There’s recently been a good deal of debate about the rights and wrongs of swearing and violence on TV, so we thought we’d take a look at these issues and ask your opinion on the rights and wrongs of it.

F-ing chefs

Let’s start with the issue of swearing and of course, one for whom swearing is virtually a trademark is Gordon Ramsay, who even has a show entitled, The F Word.

Gordon’s made a niche for himself in the over-populated world of TV chefs because of his constant use of the F word… but is it a bad thing?

Comedian Frank Skinner recently commented to The Sun that TV chefs swear in order to look “more manly” because they do “women’s work”. Obviously, Frank meant this in a tongue-in-cheek way, but perhaps he’s not so far off the mark.

Earlier this year, the Radio Times commissioned a survey of its readers on the subject of swearing on TV and 69% of respondents believed that there was far too much swearing. On the Radio Times website, a lady called Marianne responded to the article about the survey and said,

“I supply teach in a number of schools and the f-word is no longer considered abnormal by a large number of children even pre-teenager! It has been downgraded to a slang adjective added to any conversation”

And therein lies the problem: it’s all become very acceptable.

Bad role models?

Earlier this month, it was reported that Gordon Ramsay intends to cut down on the amount of swearing he does on his TV shows. This is because he’s fed up with people asking him to sign his autograph as “f**k off, Gordon Ramsay.”

He was also recently quoted as saying he was worried about his kids joining him for his live cookalong show in case they swore on TV.

The issue as far as I’m concerned isn’t about adults using swear words, it’s the fact that any anti-social behaviour is automatically glamourised by people on TV who children admire and imitate. Is Gordon someone who falls into that category? If he didn’t say f**k every two minutes, then no, he wouldn’t be, but because he does, it’s given him something of an iconic status and people – kids included – do emulate him.

Now, I love Gordon – I think he’s great, but he’s really just the tip of the symptomatic iceberg where normalising anti-social behaviour is concerned. In my opinion, far worse are soaps and even adverts where young people are shown to be horrendously disrespectful and anti-social, and worse, they’re shown getting away with it.

Violence on television shows

How many times on our soaps do we see young kids and teenagers being very rude and often violent towards authority figures? The Bill, Casualty, Eastenders… the list goes on and on. It happens in them all: kids behaving badly towards teachers, nurses, police officers, social workers and adults in general.

One such example is pretty much all of Bianca Jackson’s storylines since she’s been back on the Square. We first met up with Bianca’s family again as she was evading police and sleeping rough. However, when finally the police tackled her, she was shown assaulting a police officer and her kids shown shouting abuse.

We’ve also seen her defend Tiffany to Mrs Masood when the child had stolen her property; not only did she defend her child’s actions, she was rude to the wronged woman and didn’t even try to make the child see why it was wrong to steal. Ever since, Bianca’s actively encouraged Tiffany to get on the Masood’s nerves by petty acts of irritation. It’s these sorts of actions that spark feuds among real life neighbours and can make people’s lives hell.

Also, as we reported last year, OFCOM issued a report criticising British soaps for showing excessive amounts of violence before the watershed and in so doing, the watchdog singled out ITV soap, Emmerdale, in its report after it received numerous complaints about the violence shown surrounding the kidnap of Tom and Sadie King.

According to Ofcom, one of the scenes contained a “significant amount of blood” and a close-up of the character’s injury.

ITV defended the scenes stating:

“Whilst Emmerdale stories do not condone violent acts, it need not and should not shy away from them,” the broadcaster told Ofcom.

It said it had reached an “appropriate balance between dramatic entertainment and offence”.

But just what is an ‘appropriate’ level of violence? And in judging what’s appropriate and what isn’t, are soaps imitating real life or are the public increasingly influenced by what they see in soaps?

Even something as seemingly innocuous as TV adverts can perpetuate bad behaviour. For example, in an ad campaign that recently ran about bread, a mother and child were seen having a battle over whether the child should have crusts on his bread. He didn’t want them, his mother did, so we see the child lying on the floor kicking a wall as he and his mother argue.

Granted, it’s not violence per se but since when was it ok to a) argue with your mother when you’re not tall enough to reach her waist and b) why was she just sitting there while this small child kicked a wall over and over again? Is it therefore acceptable for little kids to kick walls in anger at something as ridiculous as having crusts on bread? And if so, what’s an acceptable display of anger if the issue was something serious? Headbutting your mother? Pulling a knife?

I honestly believe that it’s these small and relatively insidious portrayals of life – swearing, disrespecting authority – that are allowing ever more anti-social and unacceptable behaviour to become commonplace in our society.

So what are your thoughts on this? Is our society becoming immune to, and accepting of, anti-social behaviour because it’s commonplace on our screens or is the anti-social behaviour that appears on our screens merely a reflection of society rather society mirroring TV?

Let us know!