Ivy's Censorship Rant, or, Why TV Today Really Blows (Part One)
You'd think that, as a feminist, I'd be pro-censorship. (Actually, looking at me, you'd think I'm normal, but that's a very common misconception.) But I'm extremely anti-censorship. No, I don't believe we should be showing porno to six-year-olds, but we shouldn't be censoring and watching every little thing they watch, either.
Recently, the FCC declared it would put more strict guidelines down, since Janet Jackson's little "wardrobe malfunction" at the Super Bowl. I was dumbstruck. What the crap? We need MORE censorship? I asked myself.
I babysit a lot, so I am often forced to watch the things my future stepsiblings watch. These are usually Disney shows, or Nickelodeon, or things of the sort. I used to watch Nickelodeon a lot. They used to have some really good, funny shows. But nowadays, everything has turned into some sort of moral story. Everything has to be educational now, or teach some kind of Very Important Lesson.
For example, I'll walk you through an average episode of Lizzie McGuire (ye gods, I hate that show). But I'm trying to be unbiased on this example anyway. Here goes:
Lizzie is at school or at home and figures out she has to do something Very Important to Impress the Cheerleading Crowd/Ethan Craft. For this example, let's say she has to buy a certain expensive outfit. Her mom won't let her buy it. Lizzie decides her mom is a freaking Nazi for not allowing her to buy an outfit that costs $328902434958 just to impress People Who Really Don't Matter. Lizzie and her Really Cookie-Cutter Character Pals scheme and plot and buy the outfit. Lizzie wears the outfit to school only to find the popular kids still despise her (most likely because she's fucking perfect and makes a disgusting show of modesty out of it--oops, there goes my bias). After being run out of school by popular kids with torches and pitchforks, she decides, very vocally, that She Should Have Just Been Herself, and Then Everyone Would Have Liked Her.
And such like that. When I was little, my brother and I watched such mindless and lovely shows at Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Josh and I turned out just fine watching moral-less and highly uneducational TV (the most we learned from He-Man was that Guys Really Don't Look Good In Fur Bikinis). Meanwhile, my future stepsiblings are quite the living terrors.
Josh and I watched the most uneducational crap of all time (among these were The Gong Show, Lancelot Link, She-Ra, H.R. Pufnstuf, and other trippy 1980s or 1960s shows). Yet we turned out okay. We have healthy senses of humor and we're suitably adjusted (even if we have the table manners of children raised by wolves); I relate this to our third parent, Mr. Magnavox. Our dad was quite strict about things, and Mom was away a lot, doing stuff with the Army. Dad also had to work; so a neighbor often left us with the TV tuned to some mindless crap on Nickelodeon.
On the other end of the spectrum are my future stepsiblings. They're living nightmares. Their father only lets them watch educational TV, now classified as Disney or Nickelodeon. They have been turned into bloody ZOMBIES by all this education and push for keeping Everything Negative out of their brains. They are always smiling and the only time they let anything out is when my mum and their dad are away. They always decide to yell and scream and act like rabid monkeys when I'm around.
But now, we need to shove More More More Positive Things down their throats? I don't think so.
Perhaps this rant should have been more about Why Today's Children Are Doomed.
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Email: gythia_astryd@sailormoon.com