Americans have always been more protective and overbearing than the rest of the world when it comes to pop culture, but every American likes a little drama now and then.
In January, when MTV aired a brand-new show linked to child pornography, it caused quite a controversy.
“Skins” is about a group of teenagers ‘living the life,’ and not caring about consequences.
However, many people do not see it that way.
This show revolves around the sex, drinking and overall party-lives that teens supposedly have.
I guess there might be some teenagers out there that do ‘live on the edge.’
In my life as a teen, I have not run into any of these daredevils, but that might just be me being naïve.
“Skins” depicts teenagers by stereotypically basing the characters off of unrealistic versions of American teens.
Personally, I do no spend my Friday and Saturday nights boozing and partying with strangers, but according to MTV, that is how we spend weekends.
The characters stay out all night, driving around, walking the streets and somehow end up back at home in the wee hours of the morning and nobody seems to notice they were gone in the first place.
While watching “Skins” for the first time, I kept asking myself if any of the characters had parents.
It turns out that they do, in fact, have parental figures in their lives, but clearly they just don’t care what their children do.
The parents walk into scenes with no real purpose but to make the main teenage actor appear more gutsy for sneaking out and getting away with it. They have virtually no role in the show and it is just one of the ways the show does not depict a real teenager’s life.
“Skins” started off with average ratings for the first episode, drawing in about 3.3 million viewers, but that didn’t last long. The day after it was aired, people had already begun to talk about how inappropriate the show was and the rating dropped by millions.
This was mainly due to the Parents Television Council (PTC, which linked the show to child pornography, because the show has a major storyline that has to do with teenage sex. Several other shows that air on basic cable have this story line, but the PTC usually does not give them a second glace. Unlike those shows, some of the actors in Skins are underage, which the PTC considers child pornography; they are arguing that it is illegal to have the actors portray sexual acts. The PTC is urging major companies to pull their ads from the show, and many already have.
After the first viewing, Taco Bell, GM, Proactiv and Wrigley gum all pulled their commercials from the show, claiming to not want to offend anyone.
I understand why people may think that “Skins” is a ‘bad’ show, but the only bad thing that I noticed while watching was that it was unrealistic.
With teenage advisers and young writers, I would assume that the show would represent teens more realistically, but it is a television show that is clearly made solely for entertainment.
There are not very many good choices going on throughout the show, and the drama is overwhelming. The portrayment of teens is not accurate and the reviews won’t improve if nothing changes.