I’m a 32 year old male who watches a less-than-average amount of television. What I do watch has generally been comedies, and sci-fi shows on network channels.
I’ve got a roommate who has been watching, er, dramas I guess, on DVD. Rome and True Blood. They’re often on in the other room, so I catch most of the audio, and sometimes I’ll sit and watch a bit.
Call me old fashioned, but these two shows (particularly True Blood) seem basically pornographic. While there are no shots of penetration, both of these programs have frequent (at least every episode, or so it seems) sex scenes that feel very explicit and erotic, and my female roommates seem to live for those scenes, and get a little vocal about how hot they think the proceedings on screen are.
To me, it feels like they’re watching porn in the other room. It feels . . . unclassy, I guess.
Am I wrong on this? Is this just ‘how TV is these days,’ and I have just not been watching the right shows? I know there are some who will call me prudish (and might be right, I don’t know), but the amount of sex going on in these shows passes beyond being a tool for storytelling or mood and is just titillation. In my opinion, of course.
(an IMHO-type post about TV, figured CS was the place for it)
Is this a problem for you because you’re against sex on TV or because the shows are otherwise absolute shit (particularly True Blood) and that your family is watching them so intently?
Well, depending on your definition of TV these shows may or may not be “on TV”.
Both shows you listed are series on HBO which runs a bit more risqué than your typical TV series and aren’t regulated by the FCC.
I don’t know if it’s a “problem” per se; I’m not against sex on TV, I’m just against watching porn in public (maybe just a quirky hang-up of mine), and these shows feel like they should be viewed in the privacy of one’s bedroom.
It’s weird when I walk into the living room and a person I’m not having sex with is watching writhing and moaning naked people on the TV.
And, the shows are crap. There is that component for sure.
That’s what HBO and Showtime do: otherwise ordinary TV but with tits, characters that say “fuck”, and more violence. (Though honestly I find Dexter a hell of a lot less disturbing than, say, SVU). I wonder if some of that is contractually mandated, since sometimes the sex has some vague tangential connection to the plot, but other times it seems like the writers forgot and just found some random place to stick a topless woman.
I don’t mind, but it is rather silly and over the top at times. I always roll my eyes when a minor character’s never-before-seen girlfriend takes her top off before going on the shower, while they talk about something unrelated to anything else in the show.
I watched two seasons of “The Real “L” Word”- a reality show about a group of lesbians, and parts of that were definitely pornographic. Season 2, episode one (I think that was it) in particular had a longish scene of two of the ladies having sex. I was kinda shocked, but not because I’m such a prude, but because I don’t have cable or satellite TV and didn’t know things had changed so much.
According to an article in The Economist several months ago, the reason for T&A on HBO is not the FCC, it’s the no-advertising business model.
The majority of cable channels depend on ad revenue to pay the bills. Therefore, the advertisers, not the viewers, are the customer. Advertisers are sensitive to consumer complaints about TV content, and will pull advertising, or not buy it to begin with, if a channel shows something that makes little old ladies in Peoria faint.
Because HBO and a few other channels derive their revenue from subscriptions, the viewers are the customers. So they give the people what they want, instead of removing what the people don’t want, so to speak. It turns out that people want a little fake sex with their dramas and comedies, or at least the random out-of-nowhere set of tits. I, of course, only watch for the high production values and vivid characterization. And the cussing.
Every third woman I knew last year was going on and on about True Blood… which shows… porn is levied by the story line and attractiveness of the male actors…lol
BTW Rome kicked ass… Some of these series… it fits with what is going on and I don’t some assholes (Previously Colin Powell’s backward ass kid) telling me whats appropriate on televison. When you watch a BBC series you might see breasts… but god help you if the female nipple is shown on network televison…
Are there really people out there who watch “A Game of Thrones” for the tits (aside from 14-year-old boys, naturally, but they usually aren’t the bill payers in the household)?
Hell if I know. The fact that HBO allocates production capital and screen time to phony sex scenes and the odd flash of nudity suggests that the company believes that it contributes to the number of viewers, hence the bottom line, more than the additional 5 minutes of fully-clothed people talking that could have been put in it’s place. They’ve been in the business quite a while, so I expect they’ve done their homework.
