Family Double Standards Fuel Flood of TV Filth

A "which came first, the chicken or the egg" debate is raging regarding objectionable television content during family hour. Media depictions of sex, profanity, and violence are increasing in their frequency and intensity, and family values advocates are understandably laying the blame for this rising tide of filth at the feet of television writers and networks. When it comes to the issue of objectionable television content, the debate centers on ascribing responsibility either to the networks for peddling tawdry material to unsuspecting parents and children, or to television viewers themselves for creating and sustaining a demand for programming rich with violence, sexual content, and obscene language. It is easy to merely blame both parties for the supply and demand situation, but addressing the real root of the problem may prove hard for many on both sides to swallow.

To place the issue in its current context, the following excerpts from the Washington Times article "Family Hour Goes Down the Tubes" help illustrate the scope of the problem objectionable television content poses for parents:

On average, objectionable material is broadcast every three minutes from 8 to 9 p.m., according to an analysis of 208 prime-time shows released yesterday by the Parents Television Council.

Only 11 percent of the programs were free of offensive fare, the study found. Three-quarters featured profanity, more than half contained sexual references, and almost half showcased violent acts and images, including "medical violence."

"These findings even surprised us. We knew it was bad, but not this bad," said Tim Winter, president of the Los Angeles-based watchdog group.

"The family hour was once a time to watch things like 'Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom' or 'Leave It to Beaver.' Now it's been turned into a toxic dump by an industry which does not serve the interests of the American public. The people are supposed to own these airwaves, not the industry," Mr. Winter said.

...After comparing respective results, the researchers concluded that family hour is "unsafe" and "even more hostile to children and families" by virtue of increased nudity, alarming autopsies, supernatural oddities and coarse behavior, among other factors.

..."The family hour needs to be restored," Mr. Winter said. "We're calling on the broadcast industry to return to the time-honored principle of airing mature-themed content only at later times of the evening; and to provide parents with a consistent, objective and meaningful content ratings system. We are calling on the advertising industry to underwrite only time-appropriate content with their media dollars."

There is no question that television content is far more graphic and coarse than it was when Mr. Winter's organization performed a similar study in 2001. CBS has reportedly increased its smut programming quotient by 579 percent since 2001, and the Fox network experienced a 426 percent jump in the same period. Are such astounding spikes in objectionable content caused by networks pushing the envelope of artistic license, or are they merely indicative of viewers' corresponding insatiable hunger for a steady diet of prurient fare?

Mr. Winters' concluding statement above contains what I assert is the seed that has allowed weeds of obscenity to overgrow and choke out what used to be a pleasing garden of television programming for families. Winters pleaded for a "return to the time-honored principle of airing mature-themed content only at later times of the evening; and to provide parents with a consistent, objective and meaningful content ratings system." It is precisely this accepted belief in different standards for children and adults that has created the objectionable content crisis that Winters decries.

When parents establish different standards between what is acceptable for their children to watch and what they themselves watch, they are actually setting a double standard. While young children may not be fully cognizant of the difference, older children and particularly teenagers, are highly sensitive toward perceived hypocrisy. Teens are especially outraged by moral hypocrisy demonstrated by their parents, and they observe such hypocrisy daily when parents view programming containing "mature-themed content" but insist that such programming is unfit for their teens to watch. As parents subject themselves to evening television fare filled with sex, violence, and profanity, they become desensitized and weaken their own resolve to protect their children from their own viewing habits. When parents partake of ever-coarser programs and movies, they lose all perspective and begin to judge content on the "it's not that bad" sliding scale, where "bad" is measured against the worst they have been watching rather than against truly good, clean entertainment.

Television sets are often given an honored place at the family dinner table, as parents increasingly seek to avoid conversation with their children and teens. The soothing siren song of the television drowns out family discussions and exposes family members of all ages to the insidious influences endemic to evening programming. The result is that networks, who are dependent on advertising revenue, shape their programming content during "family hour" to cater to the family members who make and spend the most money in the household: the parents. The Disney Company grasped this concept long ago, and in a more benign marketing push changed the dialogue and music of its animated feature films to be more suitable for the adults accompanying children to theaters. Celebrities favored by adults were brought in to
perform the voices of animated characters, not because children have become more sophisticated but because the movies were intentionally geared toward adults.

Robin Williams as the genie in Disney's Aladdin is a classic example, as even teenage children have difficulty following his rapid-fire delivery sarcasm and references humorous only to adults. It no longer matters whether children can follow the plot and dialogue as long as there are sufficient special effects and flatulence to make them laugh. Adults have the deep pockets and network executives are eager to produce programming that helps advertisers reach ever deeper into those pockets. Thus evening programming, even in the so-called family hour must appeal to adults, and since parents are accustomed to mature content, it is no surprise that the programming from 8 to 9 p.m. is becoming ever more graphic and obscene, unfit for children.

