Bob Thompson tells me he’s talked to sixth-graders who could quote chapter-and-verse from HBO’s “Sex and the City.” This surprised Thompson, who is director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.
And it shocked me. I’m barely mature enough to have watched that raunchy show. I loved “Sex and the City,” but it made me blush. Children have no business tuning in.
So whose fault is it when they do? Politicians say it’s Hollywood’s fault. Hollywood says it’s the parents’ fault. Parents say it’s the politicians’ fault for not stopping Hollywood.
Before those pointed fingers hurt anyone, let us pin down the problem: It’s not so much what’s on television, but what children are seeing. So before parents point a finger, they should lift it. They do have tools to control what their children watch.
“People are screaming bloody murder that there’s bad stuff on TV,” Thompson says, “but the little things they can do, they’re not doing.” More on those tools in a minute.
Television isn’t going back to the days of “Honey, I’m home!” and husbands sleeping in beds four yards from their wives’. Nor should we want it to.
The big change started with the 1970s series “All in the Family.” No one had heard characters like Archie and Edith Bunker talk about abortion, impotence and their raw prejudices on family-hour TV. (A warning preceded the show.) Before that, nothing had been broadcast that a 7-year-old couldn’t handle.
Television has turned progressively lewd, foul-mouthed and offensive. The trade-off is that it has become more grown-up and in many ways more interesting. Which cop show would you rather watch, the childish “CHiPs” of the 1980s or today’s “CSI”?
Vulgar and gritty TV is here to stay. The goal is to keep children away from it.
So back to the tools, or what Thompson lists as “the minimal things” parents can do. First there’s the V-chip. Remember that? The V-chip lets adults block certain programming based on one of eight ratings.
The most restrictive rating is TV-Y, designed for children age 2 to 6. It bars even frightening cartoons. The least limiting category is TV-MA, which cuts out programming meant for mature audiences only. This means shows with graphic violence, explicit sex and crude language.
The V-chip is required on most televisions sold in the last five years, yet few parents bother with it. “Only a tiny percentage is actually learning how to use the V-chip,” Thompson reports, “and it’s not hard to do.”
For more information about the V-chip, visit the FCC Web site at www.fcc.gov/vchip. The site offers a link to the directions.
The next thing parents can do, Thompson says, is to take the television out of their children’s bedrooms. “It’s like a liquor cabinet if you have little children in the house.” Parents can keep better track of TV viewing when it takes place in the family room.
I marvel at how those sixth-graders got through to “Sex and the City” – and how little their parents did to stop them. First off, the family had to have cable, which their parents paid for. HBO is a premium channel, so the parents had to pay extra for that. Most cable systems offer a “parental control” feature that locks objectionable channels. The parents obviously didn’t use it. Nor did they activate the V-chip, if they had one.
If the kids saw “Sex and the City” at a friend’s house, the parents didn’t adequately supervise where they went. If the kids saw it in the privacy of their own bedrooms, then the parents had ignored warnings against putting sets there.
Finally, I can’t rule out the horrifying possibility that the parents didn’t really mind if their sixth-graders watched “Sex and the City.” For all I know, they may have watched it together as family entertainment.
Parents do deserve more sympathy than offered so far. Protecting children from the rough content on TV is a much harder challenge today than a generation ago. But parents are far from powerless. Ultimately, nothing comes into the house that they don’t permit. And, as a last resort, they can always smash the television set.
Froma Harrop is a Providence Journal columnist. Contact her by writing to fharrop@projo.com.
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