Last Updated:Friday - 09/24/2010
April 5, 2004
Traditional morality trampled
CTV shows shock with their 'morality'
 | Opinion |
On the Other Hand
CHARLES MOORE
SPECIAL TO THE WCR
For conservative traditionalists, exposure to the Canadian media - news or entertainment - is akin to being pecked to death by ducks. Both sectors have now moved beyond their longstanding left-liberal bias through strident left-liberal advocacy, to in-your-face left-liberal triumphalism.
Consequently, while the Americans make a federal case, literally, over a five-second flash of Janet Jackson's breast on the Super Bowl broadcast, CTV, which seems to be trying to outdo the CBC for pseudo-sophisticated edginess, gives us a protracted and graphic opening sequence on The Eleventh Hour of the man masturbating in a sperm bank at a "fertility clinic," with the aid of porn magazines and a real live bimbo clad only in a pair of black lace bikini drawers.
Full frontal shots.
Made Janet look demure.
RARE DISSENT?
And why not? One can envision the producers rationalizing that the only folks likely to complain in metrosexual Canada these days would be former Reform Party supporters and Bible Belt fundamentalists, both factions that the media liberals not only discount as no-account with extreme prejudice, but take gleeful and sophomoric satisfaction in offending.
But at least The Eleventh Hour is late-evening prime-time fare with "discretion advised" warnings.
Not so DeGrassi: The Next Generation, which is aimed specifically at middle and high schoolers, and which this season in particular is pulling out all the stops in propagandizing a liberal leftist agenda.
Along with the usual teen soap opera fluff, two main thematic threads on DeGrassi this year have been Manny's pregnancy and abortion, and Marko's "coming out" as a homosexual, both topics explicitly calculated to upset conservative traditionalists.
It's unremarkable that DeGrassi's writers and producers are CBC retreads, as is the program itself, but the distemper of our times has provided them with a licence to go much farther than they ever dared on the old CBC DeGrassi series.
Despite DeGrassi's cloying "diversity" conceit, one minority that is conspicuously absent from the program's multicultural tapestry is Christian teens. According to polls, some 12 to 18 per cent of Canadian teenagers are regular churchgoers, so this is a notable omission, although no doubt a backhandedly merciful one because this crew wouldn't know how to depict Christians with integrity and respect even if they were inclined to do so, which they obviously are not.
CONSERVATIVE CARICATURE
In the DeGrassi world, anyone with the slightest conservative orientation is presented in a cartoonish stereotypical caricature, as a buffoon, an idiot, a bigot or sometimes all three.
Manny, pregnant by the two-timing Craig, of course has an abortion, and the only principled objection registered is by her friend Emma, herself a product of an illegitimate pregnancy (in the previous CBC DeGrassi series) that was carried to term.
The pro-choice propaganda is laid on with a trowel, Emma quickly caves without much of a fight, and most egregiously of all, Manny's Filipino Catholic mother gets with the program without ever registering a peep of ethical protest - a calculated insult to all faithful Catholics.
That matter neatly tied up, we move along to a recent episode in which the recently-outed Marko goes on his first date with the studly (in a gay sort of way) hockey player Dylan. Reformed homophobe Spinner has done a 180 degree ideological U-turn, becoming the "straight eye for the gay guy," doing a fashion makeover for Marko in preparation for the big date.
We are treated to a bit of furtive hand-holding in the theatre; a chance encounter with Marko's gormlessly bigoted (see above) parents who are blissfully unaware of their son's sexual preference, and finally, the piece de resistance, a gay kiss. No tonsil hockey, but a definite and pointed pushing of the community-standards envelope in confrontational contempt of conservative moral standards.
What next? Simulated anal sex? You can count on it a few years down the road. And if that offends your Victorian sensibilities, tough beans. The authors and purveyors of this assault on the traditional moral standards are smugly confident that, at least in Canada, they can get away with it. Even most Canadians who might object can be counted on to not make much of a fuss. It's just not the "Canadian way." Pity.
As for those of us who don't mind stirring the pot, mounting an effective protest is a conundrum. After all, CTV is owned by BCE Inc., which in turn owns most of the telco infrastructure monopolies in Canada, as well as the Globe & Mail and who knows what else.
One can ignore the Globe, and tune out CTV I suppose, but most of us would pragmatically draw the line at disconnecting our telephones.
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