Is Television Indecent?
February 29, 2004
I’ve been thinking a lot about indecency lately. You know, the word that has the entertainment industry running for the hills. I’ve come to realize that, judging by the lofty standards congress expects, everything could be deemed indecent. Why, on any given night, you could flip on the TV and see, heaven help us, a man and a woman, not married, giving into the carnal act of, dare I say it, kissing. There but for the grace of God go thee. Often, it gets much worse than that. Before last Thursday, you could watch “Survivor: All Stars” and see a fat gay man walking around on a beach in all his glory, with only a slight blur to cover up his shame. The old codgers on the hill must have had a field day when they saw that one, but no, not a peep. There is, undoubtedly, something profoundly hypocritical with the way our society has shrunk into a paranoid shell of what is, and what isn’t, deemed overtly offensive to the public eye.
But hasn’t it always been this way? Any study of Hollywood before the mid-30’s Hayes code will show you that movies could be pretty racy without actually showing much, and then, when restrictions set in, they kind of bottled up for a decade (for a fascinating study, check out the recently released Warner Brothers DVD of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, featuring the 1932 Rouben Mamoulian masterpiece, which is about as suggestive as they come, and the handsome, yet bitterly repressed post-code 1941 Victor Fleming version). So, if we’ve dealt with “indecency” in the past, why did it take a carefully staged (yes, despite what some at MTV may say, it had to have been a setup) moment of split-second nudity to set off a modern day controversy of Super Bowl proportions? Ever since Janet Jackson shanghaied a great football game out of the headlines and stripped, or had stripped, her, shall we say, greatest assets into infamy, we’ve had nothing but ridiculous babble about television as a corroding wasteland of morals spent and ethics left to die. For sure, if you want to get all technical, it was a big deal, brazen nudity in front of the largest television audience of the year, even if it was only for a split second, during what was, actually, a god awful half-time show, replete with lip syncing and poor production values. It should have quickly gone the way of the dodo, but alas, we are still feeling the repercussions of the flash today, and I’m afraid it’s not going to go away anytime soon.
Let’s just take a look at some of the insanity we’ve come to live with since that famous moment. We had one of the highest rated television shows on the air (“E.R”) cowardly cut out a minute moment where an elderly woman, sick mind you, was shot without a top on, during emergency surgery. Hmm, indecent indeed, and you thought our biggest national problem was the natural inclination for gay couples to want to be married. Now, the producers of said aging NBC hospital drama didn’t exactly cut out the shot, they just blurred it out, ala “Survivor” whenever Richard Hatch decides to doff his shorts in lieu of a more naturalistic mindset, which seems to be always. Secondly, time-delays were added to the broadcasts of both the Grammy’s and the Academy Awards, to curtail any potential fun out of a usually stuffy awards night. And equally disturbing, heat was put on the producers of “NYPD Blue”, that bastion of prime-time suggestiveness, to tone down a scene where Detective Clark breaks up with his nutty girlfriend, in the buff. What has the world come to when “NYPD Blue” gets heat for a rear shot?
The kicker, and the most recent aftershock, came a few days ago, when the head of the radio conglomerate Clear Channel, sat there on national TV, cowering before the imposing white men of congress, and apologized for the behavior of Howard Stern. I’m not really the biggest Stern fan in the world, but haven’t we been through this before, just not so highly publicized. Stern has always ruffled feathers with his outrageous, sexually charged talk show, and often he’s faced suspensions (watch, or read “Private Parts” for the details), but they were internal, never was the head of a major media outlet dragged in front of congress to apologize for a man who makes his company millions of dollars every year. It’s almost absurd to think of it, Howard Stern, about as indecent as they come; if anybody should be able to escape the net of Janet Jackson, it should be him, if only because it’s so obvious. Ditto “NYPD Blue”. It’s one thing to go after something that hasn’t felt the sting before (why not some of the reality TV currently stinking up the airwaves, such as “Fear Factor”, which weekly features scantily clad ladies swimming in vats of scorpions and dining on, well, anything the feeble minded producers can think of), but, my point is, if you start complaining about things that you’ve already complained about, than haven’t you come full circle? And isn’t it time to move on?
Here is my suggestion to the FCC, who is so smugly controlling the congressional hearings on indecency. Why not, instead of dragging out the usual offenders to apologize like whimpering puppies, you call to the table the real villains, the network executives, people like Rupert Murdoch, the egotistical head of Fox, the great station that has brought you the likes of “My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance” and the current ratings juggernaut, and over hyped pop-fest, “American Idol”, or how about the head of programming at NBC, Jeff Zucker, who once apologized to the nation for the lack of quality with which his station put forth. Not to complain, Jeff, but, you are the guy who single handedly axed “Boomtown”, the best show on television, after only five episodes into its second season, but yet, you continue to stick with “Fear Factor”, “Average Joe”, and, uh, “Whoopi”. What would you say to congress if they asked you if that was indecent? You know what I’d say.
by Adam Suraf