TV over the last 40 years and morality

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How has morality, especially in the United States, been helped or hindered by the programs that aired during those four decades? Please be specific.

Thanks,
Ed
 
Well, we’ve gone from Fulton Sheen and My Three Sons to Two and a Half Men, where sexual innuendo reigns supreme. I need not even mention the rest.
 
Well, let’s see…married couples used to have to have twin beds on tv (“Bewitched” was the first show to have married couples share a bed I believe), and they couldn’t even say “pregnant” on “I Love Lucy” when talking about a married woman expecting a baby. And now…let’s see…there AREN’T any jokes except sexual ones…the gay agenda is shoved down our throats as “normal” at every turn…
What is the affect of this? Well, basically the people who watch current tv shows think they are “funny” and that they show “normal” life; therefore they are not only a reflection of our current society but they encourage those who watch them to live that way, making them think it is all “normal” and “okay”. A vicious cycle, and I see no end in sight.
 
Given the social changes that took place in the past 40 years, in a vastly turbulent time socially, I believe TV has done an excellent job guiding and controlling our social cognition during this time of social change.
 
Clear your PM box, Crescentinus. I keep trying to find you. 😉
 
OP, I tend to think it has not only hindered morality, but often attacks it. I’m specifically referring to pop-culture TV, “reality TV” and current sitcoms. Some documentaries are great, and I love channels like NAT-GEO, Animal Planet. These are several offensive shows, some of which are “good” (as far as the writing/acting goes), but which paint immorality in either a comical or positive light:

How I Met Your Mother - very funny episodes overall, but I don’t think I’ve seen one in which the character Barney is not regaling the group with his latest sexual conquest. In fact, he always takes pride in the fact that he sleeps with women whose names he doesn’t remember.

Two and 1/2 men - have never seen it, but have seen commercials in which Charlie Sheen jokes about going to strip clubs.

That 70’s Show - again, haven’t seen it, but commercials are filled with disrespectful sexual comments/innuendo.

Showtime’s series **Gigolos **- it’s about, well…gigolos. Real ones. And it’s not a documentary, but rather an entertainment program that shows them in bed with their clients.

**Housewives **of Orange County/NJ/NY/Beverly Hills, etc - the “reality” show revolves around narcissistic women who have little better to do with their time than gossip about the other members.

Bad Girls Club - “reality” show on Oxygen that films a group of young women getting drunk, having one-night-stands, cursing, and beating on each other.

The last two shows really show women at their worst and seem to glorify the very worst feminine traits.

And it just came to my attention recently (because I don’t normally watch ComedyCentral) that they do not censor profane language after a certain time (around midnight, I think).

I’m sure I could think of many, many more.
Miguelita said:
You’re obsessed with this you know that?
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Perhaps he is concerned with what is spewing from our media, and rightfully so, considering that millions of Americans are addicted to it, many of them who are impressionable children.
 
Oh, forgot to mention. I watch a bit of G4 from time to time, usually to see MMA or UFC competitions, and if I’m watching it late at night there are often commercials advertising phone-sex companies or a ladies’ sex toy made by Trojan.
 
It’s saddening that I see more garbage from the Western entertainment industry go here to the Far East. Shows such as “Glee”, “Family Guy”, “Ellen” among many others are swarming the airwaves and trying to kill the local shows. D:
 
Crescentinus said:
It’s saddening that I see more garbage from the Western entertainment industry go here to the Far East. Shows such as “Glee”, “Family Guy”, “Ellen” among many others are swarming the airwaves and trying to kill the local shows. D:
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You guys could always put a stop to it, though.:cool:
 
lerapt78 said:
You guys could always put a stop to it, though.:cool:
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Here in the Philippines, there is growing demand for such garbage among Metro Manila residents.
Good thing that there’s hope though. Why? Because there’s decent programming like the shows from EWTN and TV Maria. 🙂
TV Maria = one of the Catholic cable TV channels here in the Philippines
 
I have some sympathies with some views expressed.

Popular culture feeds on itself. There is always someone, quite rightly in my mind, pushing the boundaries a little. It started in the 60’s when plays – live and on screen, tried to better reflect society. Prior to that things were a little restricted – more so than in the real world.

So when people had access to TV and were able to see what other people were doing and thinking and saying, then rather than living in a restrictive sense, society started to reflect itself more accurately.

Then everyone got bored just watching reflections of themselves so popular culture started concentrating on the edges of society. And we all started taking this new view as the norm. And so it went on.

