As ever, I see the decline of British drama with programmes like Skins on E4/Channel 4. The obsession with getting the cast naked (predominantly male) to portray the lives of young people today is a complete insult to the intelligence of the audience and demonstrates a real lack of attachment to the realities of young people. What we really see is is smutty exploitation of actors who will experience so much time out of work they will do anything asked. I have even seen comments from people on message boards stating that actors should get erections to add to reality. But the reality of that (tantamount to rape so would the violation of the expectation) would be that they are needing porn actors not real actors. The internet is on fire because the odd established actor has turned to porn in the guise of 'art'. Or they are obsessing over the latest gaorgeous lad and posting step by step pics of him in various stages of nudity. How pathetic are those people.They are a vile as the writers who get off seeing these lads exploited.
In the first series we were privy to the penis and testicles of a young actor. this completely surreal scene was nothing more than pornographic exploitation of the lad, who was also required to walk down the street completely naked towards a busy road junction. This nudity was completely un-necessary and did not add anything to the scene or episode. All it provided was a vehicle to attract a larger audience. The writers are so unintelligent that it was their only hope of achieving notoriety by this exploitative pornography.
pornography |pôrˈnägrəfē|
noun
printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.
Now the said same character was having a sexual assignation with an older female character, I believe a teacher at school, and whilst we were (unbelievably shockingly gob smacked) privvy to her naked in the shower her genitals were NOT on display. Not that I wanted to see it of course. But then it did kind of re-address the balance a little. Just knowing that in terms of the exploitation in this programme was balanced across the sexes much more than usual.
But Skins is more than that, It can be fun and extremely well acted. If it wasn't for the comedic violence towards men such as the lads being slapped or even sexually violated by the black girl who grabbed the groin of a lad and twisted it. hmm! How hilarious was that. Think about the last time a male character was required to inflict such a crime towards a woman in a comedic sense. NEVER! Think about how disempowering this is to women. To portray them as small minded unintelligent violent numbskulls, whose only reaction to not getting the dolly is to be violent. There, put it in another way and if you have a brain you should see what I mean.
I long for the days when such smut has had its day, and we can look forward to being entertained as oppossed to me wondering how they coped watching this drivel with their presumably and hopefully embarrassed families.
Even the genius behind several long running TV programmes, Phil Redmond, recently interviewed on the Big Questions, feels that TV is just smut these days. We need more Phil Redmonds in the world. Whilst the programmes he devised certainly challenged convention and were not afraid to tackle issues, they never exploited its actors.
©MASCULISTUK
