A Culture That's Ripe to Sustain Evil

Jack Levin and James Alan Fox
Northeastern University

In an attempt to explain the recent school massacres in Jonesboro, West Paducah, Pearl, and Littleton, many commentators have implicated the prevalence of violence in television, films, and video games. Not only has the First Lady made this her latest soap box issue, but the White House has planned a summit focusing on the effects of entertainment on youth violence. Right or wrong, they still may have missed a far more important point: Americans have created a popular culture in which evil is celebrated.

The most popular of the morality plays of yesteryear have gone the way of Leave It To Beaver--and with them America's heroes. Only the bad guys remain to serve as role models for our children. Everywhere you look in our popular culture, you find villainy. Professional wrestling provides an apt metaphor for viewing such changes in America. Until recently, the typical wrestling match consisted of the powerful and virtuous good guys (dressed in white tights adorned with stars and stripes) who almost always beat the physically and morally inferior bad guys (dressed in menacing black costumes). But professional wrestling of the 1990s has instead become dominated by darkness and brutality--opponents are set on fire, hit with a barbed wire baseball bat, or dumped into a garbage bin and carried away on a stretcher. The traditional good guy has been written out of the script.

Talk shows of the 1980s--Oprah, Donahue, and the like--similarly featured good against evil--the abusive or womanizing husband versus his victimized wife; the child who terrorized his classmates. Audience members would typically boo and hiss the villain and support the victims. But Jerry Springer's youthful audience now cheers wildly as equally sleazy guests pound one another with their fists as the cameras role. And Springer is now more popular than Oprah--especially with eighth graders.

Prime-time TV programs have traditionally included a variety of contests--westerns and police dramas--in which the guys with the white hats ultimately defeated the forces of evil. Today, such dramatic series on TV are more likely to focus on the complexities of morality, rather than its virtues. Chuck Norris's "Walker--Texas Ranger" is one of the few programs to retain a morality play aspect, and it is routinely attacked by critics who regard it as the most violent program on television. They, too, have missed the point.

We used to put our heroes on pedestals where they could be admired, revered, and emulated, but those days are long gone. Today's children grow up collecting trading cards which bear the images of mass murderers rather than baseball players. On their bedroom walls, youngsters hang calenders featuring Ted Bundy and the Hillside Strangler. Instead of chronicling the good deeds of Super heroes, cartoons and comics today depict the seedier side of life. Batman and Robin have been supplanted by Beavis and Butthead as well as South Park, the conquests of Superman have been replaced by a comic-book version of Jeffrey Dahmer. Children can also locate killer web sites, wear killer t-shirts, and join killer fan clubs. They listen to the lyrics of Marilyn Manson who inspires them to try Satanism, Vampirism, Gothic fashion, and mass murder.

Why have we abandoned hero worship? The answer is clear: our traditional exemplars have let us down; our idols have feet of clay. Over the last 30 years, there have been repeated scandals at the highest levels of government, industry, and entertainment--Chappaquiddick, Watergate, Abscam, Irangate, Whitewater, Filegate, S&L, Monicagate, and campaign financing. Even worse, former heroes have been accused of engaging in major acts of crime and corruption--for example, Hulk Hogan (steroids), Pete Rose (illegal gambling), Mark McGwire (a diet supplement), Mike Tyson (rape), Hugh Grant (cavorting with a prostitute), Michael Jackson (child molestation), Pee Wee Herman (indecent exposure), Chris Farley (drug abuse), Michael Milken (insider trading), Bob Packwood (sexual harassment), O.J. Simpson (murder), and Bill Clinton (womanizing and sexual assault). The latest Americans celebrated for their evil ways are the two Littleton teenaged shooters. While most youngsters around America have rightly identified with the victims' pain and suffering, too many children instead identify with the power of the perpetrators. What is more, Harris and Kliebold became instant celebrities when they had their photos plastered across the covers of magazines and newspapers, coast to coast, inspiring a series of copycats seeking their own fifteen minutes of infamy.

Celebrating evil has turned morality inside out, making heroes into villains and villains into heroes. We no longer trust our traditional role models, because they have too often let us down. Notorious criminals, on the other hand, may not have the virtues we would like our children to emulate, but at least they will never disappoint us.

Prepared for The Boston Herald, May 11, 1999; 25.