I’m not sure when we’ll get to a point where the majority say: enough. But I’m sure it will happen. I have no problem with most of what’s on TV at the moment (as long as it’s written well and doesn’t insult my intelligence – which actually takes out a fair proportion of what’s on). But if my parents were alive today, they’d be horrified at what passes for entertainment. So I am assuming that I’ll be in the same position in years to come. But then, maybe not.
 
The frog/boiling water analogy comes to mind. Retrospectively, one can see the fine gradient by which TV programming has little by little, word by word, lewd joke by lewd joke, from innuendo to blunt talk to full out sex scene, become more and more base and animalistic. Compare Three’s Company to Friends, Friends to Two and a Half Men. Two and a Half Men being all the more despicable in involving a child in its crass excuse for comedy which is little more than a paean to decadence and promiscuity (even Alan, the “good one”, seems to be ever on the search for a “booty call.”)

The most disheartening thing is that shows of that sort have not only become the norm, but the overwhelming majority. Even networks like ABC Family, Disney and Nickelodeon push sexual and political agendas; it’s no longer children’s entertainment, it’s broadcast indoctrination.

One need look no further than the world around them to see the results. I agree somewhat with Bradski. Upon its advent, television depicted ideals; “fantasy worlds” if you will. With the massive cultural “revolution” of the 60s, people became “disillusioned” and wanted more realistic representations of life in their entertainment. But if art imitates life, so too does life imitate art. I think the cycle is pretty obvious to the careful observer. We feed our reality into the media, where it becomes exaggerated and overblown; this exaggeration, after so much overexposure to and immersion within it (consider the amount of time the average person spends watching TV), then begins to manifest itself in the lives of the viewing public. This new mutation is then fed into the media machine and the cycle begins anew. It seems like, unless people wake up, this process will continue until our society completely decays.

That’s one cynic’s opinion anyway. 😉
 
Veronica97 said:
Well, let’s see…married couples used to have to have twin beds on tv (“Bewitched” was the first show to have married couples share a bed I believe), and they couldn’t even say “pregnant” on “I Love Lucy” when talking about a married woman expecting a baby. And now…let’s see…there AREN’T any jokes except sexual ones…the gay agenda is shoved down our throats as “normal” at every turn…
What is the affect of this? Well, basically the people who watch current tv shows think they are “funny” and that they show “normal” life; therefore they are not only a reflection of our current society but they encourage those who watch them to live that way, making them think it is all “normal” and “okay”. A vicious cycle, and I see no end in sight.
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Yes, we’ve went a long way from what was on TV in the 50’s and early 60’s- although I think showing a married couple’s bedroom with single beds was absurd and so was not allowing the word"pregnant" (which is the simple, educated, and appropriate term for a married woman that is…pregnant! That was probably the first example of the media/hollywood “dumbing down” the audiences! I think most kids of all ages knew married couples slept in the same beds-a quick glance in their parents’ room would have confirmed that, given that most of America’s married couples had one bed in their bedroom!

I agree with the “frog in the boiling water” theory- society as a whole has become desensitized to what is on TV. But, does TV reflect more what is going on in society and place it in our homes, or is what is in society make it on to TV more and more?
 
LightBound said:
Yes, we’ve went a long way from what was on TV in the 50’s and early 60’s- although I think showing a married couple’s bedroom with only single beds was absurd and so was not allowing the word"pregnant" (which is the simple, educated, and appropriate term for a married woman that is…pregnant! That was probably the first example of the media/hollywood “dumbing down” the audiences! I think most kids of all ages knew married couples slept in the same beds- given that most of America’s married couples had one bed in their bedroom!

I agree with the “frog in the boiling water” theory- society as a whole has become desensitized to what is on TV. But, does TV reflect more what is going on in society and place it in our homes, or is what is in society make it on to TV more and more?
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Robert_Sock said:
Given the social changes that took place in the past 40 years, in a vastly turbulent time socially, I believe TV has done an excellent job guiding and controlling our social cognition during this time of social change.
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Wha… what? Guiding us to greater and greater sin. Spewing profanity, lies, deception and propaganda. It’s called slow, and gradual conditioning to behave badly.

Peace,
Ed
 
edwest2 said:
Wha… what? Guiding us to greater and greater sin. Spewing profanity, lies, deception and propaganda. It’s called slow, and gradual conditioning to behave badly.

Peace,
Ed
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I would agree with Robert that TV has done a great job of guiding and controlling our overall social cognition… it’s just that it’s guided us into exactly the depravity you describe!
 
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