The 2014 MTV Video Music Awards are just around the corner. The spectacle is set to hit the schedule on August 24, and with that in mind, the pesky advocates on the Parents Television Councile have petitioned for less hanky panky this year. Only, the PTC would never use such language as hanky panky. Instead, they’ve asked MTV to avoid any sort of "public relations kerfuffle."
In a letter the group sent out to Janet Borelli, Senior VP of Standards and Practices at MTV Networks and Viacom Media Networks, the PTC once again blasted MTV for its standards and network content, especially after the Robin Thicke and Miley Cyrus debacle that blew up on social media for days after the event. Then, like good little publicity stuntmen and women, they posted the letter up as a press release. Here’s the solid chunk of nonsense they spewed out:
“Parents and families around the country have had ample reason to be concerned about the material distributed and promoted by MTV over the years, particularly during MTV’s original programming. While last year’s Miley Cyrus/Robin Thicke performance garnered most of the headlines after the fact, the sexually charged and otherwise inappropriate content of the show was not limited to them. Even more troubling was the fact that MTV still applied a TV-14 rating to the program, despite other adult-oriented performances and advertising messages. Such a rating was simply unacceptable to the families who depend on the television ratings system to be applied accurately and to the millions of families whose children are marketed to by MTV. The 2013 VMAs were a public relations kerfuffle for your network that I feel certain you will not wish to repeat.”
Admittedly, shocking audiences with a foam finger was likely the point, but it wasn’t a point the PTC took lightly. Last August, the group complained about the bodysuit that Cyrus wore, as well as the inappropriate use of a “former child star” on the TV screen. That they would complain over the TV’s content rather than just choosing to change the channel in order to keep their own children from watching is beyond me, but this time instead of just complaining, the group has three demands, including “committing publicly” to no “explicit sexual content,” maintaining MTV’s own standards and rating the program more accurately, presumably higher than TV-14. Looks like PTC advisory member Billy Ray Cyrus might want his daughter a bit more covered up this year.
Honestly, we all know this is just one group huffing and puffing for attention. We’ve seen it time and again, from MIA flicking off the camera on live television to stranger complaints about the level of sex on Glee. There’s no point in ranting about what fools the PTC are. Instead, I’ll just say that there is a huge variety of television and media content available to children. As a parent, it’s your job to decide when content is acceptable for your kid to see, whether that content be TV, movies, books, artwork, graphic novels, magazines, or video games. Every family has a different idea about what portions of culture are acceptable for their children to be a part of and which they’d rather decline, just as every parent understands what their children are capable of handling at what age. So, let’s leave the decisions to the individual parents, shall we?
