"The national news was crowded with big stories this week, and most of them turned out to be somehow joined at the hip with major league Sports -- especially Football and its sinister connections with tainted money and naked women. It was shocking.
'This is horrible news,' I said to Anita, as Janet Jackson's tortured right nipple was rubbed in our face for the 55th time in three days. 'Nobody remembers the final score in Houston, but we ALL witnessed the shameless quasi-naked sight of that breast and S&M-style nipple shield.'
"It was like having football and porno all at once, with no holds barred ... Or that's what they said on TV, anyway. CBS News Wizard Ed Bradley called it a magic moment for show business."
-- Hunter S. Thompson
What's so bad about women's breasts, anyway? The hysteria at the Federal Communications Commission over Janet Jackson's now-legendary "wardrobe malfunction" during the 2004 Super Bowl on CBS is baffling. The FCC is now launching a full investigation and proposing new legislation to curb "indecency" on television. Now, if they were working to curb "idiocy" on TV, I'd be more impressed. The FCC, however, is slowly becoming a national joke. My criticism is this: the government should be concerned about violence, not boobs.
The lunacy
over a federal investigation titled: "How Did Janet Jackson's Right Breast
Pop Out Of Her Costume?" is obvious. Currently, there are no rules or regulations
regarding violence on television. Why is violence OK, but a breast is such a
big deal?
For those who missed the news, during the National Football League Super Bowl halftime show in February 2004, singer Justin Timberlake ripped part of Jackson's costume and exposed her right breast and silver "pasty." The program was produced by MTV and shown on CBS, both owned by media giant Viacom. The show was watched by 44.2 % of U.S. households and 140 million people. CBS got a record $2.25 million for a 30-second commercial during the program. The Super Bowl is big money and so, I guess Jackson figured it should also mean big boobs.
"The decision to have a costume reveal at the end of my halftime show performance was made after final rehearsals," Jackson said in a statement released after the incident. "MTV was completely unaware of it. It was not my intention that it go as far as it did. I apologize to anyone offended — including the audience, MTV, CBS and the NFL."
FCC Commissioner Michael Powell was outraged. "We all as a society have a responsibility as to what the images and messages our children hear when they're likely to be watching television," he said. "I don't think that's being moralistic, and I don't think that's government trying to tell people how to run their businesses. I don't think you need to be a lawyer to understand the basic concepts of common decency here."
Powell called it "a classless, crass and deplorable stunt."
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps was also outraged. "Millions of Americans have made it convincingly clear that they no longer will tolerate media’s race to the bottom when it comes to indecency on the people’s airwaves," he said in a March 2004 speech. "The Super Bowl had a galvanizing effect here in Washington, particularly at the FCC, where the tired old arguments I have been hearing for the past three years were finally laid to rest—I think. 'If people don’t like what they’re seeing, they can just turn it off,' I was told. Are we supposed to just turn off the all-American Super Bowl?" (Editors note: the horror the horror.)
Copps
goes on to say that he believes that society has "a responsibility
to protect children from content that is inappropriate for them. And when it
comes to the broadcast media, the Federal Communications Commission has the
statutory obligation—the legal mandate—to protect children from
indecent, profane and obscene programming."
Why is a woman's breast considered indecent? My theory is that American piety stems from Puritanical roots. In 1624, one of the first white settlers in the "new world" was a group of ultra-religious people called Puritans. For years, the Puritans tried, unsuccessfully, to "purify" the Church of England and were often jailed, whipped and hanged. They traveled to America in search of religious freedom and created the first settlement in Boston and first business, the Massachusetts Bay Company. The Puritans were incredibly strict -- beating people who fell asleep in church and banishing people from the colony who spoke out against the church or government. They didn't celebrate Christmas or Easter because they were not events recorded in the Bible.
Puritans would not have been too happy with a performer exposing her breast during halftime at a football game. Nudity is shown on television in Europe without making a big deal. In fact, in Europe, motion pictures are shown on TV uncut. (For those Europeans reading this article, if you don't know, in the U.S., all movies are "Edited for Television" with any nudity or dirty words deleted.) So if American society has evolved from the Puritans, it is easy to see how these notions have been handed down through the centuries.
However, the real issue is NOT whether the Janet Jackson breast incident should be categorized as "indecent." The issue is also NOT whether the government should care. The FCC should regulate indecent programming. Children should be protected and networks should be forced to comply. The real question, is how should it regulate indecency? How will the agency straddle the line between regulation and censorship? And this is where things seem to get fuzzy.
What is the definition of indecency? Who decides what is decent or not? What does the government do to control programming?
The current FCC definition for indecency is:
Apparently, the FCC commissioners themselves decide what is indecent. There are five commissioners. The positions are political and appointed by the U.S. President, not elected by the people. Do these five people really reflect "contemporary community standards" and what is a contemporary community standard anyway?
The FCC also has no mechanism to control programming. They act at random. The FCC responds to complaints from the public and then decides if it should act. In some cases it does and in some cases it does not. If there is no complaint there is no action. There are no rules there are no standards. There is no office in the FCC to monitor broadcasts. The FCC acts as it pleases unchecked and uncontrolled. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." So what are the lines? How does a network know where protected free speech begins and ends? Obscene speech is not protected by the First Amendment and can be regulated. Where are the rules? Where are the regulations? What is considered offensive? The United States is a big country. What is considered offensive in New York City may not be the same in Birmingham, Alabama or in San Diego, California or in Fargo, North Dakota or in Fairbanks, Alaska.
The problem is that the FCC has no guidelines and no rules regarding what is permitted and what is not. Free speech is at the whim of five politically appointed people who have the power to invoke large fines or revoke broadcast licenses.
