This week’s Finally Watched It post is going to be Black Mirror and in watching this, I had a strange thought: SciFi these days has a lot of sex in it.
I find myself more often than not being super excited about a new fantasy, science fiction, or horror series only to start it and with in 5 minutes think “Whelp, I can’t watch this with my kid.”
I have very fond memories of watching Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Star Trek, Quantum Leap, A-Team, and Knight Rider with my mom. We would talk about what happened, joke about stuff; it was a bonding experience for us. So, when a new series is announced, part of me gets all nostalgic for those days and I want to recreate them with my kid. Like a good parent, I watch it alone first to make sure it’s alright for a 9 year old to see (at least in my opinion) only to end up with a sex scene, massive amounts of cursing, or a pair of breasts right there on the screen. This happened with Defiance, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and now, Black Mirror. And to have a kid who LOVES SciFi, comics and horror who is too young to really be grabbed by something as old as Twilight Zone and has already seen Star Trek, it’s a little disappointing when something I think is cool comes out but I can’t share it.
With the exception of Stranger Things; which had a tolerable amount of cursing in it considering at 9, my kid has heard all this already and it’s not excessive in the show. It also has characters closer to her age group; much like Goonies was for my generation.
I’m not saying that every show in this genre needs to be accessible to children. I’ll sit and watch Gravity Falls or Star vs the Forces of Evil all damn day because they’re entertaining, well written, and fucking hilarious. But so much of the new stuff relies on all this sex to sell itself and it’s a trend I noticed. Has anyone else noticed this? I know it’s not a NEW thing but with TV not being as strict as it was 20 years ago and the advent of services like Netflix having none of the restrictions traditional cable has, there’s a lot more boobs and sex now. And it doesn’t always seem necessary for the plot half the time.
Or, I just got old. I dunno…
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