The highest rated new television drama currently on US network television is Desperate Housewives. The series, which follows the exploits of four bored suburban housewives, has been an unlikely hit and is earning one of the traditional three networks, ABC, record audiences.
Every episode is packed with enough sexual intrigue, murder and malice to mean that the sub-par scripts and acting (barely a step up from the afternoon soaps) do not take away from the show’s popularity. The storylines bend but don’t break the standards of network television (that is on unencoded, free terrestrial broadcasts). As a result, advertisers are clamouring for spots and shows with floundering ratings are taking cues from the new series.
It therefore came no surprise when another ABC staple, Monday Night Football, attempting to stem the ebb of its ratings, decided to cash in on the Desperate Housewives fad.
On November 15, before the start of its weekly football broadcast, ABC screened an ad featuring Philadelphia Eagle Terrell Owens (a wide receiver — kind of like a rugby wing if he could receive forward passes from the scrumhalf — and one of the National Football League’s brashest stars) with one of the sultry characters from Desperate Housewives, Edie (played by Nicolette Sheridan). In the playful ad, Sheridan, clad only in a towel, is seen trying to seduce Owens in the Eagles locker room. By the end of the skit (peppered with references to the drama series), Sheridan drops her towel and leaps into the arms of a very happy Owens. Viewers never see her naked, but it is insinuated.
The next day news reports indicated that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the broadcasting regulator, had received complaints from viewers and would investigate. The FCC chairman, Michael Powell (son of just-ousted Secretary of State Colin Powell), wondered aloud “if Walt Disney would be proud” (the Disney company owns ABC), and vowed to review the matter. In the end, ABC apologised.
The Owens-Sheridan incident is the latest in a series of attempts by the FCC to go after indecency on television. Recently it fined Fox TV $1,2-million for happenings on a now-cancelled show, Married by America (the show featured a simulated lapdance, among other things). During the Golden Globe Awards, the use of an expletive by U2 singer, Bono, to celebrate his award, earned NBC a rebuke, and earlier this year the FCC fined CBS $550 000 for a “malfunction” in singer Janet Jackson’s costume during the live halftime show of the NFL Super Bowl final (Jackson’s nipple was exposed for a split-second).
The FCC decency crusade predates the election, but a more recent twist, related to the results of the November 2 presidential election, has got broadcasters worried.
In mid-November, when ABC scheduled the Steven Spielberg-directed World War Two drama Saving Private Ryan as its feature movie to coincide with the annual Veterans Day holiday, 66 affiliated TV stations (more than one-fourth of ABC’s affiliates) refused to air the film. Station managers cited FCC sanctions. Saving Private Ryan featured violence and graphic language (it contained “at least 20 ‘f’ words and 12 ‘s’ words,” according to one complaint). An ABC promise to edit these out, the usual practice for network broadcasts, did not save the film from being dumped.
What does this have to do with the election?
Bush and the Republicans campaigned heavily on “moral issues” (especially from a fundamentalist Christian standpoint) and relied on support and activism from religious organisations and others who identify with the “cultural war” (gay marriage, abortion, etcetera) as the greatest threat to American lives. For many observers, the result of the last election was a mandate for cultural conservatives to take an aggressive stand about God in American politics, contemporary life and the shape of American culture.
A number of these conservative organisations are behind the campaigns to keep films such as Saving Private Ryan off the air. They have perfected the art of expressing their displeasure about programming through blast emails and weblogs (in the case of the Jackson breast-malfunction episode, the FCC was besieged by half-a-million emails and letters). Whether the noise they generate is commensurate with their actual support in the American population is not the issue. The fact is they are organised, they believe they helped Bush regain the White House, and now they are calling in favours.
In the case of Saving Private Ryan, which stars Tom Hanks, an actor usually loved by the mainstream (and a red state favourite), the main organisers pushing it off the air were the American Family Association (AFA) and Focus on the Family. Both were until recently considered part of the loony-right of American politics, which operates on the fringes of the Republican Party.
Focus on the Family is run by James Dobson, who in the past has equated the war against gay marriage with Pearl Harbor and D-Day. What makes him such an important player is that from his base in Colorado Springs in the American West, he presides over a media empire that includes radio, print and video. His weekly radio show is heard on 1 900 radio stations, with a combined listenership of around 4-million people.
In the past, Dobson and Focus on the Family have taken on films like Priest (the British film about a homosexual Catholic cleric), Pulp Fiction, Sex, lies, and videotape, and TV shows like Ellen, featuring the gay comedian, NYPD Blue, and Spin City.
The AFA in turn has taken on such diverse programmes as Will and Grace, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and the animated kids film, Shark Tale, for promoting homosexuality. In the case of the latter, which is about a shark accepting his offspring’s decision to be a vegetarian, the AFA claims that the film legitimates homosexuality.
The complaints about Saving Private Ryan are not new. Indeed ABC has screened the film before, in both 2001 and 2002. At those times, when the AFA filed complaints with the FCC about the film, the regulator threw them out. This year is different: nearly 23% of Bush voters cited “moral issues” as influencing their choice; this has provided a powerful sense of backing for the dirty-word police in the government bureaucracy, and has made complaints that seemed “fringe” only two years ago seem mainstream now.
The success in keeping Saving Private Ryan off the air in one quarter of ABC’s market succeeded in promoting perhaps another more sinister, and more consequential, politics. That is, as America is involved in a dirty occupation in Iraq that it cannot win and where more than one thousand of its soldiers (and more than 100 000 Iraqis have lost their lives), the Bush FCC, with help from the AFA and others, has succeeded in keeping graphic depictions of injuries, mental stress, brutality, and violent death, off a significant number of American television screens.