TV critic Tom Shales made the point that "one nipple pops out and the First Amendment gets shot full of holes. Imagine if there had been two nipples. Or if Justin Timberlake had whipped out his weenie. Ms. Jackson's exhibitionism was foolish and pitifully out of context, but there hasn't been a single recorded example of anyone being harmed by it-scarred for life, say, or stricken with hooterphobia."
The greatest hypocrisy of the whole affair is that violence continues to be broadcast on television unabated. The group ACT Against Violence notes that the average child will witness 100,000 acts of violence on television before completing elementary school and 40,000 murders by the time he or she graduates from high school. The group also notes that "15% of all U.S. TV programs per week contain violence, the highest percentage of any nation in the world." (See my essay "Filling Their Minds With Death: TV Violence And Children" for a detailed investigation of the amounts and effects of TV violence.)
There
have been numerous studies all leading to the same conclusion: TV violence influences
the minds of young children and makes them more aggressive. The most recent
study, at the time of this writing, was entitled "Media violence as a risk
factor for children: A longitudinal study" published in May 2004 by researchers
from Iowa State University, the University of Minnesota and the National
Institute on Media and the Family. The study surveyed the TV viewing habits
of 400 third, fourth and fifth grade students for three years and created a
General Aggression Model to explain links between exposure to media violence
and aggressive attitudes and behaviors.
"Children who consumed more media violence early in the school
year were more verbally aggressive, relationally aggressive, and physically
aggressive later in the school year," concludes the report. "Media
violence exposure is described as a risk factor for aggressive beliefs and behaviors,
and it is argued that media violence exposure in combination with other risk
factors for aggression can produce an effect greater than any single risk factor
alone."
While the amount of televised violence escalates the FCC says and does nothing. For more than a decade, Senator Fritz Hollings from South Carolina has been attempting to pass the Children's Protection from Violent Programming Act in the U.S. Congress. Each year, the legislation dies in committee or tabled on the Senate floor. Hollings states the legislation is "narrowly targeted to comply with Constitutional scrutiny. The 'safe harbor' legislation does not prevent broadcasters from offering violent programming. It simply directs those programs to hours when most children are not watching – the same way the FCC treats 'indecent' programming today."
Hollings notes that "if children can be constitutionally protected from indecent material, they should also be protected from gratuitous violence." The bill, first produced in August 1993, was presented to the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee again in March 2004. This is the eighth time the bill was introduced. Will it pass into law this time?
According to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll in May 1999, 56% of Americans feel the government should be doing more to regulate violence on television and 65% said violence on TV is in some ways responsible for increases in crime.
Janet Jackson's breasts are not the problem. Her breasts are a smoke screen. The FCC crusade against "indecency" is a distraction from the real issues. Violence on television is a real problem with real impacts. The government could do something, but chooses to do nothing.
Why
do I care? I don't watch TV. Unfortunately, the FCC's holy crusade against women's
breasts appearing on TV is bleeding over into other areas. The FCC is going
after all indecent sexual content or anything that sounds "obscene."
It is targeting radio. Its next target will be the Internet.
In April 2004, the FCC fined Clear Channel Communications $500,000 for an airing of The Howard Stern Show. The offense was making fart noises while discussing sexual positions. Clear Channel then cancelled his show on six stations (in Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Rochester, San Diego, Pittsburgh and Louisville). Infinity Broadcasting, however, said it will continue to air his show on 75 affiliate stations. Infinity is also owned by Viacom.
"This is the new McCarthy era!" said Westwood One radio's Tom Leykis in May 2004. "It's an election year, so the Federal Communications Commission is taking action that has nothing to do with protecting children." He warned that the FCC's fines for indecency are a form of censorship similar to Senator Joe McCarthy's hunt for communists in the 1950s.
Howard Stern and others claim that the FCC, since it arbitrarily picks and chooses who to investigate and fine, does so for political reasons. Stern routinely criticizes President George Bush and the Republican party. The radio host states he is being targeted for his political views, not for making fart noises.
The FCC needs to get its act together. The agency needs to produce a detailed policy for indecency and a separate set of standards for violence on television. Priorities need to be set and realities need to be faced.
And people shouldn't freak out next time someone's boob pops free!
© 2004 by Ron Kaufman at TurnOffYourTV.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004
To: comments@turnoffyourtv.com
Subject: Violence vs Sex
Dear Ron,
I encountered your website today, so happy to find something about how horrible TV viewing is, particularly advertising and the robotic consumerism it enforces. I too have a degree in Psychology and working on a Masters in Counseling. I fully agree with the atrocious amounts of violence we are all exposed to by watching, particularly children. I do wish efforts would be taken to address the disturbing facts of how many murders people watch per year and how society has become desensitized to it, etc... After reading your article about Janet Jackson however, I wish you would open your mind to damaging the amounts of sexually explicit materials in advertising and on network and cable television is as well. Perhaps it is because you are a man that it doesn't affect you as much. But as a female, and as a studying counselor, I have met many women who do have 'hooterphobia' as you so coined it in the article. The vast amount sexual and degrading content, especially in advertising, does not promote the healthy adaptation of girls and women into society. And we can't get away from it, unless we kill our television... A wonderful resource on the subject is Jean Kilbourne who has produced the poignant documentary series "Killing Us Softly": http://www.jeankilbourne.com/ ... which I hope you will take the time to explore for your website.
I do appreciate your website and hope you will consider expanding it to be more inclusive of the negative and dehumanizing effects sexually explicit materials on tv have as well. Because we have the same goal: "kill your television".
Thank you for your time,
Angel
