Posted on 04/23/2004 2:23:36 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Decency is dead. Now we're fighting over acceptable indecency.
.......The truly brazen authors of NBC's petition to the FCC say, "Live and uncensored programming is the hallmark of a free society." Oh please. It is the hallmark of NBC's need to produce quarter-over-quarter growth in the business it is in. Income and lifestyle needs aside, the truly serious writers and artists out there should consider where their true interests lie in the Bono/Golden Globe controversy. They should understand (and many do) that this claim of a constitutionally protected pants-drop is simply a race to the bottom that is sucking all the available capital out of the entertainment system and increasingly investing it in junk guaranteed to enrage the majority in what, alas, is still a democracy. If broadcasters and cable networks couldn't slip in f-words and f-scenes to make ends meet, they'd have to try harder to "create" something new that would hold large audiences.
The Golden Globe petitioners claim the new climate is threatening even airtime for oldies like Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side." That's because Mr. Reed's successors took truly ample speech protections and drove them over the cliff. The politicians are simply sweeping up the wreckage.
As to the "decency" police, the very notion is quaint. Decency died years ago and isn't coming back. The standards of the American people have been so beaten down that no public groundswell is likely unless something is really over the top. The argument now is over a social consensus on acceptable in-decency. Not being able to say "f------ brilliant" in front of 30 million people is a small price to pay to keep the gravy trains running. .............
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
I bet if they tried one solid month of old fashioned genteel programming, advertising it well, their ratings would rise rather than fall. I can get filth on the street, why do I need a TV?
The network morning shows are boring, air headed, political advocacy - at least from what I remember because I don't watch anymore.
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You're right, if they tried some good programing, we'd all benefit.
Prime time TV became nearly unwatchable for me a number of years ago. I confess, somewhat sheepishly to having watched about 20 minutes of "Friends" over 3 different episodes. These three were blatantly prurient. Now, I celebrate what folks can do in private, as they get to know one another...pretty well ala Rodgers and Hammerstein. Yet, parading it on prime time TV seems a little "over the top" for me.
In all genre of prime time TV, crudeness and crassness isn't creeping into the mix, it's cascading.
I still like to watch ancient reruns. It strikes me that actors in those days were able to convey all ranges of emotions without crassness or crudeness. It must be that there just isn't that much talent about these days.
If you take sex and speech devoid of imagination out of the scripts, from what I have seen over the last couple of years, you would need 52 minutes of commercials every hour. Come to think of it, that would be an improvement. Commenting on the mating habits of dogs isn't funny, anyway.
And it's gratuitous. On one of the very rare occasions when I heard a TV show (it was in a laundromat, my washing machine is busted) they said "p-eye-ss" when they didn't even need to.
I once heard a speech by Tom Landry (former Dallas Cowboys head coach). Many of his circuit speeches had much more to do with life, often with zip about football.
Landry was lamenting this same crassness cascading into the movies. He had a simple question: Why? What he said was the movies would, in every case, have been just as watchable without it, in many cases better. So true.
These days it's TV that is being or has been ruined.
It's amazing. It's as if all creative things in the medium have been lost, writing, directing, acting. And why? Market? I suppose. Some of the most popular shows would be zero minutes long once you make them worthy of viewing by people with respect for "self."
Perhaps in the end it is good for me that things have so evolved. There was a time in my past when I spent nearly every waking moment hypnotized by the TV. These days I can't see the point. Maybe it took that evolution to finally get through this fog where I live my life. I know I won't be changing the productions any time soon, so I just stopped watching.
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