Unsuitable for A General Audience

Over the past few weeks, I have been working on a short story for a contest sponsored by the city library system. Most of the rules dealt with length and formatting, which were easy enough to follow.  The instructions on content were more problematic. All they said was “Stories should be suitable for a general audience.” That leaves a lot of scope for interpretation. In the movie rating system, "appropriate for all audiences" means "no violence, offensive language, or sexual activity.” The vast majority of animated Disney movies which were made before the new millennium like the Lion King, the Little Mermaid and Aladdin fell under this category and were rated G or GA.

What constitutes G-rated entertainment today, however, has changed to include content that is violent, suggestive or both. An online article from November 2005 (https://www.today.com/popculture/what-does-g-rated-mean-these-days-wbna9889136) references the Disney movie Chicken Little, which includes violence and sexual innuendo. 

So what is a general audience? If I categorize it by age, it would include babies to senior citizens. Stories geared towards a pre-school or pre-teen audience would not have the same subject material or appeal for a more mature audience. A general audience would also include different ethnicities, religions, political ideologies, sexual orientations, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The content would have to be relatable to everyone in those categories. That’s where I’m having a problem. How can one story satisfy everyone's preferences?  

My story is written in English, which may not be understood or appreciated by people for whom it is not their native language. It does incorporate a foreign language because of the setting of the story but any unfamiliar terms are translated into English. I have written stories that draw upon my religion and cultural heritage in the past. My story does not reference any particular religious orientation although it does have a mythological component. Because it is not set in modern times, the language is deliberately formal and precise and utilizes complex vocabulary, which may not engage teenage texters or people who are used to more colloquial English. 

The male protagonist is an alpha male, which may be offensive to feminists, but the female protagonist, while sheltered, is not weak. The characters, like the dialogue, are true to the setting and conform to classical Western norms of appearance and behavior.

There are no physical contests, fights or battles, no races or weapons in the story so the average boy may not find it exciting. But it does include my perspective on the characteristics of a gentleman, which is a lesson that very few young boys get to learn these days. There is a hint of innuendo, but nothing as blatant as the Fifty Shades trilogy.I am an idealist at heart who believes that anything related to themes about love and sex should be portrayed as tender, nurturing and strengthening rather than dramatic, unconventional and combative.

 I don’t think that the trend of "more permissive social values" in modern entertainment has had a positive influence on relationships between men and women as the today.com article points out. A poster on an Etsy chat forum comments, “In American primetime, we have Victoria's Secret commercials that are pretty risque, Viagra commercials, commercials where men and women treat each other like dirt...Really, I'd rather have a felt [sic] penis flash across the page and quickly hit the back button with my child in the room (or my dad) than sit through a VS commercial or a commercial about erectile dysfunction.”  

 But if I am writing for a modern general audience which has been largely desensitized by graphic images and pornographic content, a story that doesn't create shock value by conforming to the popular expectation would be viewed as dull and insipid and fail to hold the attention of its audience.

I have heard profanity being used frequently in movies, songs, television, and the news and seen it in stories I have read as a way of demonstrating conviction or strong emotion.  In the past, it was used to identify a character who is not educated or cultured, but today  I see nothing beneficial or enriching in using profanity as a narrative device, or even a way of making a point in a debate or speech. To me, it just means that the writer or speaker doesn’t have the proper tools to create a good story or support their viewpoint, and the wrong tools only weaken the structure.

One of the lessons that I learned from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, is that the best stories are the ones that are based on your own experience. Growing up in a Western culture I am familiar with its traditions, so I made that the background for my story.  Professor Bhaer  tells Jo “to write what would be of benefit to the mind, heart, and soul,” advice which is reinforced by blogger Trix Wilkins, who says “It’s when we feel, that we write passionately, from the heart – and that is where the compelling story begins.” So maybe that means that it’s time to go against the tide, to write a story that is not suitable for general audiences, but for discriminating audiences, who hold the writer to a higher standard. A story where the reader can learn about a variety of subjects from history to geography, art, culture, and psychology, where the humor is subtle rather than vulgar, a story that employs sensuality rather than sexuality, one which makes the reader both feel and think. A story like that may not satisfy everybody, so it may not reach a wider audience. But at least it will have bolstered the mind, heart, and soul of its first audience: its creator.

Civil Discourse in the Midst of Militant Reaction

The recent school shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida has resurrected the ongoing debate between those who support increased firearm legislation to combat the increased incidence of mass shootings, and those who feel that such legislation does little to solve the underlying problem.

The specific language of the Second Amendment states that “a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” It prohibits the federal government from making any laws that would hamper the ability to defend against unlawful violence.  Americans have interpreted the wording to believe that every individual has the unrestricted right to own a gun, but according to former Chief Justice Warren Burger, such a belief is “a fraud on the American public” and the right was intended to be reserved for the purpose of ensuring collective security by arming a state militia. It was not until the 2008 Supreme Court decision in Columbia vs Heller that the Second Amendment was interpreted as supporting the individual’s right to own a weapon, “unrelated to service in a militia” for self-defense. The ruling in the case applied first to the federal government and was later expanded to include state and local governments in McDonald v City of Chicago.

