Mayhem: Violence as Public Entertainment.

• Author: Metcalf, Stephen

In 1996 two teenagers, after repeated viewings of Oliver Stone's movie "Natural Born Killers," committed a brutal murder. One of the victim's friends later wrote a letter of protest. Stone's film, he argued, should not be allowed the excuse of artistic freedom. Instead, the film should be treated as a product, "something created and brought to market, not too dissimilar from breast implants." If something goes wrong with the product, he concluded, "either by design or defect, and injury ensues, then its makers are held responsible. It will take only one large verdict against the likes of Oliver Stone, and his production company, and perhaps the screenwriter, and the studio itself, and the party will be over. The verdict will come from the heartland, far away from Southern California, in some small courtroom with no cameras. A jury will finally say enough is enough, that the demons placed in [the killer's mind were not solely of her own making."

Is it a coincidence that the author of this letter was John Grisham, creator of such bestselling literary products as The Firm and The Pelican Brief. Many of us may share Grisham's outrage, and might even be happy to sit on such a jury. But we may also suspect the task is at once subtler and more awesome than Grisham allows. How do we begin to pinpoint causality when considering an act of violence? How can we distinguish art from schlock when labeling a movie a mere "product"?

The presumably intractable nature of such questions has limited debate on the subject, but has not deterred Sissela Bok, an accomplished public philosopher and the author of widely acclaimed books on lying and on secrets. With her new book, Bok seeks to initiate a "probing society-wide discussion on violence in society and its links with cultural life, including all forms of entertainment."

Bok is in no hurry for Grisham's version of heartland justice, but is fed up nonetheless with the interminable hand-wringing that postpones any serious discussion about violent images in TV and the movies. She identifies the sources for our inertia perceptively: First, we have placed the bar of empirical proof for the causal relationship between the consumption of violent images and deleterious effects way too high. The tobacco lobby put off cigarette legislation for decades with similar arguments; instead Bok urges us to settle for "probabilistic causation," or the intelligent suspicion that the nightly carnage piped into living rooms...