This is why we can't have nice things

[retro_eidas]

I don't know anything about "Gossip Girl", but apparently they have some sort of scandalous, sexually deviant story coming up? Or, so says the Parents Television Council anyway.

From a letter the PTC have sent to the CW regarding GG's apparent lasciviousness:

Gossip Girl routinely depicts teenage characters engaging in promiscuous and consequence-free sexual behavior, and that's bad enough. But will you now be complicit in establishing a precedent and expectation that teenagers should engage in behaviors heretofore associated primarily with adult films? Behaviors that not only increase health risks, but which are emotionally and psychologically damaging to participants, as well? I certainly hope not, and I'm sure members of your community and parents of children who watch your network expect more of you.

There's also the typical Big Brother Is Watching You type warning.

Please be advised that the PTC will monitor this episode very closely.

Our members will not hesitate to contact local and national advertisers; and if this program violates broadcast decency law, rest assured that our members will contact the Federal Communications Commission.

According to this article, this same group apparently also considers "Ugly Betty" only appropriate for people over 18. I don't really give two straws about "Ugly Betty" or "Gossip Girl", but "Ugly Betty"? Really? What little I have seen of the show, I'm having trouble pinpointing what exactly their issues are with it. I can't imagine it would have at all to do with the fact the incredibly tame, watershed sitcom is one of the few network shows on television that has openly gay and transgendered characters in it? Oh wait, I can imagine it! But I guess "we're narrow-minded, paranoid homophobes" doesn't quite roll off the tongue as well as "stem the flow of harmful and negative messages targeted to children". I suppose if the PTC had their way all kids would be locked in the basement until they're 21 get home-schooled? Like all those kids they fear the tv box is corrupting can't go to school or the mall or the internet and not only be exposed to this same sort of deviancy, but hear and see things far more "explicit" than anything you'd see on primetime CW or ABC.

I am kind of curious on what would happen if these folks watched an ep of "Skins" or maybe "Torchwood"? I kind of really want to see those letters to the FCC. That is, if they were even capable of typing and not induced into some catatonic state from their shock and horror. Heh.

Now for my own shameful biases, but it makes me wish certain showrunner's of little-horror-shows-that-could would do something - anything - to really get these people to clutch their pearls. I know it won't happen, but it would be nice.

Comments

[godofstrife.livejournal.com]

Skins, Doctor Who and Torchwood are the shows I'm growing up with and I haven't turned into a 'sexual deviant'. Oh wait, I forgot I'm gay and in an open relationship with my boyfriend, so I guess they must be right. *rolls eyes*

Seriously, idiots like this piss me off beyond the telling. They actually believe that an open minded and unrepressed approach to teenage sexuality will lead to mass pregnancies and the rest of us pursuing careers in prostitution? It's the simplest rule of all: you prohibit something and demonize it, people will want it even more. I'm not saying being aware of disease, pregnancy and exploitation aren't important but this? This so stupid it feels like I'm losing IQ points just talking about it.

/rant

[eido.livejournal.com]

Obviously, you cure the tv box of the evils of "Gossip Girl" and stupid teeny girls will suddenly not be stupid and either use protection* or, likely the ideal of the PTC, realize abstinence is best. Hate to tell them that teenagers are going to be teenagers, no matter what century we're in or the newest wave of technology. Although while they're expending so much energy on preventing the evils of television and movies corrupting the chil'runs, they might want to check out a little thing called the internet. Something that's increasingly accessible and usually something these teens know how to use with more efficiency than ma and pa watchdog.

*The thing about shows like GG, I don't know much about it, but I do know it's about a bunch of rich kids living the charmed life. I doubt any of them would care to be sidled with teen pregnancies and babies and such, how would they ever fit into their Michael Kors leather pants? Presumably all those characters use protection and mention it from time to time. Yet this show is still bad bad BAD? Apparently for little other reason than *gasps* teenagers have sex? GG may be a very fictionalized depiction of teens, but I'd sooner believe that holds more reality to the way teens in geneal actually are than say, "7th Heaven" or "Full House". I know I when I was a kid I wouldn't have been able to relate at all to anything in "7th Heaven".

[godofstrife.livejournal.com]

I don't know more about CG than you mentioned but I find it laughable that anything that could happen on that show is as remotely as explicit than the stuff I've been reading/watching on the internet since I was about twelve.
And I don't think it affected my childhood negatively, sure according to the law I'm not allowed to come in touch with any depiction of explicit sex, but to me it always felt normal.

Oh yeah, I find hilarious when a new "killer game" is released and promptly ends up in the index (in Germany most computer games with graphic violence and/or depiction of antisocial behavior get banned or heavily cut) and the responsible politic claims that this was another important step to protect the children I lol. They actually believe when they ban something that it's really gone because you can't buy it.
It's true there is already a big gap between me and my boyfriend (he's 23) when it comes to working with the internet or just with a computer and he is only six years older.

[eido.livejournal.com]

I don't know more about CG than you mentioned but I find it laughable that anything that could happen on that show is as remotely as explicit than the stuff I've been reading/watching on the internet since I was about twelve.

Or, hey, the Bible. I don't think GG has ever done anything as risque as Lot and his daughters or Jacob and his many wives.

the responsible politic claims that this was another important step to protect the children I lol. They actually believe when they ban something that it's really gone because you can't buy it.

Pffft. They've never heard of emulators, have they? Or many hardcore games still coming out on PC. Also it being so hard apparently to buy an American or Japanese PS3, for example, to get the games they're not releasing in their own country? Except how it's not hard at all actually if someone has the money to buy next gen consoles to begin with. Fools.