Word: ptc
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...Parents Television Council (PTC), a TV-decency watchdog, is not so charmed. When CBS picked up Dexter as a strike replacement from sister network Showtime, it cut out the most graphic violence and language, but the group is pressing advertisers to boycott the show anyway. Edits or no edits, says PTC president Tim Winter, "it's the entire premise that's the problem. You are in a disturbingly queasy way rooting for a mass murderer to kill somebody...
...PTC's problem, in other words, is with Dexter's ideas, not its gore. This is disturbing if you'd rather control your own remote, thank you very much. But at least it's refreshing. TV-decency campaigns are only nominally about nipples, blood and curses. Ultimately, they're about the messages that "our children"--read: other people's children--are exposed...
...game, the gruesome trailer at a family comedy, the R-rated movie on a plane. The responsible answer is respect for context from entertainment megacorporations and more information for audiences. With Dexter, which carries a "mature themes" advisory before each episode, everyone knows what's coming. But to the PTC, as Winter says, "airing something more explicit with a better warning" is not enough...
Ironically, when it's not trying to get shows off the air, the PTC runs a very good online program that reviews shows for family-friendliness. This kind of effort--which enables choice rather than limiting it--might recognize Dexter as an intelligent, dark show for grownups and maybe mature youths (many of whom would probably rather watch it unedited anyway). Making those educated choices can be overwhelming for parents, it's true. But it's in the spirit of democracy, where ideas are life or death...
There are valid reasons to bash TV violence. The CSI series are desensitizingly gross. 24 uses torture to the point of self-parody. (The PTC counts 67 instances of it in the first five seasons.) But these shows are also long running and hugely popular. To suggest that children need federal protection from "accidentally" watching shows well known to be violent at best lets parents off the hook and at worst masks an agenda: to prevent other parents from making choices that antiviolence activists disagree with...