The big brouhaha in the TV world last week had to do with MTV’s new show Skins. I haven’t watched the show, apparently not many people do watch it, but the depiction of teen sexuality has enough people up in arms that I seem unable to escape daily updates about the “controversy.”
I guess I naively believed that our culture was so saturated with sex that we were finally past getting upset about sex on TV.
Whether your like it or not, if it is good or bad, pornography is everywhere. This month’s issue of The Atlantic had a timely article on this.
According to it, in 2007 a quarter of all Internet searches were related to pornography. Further, in January 2010, more than a quarter of Internet users in the United States visited a pornographic website. So the people upset with what’s on TV should really be more concerned with what their kids are looking at on their computers and smart phones — and I guarantee it’s a lot more graphic and exploitative than anything on MTV.
Another reason why I’m surprised by the outrage over Skins is because nothing on the show seems to be near as graphic as what else is on TV. Reflecting on this, there has been a pretty dramatic explosion of sexual content in our TV entertainment.
In the 1990s, Seinfeld appeared to push the limits of what was discussed during prime-time — masturbation, contraception, orgasms, etc. But Seinfeld typically did it with euphemisms and winks to the audience. To put in perspective how puritanical we were in the 1990s, in the fourth episode of the animated TV show The Critic (circa 1994), ABC was very upset that show’s protagonist had sex off-screen in a projection booth — the network executives thought it was lurid.
By the end of the 1990s sex on TV began to rapidly change. I think it’s no coincidence that not only did an increasing number of Americans have internet access at that time, but people started making the switch from dial-up to broadband. It simply became impossible for people in the TV industry to continue to pretend no one thinks about sex when everyone is at home looking at people having sex on their computers.
If there was a watershed moment for sex on TV, I’d say it was The Sopranos. Thanks to being on paid TV, the show could get away with just about anything. Not only did it feature more copulating than most R-rated movies, but one of the main locations in the show was a strip club where the women were always topless.
Broadcast TV simply cannot get away with what The Sopranos did, but through reality TV it worked sex into its programming. Whether it is characters locked in a house who pair off and have affairs, or women throwing themselves at “bachelors,” so much of reality TV deals with sexual liaisons.
So it seems like outrage over Skins is too little too late. Our TV shows have been reflecting our obsession with sex for years.
If people really want something to moralize about on TV, I say go after alcohol.
Now I’m not arguing for bringing back prohibition — I drink booze like everyone else. But the last season of Mad Men really resonated with me because of its frank depiction of alcohol’s negative effects. Having known alcoholics, during the episode when Don goes on a bender after winning an award, I felt like I was watching a moment from my life when he pitched a client while buzzed.
The season’s unflattering look at alcohol was a sharp contrast to the relentless TV commercials we’re bombarded with where the central message is that getting plastered on cheep light beer that tastes like ass is a an all-around good American time (if you’re going to get drunk, it should at least be on something that tastes good). And reality shows take that message and celebrate the consequences of heavy drinking.
For the better we’ve reduced the frequency that we see characters smoke in TV shows and movies; it wouldn’t hurt if popular culture toned down drinking a bit. I don’t think anyone really gets hurt from sex on TV, but I do think our entertainment influences people to drink irresponsibly.
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