So, this week I have been hearing all kinds of controversy about this new MTV show, “Skins”. It is scandalous. I portrays teens doing DRUGS! And HAVING THE SEX!!!! And apparently, in one scene, a girl played by a 17 year old actress runs naked down the street, possibly violating federal child pornography.
Well, a year or two ago, a friend of mine told me about this excellent BBC teen drama she was hooked on, called “Skins”. I watched it and I loved it. One of the big things I loved about it was how real it was. The fact that the British are not a nation of puritanical prudes that have apoplexies any time a boob is shown. A nation that gets that teens have sex, do drugs and listen to rock-n-roll. All of these things figured heavily into the show…but because they were merely THERE, neither glamorized nor demonized, the show was not ABOUT them. It was about the struggles these young people experienced growing up…some of those struggles involving, or the result of one of the afore-mentioned vices, but many simply the result of being a teenager.
Well, I admit that like many of my acquaintance, I AM offended by this new MTV series — I am offended that, yet again, the US networks are mining fabulous BBC shows, and turning out crappy knockoffs that are bound to either censor the show into pointlessness, turn every digression from the straight and narrow into an after-school-special warning, or both. Oh, and along the way, probably make that sex and drugs lifestyle look super cool. Rather than simply something that many teens experience and then grow out of.
