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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - While PG-13-rated films contain material that's inappropriate for anyone under 13 years old, they are often aimed at young teenagers -- and the great majority of these movies contain some level of violence, according to new study findings.
In an analysis of the top-grossing PG-13 movies from 1999 and 2000, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles found that nearly 90 percent contained violent scenes.
In all, the 77 films showcased 2,251 acts of violence, Dr. Theresa Webb and her colleagues report in the journal Pediatrics.
Often, their study found, the violence was portrayed in a funny or escapist way, as part of a comedy or science-fiction movie, for example. Still, about half of the violent acts across film genres were of a "lethal magnitude," the researchers write.
One problem with such PG-13 violence, they say, is that it rarely shows the negative consequences of aggression. Only one of the 77 films in the study spent time portraying the aftermath of a violent act, the researchers found.
This pattern is "problematic," Webb and her colleagues argue, because studies have shown that depictions of consequence-free violence may encourage aggressive attitudes and behaviors among viewers.
Hollywood has consistently maintained that its job is to entertain, not educate. Certainly no single factor, movies or otherwise, can account for why one person acts violently while another does not, Webb's team notes.
"However," the researchers add, "it is equally obvious that in today's media-saturated world, education has become indistinguishable from entertainment and that popular films have an impact on beliefs, behaviors, attitudes and knowledge."
They call on the film industry to take more responsibility for the messages it conveys to children and teenagers through PG-13 films.
They also urge parents not to let their children see PG-13 movies unsupervised when "violence" is one of the so-called content descriptors given along with the rating. Parents should also be wary of action-adventure movies, Webb and her colleagues note, since the term "action" essentially means "violence."
SOURCE: Pediatrics, June 2007.
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