I’m actually not a great fan of violence in TV dramas or soaps (apart from obvious comedy violence like the Young Ones, Bottom etc!) – TBH I think some of the portrayals of domestic violence in UK and US soap operas have a nasty effect of normalising this behaviour within some sections of society
🙁 – but of course I simply choose not to watch them. [1] my mother does, and then complains that she is worried to go out because of crime…
OTOH, a soap opera about a Mob family will contain violence (duh!) – what is rather depressing is how quickly the shows writers were made to cave in to a desire for greater censorship, ostensibly not to protect “public morals” but so as not to jeapordise the revenue from a fat contract..
This is something broadcasters in Britain and Europe must be increasingly wary of, as the commercial element increasinly overrides the creative element in our media companies..
following extract from the mediagrauniad 2005-02-02 by Julian Borger in Washington – (c) 2005 Guardian media group..
Quote:
In a record deal, the series about the famously dysfunctional New Jersey mob family has been sold to another cable network by HBO, a subscription cable channel.
The deal, worth a reported $200m (£100m), means repeats of the show will be broadcast on the A&E channel to a much bigger audience, where broadcasting authorities and advertisers have a decisive say on content.
In a year in which the big networks have been fined for showing Janet Jackson’s breast, the violence-filled programme is bound to be scrutinised closely.
A&E’s president, Abbe Raven, told yesterday’s New York Times the network would work with HBO to edit “tailormade” episodes of the show to “meet our broadcast standards”. HBO had already anticipated the show’s need to clean up its act if it was to earn syndication rights. The cable channel arranged for alternative versions of the most foul-mouthed, violent or sexual scenes to be filmed to make the series easier to bowdlerise.
[1] As a Londoner whose family left the capital because of the fear of crime and violence – I can’t help but feel that the obsession Eastenders has with crime, violence and dysfunctional family behaviour is as bad a sterotype of Londoners as the minstrel shows were of black people!
