With great power comes great responsibility. Those are the famous words uttered by Peter Parker’s uncle in the movie Spiderman. The same can be said of our freedom of speech. With each passing day it’s becoming increasingly evident that our society is wielding this power irresponsibly. Many of our ancestors have fought and died so we can possess the ability to express our thoughts and ideas. It is an ability many of them were not able to behold, themselves. In addition, there are many countries today still fighting for their chance to achieve the incredible gift that has been afforded us. There is a banquet of opportunity for us to learn, grow and flourish if we work for it. However, rather than focusing on the opportunity for positive growth, we are seeing detrimental examples of the aforementioned irresponsible handling of free speech. This is most blatantly visible in the world of music, media and entertainment. Television, movies and music promote sexism, violence and promiscuity in a time of widespread disease. Combined with a growing deficit in our education system, this presents an ideal breeding ground for the plague of indifference and rowdiness sweeping the nation and the world. Anything remotely thought-compelling is either attacked, dismissed or ignored. Conversely, more people are widely embracing and defending things that are done for shock value that contain no pertinent messages.
Society is raising today’s youth to be more interested in how to screw like porn stars than to aspire to become doctors, lawyers or scientists. I mean, when you’re sitting on a train and there’s a 4-year old girl practicing stripper moves on the pole, it’s a clear sign that something’s seriously screwed up. Some of you may be thinking that parents have sole responsibility in raising their children and that any wrongdoing on the child’s part rests solely on them. In many ways, this is correct. It is the parent’s responsibility to prepare their children to make the right choices. However, we must not forget that no matter how much a parent restricts their child’s access to such material, it still finds a way into their lives—most often through the offspring of negligent parents. As a result, children grow up far too soon. Often times, parents find their best efforts negated by what the media presents. Hell, even some children’s movies have questionable language and sexual references these days.
The world is less child-friendly than it ever was. Yet, the media has all but completely washed their hands of any responsibility for the bastardization of our culture. Their response: if you don’t like it, don’t look. That’s like telling passengers on a bus to look away while the driver’s headed towards a cliff. Whether we choose to look away or not, the truth is we’ll have to deal with the repercussions since the media has a huge influence on the development of our society. Realistically, in order to completely protect our children from offensive material we’d have to ban television, radio, internet and walk around blindfolded since there are so many suggestive ads out there. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a prude or practicing for nunhood—I’m all for fun, silliness, even a bit of sensuality—but everything has a time and a place. At least it used to. When will we finally come to a point where we say enough is enough? So I ask you, since it’s the parent’s job to raise their kids, shouldn’t it be the media’s responsibility to do a better job filtering the content they display? Shouldn’t some form of public decency come before the money they receive to shelve their moral values?
I guess in some ways Pandora’s box has already been opened and everyone has a hand in it—the media for propagating bad behavior and us for accepting it. People are growing progressively complacent with the dizzying carousel we’ve been riding for years. It’s the perpetual spin of the degradation of human culture and its correlation to our troubled existence. When things go seriously awry, we ask all the right questions and sometimes make a temporary change, but eventually regress to our former ways. Yet that momentary instance of reform proves that we are capable of positive growth. And in that brief instance lies a flicker of hope.
What do you think? Is this a trend that can be turned around, or have we already ventured beyond the point of no return?
Please comment with your thoughts and opinions.
Shykia Bell 