Adult
- Burn Gorman in an early episode of Torchwood
I've been thinking a bit over the last day or so about what "adult" means, when it comes to entertainment. This is mainly down to watching something on television that was fairly heavily signposted as being "adult" by throwing a couple of rude words in early on, and some gratuitous sex.
The basic dilemma is this. Real life contains sex and swearing. Adults can deal with sex and swearing, so it's okay to have them in an adult drama.
But, of course, being an adult means having responsibility. Just because you can have sex and swearing, doesn't mean that you have to. There's a whole train of thought around "If you're being terribly imaginative and grown up then you don't need to resort to sex and swearing" which is tantamount to saying "censor yourself". Nothing wrong with that as long as you still have the choice, but it is getting close to the message purveyed by the Provisional Wing of the National Viewer and Listener's Association in the 1970s when they campaigned against that sort of thing. And ended up publicising it, but never mind.
However, there's a counter-argument. The programme contained adult themes, by which I mean serious moral ambiguities discussed and unresolved, conflict between the characters and characters who were heroic - but not role models. By using swearing so obviously, it clearly marked the programme as one that was targetted at adults rather than children. A few "rude words" act as a deterrent - highlighting that this is the sort of programme that parents may not want to expose children to.
Don't know, jury's still out.
23 October, 2006
