Imagine if a person who was absent from the current American, and even worldwide, media scene for the last 20 or more years suddenly returned and decided to turn on the television. I think that person would be shocked and overwhelmed by all of the changes that have taken place in this relatively short frame of time. We have gone from a standard of television culture that was extremely conscious of what it said and displayed, maybe even overly so in some cases, to one that seems to have no boundaries or standards whatsoever. In the 1950s there was The Lucille Ball Show, where a husband and wife were unrealistically shown as sleeping in separate twin beds. The standards that were to be promoted on television, which was a relatively new media at the time, were not supposed to show men and women even sleeping in the same bed, even if they were husband and wife. Fast forward to the 1970s, with the television show Three’s Company, which was considered risqué at that time. This show featured a plot where a man was roommates with two women, but had to pretend to be gay in order to satisfy the landlord’s aversion to co-ed living situations. Again, this was considered a highly risqué comedy for the time, even though it was set in the “free-spirited” 1970s, and featured no nudity at all or any language that could be at all considered provocative or vulgar. Keep fast forwarding to the 1990s, when cable television was the norm in most American households, and we start to see explicit crime drama shows such as The Sopranos, The Wire, and Oz on HBO. These shows displayed extremely explicit language and graphic images, showing Mafioso- style gangsters in New Jersey, drug dealers and narcotic officers in Baltimore, and even the wild exploits of inmates and guards in a fictional prison. With these shows and a slew of others like them, television seemed to have reached its peak level of its use of explicit material.
The 1990s era of cable television has had an effect on the type of content material is accepted on television today. The content has become filled with murder, sex, scandal, and in many cases, extreme foul language is used to describe these things. The HBO shows mentioned above are from a premium channel, granted, but they are extremely popular and have had great influence on not only cable television non-premium programming as well. So much more is allowed today. The kind of material that would have never been allowed on television when I was a child is now a normal thing on cable television. In addition to the cable channels like HBO or Showtime, much of prime time, non-premium channels play the same type of content in the movies and other shows that they program, but many of them will mask out most of the “curse” words. In addition to the shows mentioned above, other “reality” shows such as Jerry Springer and MTV’s Real World ushered in the current era of Jersey Shore and Bad Girls Club. All of these television shows continue to push the limits on what type of language and content is allowed on television today.
Good job in presenting the content of television over the past 60 years. 60 years kinda seems like a long time, to me at least who has only lived for 21 years. But when thinking about centuries and the time that it has taken for some societies to develop, 60 years is rather a short time for such a change in what is allowed on television. In America’s history alone, our basic morals as a society did not drastically change from 1600 through the 1800s. When looking back on our society, “morality” or what was considered acceptable in the public eye, started to shift in the early 1920s. Since then the change has been accelerated (and not only with ‘decent’ behavior, but also with technology). I wonder if television was a direct influence on the public’s idea of what is decent or if it only reflected the change. An interesting thing to think about. My Great Grandma who is 93 years old will now only watch the news on TV because she is disgusted with what is allowed on television. She is not only appalled at the language and sexual innuendos, but she is also disgusted at the number of tattooed and pierced people that are shown on TV. She is not a religious person but growing up, what is commonplace to us was shocking and still is shocking to her today.
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I could definitely see the difference between the media from the 50’s and today. I once saw this comic were an old couple and a young couple were at a bar. The young couple were making out which was unusual for the older couple since in their young days “romantic” physical contact was considered as inappropriate. Then the future version of that was the the couple that were kissing as the older couple with a new younger couple. The funny part was that the new younger couple were having sex in the club. Having sex in public is now considered as normal. I always wondered if public sex will ever happened in our society. LOL I definitely hope not! The changes are just so dramatic. I’m not sure if we let the media do those type of changes or the media forced us to accept to changes for our daily norms. I remember when i was around 10 years old, the word bitch was only in rated-r movies, but now I hear them in pg-13 movies. Even the f word i sometimes hear it in pg-13 movies. How surprising do you think it will be if those type of language is presented in pg movies then g movies?
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