The most exciting words on American television are “viewer discretion is advised.”
Usually you hear them spoken by a baritone-voiced announcer before a show or movie that contains “violent scenes” or, with any luck, “adult themes.”
Other times, networks broadcast the caveat before a news documentary about a troubling subject such as a disease, genocide, or even an administration’s ineptitude when an American city is underwater.
But about a week ago, I heard the admonishment before a 20/20 program on ABC about supposed hidden messages in Michelangelo frescoes in the Sistine Chapel.
The voice advised viewers that the following program “contained imagines of Renaissance nudes.”
Really. Get thee behind me, Hugh Downs.
Granted I didn’t watch the show, as I recently endured The Da Vinci Code and had my fill of hidden symbols in paintings, but also because I was staggered that ABC would make such an announcement.
Cooler heads would reply that 20/20 just wanted to make sure the paintings of the ever-hirsute God reaching out to a nude Adam would not offend anybody.
Though, when it comes to puritanical nonsense, mine, alas, is not such a head.
If you are the type of person who would get offended by Renaissance nudes on television, you are a Philistine.
Ever since that iconic moment when Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson’s mammary for less than two seconds at the Super Bowl in 2004 networks have been all a twitter about offending people. After that episode, plenty of airtime has been given to groups such the Parents Television Council, the right-wing organization that serves as a television “watchdog.”
The PTC allows you to file complaints with the FCC instantly through links on its Web site. Currently they are lodging a jihad against NBC and its hit show 30 Rock for its use of “bleeped expletives” and a joke involving the acronym MILF—take a second to figure out this reference to attractive mothers. (If not, PTC has spelled it out for you with plenty of chaste asterisks.)
As of this writing, PTC has not yet rated 20/20 as “inappropriate” or “unsuitable” for children, but ABC engaged in a bit of preemption on the matter.
But, as we hear at least 600 times a week in the newspaper game, what about our children?
Why would a parent or guardian want to pass up an opportunity to expose them, even if it is through television, to one of the great world achievements, Michelangelo’s art?
It might be a one in a thousand shot, but maybe a kid somewhere watched 20/20 that night and became curious about Renaissance painting or Michelangelo.
And as those born before 1990 would have turned to the encyclopedia to learn more, our curious child might enter Michelangelo’s world via Wikipedia. Once there, this kid will read about his great works, including The Last Judgment on the wall behind the altar in the Sistine Chapel.
There one can read that the nudes in the scene were considered obscene and how, after Michelangelo died in 1564, censors launched a campaign to cover or obscure the genitals on many of his frescoes and sculptures.
It was the so-called “fig leaf” movement, fig leaves being the “bleeping expletives” and blurred images of its time.
After a warning, ABC did show the paintings, sparing parents, so the argument goes, of having to explain nudity to their children.
After all, what better example can one think of than Michelangelo’s religious works—that are in a church, for bleeping sake—to elucidate about the difference between true obscenity and art.
That conversation is the seed of our most treasured value: free expression.
This is the opinion of Times staff writer Stephen Chupaska.