Popular Entertainment Is Overly Influenced by Commercial

Popular entertainment is overly influenced by commercial interest. Superficiality, obscenity, and violence characterize films and television today because those qualities are commercially successful. Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with this opinion. To support your position, use reasons and/or examples from your reading, your observations, or your experiences as a consumer of popular entertainment. This assertion seems unusually pertinent to a current obsession of the media at this moment in our pop cultural history.

Quite recently a popular singer, attempting to resurrect her flagging career, exposed -- apparently deliberately -- a naked breast during a live, half time show during the Super Bowl. The breast in question of course belonged to one Ms. Janet Jackson, and although the singer coyly referred her exposure as a "wardrobe malfunction," her previous assertion upon her fan website that the half time show was going to exhibit something exciting or daring seems to fly in the face of her protestations that the brief nudity was accidental.

However, the incident, however trivial, gives rise to a question that is anything but lacking in significance -- why does sex supposedly sell so well? Why would Jackson choose this particular exhibition of open sexuality as a way to gain attention and why was she so successful? Supposedly, certain guidelines are put in place to ensure that so-called family programs such as the Super Bowl are 'vetted' for their sexual content -- guidelines that were breached because of the live nature of the event.

However, the Super Bowl itself is quite a violent, live event, even though it is a sports competition. And it is perhaps no coincidence that it draws a large audience as a result and thus the Super Bowl is also one of the most highly coveted spots for advertisers.

Just like Jackson deliberately decided to use nudity to gain attention for her career's advancement, advertisers use sexuality in the form of Swedish Bikini teams to sell beer during the game, and make use of the game's violent popularity to generate interest in their products. Furthermore, even supposedly legitimate forms of entertainment, such as the popular sitcom "Friends" have been frequently critiqued for their references to extramarital sexuality and masturbation, among other things.

The reason for this focus on sexuality, critics say, is that it draws upon the lowest common interest of everyday viewers in an easy way that advertisers can exploit. Such examples as "Friends" provide lurid storylines to pander to the least critical of viewers, the highly coveted teenage and young adult audience that is so coveted by advertisers. This audience tends to consume popular culture in the greatest quantity, to be most apt to shift brand alliances, and thus is the most desirable target audience for advertisers.

The need to attract teens, especially young, male teens has also been blamed for the supposed decline in the film industry and its focus upon characterless spectaculars of supreme violence, special effects, and pneumatic showings of breast and legs of nubile female co-stars. However, despite this critique, it is also important to note that some of the greatest works of classical literature are themselves quite violent.

A protagonist who has married his mother and murdered his father drives the text that provides the foundation of modern, Western drama, namely "Oedipus Rex." The Bible is quite violent, even if its tales take the form of a supposedly moral context. DH Lawrence's classic novel Lady Chatterley's Lover was once banned.

Now, any parent would be delighted to see his or her child reading this book under the covers because it is an acknowledged 'classic,' or at very least parents wouldn't mind seeing their children perusing "Romeo and Juliet" as a part of their freshman high school homework. The first scene of this work of Elizabethan drama, to draw the attention of the 'groundlings' begins with a brawl, just like the tragedy of "Hamlet" ends with a bloodbath.

Inclusions of sex and violence in all of these great works of literature were of course, because these acts were justified by the works' narrative structures and because they were supposed to reveal something about the characters involved. Thus, one might say they are quite different to the types of violence condemned by media critics today. But the examples above also show that violence and sexuality is part of the human condition, and cannot be ignored.

These works are classics because they say something profound about sexuality, morality, and human impulses to violence. Even the fascination of football is tied on some level to its examples of extremity, of the limits to which the players will push the human body.

The attraction of a violent street fight at the beginning of "Romeo and Juliet," to draw an individual into the story of the war between the houses of Montague and Capulet, is based upon the same dramatic attention-grapping principles as "Friends" making use of double entendre at the beginning of its half-hour. The author wishes to entice the attention of the viewer to remain with the tale that will unfold, not simply because a commercial break will draw the viewer's attention afterwards and the sponsor desires this.

Such attention getting is a legitimate dramatic technique and a part of narrative structure, and the interest in sexuality and violence is a human one, not simply one generated by media product purveying. This does not mean, of course, that Janet Jackson showing her breast to legions of fans at the Super Bowl and "Romeo and Juliet" are one in the same on a.