If you enjoy shows aimed at more mature audiences, whether they’re crassly funny cartoons or intense network dramas, you know what the Parents Television Council (PTC) does even if you aren’t familiar with the organization by name: it’s the group that wines incessantly about the “inappropriate content” of your favorite shows, surfacing every few months to preach their morality as gospel. Whenever the PTC starts up with its spiel, I just ignore it. Or listen to what it has to say and get a hearty laugh out of it.
But then came news from the PTC that I didn’t expect to actually – dare I say –intrigue me. Last week, the PTC released the results of a study tracking the depiction of violence against women in primetime network shows. Incidents of violence against women shown on television increased 120% from 2004 to 2009. Additional figures from the study were just as alarming.
Now this was a headline I simply couldn’t shrug off. In fact, it has made me once again consider a question that has been raised many times in the television censorship debate: is TV programming an art form with the right to free expression, or is it the product of an industry that needs to be conscious of its social influence? As a woman and as a writer, I find this issue a particularly difficult one to navigate.
Cynics may scoff at the thought, but I have always seen television writing as a form of art. Scriptwriting requires a great deal of skill and creativity. There are some programs whose dialogue is just so perfect, whose stories are so personally engaging, that one feels completely immersed in the world created on screen, affected by the show as one would be affected by a book or a work of art. Typically, if the story of a show in some way involves violent acts against women, I do not have an objection to it, unless such violence is obviously gratuitous or unnecessary.
But as someone who considers television to be an art, I don’t believe violent incidents against women should be censored, at least not without just cause. Should “To Kill A Mockingbird” be pulled from English class reading lists for using rape as a plot device? Should any artistic medium refrain from depicting what is socially repulsive, even if it is expressive of the reality of our world? Let’s not go “Fahrenheit 451” here and start smashing in screens.
While I’m all for creativity integrity, I admit that television is not just an art form. Television is chiefly an industry whose goal is to bring in viewers and, of course, make money. What sells a script to a broadcasting network is its ability to sell itself, and what sells better than sex and violence?
Yet while the television industry exemplifies good ol’ American capitalism at work, it must also realize that its products become part of our cultural lexicon, forcing the industry to bear a responsibility to consumers. Portraying and making jokes about violence against women desensitizes viewers and overexposes, sometimes even glamorizes, the horrifying reality. Whether or not there is a causal relationship between televised violence and real-life aggression is arguable, but there is no denying that these depictions of violence reach an enormous audience. The television industry must take into consideration the influence of its shows on a pop-culturally literate society.
Unfortunately, working out the arguments of both sides on paper hasn’t helped me solidify my own position on the issue. Likewise, the television world and its watchdogs will continue to lock horns when it comes to program content. But this is undoubtedly a stimulating debate to ponder the next time you turn on your favorite show. And when’s the last time your brain had any intellectual activity while you watched TV?
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