Is The Fairytale Over?

Once upon a time, in a lounge room far, far away, people would have fainted at the sight of nudity on television. But as our culture progresses away from T.V.’s modest conventions, are we becoming more and more accustomed to adopting jaw-dropping sex scenes as our source of entertainment rather than finding it in a well scripted plot? asks Tea Tripping...

These days it seems most shows are trying to scream out ‘screw all those right wing, conservative knobs, let’s be edgy and show as much sex as possible!’ And if a show isn’t screaming that out (or at least showing one pair of breasts per episode) it’s considered a little mundane, a little underwhelming and a little cultureless; that, or it might actually have to rely on it’s script, what has the world come to!


Though most audiences are looking for something quirky and a little out of the ordinary in their shows, do we really see these programs with an abundance of boobs, sex and violence as doing something on edge? Sure controversy has always been a good tool for the publicity of a show; make it as grotesque and erotic as discerningly possible and people will watch, and we already know sex sells; but does this mode of address actually encapsulate ‘the fan’ when so many cultural spheres would find it tasteless?

My beef is that much of the time I find that shows with a lot of these explicit themes are compensating for lacking in the script and narrative department. The new Underbelly Razor is a perfect example of a show using this kind of ‘re-directing attention’ tool. It’s easy to see through the snappy one-liners, flamboyant costumes and dangerous nudity that attempt to bring Underbelly together, and while the basis for a good story might be there, the charm and wit that come with true creativity is not.

Deadwood, on the other hand, manages to incorporate violent and sexual themes without that same desperate reliance. It is T.V. shows that depend on such themes in place of a good script that really annoy me, not the idea of them altogether.

In saying that, however, there are probably more brilliantly written shows out there now than ever before. It is the blossoming of transmedia that has really made it necessary for some shows in the T.V. biz to use outrageous, risky and unashamed styles, as with such a vast array of mediums and platforms that television can now be received on, maintaining and capturing an audience is harder than ever.

Obviously there are many cultures that would still never allow shows such as True Blood and Californication (two American dramas both very adept at making soft core porn for television) to be aired, so how do these shows reflect the tastes of their audiences? Do the people who watch shows like Underbelly and Spartacus (that show in which you can see ten pairs of breasts and one hundred men brutally slaughtered in the first two minutes) watch it purely for the naked people and disturbing violence, or do they honestly enjoy the program’s ‘qualities’?

The most brilliant of scenes are the ones filmed with suggestion rather than crassness. T.V. shows should be admired for their ability to leave their audiences dangling, not by making the plot and characters blatantly obvious.

Whatever happened to leaving some things to the imagination? While nudity and sexual references can be a tool adding to the culture of some shows, like it does with Deadwood, using those themes just for the sake of getting attention or making up for drab content is lazy and reeks of try hard rebellion.