"Millions upon millions of people go to the movies or flick on the TV to escape from their own lives for a few short hours and enter into another world. What a sick world it can be. In the hit Natural Born Killers directed by Oliver Stone, the hero drowns his girlfriend's father in a fish tank and kills her mother by tying her down on her bed, pouring gasoline on her and burning her alive. How are we supposed to react to this blood bath? A harsh, laugh-filled sound track tells the audience to regard this slaughter as the funniest thing in the world. What has Hollywood done to our senses? Violence in moves has become so commonplace that it ceases to seem real. Imagine going up 1000 feet in the air in a hot air balloon ride every day for a year. At first it would be an exciting adrenaline rush, but soon the repetition would become only a monotonous ride. To experience that thrill again, the balloon would have to go yet another 1000 feet higher. That is what the constant excessive violence is going to the public's senses. At first the violence is shocking and sick, but soon it's just an every day part of life. This glorified violence brainwashes people's minds. The feelings of shock and disgust are being replaced with a desire to be part of it's thrill. The move The Program influenced the behavior of a group of teen-agers who decided to prove their manhood by lying in the middle of a highway at night: copying the macho stunt of the film's college football players. Two of the young men were killed and two others were injured. The sense of reality about death and agony seems to have become lost. Unfortunately, many companies don't care about accepting their responsibility of contributing to a society that values life, instead they only care about maximizing their profits.

Fortunately, not everyone is too blind to see that perhaps they have a part they can play in stopping this excessive violence. The president of CBS Entertainment, Jeffrey Sagansky, said "Do we have a responsibility to help kids deal with violence?" I think we do. There is a separation of our public responsibility and our job responsibility, and we have to make them coincide more closely. It's not enough to say, "I won't let my kid watch it, but it's going to make money." It seems that too many people just dodge the question of responsibility when it comes to the question of money. Just because it sells doesn't make it right. The public's incessant pressure kept some companies from looking the other way. That's why networks, studios, production companies and industry groups arranged meetings with violence experts to distribute information about the effects of violence in entertainment and to discuss alternative ways of portraying dramatic conflict. Network and capable companies have found ways to turn this tide of violence. They have stepped up their anti-violence messages with public service announcements and specials. Four of the broadcast networks and fifteen of the cable networks have also agreed to voluntarily affix a label to any program they deemed too violent. Along with that, the cable industry promised to eliminate the unnecessary portrayal of violence as "an easy and convenient solution to human problems."

"For example, in Disney's The Little Mermaid, Ariel who is the youngest of the king's children wants to be part of our world, but her father thinks that humans are terrible. Ariel says, 'I don't see how a world that makes such wonderful things can be bad.' Her father eventually learns that the above world isn't as bad as he thought. When something as complicated as hatred is broken down into something so elementary we begin to see ourselves as we really are. Our children are our future so educate them, and they will know love.

"In various states, schools punish the parents as well as the student with a fine when the student [fails to] attend school. . .In these cases, school is not a joke, therefore, responsibility is taken seriously."
Amy Yarlett, Big Spring High School, Newville, Pennsylvania