Recent news stories about Tom Cruise and Harry Potter – two intensely admired, if wildly dissimilar, titans of the popular culture – highlight dangerous extremes in the ongoing debate about American entertainment and its influence.
The most outspoken commentators on the subject either irresponsibly exaggerate the effect of movies and television on real-world behavior, or else they dismiss that obvious impact altogether. These polarized positions prevent the sort of balanced and honest appraisal that might actually assist consumers in making more thoughtful decisions about the media messages and images they regularly consume.
Take the case of the curious craze that’s been launched by the most recent Tom Cruise movie. That film, “Vanilla Sky,” is a turgid, incoherent flop that’s won little success with either critics or audiences. It contains, however, one brief scene in which the handsome star swaggers up to a bar and orders a combination of beer and Patron, a premium tequila.
Suddenly, watering holes across the country began reporting an immediate demand for that same odd mixture. “It’s the hottest drink on the club circuit these days,” says spokeswoman Gail Parenteau of the Culture Club and Polly Esther’s chain in Florida. “I’d never heard of it before, but sales of Patron have at least doubled,” in the weeks since the film’s release, the owner of a swanky New York club told USA Today.
If the briefest mention of an obscure product in even a feeble, feckless film can produce this dramatic commercial impact, who can doubt the influence of more significant messages in far more popular movie releases? If thousands of customers imitate a fictional character’s choice of expensive libations, then why shouldn’t they attempt to mimic his behavior in a more intimate arena?
In “Vanilla Sky,” for instance, the Tom Cruise character keeps company with a saucy mistress (played by lovely Cameron Diaz) who purrs about his ability to make love to her four times in one night. If men who want to emulate Tom Cruise go to the trouble of seeking out pricey Patron tequila, is it ridiculous to expect that they’d try to live up to the character’s bedroom performance – or feel the influence of the movie’s general infatuation with racy, dangerous sexual adventurism?
Pop culture’s ability to set trends in clothing, hair styles and slang phrases is so obvious, that it makes no sense to deny its power over romantic mores, attitudes toward violence, the work ethic and other more important matters.
Of course, most people who see “Vanilla Sky” will never try to recreate its erotic acrobatics, or order a shot of tequila to accompany their beer. By the same token, most people who see a TV ad for a new Lexus ES300 will never consider buying the car.
But enough people pursued Patron after watching the movie, and enough people respond to the urgings of advertisements, to make a major difference for the relevant corporations in the real world. The fact that media messages fail to influence everybody doesn’t mean that they fail to influence anybody. Even a tiny proportion of the audience for major films and TV programs can amount to millions of people.
And that argument brings us directly to the current controversy over Harry Potter – with a church in Alamogordo, N.M., so worried over the influence of the best-selling books and the smash hit movie that it organized a much-publicized book burning in the last week of 2001. If adults will imitate the drink choices of movie characters, then it makes some sense to assume that children – even more vulnerable than their elders – will follow their favorite cinematic and literary hero into the practice of witchcraft and sorcery.
The parallel breaks down, however, because ordering a shot of tequila, no matter how costly, is still far easier to do than casting an effective spell or flying through the air on a broomstick in a game of Quidditch. Kids may play with wands, and repeat some of the exotic Latin phrases they hear in “Harry Potter,” but this will not enable them to transcend the laws of nature – any more than imitations of the witchcraft in films like “Snow White,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” or “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” led previous generations of children into darker realms.
Children’s fantasy, from “Hansel and Gretel” to “Star Wars,” does limited or no damage precisely because it’s so far removed from everyday reality.
The most worrisome films in terms of social impact are those that take place in a world that young people will recognize as similar to their own. Parents should feel seriously concerned about the glamorization of drugs, cigarettes, promiscuous sex, vulgar behavior, drag racing, random violence and suicide in a host of contemporary teen movies. They clearly have more to fear from Hollywood’s glorifying the use of marijuana or sex toys than they do with the glorification of light sabers in “Star Wars” – or giant three-headed dogs and magical owls in “Harry Potter.”
Between smug Hollywood apologists who pretend that all popular entertainment is harmless, and overwrought demagogues who publicly burn children’s books in church parking lots, there’s a vast middle ground for reasonable people who want to come to terms with the undeniable power of pop culture. That effort, however, requires the examination of very different products in their own terms, and recognizing the essential and inevitable distinctions between Tom and Harry.
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