This does not insulate network officials from their portion of responsibility in producing filthy television fare, but it is evident, as illustrated by the widespread acceptance of pay-per-view pornography available on demand in any home, that parents are becoming less and less capable of judging objectively whether programming is good or bad for their children. After all, they cannot see, or perhaps refuse to acknowledge, the harm mature programming and dangerous moral double standards for their teens is doing to their families. It may be considered prudish in today's morally permissive climate to use a simple standard for judging television content: if I would not sit down and show this program or movie to my children, why do I need to expose myself to it either? A similar question might be posed: if this content will harm my child and offend her purity and innocence, why do I think I am immune from its harmful effects? Tucking children safely in their beds and then immersing oneself in obscene "mature" programming is a double standard that will impair parental success and dilute family values.

It is likewise baffling that otherwise intelligent parents place so mush faith in content ratings systems for programs, movies, music lyrics, and video games. In essence, if you trust ratings systems, you are trusting a group of strangers employed in the entertainment industry to get together and decide what is appropriate morally for your children. We teach our children not to talk to strangers because strangers may harm them or not have their best interest in mind. Why do parents not apply the same advice when it comes to their reliance on content ratings?

Mr. Winters deserves support and respect for encouraging networks to produce more family-friendly television fare, but the root of the problem is that too much of what is aired during "family hour" fits all too well the accepted standards in many homes. The term "family-friendly only carries significance if families have high standards and entertainment expectations that all family members live by at all times, not merely during the hour before 9 p.m. when mature content magically becomes acceptable on all channels.

The laws of supply and demand, like the chicken and the egg question, dictate that one is necessary to produce the other in a symbiotic relationship. Left to their own devices, Hollywood's television producers have been known to push the limits of acceptable content. They need little encouragement to try every titillating tactic possible to attract viewers. Yet they do not produce this content in a moral vacuum. It is the widespread acceptance of coarse content in American homes that encourages the flood of filth now permeating every network. Calling for a restoration of the "family hour" is noble, but unless parents make a conscious effort to improve the quality of the media content they consume during the other hours of the day, they will be in no moral position to make family hour meaningful.

Technorati Tags: Content Ratings Parents Television Council Mature Content Television Programming Parenting Family Values

Honey, Hide the Celery! Boys Genetically Driven to Weaponize Ordinary Items Due to Toy Gun Control

On Saturday I viewed much of the Fox News mockumentary, "Reel Politics: If Hollywood Ran America." It was disappointing, largely because it did not portray what America would be like with Hollywood celebrities holding important political offices in Washington, it instead merely named which celebrities Fox News felt would be appointed by Hollywood to fill various cabinet posts. There was some humor in the selections, such as Jane Fonda as Secretary of Defense (sorry to my milblogger readers!), but I had hoped the comedy program would delve into the actual policies the Hollywood liberals would implement and the disastrous results of those policies.

While still considering the frightening scenario of Tim Robbins or Alec Baldwin running our government, I happened upon a seemingly unrelated, but delightful, article at WashingtonPost.com by Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University. Professor Turley's article takes an unintended swipe at an issue near and dear to the Hollywood liberal heart: Gun control. However, this is no ordinary, predictable gun control article, since the guns people are demanding be banned range from plastic to an index finger and thumb held in gun shape: Toys or imaginary guns. Applying the situations described in Hurley's article to the question of what America's gun control laws could regress into if Hollywood liberal activists held positions such as Attorney General or Chief Justice of the Supreme Court provides an unsettling vision of the future.

Turley's wonderful article, titled "My Boys Like Shootouts. What's Wrong With That?", describes his encounters with parents who do not allow their own children to play with toy guns of any kind and seek to enforce this zero tolerance toy gun policy on other children and parents as well, threatening not to allow children to play together and either not attending parties of friends who play with toy guns or not inviting any plastic gun-toting tots to their own parties. Of course, this sounds ludicrous and perhaps an exaggerated reaction by only a few parents out there, but as Turley relates through his own stories and some amazing examples from across America, the toy gun control lobby is growing in numbers and influence in many neighborhoods, perhaps even your own.

Turley begins by relating when he first noticed that what he considered normal role playing adventures for his three young boys was generating unexpected reactions from other parents in Alexandria, Virginia:

I first noticed the "shunning" at the most unlikely of events. Each year on Labor Day, my Alexandria community has a "Wheel Day" parade in which hundreds of kids convert their bikes, scooters and wagons into different fantasy vehicles. Last year, we turned our red wagon into a replica Conestoga wagon with real sewn canvas over wooden ribs, wooden water barrels, quarter horse -- and, yes, plastic rifles. It was a big hit and the kids won first prize for their age group. The celebration, however, was short lived. As soon as one mother spotted the toy rifles inside the wagon, she pulled her screaming children out of the event, announcing that she would not "expose them" to guns. After some grumbling, my friends and I eventually dismissed the matter as some earth mother gone berserk.

