Ten years ago, at the young and impressionable age of 14, I stepped out of a theater totally awestruck after seeing the French movie, "La Femme Nikita." In the movie's most pivotal scene, she is assigned to kill on her birthday. Her "present" - a huge shiny gun. Donning a sleek black dress and high heels in an expensive restaurant, she walks calmly over to a table and blows a couple of heads off. I was so impressed with what she did that I went back to see the movie three times. The movie did not make me want to go out and kill people, however, it did make me realize how oblivious I was to the gore and violence because I thought it was all kind of "cool."

Cut to April 20 1999, two students at Columbine High in Littleton Colo. shoot 12 of their classmates and a teacher dead, before turning the gun on themselves. Even more disturbing than the shootings was an alarming and eerie claim made by Time magazine. The two teen killers were discussing how their "story" would turn out on the big screen and argued whether Quentin Tarantino or Steven Spielberg would do a better job directing their "movie."

Former President Bill Clinton felt so alarmed by the teens' discussions that he ordered both the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department to conduct investigations into whether the entertainment industry has been using marketing tactics to draw younger audiences in to see violent movies. The report came back positive and Hollywood faced more heat when U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher published a report claiming that repeated exposure of "violent entertainment during early childhood causes more aggressive behavior throughout a child's life."

"From a public-health perspective, today's (media) consumption patterns are far from optimal. And for many children they are clearly harmful," said Satcher in a LA Times article on the controversial findings. The findings sparked a follow-up article the next day. Lawmakers and parent groups lauded the Surgeon General's findings and urged the entertainment industry to seek more responsibility towards children by curbing their use of "gratuitous violence."

"It makes me feel angry when I see a lot of things glamorized...People sitting back making money off kids, off adults that shouldn't be buying it," said Darontay Mcclendon, of Los Angeles, at the entertainment industry's flagrant use of violence to sell records or movies. McClendon, now 18, spent most of his youth in juvenile correction facilities and grew up watching gang films because they appealed to him.

"I liked to see people that were kind of like myself, or like somebody that I would grow up to be...Videos or movies with black people," He particularly identified with the character "O-Dog" in the film Menace II Society. I wanted to be twice as bad as he is, I wanted to take what he did and flip it into my own certain way 'cause if that dude got respect I could do it twice as good, or twice as bad as he is," said McClendon. The film's opening scene is its most disturbing. O-Dog and his friend Caine enter a Korean mini-mart. After repeatedly insulting the shopkeepers, they are about to leave when the Korean man says, 'I feel sorry for your mother.' O-Dog, infuriated and insulted, shoots the shopkeeper repeatedly and later drags the man's wife to the back and does the same thing to her. Throughout the movie, O-Dog screens the surveillance tape of the shooting to his friends at parties with his friends making a big joke out of the whole incident and lauding his behavior at the same time.

"Nobody wanted to mess with him...in the eyes of a 12-year-old, nobody could come across (him) without repercussions or penalties." McClendon, who recently became a father, does not see censorship as the answer but says that the industry is making it sound as if selling drugs and robbing liquor stores is "fun and great."

However, there are no signs of backing down from the entertainment industry. In an August 1999 LA Times report, the House Republican leadership under Clinton's administration failed not only to bring about a flat-out ban on "extremely violent or sexual material" but also to impose a "mandated government-imposed rating system." Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) president, Jack Valenti, did not give the Surgeon General's report any credit, stating these findings as "murky" and not an accurate prediction of a child's future behavior.

Entertainment Weekly states that "60% of movies feature at least one firearm." If movies are supposed to be vehicles reflecting a society's values, what messages are we sending out with ultra gory and meaningless violent films like "Hannibal" and "8MM?" Movies such as "Schindler's List" and "Welcome to Sarajevo" contain graphic scenes of carnage, brutality and destruction. However, these movies also display the terror of genocide, the inhumanity and evil of war and ultimately, the triumph of the human spirit.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the average American child will have viewed about 200,000 acts of violence on television alone by age 18. Violent cartoons, video games and the belligerent lyrics of Eminem now subconsciously envelop a child, slowly forming and shaping his social skills. Ergo, there is a greater need for them to distinguish between necessary and superfluous violence that they see on screen. There has yet to be a satisfying solution that would appease both First Amendment proponents as well as conservative right wing parents. However, stricter measures have recently been imposed with the mandatory photo-ID check of any minor who wants to see an R-rated movie. Some form of truce should be formed between parents and the media industry. Parents have to be responsible in monitoring what their children watch and the media industry has to realize that they have a social responsibility to the public.

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