Saturday, May 14, 2011

Would A Perv, By Any Other Name, Still Be A Big Ol' Perv?

I was reading here about how book and TV people do not act as they would in real life.

Here's what gripes me: fictional portrayals of teacher/student romances.

That is just so wrong. So nauseating. I don't care how clean and shiny and good-looking the actors are. It's gross. Don't glorify it. You might as well try to foist a sympathetic child-molester on the viewing/reading public.

Let's take one of my favorite shows as an example: Pretty Little Liars.

The Aria/Ezra storyline always jarred me right out of that fictional little world. I could buy that Ezra mistook Aria for a college student when he first met her. Being right out of college himself, and Aria all pretendy about who she was, fueled that mistaken-identity fire. But when Ezra saw that Aria was a high school student in his class that first day, he should have put an end to their budding romance. He's the adult.

Since Ezra allowed the relationship to continue, he became a perv. A perv who doesn't give one whit about his career or the tender psyche of a 16-year-old girl. A perv who plays along with his victim's fantasy that they are soul mates. It doesn't matter how mature for her age Aria appears to be. No matter how much coffee she drinks with Ezra, or how many art shows they attend, she's still a freaking child! Lock up that perv and throw away the key!

And seriously...Ezra? Why not just name him Ichabod, or Ebenezer, or Bartholomew, or Marmaduke. Here's a thought: Chester the Molester.

Adults who watch the show can reconcile fiction with real life. The kids are kids. They don't think the same way adults think. They romanticize. This storyline should be taboo. Or used to illustrate how very, very wrong such a relationship would be. Because Pretty Little Liars is a show designed to attract an adolescent audience.

Criminy! We need to stop glorifying pedophile/victim love stories. This show has an adult male of at least 22 years of age in a romantic relationship with a 16-year-old girl. Aren't there laws against that sort of thing?

Lock Ezra up and throw away the key. And his teaching certificate.

It's all I can do to watch every single episode.

4 comments:

Mommy Needs a Xanax said...

Good grief. What channel is this on? Not surprising, if you think about it. It's like nothing is off limits anymore and if anyone questions whether something you want to do is okay, they're oppressing your individuality or trying to control you with their own measure of right and wrong, or whatever.

No republic without liberty; no liberty without virtue; no virtue without religion.

Hillbilly Mom said...

MommyNeeds,
Mark your calendar: new episodes begin on Tuesday, June 14, at 7:00 p.m. central time on ABC Family.

Yes, it's true. This soft-core kiddie pr0n is on ABC FAMILY!

It's based on a YA book series of the same name. I haven't read them, so I don't know if the plots are the same.

Synopsis so far: four girls are being spied on and blackmailed by "A", the fifth friend who just happened to turn up dead on the night they all had a sleepover. The texts and mysterious happenings started on the one-year anniversary of A's death.

It's a pretty little show. And addictive. In a yelling-at-the-screen kind of way. I love to yell at Spencer, the sixteen-year-old character portrayed by an actress who looks 40.

I think you can watch the earlier episodes online. There's an official website with info about the characters.

Not that I'm promoting the show or anything. It's like a train wreck. I can't look away.

Mommy Needs a Xanax said...

Some "young adult" literature is just nasty. My sister's friend's 11 year old daughter recently checked out a book at the school library that included a detailed description of a girl getting her jollies with a shower head while picturing Orlando Bloom. She then describes the experience to a younger girl to teach her how to, you know, take care of herself, explaining that when she has sex with a boy he isn't going to care about whether she enjoys it so she'd better learn to make it happen herself. Sister's friend found her daughter reading this to her 2 little sisters, who are about 4 and 7 years old.

I'm pretty sure she let someone at the school have it the next day. I don't blame her. I don't want to totally shelter my boys from the ways of the world, but a detailed description of someone getting their rocks off is too much, especially for a pre-pubescent tweenager. As a parent you should be able to rely on the school to not provide that type of smut to them, IMO. And yeah, a tv channel with the name "family" in it kind of implies that they won't be working to convince your children there's no such thing as right and wrong, but apparently they are pushing the boundaries with that show.

Hillbilly Mom said...

MommyNeeds,
Thank the Gummi Mary, this show isn't that graphic. But it's glorifying a taboo relationship. It would be different if it was marketed to adults on NBC at 9:00 p.m. The 7:00 ABC Family time slot is the irker for me.