Captain Picard Strikes Back
Star Trek Actor Patrick Stewart Assaults Hollywood Violence

March 6, 2004

British actor Patrick Stewart, aka Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek fame, yesterday condemned Hollywood's culture of violence.

Speaking on behalf of an Amnesty International campaign targeting violence against women, Stewart lambasted Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, Vol. 1 for its portrayal of women-on-women violence.

"The entertainment industry has been extremely irresponsible in perpetuating and stereotyping the violent attitudes of men to women," said Stewart. "I condemn utterly films like Kill Bill. We are told it is about empowering women. All it does is empower a woman to kill other women."

Stewart's statement came in conjunction with an Amnesty International news release yesterday announcing the "global campaign to stop violence against women."

Official Department of Justice statistics show that men commit 70% of all murder of intimates. However, when other factors are accounted for, including unsolved murders, poisonings mistakenly classified as heart attacks, and contract killings classified as 'multiple offender killings,' women have been shown to be at least as likely as men to murder their current or former spouses or intimates.

Documents from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also show that children are 88% more likely to be seriously injured from abuse or neglect by their mothers than by their fathers.