0:04 I'm in with them to the movie and said,
0:05 "Just drop me off and go then pick me
0:07 back up." You know, and certain age when
0:09 they get around past 10, they're kind of
0:12 pushing the parents and so on away. So,
0:15 they're seeing up what what what I'm I'm
0:18 trying to uh to say is that the our
0:22 children are exposed to so many things
0:25 that the family can't control
0:27 or perhaps should be controlling but
0:30 does not control. that's determining
0:32 their values and their perspective on
0:34 the world. So we have to ask ourself
0:36 what is that perspective? What are those
0:39 values that they're picking up and how
0:42 is affecting their behavior?
0:45 Now the TV industry and the other people
0:47 like to say I mean they'll deny that to
0:50 me I think the evidence is kind of
0:52 overwhelming that watching a whole lot
0:54 of violence on TV affects your values
0:56 and may gives you a proclivity toward
0:58 violence. no matter what uh you know
1:01 what uh they're saying now but they'll
1:05 the the the TV execs will say well TV
1:07 really can't affect people that much it
1:09 doesn't you know it's it's fantasy they
1:12 know it's make believe well
1:14 well
1:17 ask that of the advertising people the
1:20 advertising people know that they can
1:22 affect you through television and
1:25 through radio and they affect us all
1:28 rather kind of quite Well, right. I
1:31 mean, they put um uh they advertise and
1:35 they create in us needs and desires and
1:38 wishes and they play on our weaknesses
1:41 so that you will go out and buy those
1:43 products. And one of the chief ways they
1:45 do it is to make you feel inadequate
1:49 that you don't have something right. And
1:51 they'll also associate it with being
1:53 attractive and being sexual and so on.
1:55 But they're say saying if you want to
1:57 feel like you're worth something, please
2:00 go out and buy this car. Please go out
2:02 and buy this toothpaste so I can get
2:05 richer and richer. And it has a very
2:09 deep effect. So much so that people see
2:12 this is where vulnerability comes in. If
2:14 you have no way of getting these things
2:17 and you keep getting a message over and
2:19 over again through the advertisers that
2:22 to be somebody you should have this item
2:24 because we are society that deals in
2:27 status relationships, right? Status
2:29 relationship right down to the
2:32 elementary school that the young
2:35 students don't want to come to class
2:38 without the right clothes.
2:40 That has to do with status. And where do
2:43 they learn what the right clothes are?
2:45 The young people like to feel they're
2:47 creating the styles all all the time.
2:49 Frequently they're being manipulated in
2:51 the styles just like women in particular
2:52 are manipulated in the styles. Every
2:55 year the fashion industry changes things
2:57 so you can go out and buy some more
2:59 clothes. So they keep changing the
3:01 styles to keep making money. And they
3:03 push it. See they push it. They carry
3:06 very very well-designed programs to keep
3:08 people spending money and to make them
3:10 feel out of style, which means that
3:14 they're out of status. So, young people
3:16 get a real need for this status to feel
3:18 like somebody. Now, if you're dealing
3:20 with young people who have low self-esteem,
3:22 self-esteem,
3:26 right, who are poor, who feel pushed out
3:28 because they're so-called minority in
3:30 some way, then the the need for these
3:32 things in terms of feeling like somebody
3:36 may become very important. So important
3:39 that they will kill to get them,
3:42 right? They will kill for the pair of
3:44 sneakers. Now, where did they get the
3:48 need to have those pair of sneakers?
3:51 Where did it come from? It came from
3:54 advertising. Now, I'm not saying that
3:56 the people had designs to do it, but
3:58 they do. Don't think they know. They
4:00 look at their market figures. They look
4:04 on who's spending on what, and they know
4:06 that a lot of inner city youth will go
4:09 out and some way get $175 to buy some
4:11 pump up sneakers.
4:13 And so they know where the market they
4:15 know who's buying the the malt liquor.
4:18 Black people buy 50% of the malt liquor.
4:21 You should know that. See, so you go in
4:23 and make demand things from these people
4:25 because if you stop buying black people
4:27 a lot of these plot
4:30 of cereal, they have printouts, you see,
4:32 on how to to do it. And nearly every
4:35 corporation now has black experts within
4:37 the corporation helping them deal with
4:40 the black market. I'm telling you. and
4:42 how to sell because sometimes they call
4:44 me and and want to pick my brain for free,
4:51 you know, you know, how do you think
4:53 they would respond and so on. So that so
4:56 that we have to be aware what advertise,
4:59 you know, if you have young children how
5:01 difficult it is when they see things on
5:03 television advertised and they want
5:05 them, the kind of feelings it stirs up
5:08 in the parents. Well, well, mommy, I
5:09 want that thing.
