Irwin Winkler Quotes

So, if falling crime rates coincide with the rise of violent video games and increasing violence on TV and at the cinema, should we conclude that media violence is causing the drop in crime rates?

Cable television is such a part of our society now. Oftentimes, the shows are really good, and you're just like, 'Well, it's worth sitting through the sex and violence because the narrative is so great.'

Even when I started in 1970, I knew that television was having a negative effect on our society.

I do show violence as entertainment. Clearly, I'd be a liar if I said I didn't.

We have a lot of American TV in Australia. I grew up watching 'Seinfeld,' 'The Simpsons' and those prime time TV shows over the years that feature grown-ups and high school kids. We had a saturation of American voices.

What is acceptable in our culture, I think, is really detrimental. I think we ought to have a little more ownership over the kind of material and the content that we put in front of people, especially young people.

Growing up, I remember my parents feeling a little wary of 'The Simpsons.' This was the late eighties, and there was a wave of articles about TV shows that were bad for America. Then we all started watching it and loved it.

TV serves us most usefully when presenting junk-entertainment; it serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse - news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion.

Even some of us who make movies underestimate their influence abroad. American movies sell American culture. Foreigners want to see American movies. But that's also why so many foreign governments and groups object to them.

Violence in film and television is an ongoing conversation, and I like eavesdropping on it, but I'm never sure what my opinion is. I like watching creative violence, but I don't know.

I think movies glamorize violence, in the sense that they make it in a way that it's either cool or funny.

There is a cultural factor promoting violence which nowadays undoubtedly is highly effective is the mass media. And particularly everything that enters our minds through pictorial media.

In today's world, America's soft power is commonly thought to reside in the global popularity of Hollywood movies, Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Starbucks.

Still, most of those effects occur in the context of harmless play and it is patently obvious that children are not normally turned into aggressive little monsters by TV or video games, since most children do not become aggressive little monsters.

When a television show like 'Scandal' becomes the biggest show in recent history, suddenly advertisers and networks want to jump on that. And what it's showing is that people want to see diversity.

I grew up with 'Roseanne'; I kind of adore her and stuff like' Home Improvement', really traditional American stuff.

I think the cartoons that they're children are watching, particularly 'The Simpsons,' they're OK. I think that the adult audience is making much too much of the danger that they imply. That's not the case. The danger for children today, honey, is the news. Keep them away from news on television.

The copycat effects of media violence, similar to those previously attributed to westerns, radio serials and comic books, are easy to exaggerate.

Sex should not be in the movies and should be in the home, and violence should be in the movies and not in the home.

Television isn't inherently good or bad. You go to a bookstore, there are how many thousands of books, but how many of those do you want? Five? Television's the same way. If you're going to show people stuff, television is the way to go. Words and pictures show things.

We've had American TV shows in Britain for years and that hasn't affected our culture at all.

Books are as dark as what is available to teenagers through the media every day.

Violence and smut are of course everywhere on the airwaves. You cannot turn on your television without seeing them, although sometimes you have to hunt around.

Games have a huge impact on our society because the media plays a role in helping to shape our attitudes. So it's not just fantasy.

The Beijing Olympics were an exercise in Chinese soft power. Americans have the 'Voice of America' and the Fulbright scholarships. But, the fact is, in fact, that probably Hollywood and MTV and McDonalds have done more for American soft power around the world than any specifically government activity.