MTV has never been a haven of moral high ground. From Johnny Knoxville's painful antics on Jackass to the juiceheads of Jersey Shore, the network has a long history of glorifying behavior that would not be advised in real life.
In spite of this, MTV never did anything that crossed the line of human decency. As ridiculous, and sometimes unwatchable, as its shows may have been, generally speaking, it was in all in good fun.
This time, however, the network has gone too far.
In recent weeks, MTV has come under fire for its series Skins, a scripted show about teenagers who engage in sexual intercourse on a regular basis. Usually, this wouldn't be out of the ordinary. After all, many of MTV's programs feature a great deal of sexual content.
In this case, however, the problem isn't with the sex, but rather with the actors. Many of the performers on the series are under the age of 18, which has led to accusations that MTV is in violation of child pornography laws.
While there is obviously no actual intercourse occurring, since it's a basic cable show, the show does feature many sexually explicit scenes that have been considered problematic due to the young age of the actors.
We agree with this sentiment. While plenty of MTV's programs have pushed the envelope with regards to sexual content, none of them have featured performers who are so young. Jersey Shore may be just as sexually charged as Skins, but all the actors are of legal age.
Two of MTV's other juggernaut programs are 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom, both of which focus on the lives of teenage mothers. Many have argued that what occurs on Skins is no worse than what takes place on these shows, since both present teen sex in a manner that could be characterized as glorification.
The Spectrum disagrees with this sentiment, however. For one, neither of these shows feature the explicit sex scenes that Skins does. Additionally, it can be argued that those shows discuss the dangers of teen pregnancy, while Skins does nothing more than portray underage sex in a glamorous light.
MTV has recently stated that it plans to decrease the amount of sexual content on Skins in order to fight the child pornography accusations.
While we have no problem with the issue of teen sex being explored on TV, when the scenes are this explicit, and the actors are underage, that is simply going too far.
