PTC Report on Sexualization of Teenage Girls on Television

Posted on December 15, 2010 at 3:00 pm

The Parents Television Council released a new report today on the portrayal of teenage girls on television.
The report, ??Tinseltown’s New Target: A Study of Teen Female Sexualization on Prime-Time TV, is based on a content analysis of the most popular television shows for viewers ages 12-17 in the 2009-2010 season. “Girls as young as five wanting to be sexy are being robbed of their childhood,” said former model Nicole Clark, whose documentary “Cover Girl Culture” exposes the detrimental influence of media on children’s self-image. She added that she hears parents talk about their fears of sexual predators but they dress their little girls to emphasize their sexuality and allow them to watch unsupervised media “We wonder why America has the highest teen pregnancy rate and teen STD rate of all the developed nations.” It is especially troubling that the influence of these images is apparent on younger and younger children.
Every parent should look at this report and consider carefully how to protect both boys and girls from these media portrayals, how to talk to them to minimize the impact of what they do see, and how to respond to the PTC’s call to action to let broadcasters and advertisers know that this is unacceptable.
The PTC says:
Clearly, there are inherent dangers in having a cultural milieu that accepts and encourages this sexual contradiction of encouraging underage girls to look sexy, yet realizing they know very little about what it means to be sexual.
Of equal concern is the lack of experience teenagers have in making rational and responsible decisions within intimate relationships. For years, scholars have recognized that teens may be particularly vulnerable to media influence. Several studies report the negative impact that frequent exposure to sexualized media images and models of passivity can cause, ranging from eating disorders and depression to sexual risk-taking. There is a chord that is struck with every parent when understanding the devastating impact these sexual images and messages have on the cognitive, emotional, and physical development as well as the self-image of the average young girl well before they reach the stage of exhibiting these more outwardly recognizable disorders. Further, research shows that girls and young women who consume more mainstream media content demonstrate greater acceptance of stereotypes that depict women as sexual objects , and earlier initiation of sexual behaviors.
The impact of teen sexualization in the media is exacerbated by the continual increases in media usage among teens. A recent report revealed that children are spending more time than ever before consuming entertainment media -more than 75 hours a week. These rates indicate that teens are spending nearly twice as much time viewing media than they spend in school and 1/3 more time than they spend sleeping. This increase is due, in large part, to devices that allow children to access media content away from the traditional confines of the television and movie screen.
The report concludes that when underage female characters appear on screen: more sexual content is depicted; the teen girls show next to no negative response to being sexualized; more sexual incidents occur outside of any form of a committed relationship; and there is less accuracy in the TV content rating.
It found:

Underage female characters are shown participating in a higher percentage of sexual depictions compared to adults (47% and 29% respectively).

Only 5% of the underage female characters communicated any form of dislike for being sexualized (excluding scenes depicting healthy sexuality).

Out of all the sexualized female characters depicted in the underage and young adult category for the entire database, 86% were presented as only being of high school age.

Seventy-five percent of shows that included sexualized underage female characters were shows that did not have an “S” descriptor to warn parents about the sexual content.

Based upon a definition established by the American Psychological Association of “healthy” vs. “unhealthy” sexuality, the study findings show that 93% of the sexual incidents involving underage female characters occurred within a context that qualified as “unhealthy.”

The data revealed that 98% of the sexual incidents involving underage female characters occurred outside of any form of a committed relationship.

The data show that 73% of the underage sexualized incidents were presented in a humorous manner or as a punch line to a joke.

(more…)

Roger Ebert Cites Me in MPAA Ratings Op-Ed

Posted on December 12, 2010 at 7:34 pm

I am honored to be mentioned in Roger Ebert’s outstanding op-ed about the MPAA ratings, and thrilled with his support for what I do. Last week, on appeal, the MPAA lowered the rating of “Blue Valentine,” a searing portrait of a deteriorating marriage, to an R. Its explicit sexual material had given it an NC-17, which meant that many newspapers would not accept ads and many theaters would not show it.
Ebert says:

The MPAA should have changed its standards long ago, taking into account the context and tone of a movie instead of holding fast to rigid checklists….It’s time to get pragmatic about this. The current ratings system is useful primarily for the parents of small children who are concerned that images or situations may be disturbing for young minds. They know a G film is harmless and a PG almost certainly is, and a PG-13 may or may not be. It’s an open secret that some naturally PG movies have an element or two thrown in to earn a PG-13, so teenagers aren’t scared off. That’s not a step forward.

