lawyers, TV industry people and awkward squad over here please...

[rowan1971]

DeviousDaffodil started this thread a few days ago about quasi-pornographic music videos, and a few of us have got hot under the collar about it - not in a good way - and have decided to try getting up on our hind legs and making a fuss about objectification, misogyny and all that jazz. (Yeah! I know! It's soooo 80s!)We're starting a new thread in the hope of getting a few more MNers on board, and also picking the brains of those of you who have some experience in the relevant industries. So, our specific queries are:

Would you be up for complaining to your gym, if you're bothered by videos shown there? We thought that this might be particularly effective with chains such as LA Fitness, if they get enough complaints. (Obviously the gyms are going to say that they don't control the visuals, but we're suggesting it would be better to simply not have them.) Also, would you be willing to complain to e4, MTV, Ofcom, Tessa Jowell and so on?

People with experience in the record/music industry: do you have any ideas for how we could make an impact there? Presumably it's the record companies/artists who decide that a video is going to be one of these wank-fests.

Does anyone know about the law as it applies to the workplace (ie, gyms) and whether we could complain on the grounds of harrassment - just as Pirelli calendars are now frowned on?

And finally... does anyone know much about the Ofcom Code, and whether a complain made under that would have much chance of succeeding?

bump

I think you'll have a tough time getting any traction with this issue. The people who buy/download this type of music (and who the videos are aimed at) are probably OK with the imagery because they're young - they probably even think it's cool. It's only us old fogeys with a bit of life experience who object - and we're busy paying mortgages and not buying music.

Doesn't make it right, but objecting to something because it's semi-pornographic loses it's clout when you're not buying that sort of music anyway........

Don't know anything to help, but they really piss me off too. What happened to the watershed at 9.00pm, or are music channels exempt from it?

Getting really annoyed about it as I write

Well, it's worth making a teeny-weeny fuss about the fact that our public spaces are becoming colonized with woman-hating imagery, is it not?

offcom have alot of clout have you tried them

[That post was for Earlybird, btw!)

SEA, Ofcom is one of the avenue we're thinking about. Do you have experience of complaining to them? I have a feeling that they tend to swing into action if there are thousands of complaints, but wonder whether they bother about individual ones. Their code is ambiguous enough to drive a coach and horses through.

I complained once to offcom about XFM and they got fined £50k and the relevant presenters were sacked!

It was for a similar thing - talking about women in a really crap way (basically whether you could gauge how many children they had had by the width of their vaginas - god it makes me really angry even now) and not on a late night show but on the breakfast show.

I think there's a good case there along similar lines. These programmes are being shown in the day on channels aimed at kids.

I also have half a mind to complain to Channel 4 about T4 - loads of children see it and the tone of it is just really depressing. Arch, overtly sexualised, cynical crap. I particularly hated a feature they did where they got people in an old people's home to comment on the latest super cool band. The whole point was for the cool, young and beautiful presenter to chat to the old people apparently genuinely but basically she was laughing at them for being uncool and old. It made me so cross.

Please can we do something? How do we start an online petition that we could send to the gyms etc that we use?

this may be a good place to start

oooh. I've just remembered. I know someone at Offcom and she hates this sort of thing. I'll ask her (though I know she's ill at the mo so it might take a while)

not really but know they have to act with even a few complaints, music videos seem to have been passed through with hardly any thought, but they appear on tv all the time so i imagine complaints could have some impact.

Ofcom website makes for very interesting reading about all of this. Under 18's are supposed to be protected...
See link in my last post

Surely if these threads were sent to them, that would constitute a large number of people complaining?

Good going margoandjerry
ofcom seems to be a good place to start

Ooooh, margo, I like your style (and see from your other thread that you are a serial complainer!) So, it is worth approaching Ofcom, then?

Is it best done through one class-action complaint, as it were, or through lots of individual ones, basically all saying the same thing? Does anyone know?

Fizzbuzz - yes, the under-18s thing is definitely one prong of our potential attack. Most gyms have under-18s in at least occasionally (ours has loads in during school holidays), so it's definitely something that the gyms should consider. Whether Ofcom would accept the argument, or say that kids watching these channels know exactly what they're getting, is something else - but no harm in trying.

But if older sibling is watching daytime music channel with younger sibling in room, as must happen lots of times, then children under 18 will be seeing them.

They should come under the watershed

Good point!

lobbying chains like LA fitness is a good idea I think. It certainly can't hurt, as long as the requests are reasonable and not harpy like.

I'm not sure about mentioning misogyny too - it's such a tricky term to pin down. FWIW, most of these videaos are glorifying the female form - but it's the prepartum, 20 something form. Youth and beauty are a powerful tool for young women, but it's a rite of passage not the be all and end all. There does need to be an equity with less sexualised female role models in the media. Ther gym isn't for that, but it can still show beautiful women without the images being sexually explicit.

dunno about you, monkeytrousers, but I never looked like that!

However, I'm determined not to get too bogged down in semantics. Of course, you're right about keeping the language moderate when we complain and approach Ofcom, etc.

Wouldn't want them to think we're a bunch of hysterical women, eh? With PMT! Ho ho ho!!

LOL

Indeed I am a serial complainer!

I complained to WH Smith about their stocking of playboy stationery, effectively for children (notelets and pencil cases).

The (female) chief exec wrote back saying these items were aimed at adults so it was ok...How many adults have a pencil case?

I really am so angry with this culture at the moment. When I was a child, WH Smith was for your Letts Revise or your holiday books and colouring pencils. It was a sort of fun but bookish place. Now it's for selling soft porn to teenagers and younger.

Margo - you might be interested in this - I've stopped going into WH Smith now. (Should really write to them to tell them why, though!)

I don't understand why this is happening. I don't believe that most men are particularly happy with it, either.

just read it...even more depressed now.

Please, someone who is good at this kind of thing - tell us what to do. I'm good at writing letters that get ignored

Awww, don't get depressed. We can start off with nice polite letters, and if they don't get us anywhere, we can picket the Chief Exec's house with great big centrefold images.

I'm off to bed, but will bump this thread tomorrow and for the next few days.

there is already a gentlemen's agreement on soft porn in newsagents that relies on direct action