Viewers’ views on violence

Press, 12 October 1976, Page 19

Viewers’ views on violence

Viewers were invited to express their views on TV violence. These are the letters:

Congratulations to the Christchurch group showing concern over the type of films being shown in TV programmes. Unless the brake is applied soon, more harm will be done to impressionable viewers. Violence is presented as the only answer to a disagreement, whereas lively discussion would be a much more normal solution. Recently overseas, a young girl tried to murder her parents by fiddling with the brakes on their car. after viewing the same scene in a "Starsky and Hutch” feature The “Batman” series is full of violence, yet is accepted

as entertainment for young folk at an early hour. In Sweden, sex is given free rein on the screen (not advocated here) but violence is prohibited as it is considered more harmful. A clean-vp campaign is long overdue but not too late. Good luck to any effort made in this direction. — CATHERINE SIMMONDS. My wife and I also have been very concerned at the mania for violence in so many television programmes. In fact I have previously written to a woman M.P. (a few years ago), but received no reply; also to the "Listener” on two widely separate occasions, but the editor was not interested on either occasion. The

supposedly responsible people who keep denying the effect on susceptible children are deplorably blind. Firstly, they make no allowance for the persistent impact on viewers right in their own homes several hours almost every day, every week, year after year. Surely that must impinge on impressionable young minds, especially when they are of comparatively low intelligence, far more drastically than the once-a-week visit to the cinema we Hd when young. We may well ask why on earth so many people in the film industry want to churn out so much violence; there’s more than enough in real life without artificially adding to it.—HUGH BENNETT.

Keep Them Going: Only under your own name.