Conservatives Freak Out Over MTV’s "Skins" -- Teenagers Have Sex. Get Over It.

From AlterNet:

Last week, the conservative Parents TV Council slammed MTV for its new show, "Skins," calling it “the most dangerous program ever” for its portrayal of teenagers doing things they often do in reality: have sex, curse and take drugs. Advertisers from Taco Bell to H&R Block have pulled their spots, and now MTV is wringing its hands (aka trying to drum up more viewers) over whether it's violating federal child pornography laws by an upcoming scene featuring a naked 17-year-old with an erection running down the street. (Not that we’ll see it.)

The fact is, the brouhaha’s a load of bull, and both MTV and PTC are being ridiculous.

More here.

The essay goes on to blast the anti-sex controversy-rousers for, well, the title sort of says it all: teenagers do things that most adults do, too, and adults even know this, but really hate when they have their noses rubbed in it. That is, the same wishful-thinking crowd that brought us "abstinence based" sex education is going wild that MTV would dare portray reality in living color. The essay then goes on to blast MTV for making a British TV knockoff that isn't as good as the original British show, as if US television didn't have a multi-decade history of watering down good across-the-pond programming for our own rude, unwashed masses.

Whatever.

I actually ended up watching an episode of the show last night. Ordinarily, I wouldn't trouble myself, but had read about the controversy over the past week and was channel surfing while Carly was studying her paralegal stuff, so I figured what the hell. And, surprise surprise, I liked it. A lot. It probably got a few extra points because my expectations were extraordinarily low. I mean, MTV has been mostly trash for years and years, and I figured this one would be no exception, but I was curious to see if it was as verging on child pornography as detractors have claimed. And no, it comes nowhere close to that, but, as the essay asserts, it does play up the sexuality a great deal, which is probably exactly what MTV wants to do.

But really, it's not nearly so exploitative as virtually everything else showing on the washed up youth channel these days, and frankly, the sex stuff succeeds because the show's so damned well written. I can't compare it to the Brit prototype because I've never seen it, but this is good stuff. The characters are nuanced and sophisticated, concerning themselves with real world issues that I almost never see in either film or television. And these people are interesting. Like people I wish I was friends with. Actually, these people are kind of like people I knew when I was a teenager, which just goes to show you that no matter how much things seem to change, the essential nature of human beings remains the same.

Listen to me talking about how well an MTV show deals with the "essential nature human beings." That, in itself, ought to make you curious. I don't know that I'm going to go out of my way to watch "Skins," mostly because television is just something I do when I haven't got anything else to do, but if I was the kind of person who tracked down quality TV shows, this might be on the list.

It is nice to know that TV can still surprise me.

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