Rant: or why Hollywood will never hire me

I love television. Films and television have always been texts to me – a way to enjoy a story at a faster pace than I can read and to hear the words spoken in wonderful inflections never supplied by my internal narrator. That being said, I have a complaint about most of the shows I’ve recently watched.

I’m not a terrible prude, but I do wonder why so many shows have to be so very explicit. Who is the intended audience? After all, if one wanted to watch porn, wouldn’t that more easily be done outside of a series format? And if it’s being done for shock value – who is being shocked? I’m just annoyed. The king of this trend is Game of Thrones – which will set a scene in a brothel not because the setting contributes anything, but because it will allow for maximum nudity. Why? 

[Also, and not unrelated: why is rape so prevalent? I understand that it is traumatic and so, to a writer, probably carries some serious emotional resonance, but can you remember the last enduring female character you watched that wasn't subjected to rape or the threat of rape? What does that say about our culture and our entertainment?]

Some minor examples of gratuitous sex(uality):

Riverdale – a friend turned me on to this show. The dialogue is hilariously bad (I think it may be a ploy to make high schoolers look up words on their smart phones – a sort of covert Sat training) but the story is interesting in its melodramatic way. So what am I so irritated about? Cheerleading. I never was a huge fan of the activity, but in Riverdale it’s twice been used to focus a very male gaze on Betty and Veronica. 

Faking bisexuality to win a spot on the cheering squad

And weirdest of all, their performances weren’t just for the camera but for female spectators – other cheerleaders – and that’s what makes it so odd. Not that there isn’t a trend towards this – the cover of women’s magazines, advertisements for bras – but that doesn’t make it less bizarre. [Oh, and just in case it seems like I’m only irritated with the male gaze, I have just as many complaints about Outlander, which definitely uses the female gaze. I’d just like less porn, period.]

Then there’s Dear White People. The humor is far superior to that in Riverdale and I think it is making a serious attempt to parse some of the issues that intersect with race, but it has its share of lurid scenes that don’t necessarily advance the plot (or in which the plot could have been advanced without shoving genitals into the viewers face) – and it commits the second sin I’ve come here to complain about:

Cell phones.

I understand that smart phones are now part of the fabric of modern life (I’m gritting my teeth as I type this) but why do they have to be so very central to television? Shows from the 1980s and 1990s didn’t show incessant phone calls, so why do we have to watch scene after scene of sending a text, getting a text, posting to some form of social media… it bores me and I think it shows a lack of creativity on the part of scriptwriters.

This all being said, I’m not going to quit television anytime soon. I’m always eager to explore new offerings and see new stories. But, sometimes I think it’s okay to tally the sins of this medium and to wonder who is being addressed by these stories. I don’t have the answer… but when all else fails, I know Lennie Briscoe is there to keep me from sliding into cynicism!