http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/brentbozell/2005/12/30/180704.html
Coming in 2006: Group marriage TV?
Dec 30, 2005
by Brent Bozell
As another year turns, we're reminded that the more things change, the
more they stay the same. As our popular culture pushes ever further
into anything goes, we're reminded that anything-goes has certainly
gone before.
Pick up St. Augustine's "Confessions," and find him traveling to
Carthage in the year 371, where "I found myself in a hissing cauldron
of lust." Looking back, he regretted how in his desperate search for
love, "I muddied the stream of friendship with the filth of lewdness
and clouded its clear waters with Hell's black river of lust."
This was not the way Augustine saw it in the dissolute days before he
found God, and it is certainly not the way our entertainment elite sees
love and sex today. But it's interesting how at that time, Augustine
found his sorrows drowned at the theater, "because the plays reflected
my unhappy plight and were tinder to my fire." He was amazed how no one
actually wanted to experience sadness and tragedy firsthand, but many
were thrilled to watch it faked before them. They wanted the vicarious
experience of risky emotional highs and tragic emotional lows without
the actual, nonfictional pain. Curiosity could drag them anywhere, to
spy on the ribald and disastrous ways "the other half lived."
That urge still has echoes today. Led by the usual hallowed
envelope-pushers of pay cable, Hollywood has marched ever more
passionately in this decade into chronicling and celebrating a
cavalcade of alternative lifestyles. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance
Against Defamation coos over how on this season, Showtime's lesbian
drama, "The L Word," will have a full-time "trans-gendered" character.
HBO's Wild West drama "Deadwood," previously well-known for its
"lyrical" flood of profanities, will feature a new "gay and eccentric
theater owner" character in the new year.
But HBO is really trampling new weeds by ushering in a new hot
alternative lifestyle this spring -- polygamy. Newsweek is already
raving in their "Who's Next" year-end issue about "Big Love," starring
Bill Paxton as a man with three wives in three adjoining houses with
seven kids between them.
Reporter Marc Peyser explained: "The Henricksons are devoutly
religious and wholesome (they are not Mormons but an unspecified
offshoot). Most of the action focuses on how Bill, who owns
home-improvement stores in Utah, handles the mundane aspects of his
overpopulated life." The vicarious appeal is watching this man trying
to juggle his work life with keeping three "very desperate" housewives
satisfied. "It's everything that every family faces, just times three,"
claimed co-creator Mark Olsen. "The yuck factor disappears, and you
just see human faces. We found it to be a mother lode." Newsweek oozed:
"On top of that, it's taboo." For how long?
The secular sexual gospel in this series is quite obvious. Even
"non-traditional" families of all kinds of exotic stripes can still
qualify as down to earth, even "devoutly religious and wholesome." One
of the show's creators, playwright Will Scheffer, is especially fond of
envelope-pushing. One of his plays featured a bit "delivered by
[cannibal/murderer] Jeffrey Dahmer and takes place in Dahmer's kitchen
in Heaven, in which he gives lessons on cooking and other topics."
Hollywood's power to affect the popular culture is awesome, and its
dedication to tearing down traditions is frightening. We've seen it
repeated time and again. Once upon a time, society saw pre-marital sex
as wrong; after years of "Friends"-style programming, today it is
commonplace to see unmarried couples living together. It wasn't long
ago that American society saw the homosexual lifestyle as immoral --
yes, a sin. Today, after years of Hollywood agitation, promoting gay
characters and gay lifestyles, it is to be accepted, and anything short
of that is intolerance. It seems like just yesterday that a teacher
having sex with his/her underaged student was considered rape. No,
there's another word for this: pedophilia. Today? Having been
sensitized with enough "Dawson's Creek" episodes, we yawn when we hear
about it on the news.
It is a thirst to shock that cannot be quenched. It's an addiction.
This element in Hollywood lives to destroy, and must continue
destroying to stay alive, so the anti-Western cultural rampage
continues. What's next? Nonfictional "group marriage TV" will arrive on
the Bravo channel in the spring, with a documentary called "Three of
Hearts: A Postmodern Family," featuring a New York triple with two gay
men, a woman and two children.
Now, reading that last sentence -- what was your reaction? Perhaps a
bit surprised, maybe somewhat disgusted. But you weren't shocked, were
you?
I rest my case.
Brent Bozell is President of Media Research Center, a Townhall.com
partner organization.
.
|
