In an environment of vague U.S. censorship laws that govern what media outlets can and can’t do, MTV has decided to tone down its new show, “Skins”, rather than risk a chance that some ambitious federal prosecutor will target the network for a high profile career-making crucifixion.
They are particularly concerned about the third episode of the series, which is to be broadcast Jan. 31. In an early version, a naked 17-year-old actor is shown from behind as he runs down a street. The actor, Jesse Carere, plays Chris, a high school student whose erection — assisted by erectile dysfunction pills — is a punch line throughout the episode.
While simple nudity of minors is not outlawed by U.S. porn law,in the current environment of pedophile and child porn paranoia, state and federal governments have a history of threatening and harassing producers of material which is clearly within the bounds of what the courts consider protected expression. While its nice when corporations stand up for First Amendment rights, a business’s first obligation is to the bottom line and not to martyr itself for the cause of freedom at the expense of shareholders.
Of course, those scenes may be what attract young viewers in the first place. Jessica Bennett, a senior writer for Newsweek, wrote last week, “ ‘Skins’ may be the most realistic show on television.”
If there’s any thing you don’t want children exposed to, it’s realism.
It is unclear when MTV first realized that the show may be vulnerable to child pornography charges. On Tuesday, a flurry of meetings took place at the network’s headquarters in New York, according to an executive who attended some of the meetings and spoke only on the condition of anonymity. In one of the meetings, the executives wondered aloud who could possibly face criminal prosecution and jail time if the episodes were broadcast without changes.
Of course, what makes this interesting is that MTV has no clue whether they would be breaking the law or not. The laws are so subjective that no one can know what constitutes a violation in advance. The first chance you get to know that you’re breaking the law is when you’re tried and convicted. So the solution is to steer clear of anything that might excite some self-serving over-zealous prosecutor who sees high profile sex crime prosecutions as a pathway to higher political office.
Once upon a time the Supreme Court used to strike down laws that were vague. Thank goodness our government has advanced beyond such inconveniences.
Yeah, it’s good to know that our government is getting past all those old relics of legal theory and moved on to the modern day philosophy of keeping people off balance and unsure of what is or isn’t a crime.
The old argument against exposing children to “realism” is that they will draw the wrong conclusions. Monkey see monkey do, so if they see a teenage character suffering from depression, taking drugs with wild abandon and changing sex partners every other Monday, they’ll just imitate them — even if the show clearly shows how much this makes them suffer. It’s the same reasoning that says we’d better not show them people committing suicide, lest they get the impulse to do the same.
Which of course only increases their curiosity about all these topics, and makes sure they’ll go to all the wrong, illegal, bad sources for information. Because actually talking to their parents… that would be hard and difficult, besides forcing their parents to actually think about moral and ethical issues. Who’d want that?
Sounds like the same logic that says violent video games cause Columbine style shooting rampages. The fact that 25 million kids manage to play violent video games without becoming violent themselves is ignored in favor of the one kid who seems to be affected.
I wonder which is the most liberal and sensible country where these kinds of meaningless laws do not exist.Netherlands gotta be one of them.In fact,I think most of the Europe(minus UK) is far better in terms of sensibility.
“Sounds like the same logic that says violent video games cause Columbine style shooting rampages. The fact that 25 million kids manage to play violent video games without becoming violent themselves is ignored in favor of the one kid who seems to be affected.”
When I was a teenager the hysterics were going after D&D foe supposedly “causing suicide” because D&D stuff was found in the rooms of a few kids who killed themselves. As I pointed out at the time, what about all the football paraphernalia found in the rooms of other kids who committed suicide? Eventually a study was done which proved what I understood at 15 years old: D&D players actually had a LOWER incidence of suicide.
The problem is that our society has never really accepted Darwin and most people high and low still want to pretend that humans are natural innocents who must be led into “sin” by someone or something rather than naturally violent, dangerous creatures who must learn to control ourselves. All “morality law”, gun control law and paternalistic jurisprudence is based on the former belief despite the fact that it’s a load of crap.