Obviously, what parents really want is an evaluation, exactly what Mr. Valenti said the MPAA could not provide. When they’re informed that a PG-13 contains “language, some intense situations and smoking,” what have they learned? On the Internet, useful guides to content are everywhere. Critics like Nell Minow, the “Movie Mom,” write intelligently for parents about the content and context of films.

2011 Oscar Hosts Revealed!

Posted on November 29, 2010 at 6:47 pm

Hosting the Oscars is one of the highest-pressure jobs in show business. It is also one of the most thankless. Hosting the show requires months of preparation and the ability to ad lib on the spot. We expect Oscar hosts to be funny without insulting anyone too much. And we tend to blame them when the show is overlong and dull, as it inevitably is.
The hosts are usually people who performed as stand-up comedians, and the most popular have included Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, and Billy Crystal. The announcement today that instead of a comedian this year’s hosts will instead be two young actors, James Franco and Anne Hathaway. Both are possible candidates for awards themselves — Franco’s role in “127 Hours” is likely to get a Best Actor nomination and Hathaway might get a Best Actress nomination for her role in “Love and Other Drugs.”
Both have proved themselves hosting “Saturday Night Live,” showing poise and comic timing. Most important, they have both shown that they can project an instant likability at the same time as real star power. I think it will be a great show.

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Understanding Media and Pop Culture

A Black Heathcliff in the New ‘Wuthering Heights’

Posted on November 20, 2010 at 8:00 am

One of the most famous characters in literature is the brooding Heathcliff in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Since its publication in 1847 it has captured the imagination of generations of readers with its story of a tragic love affair in the Yorkshire countryside. A wealthy man impulsively adopts a street urchin with just one name: Heathcliff. He is described as “dark-skinned gipsy” and as “a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway.” He grows up passionate and impetuous — and deeply in love with Catherine, the daughter of the man who took him in. She loves him, too, but marries a neighbor with whom she is more comfortable. Heathcliff’s passion becomes vengeful and the consequences are heartbreak and tragedy.
The story has been filmed many times. The actress Helen Hayes wrote in her autobiography about seeing a young actor on a tennis court she thought would be perfect to play the role. She told her husband, Charles MacArthur, who was co-scripting the screenplay, to suggest him for the part because he was a “fine, brooding, broth of a boy.” That is how Laurence Olivier got his first major Hollywood role. Heathcliff has also been played by Timothy Dalton, Tom Hardy, and Ralph Fiennes. A new production has just completed filming, directed by Andrea Arnold. It has just become public that the cast includes newcomer James Howson, who is black.
Like the recent casting here in Washington DC of a black actress in a theatrical production of “Sabrina” (in the role played on screen by Audrey Hepburn and Julia Ormond), this decision is respectful of the text but gives audiences a fresh perspective. In both stories, it can help modern viewers, who can have a difficult time relating to the barriers that previous generations imposed, to better feel the class and cultural differences of the characters. Howson will bring not only his own talent and understanding of the character but the ability to surprise us and to become the role without any preconceptions or other associations that only newcomers have. I love the idea of opening up even classical parts to a wider range of actors to make sure the role goes to the most qualified performer and look forward to seeing what Howson brings to the role.

Happy 350 to Film Threat’s ‘Bootleg Files’

Posted on November 16, 2010 at 1:14 pm

Congrats to Phil Hall on the 350th in his “Bootleg Files” series on the Film Threat website. His tributes to the off-beat and off-the-beaten track gems is a pleasure to read and a great source of ideas for not-on-Netflix treasures that are worth tracking down.
Created in the summer of 2003 and appearing every Friday on Film Threat, The Bootleg Files has spanned the full history of motion pictures, from an 1894 Thomas Edison-produced “souvenir strip” of legendary strongman Eugen Sandow to the recently released viral video “Right Wing Radio Duck.” The 350th entry in the series, to be published on November 19, will be a review of Joseph Losey’s rarely seen 1951 drama “M.”
“While it is against the law to bootleg films, it is not against the law to purchase these items on DVD or to watch them on YouTube,” explains Hall. “There is also the fuzzy world of public domain films, where copyrights have expired but movies are duped in second-, third- or even fourth-generation versions and sold to the unsuspecting public.
And the amazing thing is that so many of theses films represent the finest works in global cinema. To date, we’ve had works by Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, D.W. Griffith, John Huston, William Wellman, Satyajit Ray, Oscar Micheaux, Walt Disney, Vittorio De Sica, Andy Warhol, Stanley Kubrick, Leni Riefenstahl, Robert Altman and Chris Marker in The Bootleg Files.”
Thanks to Phil Hall, and here’s to the next seven years of the Bootleg Files.