Private ratings - V-chip

National Review, Sept 25, 1995 by Lewis M. Andrews

ONE of the most striking things about politically inspired applications of new technology is the degree to which they tend to be hobbled by outmoded habits of regulatory thinking. The latest example is the so-called 'V-chip' legislation, a proposal by Senator Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) -- co-sponsored by Indiana Republican Dan Coats -- to help parents control their children's exposure to objectionable programing by requiring television manufacturers to install an electronic wafer capable of automatically blocking out programs coded for various levels of sexuality and violence (hence the 'V' in V-chip).

As envisioned by its supporters, the V-chip would work as follows: All television entertainment would be evaluated against a standard roughly analogous to the Motion Picture Industry Association of America's current classification for films, and the rating for each show would be electronically encoded in the black-bar area of the broadcast signal (the same black bar that appears when you twist the horizontal control on your set). The chip itself would be designed to distinguish one electronically encoded rating from another, and parents would be free to program it to determine what level of violent or sexually explicit content they were willing to allow into their home at different times of day.

ALTHOUGH there are signs of growing support for Senator Conrad's V-chip proposal -- it has already been adopted in the Senate as an amendment to the telecommunications regulation bill, and President Clinton has just given it his official endorsement -- a closer inspection of the concept reveals that while it sounds high-tech, it both perpetuates an antiquated approach to ratings and, even worse, prevents parents from taking advantage of emerging digital technologies for real control over home entertainment.

Advances in microchip technology have indeed made it possible for parents to protect their children from unwanted exposure to certain televised images in an economical way. Even allowing for differences in the estimated per-unit cost of mass-producing such a chip -- congressional supporters say $5, the Electronic Industries Association trade group puts the cost at closer to $40 -- the history of consumer electronics would suggest steady price declines to the lower figure over time.

But the problem with the V-chip proposal as currently envisioned is not that it is ahead of its time but, on the contrary, that it fails to be innovative enough. The idea of having all television programs rigorously screened against a single standard, whether by an independent board or (as some imagine possible) by the shows' producers themselves, is qualitatively no different from what the old movie studios tried to do with the formation of the Production Code Administration under the Hays Office in 1934.

The historical experience of the last 61 years indicates that single-scale systems not only fail to discourage obscenity and violence -- films are worse than ever in this respect, in spite of a uniform motion-picture code -- but have some undesirable side-effects. When public morality turns conservative, as it did in the 1930s, monopoly rating scales tend to take a bean-counting approach to suggestive dialogue, which takes a genuine artistic toll. Gerald Gardner in his book The Censorship Papers recalls how Hays Office director Joseph Breen attempted to strip films like Casablanca, Double Indemnity, and The Maltese Falcon of their most memorable lines. On the other hand, when enlightened opinion becomes as mindlessly indulgent as it has in recent years, classification systems become a marketing tool for clever producers, who pick public fights over ratings and then conveniently make the necessary cuts just before their film's release.

Enthusiastic advocates of the current V-chip legislation, such as Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey (D.), claim that their proposal is different from previous single-scale systems because it gives parents some individual control over what comes through to their homes. Not only would they be able to program the family TV to receive different levels of sexuality and violence, but they could alter the setting for the time of day. Yet this kind of end-of-the-signal choice within a single-scale system boils down to little more than being able to select the decibel level for whatever kind of sociological thinking happens to shape the current ratings classification. In just the past few years, we have seen excessive violence defined as everything from a large number of cartoon-like deaths in a John Wayne war movie to politically correct notions of the 'psychological oppression' of minorities.

All this is not to dismiss the possibility of using modern technology to help parents screen the programs their children watch (although using technology is quite different from mandating its use). Responsible parents have always relied on the ratings of religious organizations, parents' magazines, and various community groups to help determine what their children should be watching; and in what will soon be a 500-channel world, such advice will be more appreciated than ever.