by Tina Grazier
WARNING: This posting contains explicit information about the expansion of sexual content on television.
I have wondered for a long time when the good citizens of America will finally get to the point where they’ve had enough; today that question ratcheted up another notch. Will full frontal male nudity and fornication between assorted combinations of participants on TV be the final straw? I fear not, but I think it’s important to declare war and hopefully bring sufficient peer pressure to bear against the continuing assault on our children and society. Sleaze and porn have been shoved into the main stream for far too long. USA Today brings us the story:
“Sex on TV: It’s increasingly uncut — and unavoidable,” by Gary Strauss – USA Today
Viewers are about to see full-frontal male nudity, heterosexual, homosexual and group sex, and graphic scenes rarely — if ever — seen on mainstream TV. And that’s just on pay-cable Starz’s fornication-heavy, 13-episode Spartacus: Blood and Sand (premieres Friday, 10 ET/PT), a 300-meets-Caligula epic about the Roman Empire’s notorious slave/gladiator. ** MTV plans a June launch of The Hard Times of RJ Berger, a scripted comedy about a nerdy 15-year-old whose cool quotient heats up when his anatomical gift is accidentally exposed. And basic-cable network Spike’s just-launched raunchy college-sports comedy Blue Mountain State (Tuesdays, 10 ET/PT) showed a masturbating school mascot on the Jan. 12 premiere, while last night’s episode featured a scene suggesting oral sex between a coed and jock before the opening credits. ** “You need to get eyeballs. You need to be loud,” says Spike programming chief Kevin Kay, who is pairing Blue Mountain with reruns of HBO’s sex-centric Entourage. “Our viewers are experiencing content on other cable channels or the Web. Movies and video games are going after this audience, too.”
The creators and producers of “smut TV”, as some call it, offer the usual lame retort to objections:
…Fordham University media observer Paul Levinson, say(s) TV merely mirrors life. “It sounds radical, but this is healthy for popular culture,” Levinson says. “Mainstream TV has been frozen in a very puritanical position by Congress, the FCC and the Supreme Court — all who don’t seem to understand the First Amendment. Sex is part of life. If people are offended, there’s a simple remedy: Don’t watch.”
Oh what arrogance and ineptitude. Freedom doesn’t give us license to peddle porn anywhere anytime. You need to be put back in a sleaze cage…time and place matter.
How is it that we have allowed slimy degenerate minds to determine what is acceptable content for general viewing? How is it that these so called adults can put every sexual perversion and odd ball fantasy out in the open for anyone to happen upon at any hour of the day?
From my perspective adults should have to go out of their way to purchase and view such explicit material. Adults are able and capable of purchasing such material for their own private viewing or placing it in venues that are private rather than open to general public viewing. Mature adults would willingly accept this slight inconvenience to themselves to protect the sensibilities of others and the innocence of children. This idiot and others like him would if they had any sense of consideration for others or responsibility for the general well being of children and the nation. Instead they say, in the vernacular of the street, “f-you…this is good for your kids!”
I beg to differ! But we can’t ever hope to shove jerks like him back into his dark prurient closet unless we can inspire decent people who care about kids to begin to speak up and apply sufficient pressure. (Yes we still have that power; tea parties prove it.) We have witnessed generations of harm and ruined lives proportional to the increasing sleaze in mainstream entertainment. Lame, petulant, and childishly defiant excuses don’t hold up under adult audit! Freedom requires a sense of responsibility to ourselves and to others. We must begin to hold them accountable.
If cigarette ads can be banned from television because “cigarettes kill” then sleazy sexual content can also be banned and for the same reason. STDs, AIDS, drug use, teen pregnancy and sexual addictions are all directly or indirectly tied to lowered standards and all have the potential to kill, if not explicitly then certainly in terms of quality of life and societal failure.
It’s time to protect children and the future of our country by demanding a high level of decorum and excellence in mainstream entertainment.