Violence in the media, or sex in the media or 
anything is a complete red herring. It doesn’t give 
the nature of the medium itself or its effects. In 
fact, the content of any medium is always an older 
medium, as my father showed over and over again. 
And by the time you put something inside another 
situation you change its properties. By the time 
you put, let’s say, a novel or an opera on film, as 
film it doesn’t have the effect of an opera which is 
performed on a stage with a live audience and so 
on. Or as film, the novel doesn’t have the effect of 
the book, it has now the effect of film. And it 
changes people and uses them according to the 
dictates of the film medium, not according to the