Janet Jackson has a lot to answer for

I haven't written anything for a while because I couldn't decide what I wanted to write about first - my adventures in ska at a Reel Big Fish concert, surviving riding a tandem bike with my hubby, or TV. (Hopefully I'll get on to Reel Big Fish later)


I chose TV, because there are 3 major UK-to-US remakes doing the rounds at the moment, and oh boy, what a lot of drama there is.


In particular, the American version of Skins has been causing a wave of controversy after it first aired on MTV a couple of weeks ago. Yes, it is about teenagers, and yes, there is a lot of sex, drugs and rock n roll, but it is on at 10pm on a cable channel in the upper 200s. Why the fuss?


This is where Janet Jackson comes into this. Remember nipplegate at the SuperBowl? (If you don't, type 'nipplegate' into Google - brilliantly, a variety of relevant websites come up) Many Americans would argue that Jackson's wardrobe malfunction was the start of a new wave of excessive censorship in American TV. In reality, the Parents Television Council has been in existence since 1995, but Nipplegate brought what was considered 'indecent' firmly into the spotlight.


And this is where I can't help but be frustrated by the double standards of it all. This is a country which has a burgeoning porn industry, strip clubs next to churches, and shows the uncut version of Saving Private Ryan at 8am. Blood and guts before breakfast is fine, but an unblurred shot of side boob after bedtime is outrageous.


I live here now, so I have been making major efforts to understand the American way in many things. The grass is greener syndrome really isn't going to help me survive out here. But this is one that just drives me to distraction. Failing to treat adult viewers as grown-ups by giving them a choice over what they watch - and making sex and the human body taboo for younger viewers by throwing histrionics every time there is a kiss with too much tongue - is an insult to the intelligence of most adults and takes responsibility away from parents. A ten-year-old should not be watching television at 11 at night, so why censor television to a ten-year-old's level at 11 at night?


Interestingly, the American version of Shameless, which started a few weeks ago, has caused little stir (and is, by the way, excellent) - despite the first episode showing the oldest daughter, Fiona, getting a shag on the kitchen floor and high school age Lip getting sexual favours of the oral variety in return for maths tutoring. But Shameless is on Showtime, which is a premium cable channel that you have to pay extra to receive. There is also a reason why some of the biggest American exports of recent years - Sex And The City, The Sopranos, etc. - have come from the HBO stable, which is also a premium channel. Both these networks do not rely on advertising, and can therefore be riskier in their programming - even though the UK versions and exports of their programming will readily be found on the BBC or ITV back home. After the 9pm watershed, of course.


I am not saying that I want all TV to be sexed up or that excessive nudity is necessarily correct. But mainstream American TV would have you believe, a lot of the time, that life is as innocent and saccharine as a trip down the road to Disney World. For now, though, I will be paying for HBO/Showtime, and for the privilege of being treated like a grown-up.