|
|
|
|
|
|
|
No breasts on TV, but plenty of gay kissing
2004.03.05 — Culture | Television | Satire | by BB Rodriguez
|
What you can't see on network TV...unless it's slightly blurred, and then you can see it a million times...but not on Howard Stern. [Reuters] |
Has America gone loco? We are suddenly experiencing simultaneous moves toward the polar extremes of American society. Janet Jackson's peekaboo breast has prompted conservatives to demand stricter constraints on television and radio content, which has resulted in the firing of Howard Stern and others. But the issue of same-sex marriage has liberals coming out of the woodwork and demanding that gays and lesbians be given the same legal privileges as straights with regard to their personal relationships.
This polarization indicates a serious rift in society that has been smoldering for years but now has erupted in flames. Historically, social attitudes shift, pendulum-like, right or left from time to time. But these recent developments are an interesting exception. Now we have liberals demanding more liberal policies and conservatives demanding more conservative policies simultaneously.
Since the two factions are spending so much of their efforts fighting for their own causes rather than against the other's cause, we could end up with the odd situation of gay marriage being declared legal but the kiss at the end of the ceremony declared too obscene for network TV.
Maybe the TV folks could blur out the kiss. That seemed to work for the Super Bowl half-time wardrobe malfunction. Once they had blurred out the offending tit, the news and talk shows showed the moment about a million times. Seriously. I counted.
|
Close up of Janet's nipple jewelry. |
What's odd is that nobody—but nobody—liked showing blurred out breasts more than Howard Stern. It was the bread and butter of his radio show on E! television. Every show would feature Howard cajoling some stripper/porn actress/model/girl-next-door to take off her top and get sprayed with whipped cream. Or take off her top and get spanked. Or take off her top and her panties. And the show's censors documented it all and dutifully pixelated the naughty bits.
Wait. What's really odd is that the thing that got Stern kicked off the air is the utterance of "nigger" by a caller. Would Larry King get booted if a caller said that on his show?
Wait. What's really odd is that CSI had just shown the bare breasts of an actress playing a corpse on network TV several weeks before. That's prime time titty—and promotes necrophilia to boot. Call me old fashioned, but I don't think our network television shows should be encouraging their young viewers to fantasize about cadavers.
|
Janet Jackson unfettered. [source] |
Wait. What's really really odd is that we still hold on to this weird idea that the government has some inherent right to censor the content of network television shows because they use "public airwaves." Cable and satellite are completely exempt from censorial requirements (which are pretty much all about sex and swearing and not violence) because they don't use precious public bandwidth like TV and radio.
Now, I'm not suggesting that Janet should have gone down on Justin after he tore off her top. There are some obvious limits that we all agree to in general. Most cable channels adhere to slightly-less-stringent self-censorship even tho they don't have to. Even MTV doesn't show bare ta-tas, and they're the ones who arranged the Super Bowl half-time show.
This country is at least as uptight about sex as any other industrial nation, and much more so than most. We had to go to the Supreme Court to find out if it was okay to have anal sex, after all. We love that Internet porn, tho.
I guess what's really odd is just how odd we really are as a nation.
f e e d b a c k
Respond to this page by your e-mail client. Please be sure to mention the title of the article.
