|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
Print Nothing surprises me on television anymore. The rule for television is you have to top anything previously done and the standards keep plummeting. Sex still sells. And it gets younger and younger. To get on American Idol you know going in you’ll have to show a lot of skin, as well as be able to sing. It’s everywhere - not just the evil cable channels. I doubt I’ve seen it all yet, but when it shows up, I won’t be surprised. However, I was totally surprised to hear the majority of my coworkers appalled and upset at the Super Bowl halftime show featuring Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake. Why were they upset? What was so different about this display of skin/sexuality than anything else? The women dancing around Nelly while he sang “It’s Getting Hot In Here” started taking off their clothes to a cute dance routine, but no one said a word about that song. They might as well have been hookers advertising. Yet when something “accidentally” gets shown in a song where Justin and Janet were already very inappropriate for family time - why the fuss? I heard people say they called their kids to come see the halftime show and were totally offended at that scene. What about all the other acts I saw that were just as offensive? Nudity is bad, but everything else is acceptable? As long as you don’t cross one little line, all other lines are crossable? I just can’t see the logic. I would have turned off the show in front of kids and teenagers long before Justin Timberlake came on stage. I have a coworker whose daughter recently turned 21 and her maternal advice was to not drink too much if she was going to drive home after going to the bars on her first legal night to do so. She was very upset at the halftime show. Another coworker allows her 12 year-old to have a television in her room and they have cable so she could watch just about anything imaginable any time day or night - unsupervised - but she was also offended at the halftime show. I’ve seen her beautiful daughter dressed in clothes that I thought would be inappropriate for an 18 year-old. The message seems to get lost in the translation. We’ve lost all sense of modesty, graduated to dressing as provocative as possible, advanced to being as young and provocative as possible, to now showing a little nudity. “Whoa! We never intended for that to happen!”, “That’s tasteless - it’s too far!” we hear. The slippery slope just slipped away. The truth is, dressing like a hooker goes from cutting edge to the norm. The next logical step is nudity. After that, we’re at public porn. Paul warned about this in I Timothy 4:2 when he wrote, “Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron…”. America’s conscience was seared and the biggest shock to me about the halftime show was that anyone even noticed it. I guess that’s better than nothing, but sadly it seems to be too late.
ninetyandnine.com © 2004, Alicia Becton ---------- Alicia Becton is Managing Editor of ninetyandnine.com. |
|
|
