Fanboys Anonymous

WARNING: This article has been rated 'T' for the explicit use of Thinking.

The UK's two-faced—whoops, I meant two-headed—Conservative-Liberal Democrat government, fittingly known as Con-Dem, has decided to crack down on the film and music video industry!

Not only has a new set of classifications been proposed for DVD, but it is also apparent that the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) will extend their classifications system to the Internet through the likes of Google and YouTube, because all you naughty parents out there can't be trusted to let your children watch the right Internet content.


The Issue Observed

The news came from the BBC over the past couple of days, vaguely thanking Miley Cyrus, her hammer licking and crotch rubbing antics, and probably her anorexic look and godawful taste in underwear. Miley the Virus wasn't the only one to blame, however, although you can read of the extensive trauma she clearly caused this molly-coddled nation here.

Apparently—in this day and age of bad language, nudity, sex, violence, and general street trash ugliness broadcast over hundreds of television channels every day—film and music video releases have become the enemy and must be boycotted, because this proposal comes from the alleged mountains of complaints against everything except commercially broadcast television.

The BBC news service reported that some such complaints went toward the animated film Pirates! Band of Misfits for employing the word "crap"…

Let that sink in for a moment!

Others complained about the BBFC's 15-rating for Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis psycho-drama Black Swan, because it featured drug abuse and rug munching. Well, that's what TRAILERS, FEATURETTES, AND FILM CRITICS ARE FOR! Ask the film distributors: psycho-dramas rated 18 don't tend to make as much money as those daringly aimed at mid-teens. However, parents are not the only ones concerned about the visual content and the "intellectual property" or text within these products of the media industry. Institutions have been waging war for years against the sexualisation of children and the lowering of society's standards, which I do agree with. However…

"Sort your life out!"

The Issue Dismantled

I one hundred percent agree with parents who care about what is influencing their kids. But I'm also intelligent enough to know what's bad for me. I have a strong moral centre forged over a lifetime of unfortunate experiences. What could be a simple warning to the industry and to the BBFC to stop arsing around and give some films an 18 rating rather than a 15 has completely bypassed these crucial details.

1.) Why do minors have Internet access without their parents being aware of what they watch? I'm sure the exact same music videos as seen on TV are the least of a concerned parent's worries.

2.) What fifteen-year-old wanted to watch Black Swan anyway, unless it was purely for the steamy scene between Portman and Kunis?

3.) Rather than joining the witchhunt against the people who just make the stuff, get it rated, and then sell it—the people who work in the industry—and telling off the likes of Cyrus the Virus, why aren't we proposing that parents actually debate the content of media products with their spawn so that they understand the difference between fiction and reality, and why they think bad language is labelled "bad"?

4.) Why is the media so intent on making Cyrus a sensation for what she does, rather than warning her that she looks like a drug-addled teenage prostitute?

Licensed premises as in the DVD in your bedroom with the door locked!

My answers are: one, because the Internet is a modern living standard that parents and children largely take for granted; two, teenagers, hormones, puberty; three, because even the large numbers of people trying to be good parents and have the time for their kids can't be there all the time, unless the government wants to pay them to be; and four, because the media get paid to sensationalise, not to act as a moral compass for their readers.

Twerking is for twats, not just for Christmas!

Yes, smut should not be aimed at children. I don't know any adult in his or her right mind who would willfully smash Cyrus's back door in, which must say a lot for the majority of people who have made her as popular as she now is. But before Internet we had Madonna, who invented that same routine. Guess what? She was world famous too.

This issue comes down to the fact that not only do such artists lack self-respect and public responsibility, but so do the corporations that sell them and the people that buy them. This is now the world we live in and has been for a long time. If you lack talent, get your tits out; you'll have a future for as long as they stay generally horizontal.

However, the vitriol suddenly heaped upon the film industry isn't well thought out. Otherwise the people getting behind this sudden social-political brain fart would see that they're just prompting a return to the Mary Whitehouse era and the glory days of the Video Nasty, where they threw social issues under the rug and lived in ignorance.


Ignoring the Real Issue

Let's censor music videos on television! That will extinguish the power of suggestion from the minds of dirty little girls and boys. The last thing we need is teenagers discovering what causes horniness. You know what? We should probably remove sex education from the schools. With any luck, they'll never learn how to fuck, and we'll have fewer mouths to feed.

