Michael Myers in a scene from the cult movie 'Halloween'.

NEW YORK (Reuters):

Horror movies reflect the culture we live in and cannot be blamed for causing real life violence, said the slasher genre director of the Hollywood classic Halloween.

As the top United States media watchdog is suggesting Congress could regulate violent content on television, John Carpenter told a Tribeca Film Festival panel on violence on the big screen that government control of films is not needed.

"Real life causes this, fake life does not cause it," Carpenter said on Thursday. "The reason for a lot of these movies is the culture that we live in, the events that have gone on in our world."

Idea

"Censorship never works, you cannot destroy an idea. You can hide, you can try to cover it up, but you can't destroy it. It will be there and it will bubble up again," Carpenter said.

Others on the panel, Peter Block, executive producer of the Saw series of horror films, and Jim Steyer, chief executive officer of Common Sense Media, a group aimed at improving media and entertainment for children, agreed.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a report on on Wednesday which found exposure to violence in the media can increase aggressive behaviour in children, at least for a short while.

The FCC's list of recommendations included a suggestion that Congress could develop a definition of excessively violent programming, though it said such language needed to be narrowly tailored.

The FCC regulates obscenity, sexual content and profanity on radio, television, wire, satellite and cable, but does not have the power to regulate violence on the airwaves.

People's behaviour

"I do believe media impacts people's behaviour. The average kid today spends about 50 hours a week consuming media and they now get it on every kind of platform imaginable," said Steyer.

"We have a violent society and we, as a broader society, need to address that, but I don't think limiting ... creative freedom has anything to to with addressing that," he said.

The Motion Picture Association of America controls a voluntary system of rating movies to indicate for which age group a film is suitable. Most film-makers submit their movies for a rating as it makes it easier to distribute and market.

"I worry so much more about my kids wandering into the room when the news is being blurbed on television and they're watching," said Block, who is also president of acquisitions and co-productions for Lionsgate Entertainment.

"It's never happy shiny people stories, it's the war or murder or something that happened and I can't protect them from that and they know that's reality," Block said.