Morality and the Media: The Problem With TV Vulgarity

This is the world we live in now. A world where people write bile-filled letters to the Daily Express whenever someone says the word ‘arse’ on TV, and old ladies tut judgmentally to each other while saying “I knew it!” every time the police find an XBOX in the home of a serial killer. You’d think it might be easy to ignore them, especially the Express readers. All you have to do is show them a picture of Princess Diana and they’ll completely forget what it was they were doing. But the fact is those of us who realise that swearing in TV and games is no more harmful to the British public than some of the shit printed in the Sun are being swamped by concerned parents and government officials demanding that Squidward Tentacles puts trousers on, or whatever it is they moan about. These moral crusades change nothing, and just provide further proof of how futile it is to try and fix something that isn’t broken.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 4: ON STRANGER TIDES

It was once said by… someone, that one of the most important parts of having a successful movie franchise is knowing when to stop. I’ve just realised that this last sentence has kind of given away my entire opinion on Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, but there’s a page and a half left on this, so stick around. My point is that sequels to popular films are NEVER anywhere near as good as the original. It didn’t work for Ghostbusters, it didn’t work for Jaws, it didn’t work for Meet the Parents, and it certainly has never worked for anything George Lucas has ever gone near. The only film franchise that was even remotely passable was Back to the Future, but to be honest even that was pushing it a bit.

INSIDIOUS

It’s fair to say the horror genre hasn’t exactly been awash with great ideas lately. If there’s not a film coming out about a possessed child playing silly buggers with the household fixings, it’s a film about a group of teenagers (who are so pretty it actually makes me genuinely angry) trying to scream their way out of an encounter with a masked mental patient trying to cut their nipples off with a butter knife. And when the film industry does try to break away from the monotony they come up with the stupidest ideas I’ve ever seen, such as Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus. So has Insidious managed to bring some much needed innovation to the horror genre? Well, no. It’s a movie about a possessed child, so it loses about 20 trillion originality points right from the start, but we need to be professional about this. So here goes…