Randall Murphree
AFA Journal editor
August 2001 – For more than a decade, the major TV networks have been the willing pawn of pornography merchants. In entertainment series and news specials alike, porn and its purveyors are lauded as champions of free speech, defenders of the First Amendment.
ABC’s Life Goes On was usually family-friendly, the Thatcher family a refreshing contrast to most prime-time families. However, the February 3, 1991, episode jumped on board the pro-porn wagon as perky teenager Rebecca campaigned for porn.
Her nerdish schoolmate called for laws to regulate “slime on the airwaves.” He wore thick glasses and a condescending expression. He was supported by “fascist parents,” the “right-wing” and a businessman.
Rebecca, however, delivered an impassioned and reasoned rebuttal, ending with, “Who’s to say what is pornographic?” The moderator gushed, “Excellent rebuttal!”
The show was comical in its brazen bias: those who suggest restraint are obnoxious, fascist right-wingers; First Amendment advocates are the all-American teen heroine and friends. It set the tone for the decade. Decency didn’t have a chance.
American Chronicles, a Fox news magazine, had interviewed Hugh Hefner, Playboy empire founder, the previous fall (11/17/90), giving him an hour to advocate his hedonistic lifestyle. Hefner quoted the Bible, then went on to say it is just nonsense. The episode included near-nude Playboy Bunny shots and suggestive poses, reducing women to sex objects.
Just weeks before the Life Goes On episode, 20/20 (ABC, 1/18/91) had aired a segment on “free speech” and “artistic freedom.” The 14-minute feature used 11:17 to coddle an alleged pornographer whose nude photos of children were under investigation. In contrast 20/20 gave 2:13 to neutral commentary, and 1:18 to law enforcement officials.
As early as 1980, researchers S. Robert Lichter and Linda S. Lichter had begun surveying the creative elite in Hollywood.Their work paints a picture of television’s producers/executives/writers that stands in stark contrast to mainstream America.
The Lichters were startled to learn that two-thirds of Hollywood’s elite think they should use television to change our culture. The researchers wrote, “They also seek to move the audience toward their own vision of the good society. ...[They] see themselves as educators, with the tube as their schoolroom.”
In rare exceptions to the rule, CBS has offered a couple of episodes over the years that dealt positively with Internet pornography and its dangers to the family. Picket Fences (2/9/96) highlighted the responsibility of parents to monitor what their children see on the Internet. One episode of Touched by an Angel (5/21/00) also illustrated how Internet porn can damage family relationships.
By and large, however, throughout the 1990s, prime-time continued to beat the drums for porn merchants. “It is normal and natural,” they boomed in show after show.
Writers and producers legitimize porn via several common approaches.
Porn is normal. Chandler nonchalantly asks Ross to pick up some porn for him on NBC’s Friends (1/2/97). A would-be novelist writes pornography for a living in Significant Others (Fox, 3/11/98). On For Your Love (NBC, 3/24/98), Sherry is angry when she discovers her husband’s 20-year stash of Playboy magazines, but later apologizes and brings him a new Playboy. Stuart, Spin City’s promiscuous playboy, boasts of his penchant for pornography (ABC, 12/15/98). On 3rd Rock From the Sun (NBC, 12/8/98), Sally assures boyfriend Don that his desire for porn magazines is “perfectly normal.”
Antiporn people are nuts. On NBC’s L.A. Law (1/23/92), an anti-porn judge is portrayed as incredibly immature and unstable. He loses control in the courtroom, frequently launching into unethical verbal sparring with a porn dealer’s attorney. A few days later, ABC echoes the idea in an episode of Civil Wars (2/5/92) with an anti-porn judge who ogles a woman in his courtroom, then summons her to his office to assault her with sexual innuendo.
When the editor of a porn magazine comes to the college campus to find nude models in Boston Common (NBC, 4/14/97), those who oppose are radical feminists or hypocrites.
Porn is funny. A good laugh at whatever makes us uncomfortable is an effective means to break down barriers of restraint. For example, Fox’s Married...With Children aired an episode (4/19/92) in which Al Bundy, the witless protagonist decides to “vacation” without his nagging wife and out-of-control teenagers. He builds a fence around his sofa and television, then camps out in his own living room to watch porn movies.
Marge Simpson, in Fox’s animated The Simpsons series (11/12/92), delivers a welcome wagon basket to a new neighbor. The basket includes a XXX video for the man of the house. Ellen (5/14/96) promotes porn when one of the star’s friends brags about the sex video she and her boyfriend made. Great fun – until her uptight parents find the video.
Porn gives self-esteem. Posing is a CBS movie (11/5/92) in which a loving, all-American mom and a college student are porn stars whose lives are immeasurably enriched by their careers. Both families first balk at the idea, but finally come to realize that porn is normal and moral.
Hugh Hefner is special guest on Fresh Prince of Bel Air (11/8/93) after 24-year-old Hilary, a main player, announces with great pride that she is going to pose nude for Playboy. Her self-righteous, conservative father (a Playboy subscriber) decides the porn king is an upright, honorable man. In CBS’s much-honored Murphy Brown, a new, young conservative newscaster poses nude for a magazine cover (2/27/95). Brown jumps to her defense – it is a “free speech” issue, of course.
Some series, notably NYPD Blue on ABC, have pushed the envelope time and again with increasing nudity (both male and female), longer skin scenes, brighter lighting, homosexual and lesbian kissing and more. ABC’s The Practice (2/2/98) aired a graphic sexual bondage scene in which a wife strangles her husband to death after tying him up for sex. Fox’s Ally McBeal bordered on softcore porn with the October 25, 1999 season premiere which Fox boasted was “…the hottest, wettest and sudsiest television you’ll ever see.”
Social science studies reveal overwhelmingly that what we watch on TV does have an impact on us. For example, a mid-1990s study by Jennings Bryant and Steven C. Rockwell (Media, the Family and Children, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates) clearly showed that massive exposure to sexually-oriented programming can alter the moral judgment of adolescents.
And polls reveal that children and adults as well believe that television long ago passed the line of acceptable taste and social behavior. Unfortunately, to the titans of 21st century TV, responsibility, modesty, and decency are no longer virtues. 