5:12 It looks like, you know, and you end up
5:14 maybe buying it for them. And sometimes
5:17 it's a piece of junk. See, they even
5:19 have this deceptive advertising to
5:23 children. The things don't appear after
5:25 they buy them the way they make them
5:28 appear on television. And so that the
5:30 children start getting a kind of I
5:33 cynical attitude about life and what
5:35 adults are telling them because they're
5:37 supposed to trust adults. and they see
5:40 adults misleading misleading them and
5:43 frequently not acting in their best
5:47 interest. And then we have video games.
5:49 And the video games, yes, recently with
5:51 all this attention to violence, two of
5:53 them came out with the most violent
5:54 video games that that ever were.
5:56 People's heads being cut off and all
5:58 kinds of things. And you know that the
6:00 younger younger people have a much
6:03 higher tolerance and also indifference
6:07 toward uh violence than a lot of older
6:09 people. And you they they will tolerate
6:12 if you may call something violent some
6:13 of the older folks and they'll go and
6:15 say hey that's nothing. you should have
6:16 seen so and so. the head came off and
6:18 flew up in the air and blood came
6:21 gushing out of the things and that they
6:24 look the other really uh critical part
6:26 of this that's I think something that's
6:28 a little bit different from the past
6:31 even in the violent westerns and other
6:33 kinds of fields and one of the
6:34 differences people point back say well
6:36 westerns were violent and so on but
6:38 people were not bombarded with it how
6:40 often did someone go out and see a
6:43 western see now you're bombarded with it
6:48 via not just network but also uh uh via
6:51 cable. So the intensity
6:53 of promoting you know the violence and
6:58 other things is just so much um uh uh so
7:02 much uh greater and so overwhelming
7:06 to um uh for most of the young people.
7:08 Now I you you've probably heard you know
7:10 people cite them so often you know that
7:12 you know children by the time they're 18
7:14 had watched something like 20,000
7:17 murders on TV and so on and so forth.
7:19 And there's also research that shows
7:22 that the more violence you show not you
7:24 the more it seems like it's it's it's
7:26 something of not great concern
7:29 particularly when it's done um uh and
7:31 you don't really see the reality of the
7:34 violence the the the fallout from the
7:36 violence that that's been committed uh
7:38 in the shows and so on that a lot of
7:40 young people and others come away
7:43 feeling a kind of indifference or
7:45 immunity uh don't have the proper
7:48 reactions to to violence or begin to see
7:50 it as an everyday everyday kind of thing
7:53 anyway and lose their their their sense
7:56 of concern and remorse because uh when
7:58 the violence is promoted it kind of devalues
7:59 devalues life
8:01 life
8:04 that life isn't worth as much and this
8:07 is just something that you you do and
8:09 then it's associated so much
8:11 particularly for the males that violence
8:14 is is associated with be with manhood.
8:16 Now, here's another situation where you
8:19 have vulnerable populations.
8:22 That is if if you have young men, uh,
8:24 white, black, Latino, whatever, who are
8:27 struggling for a sense of manhood that
8:29 maybe and maybe more so because they're
8:31 poor, what else, or feel shut out, and
8:32 then they from the media, they're
8:35 getting a heavy dose of to be a man is
8:38 to be violent and do something violent. Then
8:40 Then
8:42 that's what they do. And then again, all
8:44 the associations with manhood and
8:46 weapons. Again, I can get Freudian on
8:48 you. People don't like to talk this way
8:51 anymore, but guns are phallic symbols,
8:54 right? Heavy phallic symbols of power
8:55 and all kinds of other things that
8:57 people use. People don't like those. But
8:59 think of think about it. A lot of
9:02 language of guns and use of something
9:05 kind of an additional additional weapon.
9:08 And if you hear a lot of the confusion
9:10 on some of this uh these profane
9:13 records, a lot of kind of association
9:15 with guns and penises and all kinds of
9:18 things in the lyrics kind of get all
9:20 mixed up in what they you know what
9:22 they're doing. So that that element
9:25 enters into it and then using the gun
9:29 becomes an instrument of power.
