I guess this question is for the younger members of the forum. When The Simpsons first hit TV, I was in around age 20 and in college, so the days of restricted TV were over for me. It's a funny thing, I don't remember my parents trying to restrict us from watching anything on TV. There were times when my parents would declare all TV off limits, but no restrictions on programs viewed. They used to get on these kicks about TV being the cause of all our problems and thought restricting it would solve them, but it never did so the restrictions didn't last long. For them it wasn't certain programs, it was all or nothing.
My brother tried to get our parents to restrict my TV viewing, but they never gave in. He for some reason, didn't want me watching the cartoon Speed Racer. I don't know what his problem with it was, he just for some reason decided there were some programs he didn't want me watching, and Speed Racer to him was the worst one. Funny when MTV reran it in the early 1990s, I found myself watching it and reliving some childhood memories. Even though I was in my early 20s with a college education, I still couldn't figure out what his problem with it was.
The only time I remember my parents wanting restrict us from something on TV was when we were small in the early 1970s and CBS aired a 2 part film called Helter Skelter, which was about Charles Manson. This film was so controversial because of its subject matter, many CBS affiliates didn't air the film in it's 9EST/8CEN planned timeslot instead delaying it to late night. My mother didn't want us watching this movie but it didn't matter anyway as our city's CBS affiliate bumped the movie to 11:35PM, long after our bed time.
Ironically several years after that, the film was put into syndication and a local independent station aired it in the originally planned 8PM Central Time timeslot! I saw a post in another forum about that movie from a guy who said he wasn't allowed to watch it, although he was older than I was at the time it first aired, but by the time he got older, an independent TV station in his area aired both parts of it back-to-back on a Saturday afternoon! How times had changed.
When I was a kid I never understood restricting kids from TV. I even had 12 channel cable with HBO in my bedroom when cable first came along when I was around 13. Saw alot of R rated films I probably wouldn't have seen otherwise. I didn't and still don't think TV is the root of all problems like some adults seem to.
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PrisonerSix
"I am not a number, I am a free man!"
09 Mar 2007, 8:17 pm
