Because I’m addicted to the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, inertia usually precludes my switching channels when he signs off.
Just like tonight. The program that follows Jay Leno, “Just Shoot Me,” with David (I’m not funny without my former partner Chris Farley) Spade, uses dialogue consisting of sophomoric humor that deals with 1) toilet humor, 2) parts of the anatomy, 3) sexual innuendo. The entire show consists of suggestive exchanges all designed to persuade the other — sometimes a virtual stranger — to bed down.
I ask you: Is that all 30- and 40-somethings think about? Is there no concern for the economy, the environment, the war in Iraq? Do they ever have a thought about the poor, the widowed, the displaced? Do they have families to care for, or is their existence a non-stop round of Miller Time at the neighborhood watering hole? Does everything simply get distilled to a romp in the sack?
Newton Minnow, who decades ago chaired the Federal Communications Commission, called television a “vast wasteland” filled with violence, sex and nonsensical programming. That was 40 years ago. Has anything changed?
But wait, there’s hope.
(Click.)
Another sitcom, another series of references to the female anatomy. Another leering exchange, accompanied by that infernal laugh track. The program? “Friends.”
(Click.) “Sex and the City.” What an original title! I wonder what that’s about.
(Click and off.)
Back to Newton Minnow’s concern about a wasteland. Just in time, I came across a copy of The Pledge of the Legion of Decency, written in 1938.The literature explains that on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the U.S. bishops requested that the pledge be taken by the faithful.
In essence, the pledge, obviously taken by millions across the country, urged that Catholics refrain from exposure to objectionable material. Passed out weekly with the Sunday bulletin was a list, a sort of Œ40s movie ratings system, that grades things in the popular culture as “unobjectionable,” “morally unobjectionable in part for adults,” all to the way to “condemned.” For most parishioners, it served as a guideline for what to avoid; for others, “condemned” meant “let’s not miss this one.”
As a child visiting relatives in Santa Fe, I got to watch “Leave Her to Heaven,” a New Mexico-based film about a prideful, envious woman who allows her stepson to drown.
Back in Las Vegas, telling fellow fifth-graders the plot of that exciting movie, I got skewered by my friend Charlie, who lectured me on the evils of pride and envy, and who refused to speak to me again — at least not until the weekend. To him there was no compromise: I had watched a condemned movie; ignorance of the flaw is no excuse, and I was going to hell, in 1949, at age 10.
At the same time, other elements of popular culture, such as radio, were being monitored closely by the U.S. bishops. Two songs which we were warned never to listen to were “Come on-a my house” and “I get ideas.” The first, by Rosemary Clooney, contains such lyrics as “C’mon-a my house, my house a-c’mon . . . I’m gonna give you candy, I’m gonna give you everything.”
Not to be outdone, Tony Martin titillated millions with the then-highly suggestive words: “When we are dancing and you’re dangerously near me, I get ideas.”
But it gets better (or worse): “And after we have kissed good-night and still you linger, I kinda think you’d get ideas too.”
To what ideas do you refer, Tony Martin, and what besides candy do you have in mind, Rosemary Clooney? As bold as they were for the times, these lyrics get reduced to total innocuity when compared to a second or two of Fifty Cents’ lyrics or anything “Friends” or “Just Shoot Me” peddles.
As a naive pupil at Immaculate Conception School, I learned to fear the consequences of failing to toe the line. Watching a movie condemned by the Legion of Decency would not only make me fearful of having my indiscretion made public but of dealing with my own conscience, even though I’m still not sure what the real issue was with “Leave Her to Heaven.” It seemed like a good plot, still does. And unless we take the movie as a training manual for getting rid of kids we’re envious of, what’s the harm?
My objection to “Friends,” “Just Shoot Me” and other programs, music and movies of that ilk is with their lack of imagination, their goal to conjure up a million synonyms for a woman’s breasts, and the vapid notion that “we can settle it in bed. By the way, what’s your name?”
It would be great if people were mature enough to make their own choices. We humans long for support, friendship and family. We are creatures of social interaction. We exist with and in our culture. My dream is that we learn to seek beauty and truth without drowning in the low forms of humor and dialogue by those who create silly, insipid and vacuous entertainment.
We’re constantly being told that ratings demand shows with immature, homogenous and empty themes.
Are we the ones who demand this mindless entertainment?
As for me, I have my own solution, but it’ll require a bit of effort:
(Click.)