Trash TV
Will Super Bowl Sleaze Prompt A Real Crackdown On All That Media Smut?
Well, at least now we all know what breast jewelry is. That includes the Manesiotis family, Mike and Sally and their three kids, ages 12, 10, and 8. They were watching Super Bowl XXXVIII in the family room of their Hilton Head Island, S.C., home when Justin Timberlake ripped off a piece of Janet Jackson's bustier, revealing that famous right breast. Like the other 90 million folks watching, the family got to see that, for, ahem, decorum's sake, Jackson was wearing something now billed as a "nipple shield." Her breast was visible for just a few seconds, but long enough for 12-year-old Mikie to shriek, "Mom, is that what I think it is?" His father, who was looking away at the critical moment, reassured everyone: "There's no way that would have happened. The network would never allow it!"
Get with it, Dad. True, CBS, and MTV, which produced the halftime show, and Viacom, which owns them both, say the grab-and-flash was a last-minute surprise they knew nothing about. But the protestations are falling on deaf ears, especially since MTV had been hyping a "shocking" halftime surprise days before. The stars initially blamed "wardrobe malfunction," but by week's end Jackson had essentially admitted the disrobing was by design. Either way, the moment will go down in Super Bowl history.
For one thing, it will be the first bowl game to become the subject of both congressional hearings and a federal investigation on indecency. The Federal Communications Commission is threatening fat fines against whoever was responsible. It may also prompt at least a temporary cleanup of the rest of television. CBS, running scared, has since promised to use tape delays to bleep out any obscenities at the Grammy Awards. Likewise, ABC will employ a five-second delay when broadcasting the Academy Awards. And Timberlake's fellow 'N Sync-er, JC Chasez, was cut from the Pro Bowl's halftime show.
Such actions will hardly meet with unanimous applause. Many fans couldn't get enough of the titillation. Among TiVo users, the performance generated the biggest spike in viewer reaction that TiVo has ever measured, as hundreds of thousands of households paused and replayed the incident over and over. The search engine Lycos reported that Jackson's unexpected exposure was the most searched event in one day in Internet history.
But for many other Americans, it was the moment they decided they had finally just had enough. Enough of the crudity and salaciousness, the violence and easy morality that have so permeated U.S. mass culture that even the Super Bowl, the quintessential family television event, is no longer immune.
Impressions. "The violence of him ripping her clothes off was like an assault," says Sue Woods, a real-estate broker and mother of three from Madison, Conn. "Then she's feigning surprise. I think it's hideous." Sally Manesiotis worries that it will make a lasting impression on her kids and others as well. "When someone touches my daughter inappropriately, I don't want her to say, `It must be OK; I saw it on the Super Bowl,' " she says.
Anne Perron, a 19-year-old University of Michigan freshman, laments the added parental burden. "The Super Bowl shouldn't be something children's parents should have to censor," says Perron.
Not that the breast baring was the sole cause for outrage. In the view of sitcom favorite Bill Cosby, "What needs to be discussed prior to commenting on Miss Jackson's performance is what came before it. Look at the rest of the halftime show and the ads. Didn't I witness a couple of hundred situations where the female was being exploited or her body parts were being exploited?"
Others agree. "How many ways can we offend America in four minutes seemed to be the goal," says satirist Andy Borowitz. If you missed the halftime show, there were the accompanying commercials--peddled by the network at $2.3 million per 30-second pop. In 1972, the big Super Bowl ad was Coca-Cola's "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing." This year Pepsi paraded 16 teenagers who had been sued by the recording industry for illegally downloading music from the Internet but who can now join the rest of the world in trying to win free songs with a Pepsi purchase. A Pepsi spokesman says, "These people learned a hard lesson, and we were turning a negative situation into a positive one." But others read the message to teens this way: "Don't steal unless you have to."
Not that CBS accepted all would-be advertisers. The network turned down ads from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Moveon.org, a liberal activist organization. But among those making the cut were several for erectile dysfunction medications, a topic some viewers complained left them struggling to answer their young children's questions. Other ads struck some viewers as hilarious and others as dreadful. "The commercials were like bad Adam Sandler movies, with crotches and farts," says Ron Simon, television curator of the Museum of Television & Radio in Manhattan.
"Pretty cool." Of course, for some, perhaps many, viewers, there is no such thing as a bad Adam Sandler movie. This audience loved the Budweiser ads showing a romantic sleigh ride disrupted by horse flatulence or a dog biting a man's crotch. Nor were they offended by the crotch pulls and gyrations of the rappers as they sang of crackheads, nakedness, and copulation in the MTV-produced halftime show.
"It was pretty inappropriate for something like that with the whole country watching, but it doesn't bother me," says Audrey Yorke, 16, a junior at Woodrow Wilson Senior High School in Washington, D.C. About the Jackson reveal, she says, "All the guys [at school] think it was pretty cool, even the male teachers." Her 10-year-old sister, Vivian, concurs. It "really didn't bother me," she says, noting that MTV regularly shows things close to it.
But while elite opinion in America has traditionally scorned prudery--witness the derision heaped on Tipper Gore for her early efforts to combat salacious rock lyrics--this time the reaction among notables was far more critical. Director Spike Lee called it "a new low," telling students at Kent State University's regional campus in Stark County, Ohio, "It's getting crazy, and it's all down to money . . . and fame. Somehow the whole value system has been upended."
Of more consequence, FCC Chairman Michael Powell got his dander up after watching halftime with his kids. Calling what he saw a "classless, crass, and deplorable stunt," Powell announced that his agency would seek to assign blame for the incident.
