Ethics and Entertainment

Introduction

Entertainment is a large part of our daily lives. Whether we take our enjoyment from music and the radio, television, theater, dance, movies or video games, we still find time every day to devote to "the arts." Yes, that's right, the arts. Though we may not think of it, television, movies, and video games are just as much art forms as poetry, theater, dance and music, and just as much forms of entertainment. What, then, separates them? What makes the content of one medium somehow more "acceptable" than another? What makes one form's portrayal of subject matter better than another? And more importantly, where's the ethics in all of it? This will examine all of these questions and come up with a proposal that the ethics of entertainment are more based off a medium's popularity, than the creator's need to be ethical.

Fine Art

The first question deals with what separates different forms of entertainment: what makes theater and dance more an art than television and video games. The answer is the term "fine art," and our different interpretations of a very versatile word. Whenever we refer to paintings hanging in a museum, or sculptures, we refer to this as art. When we talk about general forms of expression, such as writing in books, poetry, cinematography, or even choreography, we also refer to these as arts. Larger forms of entertainment are also referred to as art: the art of movies, television or production, theater production. Defining the term "art" is like trying to define poetry. As one of my professors put it: "Defining poetry is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall with a dart."

However, one of the most common uses of the word art is to refer to this subset of art which is sometimes referred to as "fine" art: putting these forms above other forms of expression. These forms of art are usually enjoyed frequently by a select number of people, usually the elite, and they are open to artistic criticism and analysis. There are eve special schools and professions devoted to its study and analysis. In some circles, the better you are at discussing the intricacies of these arts, the more cultured, intelligent, and generally popular you are. Currently, these arts include opera, theater, poetry, ballet, and occasionally underground movie productions. These art forms are somehow better than more popular media, deal with more "serious" issues, and capture the essence of humanity far better than all the others.

However, as we're about to see, fine arts didn't start out so fine. Our first look into the deep dark secrets of art is going to be a look at poetry during the times of the Greeks. Currently, we see poetry released in that time as works of fine art and literature: the Iliad and the Odyssey for example. However you'll be surprised that this view of these works is relatively new.

Plato on Poetry

The content is ruining society. It portrays actions that would make real people blush in public, and desensitizes them to such actions. It may even make people act recklessly towards others. The characters do not represent real people, and if they did, they would not be so emotionless and quick to act. It should be censored and regulated. We hear these statements all the time, complaining about the content and influence of movies, television, and general media. However, these were also the complaints Plato had about poetry.

Plato hated poetry, and he did not even consider it as a "fine" art form. According to him, the stories of poetry and the subject matter of poetry were "the lowest part of the soul." "We slowly become what we see," Plato said, and what they saw at the time was poetry laced with mature subject mater, violence, rash decisions, and two-dimensional characters. In a way, it very much looked like then what TV looks like now (GMM*, p 404).

So what happened? What changed poetry from the detestable communication form it was in Plato's time to the fine art form it is now? According to Alexander Nehamas, it is a change in popularity of the medium. In Plato's time, poetry was the most popular art form. It's lack of subject-matter, Nehamas says, was a result of people's desire to watch a media with a lack of subject-matter. "Enjoyment both reflects and contributes to a distorted, perverted and dismal life - a vast wasteland accurately reflected in the medium that mirrors it." He even goes so far as to say attemts to reform these media forms to a more "artistic" medium fail because of a lack of popularity in such a movement (GMM, 406).

People want to see sex, lies and videotape, not Hamlet. The popularity of the medium is both its savior and its demise: it allows those interested in making it money for their time and popularity for their creations, and yet limits them to less artistic expressions in order to allow for a popular acceptance, and a pervasive product.

The Paths of Other Media

So how has the media solved the problem of attacks against them by the public that fuels it? Recently, the media has come under more attack for corrupting youth more than for any other ethical question. However, just as we want freedom of speech, we still want to allow these "artists" the ability to create whatever content they feel, especially considering the demand for subject matter that might corrupt the more "impressionable."

When the movie industry was facing possible government censorship, they replied by creating the MPAA rating system. Movies with more "questionable" subject matter would be rated higher so that people could tell what their children (or they) were going to see before they got into the theater. It worked well, and the government dropped its attempts to censor the industry. The right for the movie industry to create any type of material was preserved, and more importantly for such a popular medium of expression at the time, the right for people to see what they felt like was also preserved.

The music industry also recently was attacked under the same premise. Lyrics about gangster wars, suicide, drug use, sex, and even promiscuity were attacked for having a negative effect on children. Even music types (heavy metal for example) were attacked for causing those who listened to it to behave in a questionable manner. This time however, it did take governmental intrusion to impose a type of warning and rating system. The "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics" label was created to allow musicians the ability to create the art they felt like creating while still offering the medium the ability to create whatever type of content they wished. For something that is still very popular, this was far better than the censorship alternative.

