Shock therapy

Sex in videos and movies is rampant. The television program Glee takes on scenes of teens losing their virginity. What Beyonce is asked to do in her music videos is so far outside of herself, she says, that she invents a character, “Sasha,” to do the super-racy videos for her. Bedroom scenes in soap operas abound. But these are not the only shockers we’re exposed to.

Violence takes no back seat to sex in this trend of shock value in our media. Studies estimate we will witness more than 2,000 “murders” on television by the age of 18.

Videos of Gaddafi, both right before and after death, were shown on many news networks. A photo of Michael Jackson’s corpse used in the trial of his physician Dr. Conrad Murray was shown on TV for a full 11 seconds—a lifetime in TV land. The death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was shown in all its glory in the broadcast of the last Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C.

Bleepings of profanity are everywhere, and the words they mute are so apparent, they might as well be unbleeped.

Cable channels up the ante on sex, rape scenes and vulgarity. The creators of South Park said on a Hulu video, “We thought about going to HBO where we could do anything we wanted…but [free TV] forced us to be more creative.”

Even PBS got in the act. In The Gin Game, Dick Van Dyke’s character Weller Martin swears up a blue storm every time he gets beat at gin rummy, including an epithet offensive to Christians. And every documentary PBS does on the civil rights struggle in the last several years seems to throw in a de rigueur graphic photo of a lynching, without warning.

Are we experiencing (or suffering) what Charlie Rose on his PBS talk show termed “a coarsening of the culture?” Or, is it all good? Young people today may seem to take it in stride, but some of them are upset as well.

An 18-year-old freshman at Notre Dame University who downloaded the transcript of President Clinton’s misadventures with Monica Lewinsky, happily thrown onto the internet by the House of Representatives said that she shouldn’t have been allowed to see that it.

Hollywood claims that if you don’t like the content, you can turn it off or choose not to watch.

But sometimes, doing just that does not protect you from exposure. There was a super-graphic image in the wedding video of Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooley, the figure skater and husband who ordered an assault on fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan. Audiences were warned of its graphic nature, so I avoided the internet and finding out what it was.

Eventually, a sports columnist in The Oregonian described the graphic scene. He apparently figured everyone knew by then. Later on, the disgusting image popped up without warning (but thankfully pixilated) on the early evening entertainment shows.

A similar process was used with an infamous Robert Mapplethorpe photo having to do with Jesus on the crucifix.

The media is going to show viewers what they want to with cheap justifications, regardless of their claims that you can look away.

Does media shock value occur just to make money?

Not necessarily, according to Melissa Henson, communications director of the Parents Television Council. Henson first listed two non-monetary reasons for this trend. “A former television writer on our staff describes Hollywood as ‘high school on steroids,’” she said. “There is a childish, ‘I can do better; I can shock more,’ mentality, like on a playground. At industry events they brag about what they were able to get past industry censors.”

Henson’s second reason claims that producers and directors have an agenda sometimes, to break new ground and new subject matter that they believe in. She particularly points to Ryan Murphy, the main writer for Glee, who she claims has stated his desire to “in the next two to three years” show on TV for the first time “a certain sex act” involving gay men.

The Parents Television Council strives for a firm boundary line between what children can see in mass media and what adults can choose. But that does not include regulated censorship because, according to Henson, “government censorship doesn’t work.”

The PTC supports real family hour programming between 8 and 9 p.m., a return to voluntary network censorship, more pressure from advertisers, educating parents (who often think “my kid is too smart to be influenced”), and “cable a la cart.”

Cable a la cart, the idea that we could choose which cable channels we want to watch and pay accordingly, is an interesting campaign that explores the idea of a true free market as well as morality in media. Henson believes now is the most ripe time ever for the idea, since cable is in danger of losing its market share to internet purchases and Netflix.

But is this all much ado about nothing? Several studies have claimed that no connection is firmly established between media violence and sex and human behaviors. Henson claims the “preponderance of the studies,” as reviewed by the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, supports a direct connection between media violence and sex and our behaviors.

But if a change in a haircut by Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) on Friends can influence countless women to get the same haircut, Henson says, it should be obvious the effect that media and advertising in general has on us. Henson says “the few opposing studies” that doubt a connection between media sex and violence and behavior are often industry-funded.

There should be firmer regulation of what is permitted in mass media, particularly given these results. More all-ages appropriate programming schedule and less shock and gore on TV are good ideas. They should be implemented as such.