Views » February 19, 2004

What the FCC?!?

By Susan J. Douglas

I am sure that if you, like me, see the footage of the “wardrobe malfunction” one more time you’re going to hurl your TV out the window. An entire week of the Dean scream, and now this. (Will we see, except on “The Daily Show,” repeated images of Bush’s multiple flubs on “Meet The Press”?) How much lower can TV news go, expressing its faux outrage so that it can show the offending video clip for the billionth time? It would be nice if the details of the Bush energy bill, or of Medicare “reform,” or of how many homeless people are freezing this winter had gotten a fraction of the coverage.

And don’t you love the newly sanctimonious FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who all of a sudden cares about media content and possible regulation? We’re going to have an “investigation” into how and why Janet Jackson flashed her boob on national television, but not one into ongoing media consolidation? It would have been nice, with the FCC suddenly in the news and all, if the networks and cable channels had noted how Congress, under the cover of an omnibus bill, further eased restrictions on the number of television stations the corporate behemoths can own. But of course, who’s going to cover their own raiding of the candy store? As media theorist Bob McChesney has repeatedly pointed out, it is the relentless commercialization of every aspect of the media that has gotten us to this half-time-show-as-striptease pass. The notion of any regulation coming from the event is laughable. Powell doesn’t want to regulate anyone; he’d actually like to see the FCC go away.

Having said all this, however, and acknowledging how totally overblown the Jackson incident was, I think most of us also understand why the breast flash hit a nerve. Parents on the left and the right really are fed up with the barrage of soft-core porn that urges our daughters to dress like hookers and our sons to see themselves primarily as sex machines who must dominate women at all costs. And some of these very same parents grew up during and helped launch the sexual revolution, and even we have had it.

One of the things my daughter and I fight about on a regular basis is what she watches on TV. She can’t stand having me in the same room when, say, MTV’s “The Real World” is on, because all I do is rant and rave, asking why everyone has to be having sex in hot tubs or, during the more reflective parts of the episode, complaining about who is a bitch or a jerk. Of course, it’s not like listening to the radio when you’re driving your kids around offers any relief. Sure, we had songs like “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” and “Let’s Spend the Night Together.” But songs with f*ck in the title, or entire songs about blow jobs? And the covers of magazines geared to young men and women, like Cosmo and Maxim, scream out that they are, primarily, sex manuals.

I am the last one to suggest that baby boomers grew up in some media Valhalla, surrounded, as we were, by “Mr. Ed,” “My Favorite Martian,” and “The Flying Nun.” Much of TV was utterly moronic and overly puritanical (how quaint it seems today that “I Dream of Jeannie” dared not reveal a belly button). But parents didn’t feel that on top of everything else, they had to become in-house censors, and young people didn’t feel swamped by incessant media insistence that they must turn themselves into delectable, ever-ready sex objects who nonetheless must also “just say no.”

And, of course, this hyper-sexualized media environment would not be complete without the double standard. We see who had to apologize and who got kicked off the Grammys: the woman involved in the incident but not the man.

So here is the question always raised by such an incident: If you oppose censorship but are fed up by a media culture that bombards us with corporately produced exhortations to obsess about sex—and that especially urges our daughters to objectify themselves—what do you do? Is yelling at the TV (or throwing it in the trash) our only option? I don’t know about you, but when I hear myself start to sound like Bob Dole raving about the “nightmares of depravity” in the media, I think we’ve come to an especially bad pass in the media environment that surrounds us.

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• Reader Comments

  It’s frustrating to complain about
  the race-to-the-bottom sex-obsessed/crude ads on TV
  and one-sided stuff on radio, but I’ve had some satisfaction in writing
  a petition/letter with a dozen signers,  to local sponsors (car dealers, furniture stores, supermarkets) and
  small victories like ending
  their sponsorship of Gordon Liddy—
  and maybe soon, Mike Savage
  on Clear Channel’s Radio WSYR Syracuse.

  Posted by Austin Paulnack on Feb 20, 2004 at 12:27 AM

  Mr Paulnack, I think has the right idea.  What was that saying?:  Think globally, act locally.
  As for dealing with our kids in this media environment, much depends on the example we set.  Short of trashing the tv, I’ve found it instructive (maybe not all the time, but enough) to take a breath and, after the mtv video is over (or whenever you can politely intercede) simply ask what it is that is so cool about what (s)he is watching?  I was generally surprised at the length of discussions, once I reminded my daughter that, yes, I was once a prisoner of the adult world.  The problem today is that the insanity is mainstream, and not the other way around.

  Posted by Steve Church on Feb 20, 2004 at 2:16 AM

  I agree with you on every point except one. In my understanding Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson were both given the option of appearing on The Grammy’s if they apologized for the “wardrobe malfunction”. Miss Jackson declined and Timberlake went on. I am sure Mr. Timberlake’s decision had something to with his being awarded on the show. Miss Jackson was not to receive any sort of recognition.

  Ron Johnson

  Posted by Ron Johnson on Feb 20, 2004 at 4:38 PM

  I couldn’t agree more! Especially “If you oppose censorship but are fed up by a media culture…” I just wish there were more diverse options on TV and in the media so that viewers could show the Media Execs that we can handle the truth, we can handle information and not just sound bites, that we don’t care about polls we care about issues, but we aren’t given the option to show that. I can go to the grocery store and buy organic foods and put my $$ where my interests are. I’m not even given that option on mainstream TV, in magazines. 

  “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”—H. L. Mencken

  As a friend quote this to me the other day as I was complaining about the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue which every employee at my company - a division on Time Inc, the magazine’s publisher - got a hand delivered copy… oh yeah, company sanctioned pornography, now that promotes a professional work environment!

  I feel very powerless to change this - expect by reading and subscribing to magazines like In These Times, the Nation, FAIR’s Extra, etc.

  Posted by sarah bailey on Feb 20, 2004 at 7:28 PM

  Ms. Bailey,

    The media execs have absolutely no interest in the amount of truth or information that the viewing public can handle, as long as the general attention span doesn’t dip below the 30-second level of most commercials.  In fact, they have a vested interest in keeping us as unaware as possible of most major issues.  The American public is not becoming dumber, it’s becoming more and more ignorant at the hands of the media.

  I used to work as a managing editor for a moderately respectible industry-focused magazine, and I’ve seen seen solid reporting watered down to irrelevance or cut completely because one of the major advertisers didn’t like how it and its products were portrayed.  I knew better than to ask why the hell the advertiser was allowed to dictate content in an “independent” publication, but it was in no small part this particularly odious “fact of life” that led me to reconsider my choice of career.

  This flap over content is just a distraction from the influence that advertisers have over what you’re allowed to know.  Don’t trust any news source that primarily relies on advertising for it’s income.

  Or better yet, don’t trust any news source at all.

  Posted by Aaron on Feb 23, 2004 at 8:06 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 12 posts.

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