9:33 Then the question of of of uh getting
9:35 the message that you deal with things uh
9:37 the first order of dealing with things
9:39 is through a weapon or with violence is
9:42 a message that young people get over
9:44 television and through the movie and
9:48 over and over and again.
9:50 And so it's not surprising that they
9:53 resort uh to weapons and things when
9:55 they are in a dispute. But it's not all
9:58 about conflict resolution. That's why I
9:59 said I I don't want to put everything
10:02 off on the media because a lot of the
10:05 the the the violence and so on has very
10:07 little to do with conflict resolution
10:09 types of things. That is when when
10:11 someone steps on your shoe and you shoot
10:15 them to death. That is not about
10:18 conflict. What's the conflict there?
10:20 What's to be resolved? Do you understand
10:23 what I mean? If you beat up someone
10:27 because they looked at you the wrong way
10:29 in the hallway, what's the conflict that
10:31 they're supposed to be resolving? The
10:35 other the thing that's operating is that
10:38 a lot of young people
10:42 have such high levels of anger and rage
10:46 that it's easily triggered. Now when I
10:48 start thinking about uh the media and
10:51 popular culture and so on, what what is
10:55 their responsibility of what effect do
10:57 they have on producing that rage? Where
10:59 does it come from? Or is it really
11:02 coming from someplace else? And then we
11:03 have to ask if it's coming from
11:05 someplace else, what's the effect of the
11:09 media on maybe the adults who producing
11:11 that rage in the in the in the in the children?
11:13 children?
11:15 See, we we're we're focusing on young
11:18 people, but remember, we are affected
11:21 too by what we see and what we hear. And
11:25 what about um uh what does watching soap
11:27 operas all day do
11:29 to your to your head or your sense of of
11:32 reality? And then remember that
11:34 frequently young children are also
11:38 watching the soap operas frequently with
11:40 their parents. What effect is that
11:41 having on? What is parental responsibility?
11:44 responsibility?
11:46 How do we educate children to deal with
11:47 something like television? How much
11:49 should you have it on and how much
11:50 should you have it off? These are
11:52 questions that we're responsible for.
11:54 Why do people have have it on seven
11:56 hours a day?
11:59 Why are children watching 25 to 30 hours
12:00 a week?
12:02 The secondary effect of why this may
12:05 have negative effects on children is
12:07 that it interferes with their ability to
12:09 learn and their ability to educated if
12:12 get educated if they watch too much. If
12:14 they don't get educated, this is not
12:15 going to give them the kinds of tools,
12:18 both moral and otherwise, to deal with
12:20 issues and resolve conflicts and deal
12:21 with the world and give them a sense of
12:24 self-esteem if they're flooded and
12:26 denied these uh uh opportunities because
12:32 of of of of television. Um
12:36 there are many other secondary effects.
12:38 I I I'm supposed to limit myself to half
12:41 an hour and I'm about there.
12:46 Uh, and it's impossible to to uh uh to
12:50 cover uh all of this, but let me let me
12:55 just um say that the family
12:58 and the community has to become very key
13:01 in what people watch and what the
13:03 children do and they have to get more
13:06 control. I think the whole community is
13:08 too passive in relationship to what the
13:10 media is doing to their commun
13:12 communities and what they're exposing
13:14 their children to and they have to be
13:17 more activist. Remember when I te came
13:20 out with Cop Killer?
13:22 It was one of the few songs that got
13:24 withdrawn. Why did it get withdrawn?
13:28 Because cops have some power.
13:30 And the cops said, "We ain't going to
13:32 protect you if you sing that song." And
13:36 they put pressure on Time Warner and Ice
13:37 Tea said, "I'm singing what I want,
13:39 freedom of speech." And Time Warner
13:41 first said, "Freedom of speech? What are
13:43 you trying to sense us?" Suddenly the
13:45 song disappeared.