In the original days of strict censorship and classification, between the early 80s and, quite fittingly, up until the day Scary Mary shuffled off this sexually and emotionally repressed mortal coil, television was awful and violence and sex in movies were blindly shunned and often censored, because unlike the raping and murdering of everyone on this Earth from millions of Indians and Africans right up to the Irish next door at the hands of the British, fiction was public enemy number one.

So when all that stiff upper lip attitude started to fly out the window, the country realised just how sexually repressed it really was, and it's gotten scary. While women can laugh and howl about how many vibrators they own and young couples go about making home porn movies, endless vicars and bishops are being convicted of sex crimes against children, as are all the television personalities I grew up watching on TV.

Whitehouse was right about one thing, though: the destruction of morale. When all we see on television and in movies, even in music videos, is the exploitiation of women and the sexualisation of minors (and we've had some horrific clothing ranges for children involving lingerie, for Christ's sake), is it any surprise that sex attacks are commonplace? If you read my previous article on social networking and mental health, I talked about the way the game has changed in regards to socialising.

"I shalln't repeat myself! Tea and cake first, then Debbie Does Dallas!"

If the government thinks it's going to galliantly ride its high horse into the fray of ill-advertised movies and frantically masturbating schoolboys, they've got another thing coming. There is no return to the gloriously boring days of Maggie Thatcher—high tea, Sundays off work, the working class slaves going to bed early when the broadcasts end at midnight. The UK is a miserable place, and when somebody starts a fight, the whole damn tribe jumps on. We are quick to judge others and even quicker to defend ourselves when the red mist clears.

Back then, Whitehouse was fighting a bursting dam. Today we're just floating about in the deluge, and we've gotten so used to it that either exploiting sex is just business and everyday life or it's one of the last things that can be savagely discriminated against. We are swimming around in a literal AIDS bath of tacky entertainment and embarrassing schoolyard fights between overexcited revellers and armchair politicians, both of whom have never thrown a punch in their lives. All the while, the weary teenage hooker-styled pop star clones still shake their bony arses at us because they think that's what we want.

Whatever direction this empty proposal takes us in, the same will happen as always. In a short matter of time, the message will be lost. All it takes to win is to divide an audience, because you can't please everybody, so that other half that lost the war will just be waiting for the day they can have it their way again. And they will, with a vengeance, because repression knows not balance.

Impossibru Basterds

It's not as well known now as it should be, partly why the timing is so perfect to use the British public like a cockerquodger's fuckpuppet, but while the UK was once already in the grip of people shouting about questionable content in film and television, Europe had it sweet. They still do!


Unlike the UK in much of everything else, but for the massive influx of such American trash as Dominos pizza, Europe has remained very liberal since the end of World War II. They have a rich history of very explicit scenes of sex and violence in their movies. Notably, most of them don't have population problems, they don't lack in children's education, and they don't have major problems with sexually transmitted diseases either. Some countries are even having to close prisons for a lack of criminals (partnered with a more effective rehabilitation system).

Europe is hardly a den of sin, because what we frown upon and brush under the carpet for fear of shame, they investigate, experience, and debate and then educate. Half of our government is supposed to be Liberal, just one of two halves that don't have a fucking clue about politics.

The Conclusion

It's not nudity, sex, or violence that's a problem to society and should terrify parents. It's the speed and degree to which their children lose their innocence. The greatest thing about children is the simplicity in their understanding. They remind me that adults make things more awkward and complex, thinking they're doing the right thing, when all it takes is to make things click.

If you completely lost touch with your own childhood the day you became a parent, you're trying too hard. It's natural to be concerned, it really is, but your children learn as they grow, and what they learn is up to you before and after school, not the government.

How many of you have had a talk with your teens about sex, about the perverts to look out for, and about the difference between a person with a healthy physical and emotional future and a home-wrecking slut? Just saying, you need to be frank and teach your kids to be able to make distinctions, not hide them from the dangers so that they become so naive that they can be exploited too.

Example:A Beautiful Nude European Oil Painting vs. A SLUT!

We're always going to be treated as though we can't be trusted, let's face facts. This is what we pay taxes for; to be molly-coddled and punished for the actions of child stars discovering their sexuality on live television. That's not our fault. I never asked to see it, and I sure as hell never contributed to the TV ratings. The fact that most big-budget action films don't come with morality checks or they'd be less exciting and make less money is not our fault. I won't watch anything without a strong message. People teach irresponsibility to their kids by always finding something else to blame. You can't edit real life. This fact speaks volumes at this moment in time.

Sound off Fanboys and Fangirls! If you'd like to join this debate, please comment below and thank you for your attention and your wonderful patience.