Of course the backlash could be short-lived. That was certainly the case with other media shockers, like Roseanne Barr's crotch grab after singing the national anthem in 1990. Commercial interests, after all, are sure to resist efforts to change the state of the business. Says Esten Perez, a 30-year-old public relations consultant in Washington, D.C.: "I think the U.S. has to catch up with the rest of the world, for God's sake. I was thinking to myself: `Ridiculous, prudes. Who cares?' This is Janet Jackson trying to make some money. This is what these tactics are for--to get you some public relations exposure."
No doubt. Though not everyone finds that sufficient justification. "It worked for Janet Jackson, but it is really not fair to kids," says Carol Weston, author of For Teens Only: Quotes, Notes, & Advice You Can Use. "Sex is always attention getting; it becomes too easy for marketers to use and too easy for teens to realize that it will help them get attention, too."
And while the media corporations involved say they were blindsided by the Jackson incident, Rep. Doug Ose, a California Republican, expresses a disbelief shared by many. "I think it was premeditated," says Ose. "This is an event in which they tell the players what kind of socks they can wear. MTV on its Web site told people to watch the halftime show because something was going to happen that had never happened before. . . . I'm hoping the FCC will fine them to fullest extent of the law."
Other critics charge that even if media honchos didn't approve of the disrobing, their standards are too low. "MTV scripted the halftime show with [rapper] Nelly," says Jim Steyer, author of The Other Parent and CEO of Common Sense Media. The show was "deliberate strategic business behavior by Viacom, MTV, and CBS."
Many advertisers disapproved of the Timberlake/Jackson display because of its content. But others were more upset because it upstaged the most expensive, most watched ads of the year. "You cannot sell unless you entertain," says Bernice Kanner, author of The Super Bowl of Advertising: How the Commercials Won the Game. "People think . . . to be more humorous, you've got to be louder. They have forgotten the deft and subtle humor."
Still, while the Levitra ads flustered some parents, they played big with the targeted male audience. "We saw a huge increase in the traffic to our Web site after our ads ran," says Lara Chrissey, spokesperson for Bayer. How big? Two thousand percent.
The way we were. Many football fans who remember when Lucy and Ricky slept in twin beds and Jack Paar walked off his hosting job on The Tonight Show after a censor nixed a joke in which Paar used WC as an abbreviation for water closet now wonder how television came to a time when triple entendres pepper sitcom scripts.
Today, TV sex is so casual that seinfeld built an episode around Elaine's limited supply of contraceptive sponges, which meant potential partners had to be deemed "spongeworthy." Bare bottoms pop up on NYPD Blue and other shows. Cable, of course, goes much further. "It's too much," says Manesiotis. "Everything is OK. What college kids see, a second grader sees. I feel like our country is just letting this happen."
Or perhaps not. Just days before the breast-baring incident, House members decried the state of broadcasting in a subcommittee hearing. A White House-backed bill to increase by 10 times (from $27,500 to $275,000 per offense) the fines the FCC can impose against indecent broadcasters has been put into hyperdrive. It now has about 100 cosponsors. A bill sponsored by Ose would ban six of the "seven dirty words" made famous in the early 1970s by comedian George Carlin. "My bill wouldn't impact what happened on Sunday," says Ose, "but it would set a clear line."
Congress has become increasingly angry that the FCC has done so little to enforce decency standards. The FCC has successfully fined only two television stations for indecency in its history. Last year the FCC declined to fine NBC for U2 singer Bono's use of the "F" word on the Golden Globe Awards on the grounds that it was used as an adjective, not a verb. Last month, Chairman Powell said that he wanted to reconsider the Bono decision, and the FCC has said it is investigating similarly foul language used by Nicole Richie in a recent awards broadcast. Now, FCC commissioners have been summoned to testify in front of a Senate committee and a House subcommittee this week. The commissioners can expect a tongue-lashing by members of Congress. "There are some pretty angry folks on the Hill," notes one staffer.
Ranny Levy, president of the Santa Fe, N.M.-based Kids First! thinks tighter rules may be both necessary and welcome. "We hear, `We're only giving the public what they want,' " says Levy. "I'm here to tell you parents are appalled at what they are finding on television." Steyer agrees. "People are fed up, and they don't know where to turn. They wonder, `How much lower are they going to go?' " Still, he notes, "nearly 50 percent of families with kids have no rules about television."
A 2003 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 64 percent of all shows and 71 percent of all prime-time broadcast shows have at least some sexual content. Only 15 percent of all sexual references or actions were considered to be "responsible," in that they suggested either responsibility or consequences. And while sexual references haven't been increasing, Kaiser found the content has gotten more explicit.
So far, no good solutions have emerged. "Not very many people actually use the V-chip. It's difficult to find and program," says Victoria Rideout, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. Moreover, many parents don't understand the ratings. "Only 12 percent know that FV means fantasy violence," she says. "A lot of them thought it meant Family Viewing."
Still, there are signs that the country may have reached the point of sensory overload. Author Weston says even kids are now asking, "Why does this have to be so in our faces?"
TV's outer limits
By pushing the taste envelope, some television has been thought provoking, some has been deemed hilarious, and some judged downright offensive. Here are a few examples:
1964
Peyton Place
The first prime-time soap opera, with tawdry story lines about illicit sex and thievery.
1971
All in the Family
The Bunkers address formerly taboo subjects such as race, class, menopause, and sex.
1981
MTV
With the debut of MTV, cable viewers watch pop stars sing about or simulate sex nearly 24 hours a day.
1987
Married With Children
Brings jokes about vibrators and nymphomania to broadcast television.
1992
Seinfeld
Seinfeld's cast avoided censorship by referring to masturbation as "master of your domain."
1998
Monica Lewinsky
News programs report that the White House intern performed oral sex on President Clinton.
2003
Golden Globe Awards
Bono quips, "This is really f---ing brilliant," upon receiving his award. The FCC rules that using the "F" word as an adjective is not obscene
This story appears in the February 16, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.