The final medium is television, and with new advances in technology, the system enforced onto this medium is perhaps the most severe. When television started coming under attack for questionable content, the response was simple; those channels that were public to all people were censored by the FCC, much like it's predecessor: radio. Channels that were not supposed to be publicly viewed were scrambled to avoid letting certain content slip into the main stream. However, recently, borderline content not mature enough to be considered against FCC regulations, yet mature enough to be considered damaging to more impressionable minds started startling a dangerous borderline. The popularity of the medium allowed the creators to push the limits, and when they did it attracted even more viewers wishing to see this borderline entertainment.

The response was to impose a rating system much like the one self-imposed by the MPAA. The difference this time is the existence of the V-chip, a chip that allows people to ban more mature content from even appearing on the television set. These chips will actually be required on most TVs. However, this actually does not make the entertainment more ethical, nor will it stop people from creating questionable content. As long as there is an audience for such material (as there will be so long as the medium is popular), creators will still push the limits. We do have in each case, however, the illusion of an ethical decision to protect the public from itself.

Interactive Entertainment

Now, newer industries come under moral and ethical scrutiny. The newest of these industries, and the one coming under the most scrutiny due to recent events, is the interactive entertainment industry, otherwise known as video games. This industry is facing many of the same problems that it's predecessors faced even in Greek times: the idea that it's content is ruining children's minds and disrupting an otherwise peaceful society. Plato had these complaints about poetry, parents had these complaints about musi, critics have complaints about movies and television, and now society has lashed out against the newest entertainment craze: video games. This could, however, be for a good reason.

Just like these other industries, the interactive entertainment industry has occasionally lowered itself to the least common denominator in order to sell games. Scantily clad, physically impossible men and women, as well as questionable and/or violent subject matter is frequently the focus of many games. However, this has been the case in other forms of art and entertainment as well. Is it a sign of the times, a sign of growing popularity, a sign of a loss of producer ethics, or just part of an inevitable routine that takes over every entertainment industry in our time? We can discover the answers by looking at the trends of previous mediums.

As we've seen, each of the industries has come under scrutiny for its lack of ethical integrity; for ruining society, corrupting the populous and generally causing a scene. Furthermore, each industry has come under fire for basically the same reasons, with very little derivation. Most have even handled it the same way. While under constant fire from parents, the government, and political action groups, movies, music, and even television have reacted by imposed a rating system or an age limit on their medium. This is an attempt to allow freedom to those creating the media, while still protecting the more "impressionable" from mature content. We see already, that the interactive entertainment industry follows this formula well. When it came under fire in light of recent events, the ESRB (Entertainment Software Review Board) reacted by launching larger informative campaigns to avoid unnecessary attacks and strengthened it's pleas to developers to voluntarily rate their products.

But does a rating system allow the creators of entertainment to put whatever they want in their products, or is there some type of moral obligation to society they should follow? According to Nehamas, it is not the creators that cause the entertainment to go bad. Instead, the popularity and pervasiveness of the medium causes not only closer scrutiny, but for those creating the media to appeal to the basest form of entertainment and of the human psyche. Often, those that are creating true art (or fine art) within a popular medium are ignored over those that are more controversial. So, according to Nehamas, the problem is not necessarily those creating the material, but also those viewing the material that makes it destructive to society. Not only do the creators of the media have a moral obligation to society to only create acceptable entertainment, but society has a moral obligation to the creators to only accept moral entertainment.

However, is this a possibility? Each entertainment media so far has followed a tried and true formula to its place as an artistic and expressive medium, and there is no reason for that to change in the future, almost like an evolution. Furthermore, certain attempts to create more artistic works in a popular medium (like attempts by independent film makers and pushes from industry societies like the IGDA) sometimes end up as flops. If an audience is not ready, or does not want more "serious" content in a medium, something that attempts to draw in such content is not going to be met with a warm welcome.

This is not to say, however, that such attempts are unfounded or not required. In order for a medium to gain more respect in the eyes of portions of the public, it must attempt to create these forms of fine art. In actuality, the creators, as we have seen, have an ethical responsibility, or moral obligation, to create such works. However, seeing that the status as a true "fine" art seams almost mutually exclusive with popularity, the possibility that such an endeavor will be popular is very low.

Conclusion

So we have seen the various parts of entertainment and how they have evolved from dealing with subjects that form the "lowest part of the soul" to forms of fine art and respect over thousands of years (even if it is through a loss of popularity). Is there a time when popularity and fine art will not be mutually exclusive? This newest form of interactive entertainment, though off to a rocky start, will perhaps be a deciding factor. Will its attempts at fine art be hailed as great works at their conception, or ignored by a vast majority of the public for content that might be considered more "questionable?" Or will this form of entertainment finally be able to find that balance between questionable subject matter and artistic expression? It's up to the creators and the publics to find a new balance away from the popular emotional appeals that are seen today. The only chance we have is to increase the ethical level of both the audience and the creators to raise the level of entertainment in general.