Why is MTV not censored like everything else on TV?

[AlisonDubois]

My DH watching(drooling) over MTV about 6ish this evening.
DS(8) and DH(3) come downstairs and start watching. Then they both start dancing and singing 'This sex is on fire'. Feel a bit wrong about this but DH just laughs.
Then a song I've never even heard before comes on...some disco pop thing. OMG, the women on it might as well be completely f*ing naked. There they are gyrating and thrusting...singing about getting hot and dirty on the dancefloor.
I just sat like a goldfish amazed. DH didn't bat an eyelid.
This shit should not be on TV until after 9pm. Why is it not censored FFS?
AIBU?

In the 1950s parents made a fuss about Rock & Roll music, how it was an awful influence, would cause their children to be unruly troublesome thugs, it was 'devils' music to a lot of people.

In the 1980/1990s there was plenty of it, Frankie Goes To Hollywood anyone?

Ebeneezer Goode...a dance song which got to number one in 1992, repeated the line E's are good, E's are good. That was also banned. Parents worrying about the 'rave' culture influencing their children to take drugs.

Again in 1992, 'Baby Got Back' was released..and briefly banned. You know the one it goes 'I like big butts and I cannot lie' The video featured many barely dressed women with very round bums! There were complaints about this, how it objectified women etc.

This is just the new phase, and of course there will be things parents dissaprove of, there always have been. It's not worse, just a different controversy.

I totally agree about it not being background noise. we've actually just decided to stop our TV licence for this reason! it drives me up the wall when we end up with the TV on even though we aren't actually watching it.

it is totally wrong for MTV et al to be on when a toddler can see. I watched one music show on channel 4 and there was a girls aloud video, and DD immediately copied the dancing, she was only 2, I was never again! not at this age anyway!

problem is some people don't see the need to censor it from their littluns precisely because it's available to see everywhere.

I would support a MN campaign on this but I wouldn't expect it to succeed unfortunately :(

I hate it. YANBU

YANBU AT ALL. Very depressing.

Cue 'sound like my mother' rant: In the 80s when I was a nipper, videos were creative, funny and women were FULLY CLOTHED. We still idolised the popsters and copied their moves. Even Madonna's early 'shocking' videos seem quaint compared to the porn kids are subjected to today.

ps My dc don't even know MTV exists and I would never put it on. Your dh should know better!!

I did tell DH to turn the channel over, which he did. He argued though that it's just music, not a porn film.Did not seem to understand my point of view at all. He just thinks I should 'chill out' and relax.
I cannot block music channels...have tried previously. DH will not give up his Sky Sport. IHave put a pin code into the sky box but this just seems to stop access to 15 cert films unless they have the pin number.
I would love to be able to block these channels, personally, any ideas?

Check out the lyrics to 'Love the Way you Lie' by Eminem and Rihanna.

Do a Google search for it.

I was and

Haven't seen the video for it, but the words were enough to make me almost fall off my chair. It's on the radio all the fecking time.

OP - YANBU!!!!!!

You are DEFO not being unreasonable. It's just ignorant. And most of it is completely sexist. Girls gyrating and writhing almost non-clad in various copycat sexual positions around 'powerful' and misogynistic men who blatantly make it clear that they think women are 'hoes' and only good for one thing. The lyrics are usually about how great the men are in bed/what sexual positions they want to adopt.

As for the 'talented' female main stream pop singers; what message do they want to send our daughters? Yes it's the old 1950's mantra: if you want to get ahead in this town, doesn't matter how good your voice is, you'll have to take your clothes off and cator to mens wet dreams to really succeed.

MTV should follow a watershed but then there's also Youtube. The artists should be more responsible they KNOW that most of their fans are young children and teenagers. Not all parents are responsible and leave on when their kids are around. It's sad when you hear 5 and 6 year olds in the playground singing sex fuelled lyrics.

and leave MTV on

"I cannot block music channels...have tried previously. DH will not give up his Sky Sport. IHave put a pin code into the sky box but this just seems to stop access to 15 cert films unless they have the pin number.
I would love to be able to block these channels, personally, any ideas?"

You're presumably paying Sky. Stop doing it. Simples.

