By Joshua Le Suer


In “The Scarlet Letter,” released in 1932 – that’s 71 years ago – two of the comic supporting players take a trip over to the homestead of a lady one of the fellows is wooing. The first man steps inside while the gentleman doing the courting remains on the porch to settle his jittery nerves. While the lady of the house prettifies herself, the caller happens to espy the woman’s undergarments slung across a chair and is doomed. According to puritanical law, he must either wed the woman now or suffer the deepest humiliation of ostracization.

Such practices seem incredibly antiquated to us denizens of the 21st century. Indeed, if any of the Puritans with their rockbound moralism were to glimpse the world we have forged out of their shining example, people would stride around looking as though they clothed themselves with pages of the dictionary, there would be so many accusing letters stamped on them.

Many people blame the media for exerting a malicious influence, and one person who seeks to educate the public on defanging the more venomous aspects of TV, Hollywood and popular pulp literature is Tammy Kresge, the coordinator of Alcohol, Other Drug and Violence Prevention at Buffalo State College.

Kresge will be leading a program on media influence titled "Reality TV? Alcohol, Other Drugs, Violence and the Media." The program, part of her Get Real series, will be held on April 15 from 7-8:30 p.m. in the Butler Library, room 210.

Kresge says she developed the Get Real series a year ago as a way of helping students at Buffalo State make healthy choices about the world around them and to explore the roles media takes in their decision-making. The activities she conducts are designed to be fun, interactive forums that bring in local speakers to discuss the issues of drugs, alcohol and violence facing many college students.

While acknowledging that alcohol plays a big part in most problems that occur on campus - according to Kresge, 55-75 percent of acquaintance rapes and 90 percent of violence are alcohol-related - she is quick to emphasize that only a few students get entangled with drugs or violence, creating a negative stereotype for the hard-working majority.

Many students operate under the false impression that their peers are spending their weekends carousing and pub-crawling. Kresge conducted a program on March 11 called "For the Record: Why Do Students Really Drink? Or Do They?" Asking a group of 35-40 students how many of them imbibed on the weekend, only four raised their hands. After realizing they stood in the minority, Kresge says, the hand-raisers modified their answers to say they had only "gone out."

Kresge calls this "reverse peer pressure."

As for her "Reality TV" program, she cites the Coors Lite commercials, which create a dishonest impression of drinking. Such advertising, emphasizing sexy, youthful types enjoying midnight revels, ignores the myriad diseases resulting from liquor, including cirrhosis of the liver, as well as domestic violence. On MTV, 16-year old girls are made to look like they are 25, points out Kresge, so what message does that send to college students?

For instance, a Web site that analyzes movies for profane content called Screen It, reviewing the non-rated film "Happiness," lists the picture as containg the following offensive content:

• Use of Valium; consumption of gin and tonic; use of sedative in pedopheliac activity; people drinking wine; drinking spirits from paper bags; having drinks at a bar.
• People are bloodily shot in a murderous fantasy; shot of a suicide victim; a man's neck is broken as he rapes a woman; a boy is raped so violently, he excretes blood the next morning; a neighborhood boy vomits on a kitchen table.
• A number of obscene, sexual phone calls; two instances of statutory rape; the sharing of perverse sexual fantasies; multiple shots of ejaculation; a grown man pleasures himself using a teen magazine to excite himself; frank discussions between a father and son about semen, genitalia and masturbation; a father, his son showing early signs of homosexuality, ponders getting him a prostitute.

"Reality TV," part of Kresge's Tuesday Night Series, is free and open to all, according to information provided by Kresge. The event will feature educators from Planned Parenthood. For more information, contact Kresge at 878-6725.