[Alternate blog post title: Sex and the City 2 Billboards Are Offensive To Parents With Young Children.]
I love LA.
Living in LA has its perks. You get great weather 300 days a year, really friendly neighbors, not too many bugs, plenty of excitement, just enough peace and quiet, the Lakers, and a Shul on the Beach (with a lucky Rabbi). But like any big city, there are some drawbacks to living in LA. The traffic, superficiality, the helicopters outside my window at 2 AM, the expensive housing, and the schmutz.
What is schmutz? Literally, it means dirt. But in this context it means dirty in a provocative or an overtly sexual manner. (© me this very second)
Billboards rise like giant monoliths all over the city conveying their messages of sex, wealth and superficial, fleeting “happiness”. Now, most of the time I don’t complain about the billboards. Most billboards are innocuous enough. Some are a little too risque for my tastes, but it is nothing that disrupts my role as a decent human being or a parent. However, the over-hyped, flop of a movie called Sex and the City 2 has crossed the line of decency.
Sex and the City 2 billboards have overtaken the city.
Everywhere you look there is a big ol’ billboard with the giant words “Sex and the City 2″.
The word sex can mean one than one thing. But sex “in the city” has only one meaning. Sex is not a bad word when used in the right context and in front of the right audience. An inappropriate audience would be a listener who is not old enough to understand what the word means, what it entails and when its use is appropriate. It would be wrong to have an open, frank conversation about sex with a young child.
A seven year old child can read well enough to see the word sex, but is not able to understand the word. There is just no way to have a conversation with a young child about sex. It is not age appropriate.
My son reads all the billboards (and also tons of books) and sometimes he even remembers the words on the billboards. Sometimes he repeats the things he sees on billboards. One day he was muttering to himself “Sex and the City”. He says “I can’t get it out of my head”, “what does it even mean?”.
<Quick, change the subject>
I know all about “Free Speech”. But when an audience does not have a choice or warning about the content of the speech it can be regulated. (See FCC v Pacifica: The Court accepted as compelling, the government’s interests in 1) shielding children from patently offensive material, and 2) ensuring that unwanted speech does not enter one’s home. The Court stated that the FCC had the authority to prohibit such broadcasts during hours when children were likely to be among the audience, and gave the FCC broad leeway to determine what constituted indecency in different contexts.) I think this rule could apply to billboards the same way it applies to radio.
The problem is that the speech is being directed at ANYONE who can read, with no warning and no way to shield a child from its message. That includes my son, who was reading simple words like “sex” (or fox, or dad, or mom, or dog) at the age of 3! Do people think it is appropriate for 3 year old children to read words that will be impossible to define for them?! A provocative image is not going to prompt the kinds of questions that a word can. A kid sees a word and can read it, the kid wants to know what it means! What is one supposed to tell their kids?
If someone was asking me what to do, I would probably try and come up with something clever like, “it’s an adult word and when you get older you will understand what it means”. I guess that is the best I can do. But I find it offensive that young children don’t seem to be considered in what is permissible on a public billboard.
I think there needs to be some level of regulation beyond what exists now. Am I crazy?
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