Dh will not give up Sky Sports. I can live with the sports channels.

@takelovingchances - apparently the Eminem / Rihanna song is anti-DV, see this link for a really interesting analysis: here Doesn't stop 14yr old girls thinking it's about a tornado meeting a volcano or sone such shiz.

I think a lot of posters are worryingly naive. MTV flout the law. Music video directors know full well that sexualised videos attract a large audience including young children, but they make money from it. Ergo they won't stop making them and we can't expect them to.

However, the watershed and other systems are in place in the UK to protect younger viewers. Why posters are priding themselves in their laid-backness and worse, telling people it's their responsibility to prevent their DCs watching it?! Erm no, MTV are breaking the law frequently as the cost to them of the fines is not high enough to make them change their behaviour.

It's worth campaigning for fines to be higher IMO. I'm a liberal but fiercely believe that markets need to be regulated. It's like the thread in which we were arguing whether high sugar, high fat foods should be so visible in supermarkets - well of course they shouldn't, but too many MNers are blind to how things can be changed through protests and campaigns.

it's all good and well to say it's anti-DV, but it's also really easy to listen to it or watch the video and interpret it as a paen to tortured relationships that are amazing and intense--with violence actually enhancing those emotions.

i think it's really depressing that lots of parents take it for granted that all the bumping and grinding is just the way things are now, and no different than what outraged their own parents.

it sounds ridiculous to say "it's different now, really," but it is. There have always been shocking images, songs, etc., but never on such a grand scale and never so easily accessible by so many.

i look around all the time and wonder - when did it become acceptable to have a woman in her knickers plastered on the side of London bus? or that every woman in a fashion photo or ad must have her mouth open suggestively?

it's naive to think this doesn't influence children.

Chandellina - I agree with everything in your post.

Damned right MTV are breaking the law.

Whether or not the kids see this stuff or we switch off is another matter.

MTV are out of order.

All pop music, is, and always has been, about fucking.

sure, it just didn't always say so in quite such explicit language, and wasn't accompanied by a pornographic visual.

snoozathon thanks for that link re. Eminem & Rihanna. To be honest I still think it's a far-fetched explanation that it's anti-DV.

Don't think such lyrics are needed. Doesn't gives a good message at all.

Is today's MTV really that different to Madonna and Cher in the 80s/90s? There is definitely much more of it now but it is not that much worse is it?

Yes it is worse! OMG I despair, I can only assume you haven't watched music vids in a while if you think it's comparable to Madonna and Cher.

The difference is that women in e.g. hip-hop and r 'n' b videos are wearing bikinis or underwear and are there for decoration, for the titillation of the men in and out of the video.

It's not at all the same as Madonna and Cher - Lady GaGa and Katy Perry are tongue in cheek and more importantly strong females asserting their own sexuality and are Madonna's heirs.

I can't believe anyone is happy with the PORN children are bombarded with, showing women as objects. I struggle to find any music from the past that has portrayed women as so weak and passive, only there for sexual titillation :(

It only continues because pop music is a male-dominated industry and because parents like so m y on here say 'oh it's always been this way' or 'it's harmless' or 'i don't mind my daughter imitating pornstar moves as she doesn't understand' or whatever shitty excuse you want to use.

Grrr

Alison, then turn the tv off or turn the channel over!?

sorry, come again, people think that the Rihanna/Eminem song is promoting/glamourising DV? i thought it was obviuous to everyone that its from the POV of a couple in that relationship and highlights the problem, no 'glamourising' it, Rihanna was a victim of violence, is she reaaaaaallly going to 'promote' unhealthy relationships? even my 13 year old figured out it was raising awareness....

You could just turn it off/over?

Not MTV's fault your DH is a bit dim.

YANBU.

My BiL had to bar MTV from his television after he was called in to see my niece's (then 6) headmistress because she'd been singing that fucking awful Lady Lumps My Humps My Lovely Lady Bumps song, complete with dance routine.

Oh dear.

What's this "just turn it off" argument all about?

That goes without saying....

But what about MTV - do they have a carte blanche, free for all, no holds barred, anything goes, no censorship and no boundaries on what they transmit - whatsoever??