Can They Say That On Television Essay

, Research Paper

“Can They Say That On Television.”

Yes, they can, and increasingly they do. The days of television being highly regulated, pure and decent may be over. It looks as if the ever-shifting rules governing what’s OK to say on television are made to be broken. The amount of violence, vulgarity, and sexual content that can be found at 8:00 P.M. or afterwards this year on television is unprecedented in the history of broadcasting. (Aucion, 1999). Many people wonder how television could have sunk to such a low level of glorifying violence, embracing vulgar language, and expanding sexual content in current programming.

Most viewers are troubled more by violence on TV than by profanity or sexual content, especially after being woken up by the Columbine High School tragedy in Colorado. Vulgar language is being embraced faster than we think. There are dirty words, and plenty of them, on prime-time TV. (Pennington, 1999) Prime time is also saturated with sex more explicitly than ever. Lusty scenes, partial nudity, free discussions of issues like the president s oral sex, all show the media’s general relaxation of sexual guidelines.

There are a fews subtle influences contributing to the loosening of broadcast content on television, including: staff cutbacks, which reduce departments responsible for enforcing programming standards; network executives who compete to attract the most talented writers by allowing more creative leeway; writers who resist the shackles placed upon them while competing against pay-TV shows which operate under virtually no content-restrictions. (LA Times, 9/19/99) However, the more pertinent reasons for television’s increasing boldness in language, violence, and sexuality involve society’s steadily increasing overall permissiveness in each of those areas.

The answers to how television got so vulgar can be seen by looking at three main facts. First of all, the standards of what is considered “permissible” in the media are changing at the same rate as our overall cultural permissiveness rises. Writers want to depict current true-to-life pictures of what they believe are fairly common lifestyles. Secondly, since young viewers are being targeted, more is done to attract that audience. High levels of action, violence, foul language and sexuality are accepted and expected by teenagers. (Lowry, 1999). Third, writers are attempting to keep “shockproof” viewers entertained. Viewers who access internet pornography and R-rated movies on cable TV are more difficult to impact than in the past. (Levin, 1999).

The standards regarding what is considered permissible on television corresponds closely with our overall increased cultural permissiveness. In order for advertisers to decide to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy time on show that has profanity, heavy sexual content, and shocking violence, they must be fairly certain that the content is not far from what society accepts. (Lowry, 1999) We are a long way from early days when TV had strict network standards requiring married couples to sleep in twin beds. Other than occasional uproars about taboos, our society shows by TV ratings that have accepted all changes as realistic life-portrayal. In the early 80’s, limits were pushed with dramas such as Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere, which offered frank sex talk, brief nudity, and scatological humor. All along, the shows that push the violence, language and sex the furthest are the most widely viewed. (Levin, 1999).

Violent shows train children to be violent. If Americans would wake up to what causes violence around the country, they would probably bann violent television shows and boycott sponsors of such programs. (Editoria, 1999). Although the Columbine High School tragedy in Colorado woke people up to the effects of violence on TV, current shows that glorify violence still show high ratings. Professional wrestling is at the head of the line of increasing violence in programming. Using chairs, tables, gargage cans, barbed wire to fight is hardly the sport of wrestling. Rather than the old myth of good and evil, we now see just the evil. The “Buried Alive” match where one wrestler shovels dirt onto his opponent who was wacked in the head with a sledgehammer pretty much says it all. It s not really wrestling, it s a brawl. (Graydon, 1999) A network news feature recently showed a back-yard videotape of 14- and 15- year old boys staging their own matches, exfoliating each other s faces with cheese graters, smashing one another with baseball bats and jumping off garage roofs onto folding tables.

TV writers contend that rude language on TV is not any worse than one might hear in day-to-day life. Networks have pushed toward a new freedom to use formerly taboo words and phrases such as “ass”, “sucks”, “piss off” and “get laid” and “screw you”, along with the traditional “damn” and “hell”. A recent premiere on Fox TV opened with a character using the F-word six times in the first minute (bleeped, of course). Bleeps don’t even try hard to hide what’s really being said. Television is swearing as loud as it can to get people’s attention. (Aucoin, 1999). TV writers argue that using adult language is merely being faithful to the way people talk. There is a real world ever-escalating vulgarity factor, with the recent presidential sex scandal news reports leading the way. Prime TV broke the obscenity bar