On Girls and Social Responsibility

Disclaimer #1 – This is about the TV series Girls, and in no way applies to the social responsibility I think young females in general do or do not have.

Disclaimer #2 – This is not about the quality of, lack thereof, or hype surrounding said TV series, so don’t go mad or anything. Save that for the next one.

I’ve seen a couple of Internet writings recently about the apparent decline in safe sex among the characters on Girls. During the first season, condoms were a fairly major talking point, most memorably “the stuff that gets up around the sides.” However, more recently some characters have been shown not to use condoms when having sex with relative strangers. Natalia told Adam she was on the pill, which protects against unwanted pregnancy, of course, but not against STDs, which are often bad for you.

While I agree that it’s interesting that a show which talked about condom use quite extensively is now doing the opposite, several people seem to be raging about how this will influence impressionable young people. It’s saying that it’s cool not to use condoms, or you don’t have to, or that’s what these glamorous New York types are up to now.

Maybe it will influence people, but anyone who decides not to use a condom because they saw it on TV is an idiot. In the most extreme cases, you can die from whatever diseases you might catch. Other potential problems include itchiness, discomfort, swelling and infertility, as well as the whole pregnancy thing. None of these sounds like much fun to me, and I’m not going to be swayed by what the folk on the telly are doing.

We’ve seen this kind of thing before: mass shootings blamed on the influence of video games, rather than on the high availability of guns; the insistence that any scenes showing smoking be removed from re-runs of Tom and Jerry, while leaving in countless sequences of senseless violence; Cheers depicting Norm and Cliff each night drinking enough beer to kill a small rhinoceros, yet rarely if ever falling over, passing out, vomiting, or even slurring their words, and often driving themselves home from the bar. How can we expect our children to learn the negative sides of these things if we don’t show them on TV? Our entertainers have a responsibility to educate.

No. That’s school you’re thinking of. I’m all for TV making a serious point once in a while, but if they’re not allowed to show anything morally wrong or even questionable, we’re going to be seeing some pretty dull shows, and very little else. Imagine if The Sopranos had been good, clean family fun; the whole series would have lasted maybe an hour. The main character regularly swears, drinks, smokes, steals, kills, and cheats on his wife, and most of his associates behave similarly. Is it a brilliantly entertaining TV show? That’s subjective, but the consensus (with which I agree) is that it is. Did it lead to an upsurge in Mafia-type activities? I don’t have the stats in front of me, but I’m prepared to bet that it did not.

TV is meant to be different from our real lives, or there’d be no point in watching it. We all like to see things which are relatable, but in moderation; I wouldn’t watch a show about my life unless a great deal of dramatic and/or comedic license were taken. We should also be able to separate TV from real life; if we can’t do something this simple, I don’t really think TV can be blamed for that.

Moreover, Girls airs at 9pm on a school night, on a premium cable network. Any impressionable youngsters should be away to their beds by then and, if they’re not, parents should be taking care to ensure they don’t watch unsuitable content. Not unrelated to the condom debate, we saw an extremely graphic moment between the same two characters in another of their sexual encounters. Girls is a show for adults, and it has never pretended otherwise. HBO is an outlet on which you can show tits, fire guns and say “cunt” as much as you like. Anyone old enough to be watching their content should know the dangers of not using condoms, and anyone not old enough shouldn’t be watching it. If children watch it, is that HBO’s fault for airing the show in the first place? No, it’s the parents’ fault for allowing their children to watch.

I read a most ridiculous “review” of J. K. Rowling’s most recent book The Casual Vacancy (in the Daily Mail, where else?) a few months ago, essentially lambasting her for writing an adults’ book when she’s so well-known for the Harry Potter series. The argument boiled down to the idea that children recognise her name, so when they see it, they want to read a book that isn’t suitable for them. I find this utterly nonsensical; she’s done with that series, now she’s allowed to say, write, do and think whatever she wants. You might not like it, but she’s a person. Nobody owns her or has any say in what she chooses to write in her future career, aside from publishers, who obviously had no problem releasing the book.

It’s the same as the Girls/condom issue: the content is there, and it’s reasonably well-restricted. It is not the job of Lena Dunham, HBO or the Federal Communications Commission to babysit every person who might potentially watch the show. The FCC will decide whether or not something is suitable for broadcast and, if so, when and where. If you want your kids to know that not using condoms is a bad idea, then teach them that. If you feel a TV show, film or book is undermining your lessons, then don’t let them watch/read it. It is not the fault of the author or distributor for releasing it through the appropriate channels, nor is it their job to teach your children right from wrong.

If what people want is greater censorship of such material, fine. That’s a different issue, and another one on which I disagree with them. To recap my main point: nobody old enough to be watching a show like Girls should be so easily influenced not to use condoms as through seeing TV characters fail to do so. If they are, then there are plenty of bigger issues we need to tackle in our visual media that come before condoms.