CAPES D'ANGLAIS 2000

Epreuve d'ELE

Simulations de sujet

doc. 1

Triple Elvis, 1962.

(...) I am chairman of the American Psychological Association Commission on Violence and Youth, which will issue its final report later this year, and for 3 years was a member of the National Research Council Panel on Understanding and Control of Violence, which issued its final report this past fall. Both of these reports implicate television violence as one of the causes of aggression and violence in the United States.
The scientific debate is over, as you have all noted from the testimony of the previous witnesses and statements of the members of the committee. (...) A recent summary of over 200 studies published through 1990 offers convincing evidence that the observation of violence as seen in standard, everyday television entertainment does affect the aggressive behavior of the viewer. This is an important social concern.
However, although the scientific debate may be over, the public policy debate still continues... Ladies and gentlemen of the Senate, the time has come for you to act. The TV industry has demonstrated over the last 20 years that it cannot or will not regulate itself. Something must be done before we expose another generation of our youth to the everincreasing detrimental harm of televised violence.
The Center for Disease Control of NIH has declared youth violence in the United States as of epidemic proportions and has implicated television violence as one of the causes. This is a public health problem and we must find solutions to the impending virtual disaster that this epidemic portends.
Previous congressional efforts to influence TV programming have either ignored television violence--for example the Children's Television Act of 1990--or have thus far been unsuccessful. I hope, Senator Simon, that in August something definite will come out, but I have my doubts.
What can be done? As soon as the suggestion for action comes up, TV industry raises the specter of censorship, violation of the first amendment rights, and abrogation of the Constitution. For many years now, however, Western European countries have had monitoring of TV and films for violence by government agencies and have not permitted the showing of excess violence, especially during child viewing hours, and I have never heard complaints by citizens of those democratic countries that their rights have been violated.

If something doesn't give, we may have to institute some such monitoring by Goverment agencies here in the United States. I hope, as you do, that this does not happen. But if the industry does not police itself, then there is left only the prospect of official censorship distasteful as this may be to many of us. However, as stated previously, youth violence is a public health problem. Media,violence is one of the causes, and drastic steps that we do not favor may have to be taken to curb the epidemic. Thank you." (470 words)

Statement of Professor Leonard D. Eron, research scientist and professor of psychology, University of Michigan, American specialist on the study of violence. Made before the subcommittee on the constitution and the subcomittee on juvenile justice of the comittee on the judiciary, headed by Senator Paul Simon, United States Senate, May 21 and June 8, 1993, Washington, US Government Printing Office, 1994.

"How is your car crash seminar progressing ?"
"We've looked at hundreds of crash sequences. Cars with cars. Cars with trucks.
Trucks with buses. Motorcycles with cars. Cars with helicopters. Trucks with trucks.
My students think these movies are prophetic. They mark the suicide wish of technology. The drive to suicide, the hurtling rush to suicide." "What do you say to them?" "These are mainly B-movies, TV movies, rural drive-in movies. I tell my students not to look for apocalypse in such places. I see these car crashes as part of a long tradition of American optimism. They are positive events, full of the old 'cando' spirit. Each car crash is meant to be better than the last. There is a constant upgrading of tools and skills, a meeting of challenges. A director says, 'I need this flatbed truck to do a midair double somersault that produces an orange ball of fire with a thirty-six-foot diameter, which the cinematographer will use to light the scene'. I tell my students if they want to bring technology into it, they have to take this into account, this tendency toward grandiose deeds, toward pursuing a dream." "A dream? How do your students reply?" "Just the way you did. 'A dream?' All that blood and glass, that screeching rubber. What about the sheer waste, the sense of a civilization in a state of decay?" "What about it?" I said.
"I tell them it's not decay they are seeing but innocence. The movie breaks away from complicated human passions to show us something elemental, something fiery and loud and head-on. It's a conservative wish-fulfillment, a yearning for naïveté. We want to be artless again. We want to reverse the flow of experience, of worldliness and its responsibilities. My students say, 'Look at the crushed bodies, the severed limbs. What kind of innocence is this?"'
"What do you say to that?"
"I tell them they can't think of a car crash in a movie as a violent act. It's a celebration.
A reaffirmation of traditional values and beliefs. I connect car crashes to holidays like Thanksgiving and the Fourth. We don't mourn the dead or rejoice in miracles. These are days of secular optimism, of self-celebration. We will improve, prosper, perfect ourselves. Watch any car crash in any American movie. It is a high-spirited moment like old-fashioned stunt flying, walking on wings. The people who stage these crashes are able to capture a lightheartedness, a carefree enjoyment that car crashes in foreign movies can never approach."
"Look past the violence."
"Exactly. Look past the violence, Jack. There is a wonderful brimming spirit of innocence and fun." (451 words)

White Noise, Don DeLillo, New York, Penguin books, 1984, p. 217-218