Nutter Watch US

US moralists of the Parents Television Council are calling on Hollywood to take gun violence seriously by evaluating and lowering its use on TV shows and in films. PTC President Tim Winter spouted:

We agree with Disney's Bob Iger that gun violence should be taken seriously, and in that vein, we are calling on the entire entertainment industry to evaluate its own incessant, and ever-more-realistic daily rehearsals of gun violence -- and graphic violence in general -- on its TV shows and in its movies. Hollywood needs to take seriously its own role in contributing to normalizing violence. Mr. Iger and other industry leaders cannot claim their content does not have real-life impact when their very economic existence is based on advertising, the sole purpose of which is to change the behavior of each viewer.

We urge the entertainment industry to evaluate and ideally lower portrayals of violence and specifically, gun violence.

But before US campaign groups attempt to deflect people away from gun control, perhaps they could take a quick glance towards Europe. Europeans watch pretty much the same amount of violent Hollywood films and TV as American viewers. And yet suffer vastly less killing from gun rampages. A most cursory correlation of evidence suggestion that many lives are saved in Europe through our stringent gun control laws.

Morality campaigners from Morality in Media (or the National Center on Sexual Exploitation as they like to be called now) are gushing with praise for a new cable TV programme from HBO. The campaign group writes:

HBO's television series The Deuce continues the premium cable television network's onslaught of programs that glorify and normalize harmful sexual behaviors, particularly acts of sexual exploitation that degrade women. The show's main themes -- the pornography industry and prostitution -- tee up its producers for gratuitous pornographic scenes and disturbing, graphic sexual content.

Notable incidents:

• Scene where pimps are hanging out on the street getting shoe shines; two little boys are hanging out with them looking at Playboy;
• Franco's character is walking down the street, sees a man in a phone booth getting a blow job from a prostitute, you see the man's penis in the scene;
• Graphic sex scene between a student and her professor, she's topless throughout;
• Franco's character makes the women at the restaurant he manages start wearing black leotards as their "uniform" in order to attract customers;
• A group of male teenagers come to Times Square by car to treat their friend (it's his birthday -- presumably his 18 th ) to sex. They are all pooling their funds so that he can have sex.
• In another scene, another prostitute appears to be viciously attacked. As she is unlocking the door to her room, a man follows, passes by, but then comes back as she enters the room. He grabs her head and shoves her in the room, throws her on the bed, slaps her across the face and starts undoing his pants. She's trying to kick him off. It's clear he's going to rape her. The scene ends. Later the show returns to the scene after the attack. He is sitting naked in a chair, she's on the sitting on the bed, breasts exposed. It becomes clear that the "rape" was a fetishized act that he paid for. Because he was really rough with her, he pays more. He gets up from the chair to get dressed, and his penis is clearly seen. Also full rear nudity;
• Near the end, we see Franco having sex with a woman who works with him from the restaurant. Full rear nudity of Franco. It's a very pornographic scene. When they finish you see the woman's breasts;

Feminists, women's shelters, and anti-pornography campigners in the U.S., Canada and Australia have started a boycott against the soft-porn BDSM movie 50 Shades Darker , claiming it glamorizes male-on-female violence and oppression.

The U.S. boycott is led by Morality in Media (now calling itself the National Center on Sexual Exploitation) and Culture Reframed. The latter group's founder and president, Gail Dines, told LifeSiteNews that the books and movies appeal to teenage and young adult women and:

socialize them to believe that normal sex involves the oppression, dehumanization, and degradation of women by men.

In Australia the feminist campaign group Collective Shout has joined the protest.

The film, due to be released the second week of February, is the sequel to the hugely successful 50 Shades of Grey , which cost $44 million to make and grossed Universal Pictures more than $500 million.

The campaigners are urging people to skip the movie and give $50 to a women's shelter.

Moralist TV campaigners at Parents TV Council have praised a new TV comedy, The Mick . The PTC writes:

The Parents Television Council is urging its members and the public to tell Verizon to stop underwriting graphic content on Fox's new TV show, The Mick, which disturbingly features minor children using explicit language and put into sexualized situations. Ads for Verizon FiOS and Pixel were aired on The Mick.

In the show, teens are shown smoking, drinking, and swearing, as their alcoholic, drug-using aunt does nothing to set boundaries or stop them. A six- or seven-year-old boy accidentally ingests a balloon filled with drugs; a teenage girl has sex with an adult man and engages in a drinking contest with her legal guardian, among other egregious examples.

PTC President Tim Winter. said:

Verizon should refuse to be associated with such destructive and harmful TV content on 'The Mick.' Apparently the show's producers and network executives believe such disturbing content is appropriate for the public airwaves, even at times when children are likely to be watching. Verizon must choose whether it will invest its media dollars to underwrite such content. Child characters should not be used for 'shock value,' and supporting a show that makes children participants in that kind of vulgarity directly calls into question Verizon's corporate standards

The PTC recently documented that broadcast TV shows are more frequently using children to say explicit language and put them in adult situations, a trend that The Mick continues.