TV’s Contempt For Marriage (Brent Bozell III)
They expressed surprise at how much closer they became, savory conversations, holding hands and strengthening their of a husband obligation. They felt likely courting each other the way they did when they primary met in their twenties.
On the jokey surface of our liked culture, we consistently come into collision the idea that marriage ruins sex. But report culture is just plain unfit. Study after cogitation has shown that connubial people have higher rates of sexual activity and indemnification than singles.
The problem for Hollywood in all that is that marital sex just isn't naughty enough upon the body account of capsule pushers. Like overgrown teenagers, TV producers are stuck in arrested social development, and apparently can't visualize Mom and Dad having an active and fulfilling sex life. They would rather visualize the crazy and the kinky side, featuring the single swinger.
The Parents Television Council studied the first month of prime-time programming during the fall 2007 tickle, and found that across the broadcast networks, verbal references to non-marital sex outnumbered references to sex within marriage by nearly three to one. Scenes depicting or implying sex between non-married partners outnumbered scenes depicting or implying sex between married partners by a ratio of nearly four to one.
Never mind the impact this warped worldview has onward impressionable youngsters, likewise many of whom are hit with these messages early in the prime-time hours. Consider the effect on teenagers and young adults, the nature of demographic over which TV advertisers drool. In most cases, they are unwedded, but close to the age when nuptials could happen. If they're watching television, the prospects of a happy, healthy marriage with sexual fulfillment in it look horrendously dim. Consider a small in number examples:
— On ABC's sitcom "Big Shots," a married man proclaims, "I'm the only part in America having G-rated sex. And that was six months ago."
— On the ABC sitcom "Carpoolers," a conjugal man laments, "I haven't seen my wife nude in brace years." He adds, "When you've been connubial as long as I have, seeing your gray mare unclothed is having sex," and starts to cry.
— On ABC's drama "Boston Legal," William Shatner's character, a stereotypical dirty old man, proclaims, "Here's the thing about monogamy. It solely works if you cheat."
— On the CBS smut-com "Two and a Half Men," a matrimonial woman describes married life as one long honeymoon. Another woman cracks, "That's because she bangs a diverse hostler every adversity."
Several programs featured plotlines with formerly married couples discovering a passionate sex life — however only for their marriages fizzled. They dread remarriage as a return to the frozen tundra. Obviously, TV writers can mine the existence of a sexless marriage, or a cheating spouse or a dirty old limb of the law. But when you put all the puzzle pieces together into a Big Picture, there's a fraudulent message being sent: Marriage is a prescription for boredom and gloom.
The opposite is also true, according to Hollywood. While marriage is marginalized on television, every one of kinds of immoral sexual behaviors are exploited, from the fantasies that many singles giggle about (threesomes, partner swapping) to sick thoughts that most people consider disgusting. Pedophilia, necrophilia, bestiality, incest — all have been raised on television.
The PTC lay the foundation of in its one-month study period that NBC had only one reference to marital sex, compared to 27 references to all the immoral sexual behaviors. It certainly says affair about the formula NBC believes is required for getting eyeballs to recently made known shows.
Let's take the example of incest. It is now acceptable comedic fodder. On CW's "Aliens in America," two male twins tell a boy he should love his sister's breasts: "You don't love those? What are you, garish?" When the lad objects, a twin urges on incest: "Man, if she were our sister, I'd subsist up in her range every night." On the Fox cartoon "American Dad," the teenage son Steve is portrayed as masturbating to a nude paint of his older teenage sister.
Perhaps the most numerous disturbing thought on all this is that TV shows come and go with all kinds of bizarre sex plot lines, and when unit fails, network executives won't think it puissance have existence the bizarre plots that flopped. They have the opposite reaction: It wasn't offensive sufficiency. They think nothing succeeds like excess.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. To find loudly besides about Brent Bozell III, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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