13:46 >> Disappeared from the album. They took it
13:49 right off because the police all over
13:52 the country protested. I think that if
13:54 communities rose up in protest or
13:56 stopped buying or went to the record
13:57 shops and said, "How come you're selling
13:59 this explicit lyrics to this
14:02 eight-year-old uh uh uh girl or
14:03 8-year-old boy?" That they will listen
14:07 because they're about making money and
14:09 that we have to realize that that's the
14:12 bottom line for many of many of them is
14:14 not the social consciousness that the
14:17 bottom line becomes uh money for them
14:20 and for the advertisers. I'm going to
14:21 stop stop here, but I have to tell you
14:23 something to make you laugh. You look so
14:27 glum um out there, but I have my watch
14:30 on on the podium and I was watching it
14:32 and uh I put it up there when I came up
14:36 here and I I learned that from um
14:39 watching ministers and preachers when I
14:42 was young. And I used to go into these
14:44 storefront churches with my father in
14:46 East Harlem. And a minister would come
14:48 out and they usually had on a dark suit
14:50 and a vest. And in the vest they had a
14:52 big watch on a gold chain that was like
14:54 part of the uniform. And they would come
14:56 out first thing and walk out to the
14:58 podium and they would take this big old
15:00 watch and they would sit it up on a
15:02 podium. And one time I turned to my
15:04 father I said pop what does that mean?
15:07 He said not a damn thing. Thank you very much.
15:31 Um, I'm going to take some uh some
15:33 questions. Remember, I'm I'm a
15:35 psychiatrist and I know about I know
15:39 about everything. So, uh you can you can
15:42 ask me anything uh anything you like. I
15:44 really uh couldn't cover all the things
15:47 I wanted to cover uh because of the the
15:50 the time limitations and it's such a big
15:53 uh big topic. But you might have some
16:00 >> Yeah. Uh sir, I just want to say
16:01 everybody has to be careful because
16:04 there even popular songs about killing
16:05 your brothers and sisters and parents
16:08 and and and and the community should get
16:15 I don't agree with that.
16:17 >> I don't agree with that. I think it's
16:20 wrong to censor uh free speech at any
16:24 time. I think the main problem is that
16:26 rather than censoring free speech, we
16:29 should recognize, as you said, doctor,
16:32 that there are certain vulnerable
16:35 segments of our society. Those children
16:38 should be protected. Yes. But when we go
16:41 down that road, that slippery road of
16:44 censoring free speech, we're asking big
16:47 brother to come into our houses. I think
16:51 it's dangerous. I think it's ill advised
16:55 to crush uh the freedom that we've got
16:59 in this society to speak our minds at
17:02 any time. Now, I I believe that just as
17:05 one person has the right to say what
17:07 they want, another person should be able
17:09 to say, "You're wrong. You're in the
17:12 wrong context." Uh you shouldn't be
17:14 saying it in front of this vulnerable group.
17:16 group.
17:19 But we should not
17:23 say that anything is forbidden. We
17:26 should not crush anything that comes
17:34 I don't have to say nothing. You people
17:40 >> Hi. Uh the comment that he just made,
17:42 we'll be asking Big Brother into our
17:44 home. We probably would be, but I'd say
17:46 come on in because of the violence
17:47 that's on TV now, especially in the
17:50 videos. And I can remember back in
17:55 probably 1989 when um Easy E had music.
17:57 He was making money underground. They
17:59 didn't even have it on the videos or the
18:01 radios. I think you could you can go
18:03 back to them still making that money
18:05 without them being on the videos and the
18:07 radios because he was making big bucks
18:09 underground. So if they could do it like
18:11 that again, fine. But showing it on TV
18:13 and the videos, showing it to the kids,
18:15 I don't care what anybody say. It does
18:23 >> I have a question about um parenting
18:26 black children. Um, I'm interested in
18:28 adopting an older child because I see a
18:29 great need and it's something that I'm
18:32 interested in. But one of my cons, how old?
18:34 old?
18:37 >> School age. School age. School age.
18:39 >> School age. Right. But one of my
18:42 concerns about doing that um would be,
18:44 you know, how realistic is it for me to
18:46 think that I could have any real impact
18:48 through parenting a child who has
18:50 already been impacted by other
18:53 influences? um you know what do you do
18:55 when you're when you're you know
18:56 involved in any kind of relationship god
18:58 parenting I was involved in the big
19:00 sisters program um and it's hard
19:02 sometimes to reach through whatever
19:03 they've already experienced and I just
19:05 want to know what the prognosis is for
19:06 doing that is it realistic to think you
19:10 can or how do you do it
19:13 >> I I I think any any any child an older
19:16 child you know uh foster children who
19:19 you adopt have had experience you know
19:22 obviously beforehand with caretakers and
19:25 sometimes uh uh a lot of it not good,
19:26 sometimes good. I mean it depends, you know.
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