My perverted mind is all for nudity, but certainly not at the Super Bowl. I never liked MTV except maybe for Celebrity Deathmatch. The networks are crazy if they think they could get away with this.
Originally posted by Xwing1056
It’s almost irrelevant to point out that some people have inconsistent ideas about what’s obscene.
It’s also almost irrelevant (though true) to point out that the majority determines where to draw the line between what is and isn’t obscene. The argument that I am specifically objecting to isn’t “well, we don’t want to see breasts even though we do want to see all those other trashy things,” it’s “well, seeing breasts is extremely damaging to kids but seeing any of the other trashy things is not.” It’s like I said - imagine that you let your kid play first-person shooters, but then threw a fit all of a sudden when he wanted to play Quake 2, and demanded satisfaction from the makers of Quake 2 for corrupting your kid’s morals. You’d suddenly be outraged at how the “obscenity” of Quake 2 corrupted your kid even while you gladly let your kid partake of other things that were really not that different from it.
Boob schnoob.
I didn’t see it, I didn’t care. If I did see it, it’s not like I can’t watch something a helluva lot more racy and revealing that’s on the internet already.
Fuck media.
According to what I read in the papers, it was planned but unrehearsed.
I just found it sad because Janet basically overshadowed the social awareness part of her performance.
Originally posted by Amerycinsycho
I just found it sad because Janet basically overshadowed the social awareness part of her performance.
[Cut to the infamous Smoke-Filled Room.]
#1: “Well, the halftime entertainment is all lined up. They’re rehearsing again as we speak.”
#2: “Excellent. But, what’s this I hear about there being some sort of social awareness in Janet Jackson’s act? You know that we can’t have that going on. This is the Super Bowl. This is supposed to be the biggest, gaudiest, most overproduced distraction for the masses of the year. We cannot afford to have real issues creeping in. That many people tuning in…a lot of people might start thinking. Getting ideas. The wrong kind of ideas.”
#1: It’s been taken care of. At one point during the show Justin Timberlake is going to rip some of her clothing off and expose one of her boobs.
#2: Excellent! That’s all they’ll talk about for days!
#1: And everything else about the performance, and probably the game too, will be forgotten.
#2: But, we’re likely to catch some negative PR from this.
#1: We’ll just deny any foreknowledge that he was going to do this. Timberlake’s a pro. He’s been on our side for a long time, now. He knows the score.
#2: People might pick up on our promise of “shocking” and “controversial” stuff on the MTV website. That could provide a link.
#1: Dude, it’s a NAKED BREAST! Don’t you remember what country we’re in? This is America, land of repressed morally hypocritical descendants of Puritans! A naked female breast trumps all.
#2: This is true. Very well: Proceed with Operation “Boob Tube.”
I think this is an example of the problem of the huge difference between the reality of American expectations and attitudes and what the media shows. Plenty of those Superbowl commercials were filled with sexual innuendo, and nobody seemed to overly care. But when Janet Jackson flashes during a live performance(live is the key word here), everyone’s up in arms.
Its a bad situation, because the traditional American values that favor decency and moral integrity, are the same values that are in support of free competition and basically say ‘power to making money any way you can!’. That’s why corporations are allowed to exploit our sexual urges for money. And several of those Superbowl commercials were very, very exploitive, probably the worst being the beer commercial with the two girls in the convenience store. These contradictory family and economic(make money, no matter the consequences) values are something common to mainstream America, and not just held by Republicans or those to the right of the political spectrum.
Anyway, what’s the problem with the media being allowed to create a super-sexed up and violent version of the world? The problem is the media effects all of us very much, little kids most of all. We actually begin to believe that the way they portray things, are the way they actually are, and when we emulate behavior and attitudes seen in the media, we find that our society isn’t comfortable at all with those behaviors and attitudes. For instance, young boys are exposed to things like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, and shows like ‘Am I hot or not’, and rap songs that talk about nothing but sex(which includes most rap songs), and advertising that pushes sex, sex, sex, that these boys get the impression that the world is a really sex-crazy and sex lenient place. Now, does this jibe with all the sexual harassment laws and the adult American generation’s incredibly conservative attitude toward sex in real life? No, not at all. Another example is that girls are exposed to the same things, wear the same kind of clothing they see in the media and try acting what they think is sexy, only to be derided and told they’re sluts and trashy.