Censorship Conundrums
26 June 2006
Well, thank goodness Big Brother - Adults Only has been axed. The kiddies can now grow up in a safer and more wholesome world.
For this we can thank those brave visionaries of Federal parliament, Family First's Steve Fielding and the Liberal's Trish Draper, who said Adults Only was rotting children's brains. Of course.
Now, I don't watch Adults Only because it's simply not my kind of thing, but I see no reason at all to ban it. The show is intended for adults. For a start, it's on at 9:40pm on a weeknight. If parents can't control what TV shows their kids are watching late on school nights, then they have far bigger problems than their kids seeing a few breasts and some swearing. But even so, the show has been pulled not because of demands from parents, but the demands of these politicians. And I do find the idea of MPs being able to directly decide what we can and can't see on television very worrying.
Not to mention, by banning shows like this (and in so much else of what they do) the message from these "pro family" groups seems to be that they don't actually trust families to raise their own kids right.
So what can we show on TV instead? Well, last night at 8:30pm I sat down to watch Law and Order: Criminal Intent; not as an experiment, but simply because I enjoy the show. The plot was based around a sort of Fifth Avenue Manson Family type group, and during that timeslot viewers saw a ligature strangulation; an abduction and drugging; and most memorably, a decapitated head in the freezer (and photos of the body which the head was removed from). All this was shown directly on screen, not just discussed or alluded to. Yet I'm not aware of anyone trying to get Law and Order banned.
Stop me if you've heard this before, but it never ceases to amaze me the extent to which violence in entertainment is okay, but sex is The Big No-No. On network TV you can show a man stabbing a woman through the breasts, but can't show the breasts themselves. Now, maybe this just says something about the mentality of the politicians who work themselves up trying to ban sex from TV and the movies, but getting into the Freudian implications of that is beyond me right now. If I had children, I wouldn't be happy about them watching a show like Adults Only, but rather that than a TV show featuring images of a woman who had holes drilled in her skull by a psychopath (as featured in the Law and Order episode that was on at 9:30pm).
Am I wrong or am I right?
Didn't this used to be called BB UNCUT??
ReplyDeleteIt was on at the same time and it was practically 'Adults only'. People had the same issue then, and it was being looked into because there were altercations between some housemates.
I lost interest in the show last year so I haven't bothered with it this year, but I did see this article in the newspaper about 'AO' being banned.
The thing about Criminal Intent is that it's fake - People are desensitized these days so it doesn't matter, but when it comes to 'real life' ((if you could even CALL that show real life)) - Then people are a little more sensitive. Weird I know, but they should just ban the whole BB show anyway - It's a waste of air time.
There's been no altercations this year...and BBs own censors have been alot more strict. But the pollies have still put the boot in.
ReplyDeleteI know Criminal Intent et al is fake, but it still shows gruesome things and at a time when kids may be awake.
I've no issue with people wanting the whole of BB banned for being mindless pap, but there is a general trend where violence (and there are a lot of true crime shows on) is apparently acceptable, whereas anything to do with sex isn't, and I don't understand the rationale.