A  Wall Street Journal article on February 16, 2018 reported that 80% of the worst mass shootings in the US that have occurred since 2012 involved the AR-15, the weapon used in Parkland.  The headline reads “AR-15 Type Rifles Are Fast, Deadly And Very Popular,” thus focusing attention on the instrument rather than the wielder. A website sponsored by the NRA states that rifles are far less frequently used than handguns in the commission of a crime. In fact, the AR-15 has been responsible for less than 10% of all violent shooting incidents since 2000. Regulation hasn’t had much effect in the past because there are always loopholes in the system.

The public has been led to believe that people who are mentally ill are automatically at risk to be perpetrators of violent crimes. A federal law in place since 1968 prohibits the possession of firearms by those who have been judged mentally ill by a government body or who have been committed to a mental facility without their consent.  The states also have rules that involve the right of the mentally impaired to own a gun. Hawaii doesn’t allow the mentally impaired to own a gun without medical clearance, while in California, an individual is committed to a mental hospital and legally found to be mentally impaired is banned from owning a firearm for 5 years. However, many of the people responsible for violent crimes had never previously been diagnosed with mental issues, so mental health is not a reliable indicator of a propensity for violent crime, and using such a general standard for predicting criminal behavior is insufficient as a solution. 

What would be helpful is to have a way of predicting who might actually be at risk of acting out on their violent impulses. In a follow up article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Technology Can Redefine the Mass Shooter Problem”, writer Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. suggests that technological assistance might provide some useful indicators, particularly given the wealth of  online information that is available through social media and other sources about an individual’s habits, preferences and activities. There were many warning signs in an analysis of Cruz’s online presence that, in hindsight, were ignored. But the flip side in evaluating such information, as Jenkins points out, is that we might be too hasty in jumping to judgment based on our own individual biases.  The truth is that there IS no ironclad way to determine who will commit a crime until after the act. To target a certain population without concrete evidence is a violation of its civil rights. It is one thing to have rights that may never be exercised and another to have a right summarily taken away.

By itself, a gun/firearm is merely an object, much like a knife, or a hammer or a plane. It lacks cognitive capacity and cannot function without human assistance. The outcome depends on the intent of the individual who uses the object.  As a friend recently pointed out to me, the planes that flew into the Twin Towers on 9/11 were instruments in the largest single mass murder on US soil. The murderers of 9/11 were foreign born young men who had been ideologically indoctrinated to believe that Americans were evil. Yet planes are still used as a method of long distance transportation. We have instead increased our vigilance by monitoring passengers and crew and imposing uniform restrictions on them.

WSJ Op Ed writer Peggy Noonan, along with Amy Wax and Larry Alexander in the Philadelphia Enquirer, point to a fundamental breakdown in the cultural cornerstones of society over the past 50 years as a causal factor for the increase in violence and mental instability in the population. The generation up to the late 60s followed a commonly accepted way of living and behaving. The precepts of the bourgeois culture as Wax says in "Paying the price for the breakdown of the country's bourgeois culture", were: “Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.”  There was no Internet, social media or dehumanized entertainment at that time to flood and warp impressionable young minds with images of violence and illicit or aberrant sexual behavior.Those who subscribe to bourgeois beliefs are now mocked, harassed and castigated for being biased and bigoted towards people who don’t follow them.

The disturbing change in the culture has created what Noonan refers to as a toxic atmosphere, as dangerous to the mental well-being of the nation’s youth as maternal smoking during pregnancy is to a developing fetus.  Noonan quotes data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) showing that 20% of children from 3 to 17 have suffered from mental or emotional illness at some time during the course of their childhood.In a public address the day after the shooting, President Trump asked the children who felt “lost, alone, confused or even scared” to seek help from the adults in the community, their families, teachers and spiritual leaders.  

But what if those adults are not equal to the task? Both Noonan and Wax believe that society has grown to emphasize the rights of the adults over the needs of the children, a trend Wax suggests began with the counterculture movement of the 60s. The adults who are supposed to espouse the standard cultural values that promoted a strong, healthy and functional society instead abdicated their responsibilities. Wax says: “The loss of bourgeois habits seriously impeded the progress of disadvantaged groups. That trend also accelerated the destructive consequences of the growing welfare state, which, by taking over financial support of families, reduced the need for two parents. A strong pro-marriage norm might have blunted this effect. Instead, the number of single parents grew astronomically, producing children more prone to academic failure, addiction, idleness, crime, and poverty.”

Without a strong foundation, whatever is built on it, i.e., the lives and stability of future generations, is weak. Noonan uses the abortion debate as an analogy in examining the mindset of shooters like Nikolas Cruz towards themselves and their victims, theorizing that they may feel that if an unborn baby’s life is of no value and can be cavalierly ended, no life, whether of offender or victim, has any value. Trump emphasized that the way forward is to “...work together to create a culture in our country that embraces the dignity of life, that creates deep and meaningful human connections.” Our attention should therefore be focused on repairing the void in empathy and connection, in creating an environment that fosters cohesion rather than isolation, and in seeing that our youth are given the mental, emotional and physical tools and training to foster and strengthen, rather than weaken or destroy their self-worth.  Only then do we have any hope of stemming the occurrence of further tragedies.