Friday, November 15, 2002
Thursday, November 14, 2002
Smoking on the Silver Screen
I heard on the radio yesterday that the UN's World Health Organization is pushing for the MPAA to give R ratings to all movies that show people smoking. The MPAA has been resistant to WHO's pressure so far, and I hope they continue to stand firm. Giving R ratings would reduce or eliminate whatever usefulness the ratings system has. For all its faults, the ratings system has this virtue: it attempts, in a rough and ready fashion, to reflect the values shared by most people, and specifically parents, in this country. Most parents would rather not have their children see graphic depictions of sex and violence, and an R rating currently provides a reasonable indicator of whether a movie has either of those things. The fact that parents are somewhat more permissive about these things now than they've been in the past is reflected -- I think rightly -- in the loosening of standards for receiving an R ratings. Some movies that would have gotten an R in 1970 would probably get a PG or PG-13 now.If the MPAA started giving R ratings to movies just because they show people smoking, it would mark a shift from trying to *reflect* values to trying to *shape* them. As a result, parents will find an even greater discrepancy between their own standards and the standards embodied in movie ratings. If parents see an R rating in the status quo, they can reasonably infer that the movie contains graphic sex or violence, from which the average parent wishes to protect her child. Under the WHO's proposed change, an R movie *might* contain sex or violence -- or it might just show a person lighting up while having a civil conversation.
And then there's the fact that the rating system is used to prevent young people from seeing certain movies. Under the proposed system, a 16 year old would be unable to see a movie that depicts smoking without parental accompaniment, even though he can see people smoking cigarettes on the street any day of the week. That's onerous for both the teen and his parents. If the ratings system has any value at all, it's reducing the burden of parenting by providing useful information and restricting viewing only of the movies that typical parents would object to their children seeing. Giving an R for smoking doesn't fit the bill.
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
Kick 'Em to the Curb
I really enjoyed this Non Sequitur comic that appeared in the paper late last week, but I can't figure out how to post it here without scanning it -- and I'm far too lazy for that. So I'll just describe it instead. Danae (a cynical little girl who appears in the strip occasionally) has started an online advice column. The following conversation ensues."Welcome to DEAR-DANAE.COM, your online home for sage advice. What's your problem?"
"Dear Danae -- I always seem to be attracted to the worst possible guys... How can I break this stupid cycle of bad decisions?"
"Stop voting."
Life-Saving Strategies
On Friday I attended Eugene's Xth Annual Dress-as-a-Movie party. I wore a parchment-colored shirt on which I'd written (in puffy black fabric paint) a whole bunch of Jewish names. You guessed it - I was Schindler's List. And the names I wrote were actual names of people saved by Oskar Schindler.The shirt provoked a couple of interesting conversations about whether Schindler had actually saved anyone *on net*. Or was there instead a substitution effect, meaning that saving one person merely resulted in a different person going to the concentration camps in his place? If so, then Schindler only affected the names, not the numbers.
After some consideration, I concluded that Schindler probably did save people on net, although perhaps fewer than the total number of Jews he had working in his factories. I'm not a WWII scholar, but it's my understanding that Hitler's "final solution" didn't really kick into overdrive until his imminent defeat was clear - sometime in late '43 or early '44. They were killing Jews (and others) in the concentration camps before then, but the killing machine wasn't really working at full capacity. Only in the very late stages of the war was the machine working at full speed. Schindler's plan effectively moved some Jews from the below-capacity period, when they could easily have been killed, to the full-capacity period, when they just added to the length of the queue - a queue that had not been exhausted by the war's end.
Another argument for why Schindler's plan actually saved people on net is that he presumably picked the most able and healthy people to work in his factory. Even if there were a one-for-one substitution effect, the substitution would have put relatively more unhealthy people - i.e., people more likely to have died in the meantime - in the concentration camps. In other words, having a healthy person work in the factory and an unhealthy person die leads to a higher expected number of life-years lived than the reverse. On the other hand, maybe healthy individuals would have lasted longer in the camps.
It should probably go without saying that I think Schindler's actions were still laudable and courageous. That's clearly the case if we judge by mere intentions. But I also suspect that his actions at least created a positive *expected* effect on the number of lives spared. Regardless of what happened ex post, his strategy made sense ex ante.
One person at the party told me a story - of Jewish origin, incidentally - about a man whom the king had condemned to death. The condemned man promised the king that, if he were spared, he would teach the king's horse to sing. The king agreed. Once they were in private, the condemned man's wife asked, "What are you thinking? You can't teach a horse to sing, and you'll just be executed a year from now!" The man replied, "A lot of things can happen in a year. I might die, the king might die, the horse might die!" That, I think, was the simple essence of Schindler's plan.
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