The Kids Are All Right?

I have always been somewhat obsessed with popular culture--tv, music, movies, celebrity culture. Always. Part of my interest of course is fueled by one's natural attraction to the entertaining, but I also believe that pop culture holds a mirror up to society. The values of a generation, I believe, can be seen in the music and shows which are popular.

I remember when I was in middle school a new television show debuted on the WB and it was "controversial"--parents were concerned. They even did a news story about it on The Today Show. Dawson's Creek began airing in the fall of 1998. I was 12. I was obsessed. Looking back I find it absolutely laughable that Dawson's Creek was considered risque. But parents took issue with Joey so freely climbing into Dawson's bedroom and sharing his bed (even platonically). Then of course there was casual discussion of masturbation (I still remember blushing when Joey asked Dawson how often he "walked his dog" and Dawson replied, "In the mornings. Usually to Katie Couric!") and Pacey's affair with his 10th grade English teacher. Ok, so maybe there was a lot going on in Capeside, but compared to Gossip Girl, DC was kid-stuff. At the heart of the show was Katie Holmes's Joey Potter--a virgin. A hardworker. Her biggest problems were choosing between Dawson and Pacey, figuring out how to pay for college, and missing her deceased mother. Hardly a character one needed to shield their teen daughters from. Joey waited...for love. And ultimately ended up with the boy she lost her virginity to (TEAM PACEY!).

As much as I enjoyed Dawson's Creek as a kid, my high school experience was pretty much nothing like the kids in Capeside, Massachusetts. Granted, my high school life was atypical--I went to a boarding school nicknamed the "Alabama School of Sex & Marijuana"--but high school in Capeside was a little too after school special to be reality. Recently a new show, Skins debuted on MTV. An American version of a highly popular British series, Skins is risque and dare I say much more realistic than I think anyone's parent wants to admit. Parents are up in arms. The Parents Television Council has called for its cancellation. Both Taco Bell and Wrigley's Gum have refused to advertise during its airing. All the uproar has got me thinking about the goal of television/film.

Movies and tv show offer audiences a slice of fantasy, of fiction. They represent the way we wish life could be. But I have found that the best in film and television offer audiences a slice of what truly is. The best television shows reflect what is really happening in our kids schools, in their bedrooms, and most scarily in their heads. At 17 I knew kids who drank, smoked, and "tripped" on various forms of cold medicine--both pills and liquid. The primary cause for kids leaving ASMS after my sophomore year was either sex or drug related. The story after senior prom was two classmates had gone lesbian after experimenting with Ecstasy. We weren't "bad" kids. We weren't always "good" kids. We just lived a life. A life that is now being shown via shows like Skins. Perhaps slightly exaggerated for effect and entertainment, I think shows like Skins are accurate in their depiction of teen life.

If groups like the Parents Television Council don't like what they're seeing on television, rather than censoring the art form I suggest they start talking to their kids and counting the pills in the medicine cabinet.