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Recently, a group of prominent Americans, including current and former public officials, issued a statement decrying violence in entertainment that they called an "Appeal to Hollywood." While there is certainly much to criticize in the media, this appeal is likely to do more harm than good. By promoting the idea that violent imagery causes crime and should be suppressed, it encourages government censorship.

We reject this approach and urge public officials and Hollywood executives to avoid simplistic responses and sound-bite solutions to complex social problems. There is no evidence that banning violence in the media will do anything to deter crime. Despite the claim in the Appeal to Hollywood that there is "overwhelming" evidence that entertainment violence has "harmful effects," a 1993 report by the National Research Council, a division of the National Academy of Sciences, did not even include exposure to media violence among the risk factors for violent behavior. In its 350 pages, the study, Understanding and Preventing Violence, devoted only four paragraphs to the question of whether the media cause violence, noting only that scientists do not agree. The purported link between media violence and crime is further undermined by the fact that the crime rate is now the lowest it has been in recent decades.

If censorship will not reduce crime, it will definitely prevent artists from exploring the subject of violence and frustrate efforts to understand a fundamental aspect of human behavior. Art imitates life, and violence has always been a part of life. Violence has been portrayed in art and entertainment throughout history, in both refined and popular fare: the Roman Circus and the wrestling match, public executions and the evening news, Shakespeare and Punch and Judy. The fact that audiences have always been fascinated by both real and simulated violence should come as no surprise. Art and entertainment are safe windows through which to view a world that is sometimes too terrible to contemplate otherwise. They allow us to examine our darkest fears. They also enable us to feel pity and even move us to attempt to fight the evils that they portray.

To appreciate the importance of violent imagery to artistic, intellectual and philosophical endeavors, consider the violence in the Bible, The Iliad, Agamemnon, Faulkner's Light in August, and James Dickey's Deliverance; in films such as Paths of Glory, The Seventh Seal, and The Godfather; in Picasso's Guernica and almost all religious art graphically depicting the Crucifixion; and in theater ranging from Shakespeare (Macbeth, Henry V, Titus Andronicus) to the Grand Guignol Theater's horror shows.

The attack on violence in the media is the latest battle in a campaign for "decency" that has been going on for centuries and includes attacks on novels, comic books, and even Elvis Presley. It is worth remembering that Mozart's Marriage of Figaro was once considered "low class" entertainment, as were Shakespeare's comedies and other works we now see to contain great artistry and valuable commentary. South Park may never rise to such exalted heights, but it offers humor, fantasy, satire, and irreverence, all of which surely have redeeming value. While some believe that the exploration of dark fantasies in The Basketball Diaries actually led to a school shooting, others see it as a powerful antidote to anti-social behavior.

Although the rhetoric of the Appeal to Hollywood focuses on protecting children, it advocates a system of self-censorship by the entertainment industry that would also limit what adults could see by creating "minimum standards for violent, sexual and degrading material for each medium, below which producers can be expected not to go." This would threaten not only South Park but innovative adult programming like the HBO dramatic series, The Sopranos. Despite the claims in the Appeal to Hollywood that these codes would not create "wholesale strictures on artistic creativity," we should recall the impact of the infamous Hays Office, whose Production Code enforced "minimum standards" and prescribed exactly how movie directors could depict violence, sex, religion, and the flag.

We are told that self-censorship is acceptable because government has no role in enforcement. Yet it is clear that the the goal of the Appeal is to chill certain forms of expression. Moreover, some signers of the Appeal have openly advocated government regulation if self-regulation doesn't work, and proposals currently in Congress make the threat of government censorship very real.

Even if it were possible to censor only what children could see, the Appeal to Hollywood would be misguided. It suggests that violence is never an appropriate subject for children. Yet the word "children" includes kids from two to 17 and encompasses people of vastly different maturity levels. Certainly, most people agree that older  minors should be able to see Schindler's List or The Godfather. Like Boyz ‘n the Hood, these movies provide the perfect antidote for "escapist" entertainment by stripping violence of its glamour and emphasizing the value of human life. Preventing our young from seeing the ugliness and brutality of violence deprives them of the knowledge they need to understand and resist it.

No rating system can separate "good" violence from "bad." To some extent, that distinction is in the eye of the beholder. Even if "bad" violence could be precisely targeted, however, the ideas it represents and its power to influence behavior cannot be neutralized by suppressing offensive speech and images. To counter destructive ideas and behavior requires us to see them for what they are, and to speak out forcefully and effectively against them. The best response to hateful speech is still "more speech, not enforced silence."

The Appeal to Hollywood says that allowing children to have  unsupervised access to media "is the moral equivalent of letting them go play on the freeway." We reject this hyperbolic claim as unreasonable, uninformed, and misguided. We should not blur the line between thoughts and action.

It is actions by people that kill and injure others, not their thoughts or fantasies. When we teach a child that he can blame his misbehavior on a TV show, film, song, video game, or Internet site that "made me do it," we undermine the idea that we are responsible for our own actions and open the way to more violence.

We join in the call to Hollywood executives to provide the highest quality entertainment possible. We also urge them to resist the pressure to create taboos, villainize art and artists, and constrain the creative imagination.