Children like violence, so long as it is only fiction
By Alison Boshoff, Media Correspondent
MANY children watch and enjoy notoriously violent 18 certificate films - but confess to feeling frightened about real life crime after watching the news.
Research on young people and the media, released yesterday by the Broadcasting Standards Council, finds that children as young as 10 seek out 18 certificate videos and like to watch violent post-watershed dramas on TV.
But although they reject censorship and say they do not feel tempted to copy violent behaviour, many confess to feeling frightened by the violence which they think surrounds them.
Sixty-six per cent of 16-year-olds said they had watched Pulp Fiction, the Tarantino film starring Uma Thurman, which features explicit violence and drug-taking, and a third of those surveyed had seen three or more 18-rated films.
In the 10-12 age group 17 per cent said they had watched Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, 34 per cent had watched The Silence of The Lambs and 23 per cent had seen Pulp Fiction.
An overwhelming majority of 15 and 16-year-olds - 81 per cent - said that children of their age did not need protecting, and 80 per cent said that the people who decided on film ratings did not listen to their views.
Mark Ratcliff, of the Murmur research company, which held discussion groups for the BSC, said: "A film like Pulp Fiction is a laugh for the average 13-year-old. Violence in EastEnders can be scarier than in a Tarantino film.
"We had some 12 to 13-year-old girls who saw a TV programme called Backup in which a man was thrown off a block of flats.
"Instead of being disturbed by the scene some complained that the blood wasn't the right colour. Most 15-year-olds would laugh at you if you said Pulp Fiction was disturbing."
But he said teenagers were sensitive to realistic violence in TV soaps or real life violence shown on the news.
In the survey, many of the respondents said they feared violence. A 13-year-old girl from Manchester said: "The country seems so violent, all that stuff like the Wests, what happened at Dunblane, the drug wars around here. You can't go anywhere without being careful."
Few children thought more "real life" violence should be screened, with only 23 per cent saying the news should show a person being killed. Perhaps surprisingly, 87 per cent believed that there should be some censorship of TV to protect children younger than them from unsuitable programmes.
Watching television after the watershed was very common with average bedtimes of 10.30pm.
Lady Howe, BSC chairman, said: "The extent to which violence seems to be so much a feature of everyday as well as media life for young people has to be a worry for everyone.
"I was, however, impressed by the concern that young people show for their brothers and sisters."
