'Skins' loses two more advertisers

Source: Entertainment Weekly

MTV’s bad trip continues: Two more advertisers have pulled out of the network’s controversial series Skins.

Chewing gum company Wrigley has suspended advertising on Skins after running a commercial during the premiere episode, according to the LA Times.

And H&R Block, whose ad also appeared on the premiere episode, told TMZ their ad ran “by mistake” and it will not happen again.

MTV says they will not comment on specific advertisers, but issued this statement: “We have an ongoing dialogue with our advertising partners about the best fit for them on our networks. We know that not every show works for every advertiser. That said, we are confident that Skins will continue to connect with the audience it was created for and that advertisers will take advantage of the opportunity to reach them.”



Read more: http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/01/24/skins-advertisers/

teenagers and sex. Like those two things never go together. :sarcasm:

are just so Victorian.

NGU.

I actually liked the British verstion quite a bit.

:eyes:

NGU.

I thought it was pretty consistent with the British version, but they're talking about toning it down in the future.

Like it or not, U.S. federal law criminalizes video that depicts minors having sex, which strongly suggests minors having sex, or which uses minors to sexually tittilate the viewer. Only the first is illegal in Britain. Because MTV is shooting this series with real minors as young as 15, they're playing very close to a very dangerous line.

The original British version of Skins, fwiw, can't be shown in the U.S. unedited because of its content, and even posessing the DVD set could theoretically get someone prosecuted.

For an example of something that's illegal in the U.S. but legal in most of Europe, take a look at amysrobot.com/files/skins.JPG (I'm not linking it to protect myself). While on the surface it's simply a couple of teens kissing, U.S. courts have already ruled on this kind of material. Because the actress is actually a minor, and because the pose and kiss are "sexually suggestive", the material falls under our anti child porn laws. Even though the girl is fully clothed, and the boy is only missing his t-shirt. The fact that it's an actual minor makes all the difference.

Many people have argued that our laws go way too far, and I tend to agree, but the courts haven't been friendly to those who possess these images.

As I said, MTV is playing on a dangerous line.

because I know that the US Supreme Court ruled twice in 2002 (when that conservative Christian John Ashcroft was Attorney General and the plantiff in both cases) that the child porn and child online protection laws violated the 1st Amendment: Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union dealt with the Child Online Protection Act (which made it a crime to post material "harmful to minors" for commercial purpose online) and the earlier case Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition that struck down part of the Child Pornography Prevention Act. In there is a provision banning "any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, or computer or computer-generated image or picture." Notice the word "film". The decision reads in part:

It criminalized, as an example, posting images of a legal but young looking 19 year old woman. If the model even appeared to be underage, the images were criminalized. The court correctly ruled that the law was too subjective, and that it banned adults from engaging in otherwise legal speech behavior.

Skins features actual minors, and every activity you see on the screen was acted out by one of those actual minors. It's not like most Hollywood movies where you find a young looking 19 year old to play a 15 year old...they're depicting teen sexual activities with real underage minors.

The more relevant quote here is 180 USC 110, which bans child pornography and defines it as "depictions of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct". That definition doesn't actually require that nudity be shown, and the Supreme Court has upheld in both US v. Dost and Knox that nudity is NOT required for prosecution. It also led to the development of the so-called Dost Test. Any image meeting even one of these can potentially be considered illegal pornography, and any image meeting two or more is just inviting prosecution.

1.Whether the focal point of the visual depiction is on the child's genitalia or pubic area.
2.Whether the setting of the visual depiction is sexually suggestive, i.e., in a place or pose generally associated with sexual activity.
3.Whether the child is depicted in an unnatural pose, or in inappropriate attire, considering the age of the child.
4.Whether the child is fully or partially clothed, or nude.
5.Whether the visual depiction suggests sexual coyness or a willingness to engage in sexual activity.
6.Whether the visual depiction is intended or designed to elicit a sexual response in the viewer.

The original Skins easily meets the requirements of #5, and numbers 3, 4, and 6 could be argued by some prosecutors. If MTV were to try and broadcast the original show, in its original form, it's almost certain that someone would try to prosecute them for it. Because of that, I have no doubt that they'll be toning it down a bit.

did some further searching: that six-step thing right there is the Dost test...and actually the dost and knox cases are separate not consolidated.

I just wrote that badly :)

As a longtime amateur photographer, and a person who enjoys people-watching as part of his hobby, I try to keep abreast of what's legal and what's not. It's pretty amazing to find just how fuzzy the line is when you start looking into the case law involved with past kiddy porn prosecutions.

Take a photo of a smiling 5 year old girl in panties for a Sears ad, and it's perfectly legal.

Take that same girl, in the same clothes and the same photo set, and have her "wink" at the camera. Now, any DA who finds that wink suggestive can charge you with a felony. The facial expression, or the viewers interpretation of a facial expression, is all it takes to transform a routine photo into a life-destroying criminal activity.

While the current laws are a bit hard to navigate, I don't really have any better suggestions though. I just have a knee-jerk dislike to laws that predicate an actions legality on someone elses personal opinion.

In case you didn't know, the Parents Television Council is the org that's spearheaded the call for a federal investigation of the production of Skins. (Meanwhile, when are the federal investigations into Iraq War corruption and other issues raised by WikiLeaks?) Back last October, PTC complained about a GQ magazine photoshoot featuring cast members of the TV show Glee who portrayed their high school age characters (the actors are adults though) in sexually suggestive manners: PTC said the photos "bordered on pedophilia" but stopped short of calling for a federal investigation...because the Supreme Court ruled years ago that photos of adults portraying themselves as underage are protected free speech.

the British Skins was actually originally produced by Channel 4. MTV remade the show for American audiences.

My daughter is a fan of Skins and watched it on BBCA a couple of while back. They edit it for both length and content when they run it in the U.S. As they do many shows...UK shows are longer than American shows, so they do a bit of trimming to make the shows fit our format. As my daughter discovered when she pulled a few episodes off the Internet, the U.S. version also tends to have the naughtiest bits either removed or altered. I assume this is done to avoid legal trouble.

I don't know, I wasn't shocked or anything. My son really liked the first two seasons. The characters are very compelling. They have sex, get high, sell drugs, lie, cheat on school, cheat on each other, get high, go to parties, sometimes really bad things happen-- their parents divorce, remarry, abandon them, they get in accidents, committed, get sick or deported....and then they eventually graduate and get on with their lives. Much like kids today and back in my day. The characters and relationships are very developed. The violence is very tame compared to our teenage movies.

Except the programming you yourself watch... natch.

I imagine most mediums (music, literature, art, television, film, etc) have some "crap" ans some good stuff too. I imagine it's simply a matter of separating the chaff from the wheat. :shrug:

Believe it or not, TV isn't essential to our existence. I don't watch it. I don't have a TV. I have a few friends who have TVs, but the vast majority of my friends do not own televisions.

with Reason magazine managing editor Jesse Waters. (Reason is a libertarian magazine.) I'll post the interview later. It's during the 3rd hour of Hartmann; archives are on Ustream.tv/thomhartmann. Hartmann happens to be asking questions from the angle of "protecting the children" (the Parents Television Council angle).