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The following article, entitled
"Millennium Stars Reflect on TV and Littleton," appeared in the pages of
The Vancouver Sun
on April 28, 1999. The article sought to explore how the
cast and crew of what was unarguably one of the most violent
shows airing on television responded to the high school shooting that
occurred in Littleton, Colorado, and public claims that
depictions of violence in the media fuel such real world attacks.
In the wake of the Littleton,
Colorado shootings, psychologists and sociologists have been
clambering all over one another with theories on how to
explain the unexplainable.
In a world where
traditional authority figures no longer command respect, the
idea that mass culture is somehow to blame is gaining credence
among ordinary people — if not among all the so-called
experts, many of whom are choosing to blame one culprit,
whether it's Marilyn Manson (the not-so-divine inspiration
behind Colorado killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, or so
we've been led to believe) or South Park (the not-so-divine
inspiration behind Springfield, Ore. killer Kip Kinkel, or so
we've been led to believe.)
Yale University law professor
Lawrence Friedman, author of Crime and Punishment in American
Society, posits a more disturbing theory in his most recent
book, The Horizontal Society. He suggests modern
communications technology, specifically television, has
created a "horizontal society" in which everybody is exposed
to the same ideas, people and places.
On Friday, the final day of
filming on the Vancouver-shot TV series Millennium, the
Colorado killings were on the minds of many in the cast and
crew, from production assistants and truck drivers to actors
Lance Henriksen and Klea Scott.
Chris Carter's dark allegory
has been criticized for its occasionally explicit depictions
of murder in a world gone mad. It is a tag that bothers many
of those closest to the series, who insist that by showing
violence in its true form — with all the blood and pain and
grief, not to mention the finality of death — they are
exposing violence for what it is, not glamourizing it.
"I've always believed that for the sake of [the truth], at a
murder trial, they ought to bring in the victim's dead body
into the courtroom and show what violent death really is,"
Henriksen says. "My heart went out to those people in
Littleton. Think of how desperate, lonely [and] separate ...
these kids were. There was no love there from their parents.
There couldn't have been, otherwise they would have reached
out to them. Those parents didn't know a thing about what
those kids were doing. It didn't look like they even cared.
That's the tragedy, and that's what made it happen. Those kids
were isolated in their own world.
"You see the reality of what
happened and you see the way violence is depicted on
television and you realize that television doesn't even begin
to show what violence really is. Think of the grief of the
parents of the victims. Think of the way those kids who lived
through that experience will have to deal with that for the
rest of their lives. Television sanitizes reality, and that's
very dangerous."
Henriksen says that in the
three years Millennium has been on the air, he has
fought to keep the show honest. "People say Millennium
is so dark that it scares them. Well, that's what it is
supposed to do, as opposed to a show where somebody is beaten
up and thrown off a cliff, and whoever is watching just shrugs
and says, 'Hey, I'm going to dinner; you want to come?' Death
is sterilized, made antiseptic. It's trivialized. Well, I'll
tell you something: There is nothing trivial or sterile about
death."
Director Thomas J. Wright, who
worked on Max Headroom before turning to
Millennium, says good television forces viewers to listen
to the words as well as watch the pictures. "I really don't
think you can blame what happened in Colorado on any one
thing," Wright says. "It's not television's fault. It's not
the movies' fault. It's a lot of things. I know that it's only
a matter of time before television is blamed, and we'll be
lumped in with everybody else. But I've always maintained that
Millennium is about stopping violence, not glorifying
it. We've always been selective about what we show and do."
For Scott, the Ottawa-raised
actor who appeared in Steven Bochco's Brooklyn South before
joining Millennium last summer,
Millennium's depiction of mayhem and its aftermath was
spiritually and emotionally taxing. "When you see what
happened in Colorado, it forces you as an actor to ask
yourself how you feel about what you're doing," Scott says. "I
want to be a conscientious human being and morally
responsible. What I feel about Millennium, though, is
that it deals with what happens after a violent act, which is
what I think makes it timely and important. I don't believe
examining the cause and effect of violence is trivializing
it."
The new millennium presents society with a unique opportunity,
Henriksen believes. "Are we going to keep looking down at our
neighbours in contempt and point the finger at each other?"
Henriksen says. "Is that all we're going to do, for the rest
of eternity? We have so many choices in front of us, and look
at what we're doing.
"That's why I love that Randy
Newman song. He says, 'Come on, Big Boy, come and save us.
Come and look at what we've done with what you gave us. I
heard they said the Big Boy's dead, but I think he's hiding.'
"I hope that's true. I hope Newman knows something we don't.
Wouldn't that be a rush?"
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