But then it happened again.

My 4-year-old son, Aidan, brought his orange Buzz Lightyear plastic ray gun to "the pit," as our neighborhood playground is known. As he began pursuing an evildoer -- his 6-year-old brother, Jack -- around the playground, a mother froze with an expression of utter revulsion. Glaring alternately from Aidan to me, she waited for a few minutes before grabbing her son and proclaiming loudly that he could not play there "if that boy is going to be allowed to play with guns."

Turley found it ironic that he found himself on the defensive side in a gun control battle, given his political views:

My wife and I are hardly poster parents for the National Rifle Association. We are social liberals who fret over every detail and danger of child rearing. We do not let our kids watch violent TV shows and do not tolerate rough play. Like most of our friends, we tried early on to avoid any gender stereotypes in our selection of games and toys. However, our effort to avoid guns and swords and other similar toys became a Sisyphean battle. Once, in a fit of exasperation, my wife gathered up all of the swords that the boys had acquired as gifts and threw them into the trash. When she returned to the house, she found that the boys had commandeered the celery from the refrigerator to finish their epic battle. Forced to choose between balanced diets and balanced play, my wife returned the swords with strict guidelines about where and when pirate fights, ninja attacks and Jedi rescues could occur.

Intrigued by the passionate resistance to toy guns, Turley decided to explore the psychology behind toy selections for children, and what impact toys, specifically guns and other weapon-like toys have on young boys in their formative play years:

. . . I found a library of academic studies. . . . The thrust was that gender differences do exist in the toys and games that boys and girls tend to choose. The anecdotal evidence in my neighborhood (with more than 60 young kids in a four-block radius) was even clearer: Parents of boys reported endless variations on the celery swords. There seems to be something "hard-wired" with the XY chromosome that leads boys to glance at a small moss-covered branch and immediately see an air-cooled, camouflaged, fully automatic 50-caliber Browning rifle with attachable bayonet.

Many parents can relate to Holley and Warren Lutz, who thought that after their daughter Seeley, they could raise her little brother, Carver, in a weapon-free house. Holley realized her error when she gave 10-month-old Carver a Barbie doll and truck one day. The little boy examined both and then proceeded to run Barbie over repeatedly with the truck. By 2, he was bending his sister's Barbies into L-shapes and using them as guns.

As a father of three young boys, Turley took seriously the question of whether playing with toy weapons could potentially awaken "some deep and dark violent gene" potentially found in all boys. Turley's research, however, led him and his wife to conclude that nature dictated their boys' choice of toys and the imaginary adventures they acted out while playing with toy guns and swords. Despite his rationale, founded as it was in research, psychology, and genetic science, neighbors and parents of his children's friends were not convinced.

Turley observed that despite the violent scenarios his children could have acted out with their toy weapons, something remarkable occurred that suggests something profound about toys, parenting, and hero imitation:

when their best friend recently invited them to his Army-themed birthday party, it didn't bother us a bit (though some parents did refuse to let their children attend). In fact, I was struck by how, more than combat fighting, the boys tended to act out scenes involving rescuing comrades or defending the wounded. What I saw was not boys experimenting with carnage and slaughter, but modeling notions of courage and sacrifice. They were trying to experience the emotions at the extremes of human conduct: facing and overcoming fear to remain faithful to their fellow soldiers.

While violent video games perhaps provide too much stimulus to the imagination, creating actual scenarios of lethal force for points rather than patriotism, toy guns and swords alone do not influence children to become violent. In the case of Turley's boys, and billions of young boys over centuries, toy weapons more often were used to imitate noble figures or occupations in a society, such as policemen and military heroes. If we attempt to protect boys from toy weapons in a misguided effort to shield them from good and bad uses of violence, how will they grow up to protect themselves and their nation? If we rob them of their imaginations and dreams of courage and rescue, what type of soldiers will our armed forces consist of in the future? How many will want to place themselves in harm's way in law enforcement or intelligence agencies? All of these require knowledge and use of weapons to be used for morally justified societal needs, such as protection of the innocent and preservation of a nation.

If Hollywood ran America and established the naive gun control policies they espouse, America would be filled with gender-neutral toys that send mixed messages to confused children who will have no outlet for their youthful, playful aggressions. Turley provided a small but alarming sampling of actual incidents nationwide in which young children have been punished, suspended, and even expelled for behavior as benign as pointing a piece of chicken at another child and saying "pow, pow, pow." It would appear that the liberal campaign to make America "enlightened" like European firearm-free nations is exerting enormous influence at the grass roots level, even in formerly play tolerant suburbs.

What toys do your children choose to play with when presented with several choices? After reading Turley's article and perusing some of the psychological books he examined, you may learn more about your children and their natural affinities and values than you may think. Chances are, if you can never find the celery in the refrigerator, your child may be smuggling replacement swords to his guerrilla army comrades at the playground.