Your Favorite Decade for TV on DVD (1 Viewer)

[Neil Brock]

The day that Snooki was asked to give the commencement address at Rutgers, I knew the end was near.

A requirement should be that the person should be able to spell commencement in order to give the speech.

 

[Ethan Riley]

     Quote:

 

Ethan, I appreciate the clarification even though I think the last sentence I quoted from you was the key.  ... It was that comment that led me to believe you thought all the TV shows from the 50's "sucked" in and of themselves.  And while your greater detail helps me to better understand where you are  coming from, I still think we view TV in a fundamentally different way.  I still maintain that TV is purely entertainment and that there's no unwritten rule that says a show must accurately portray the issues of the day in order to be relevant or worthwhile.  I also disagree with your contention that 50's TV doesn't "represent a real-world view of their era."  Again, I'd refer you to Paul Mavis' comments on that very subject in his review of the Ozzie & Harriet set.  ... I guess at the end of the day we just disagree about what TV is really all about.  Is it only a teaching tool used by the elite to try and mold America into what some think it already is and/or what those few elite think it should be?  Or is it simply a form of entertainment that can offer either a real life, gritty portrayal of some unpleasant aspect of human life (ala The Naked City) - OR - an idealized portrayal of a more pleasant aspect of human life (ala Leave it to Beaver)?  I say it can do either and that the 50's shouldn't be thrown out in the garbage simply because the majority of shows during that decade emphasized the better aspects of human life rather than the more seedy and depressing aspects of human life.

 

 

Gary "that's the way I see it" O.

Again, I was not attacking 50s programming. I was commenting on the outright censorship of the airwaves at the time that caused television to be the way it was. I think suppression of the airwaves sucks. I think suppression of artistic freedom sucks. The fact that good programming came out of a repressed era is a testament to clever writers and performers. But one might also bemoan the fact that 50s television is not necessarily reflective of any real-life worldview that we might have seen of those days. There's a lot to say about the 50s that's generally unknown to us today because of the filmed relics that decade left behind. And it starts with the fact that the artistic media then was forced to play it safe and was not allowed to offer a more rounded view of its time and its people. To begin picking away at this, I'll start by saying I think Paul Mavis totally contradicted himself in that assessment of Ozzie and Harriet. He can't compare real families with Ozzie and Harriet. He can't say that real families were fighting and dealing with death and taxes, claim that those families were like the Nelsons and then turn around and admit that those things weren't seen on Ozzie and Harriet. That statement makes absolutely no sense. If he claims that real-life families laughed and loved and enjoyed one another's company--like the Nelsons--that's a true statement. But he can't claim that those families were just like the Nelsons if they also were dealing with reality. He's trying to distill real life into only its most positive aspects and compare that to the Nelsons. But...that can't be done. I know highly dysfunctional families who still laugh and love and what not. I suppose if I completely ignore the negative aspects of their lives, then yes--I'd find the Nelsons. But I do not live in an age where we can or should ignore our problems for any reason. We must face them. If we ignore them, they only become worse. If you ignore those white elephants, they'll eventually come charging through your living room. Should Ozzie and Harriet have dealt with racism or alcoholism or teen pregnancy? No. It was widely viewed by children, and those topics largely don't need to be dramatized or discussed at their age group. The show offered gentle life's lessons and that was enough for its era, its viewership and its philosophy. But if you choose only to watch 50s programming, you don't get the best of all possible worlds. You get good programming, but much of it is also distilled only towards a positive and often naive view of the world. To truly live in this world, you have to face it--warts and all--not turn away from it. And television can be either an education tool, an entertainment vehicle, or both all in one show. I think the best shows are entertaining and offer us some little nugget of wisdom. 50s shows were tightly constrained by Standards and Practices. By now, that's largely been done away with, and I do not see that as a negative thing in a country where Freedom of Speech is supposedly a right that we all share. But to be horrified by social problems and turn away from them to the comfort of our televisions is like making the same mistake our repressive forebears made in terms of media and censorship. If we as citizens of the United States today and look out our windows and don't like what we see--then that's a sign that weneed to do something about it. Weneed to join a group that cleans up the beaches, reads to senior citizens, removes graffiti from the downtown area or volunteers in a homeless shelter or a group that keeps kids away from gangs and drugs. Those are all things that we can be doing--that we need to do--if the world is so awful, as some seem to believe. Problems don't solve themselves--we solve them, as a society. I don't see anything wrong with that either. But we can't just shun all of those things--tell ourselves that there's nothing we can do about it. There's something wrong with that. And I believe because of the paranoia during the 50s what with the Red Scare, the Hollywood Blacklist and so on, that those same artists were not able to get their point across and society suffered as a result. And nobody better tell me that television drama and comedy doesn't make a difference--that television is too impotent to create any societal change. Art is powerful and has always made a difference in the lives of those viewing it. If television made no difference then we'd have no love for it and wouldn't be discussing it in any great detail, day after day on the message board. Everyone's favorite shows have had some meaning and impact in their lives whether they're consciously aware of it or not. I don't believe that any of this is mindless, forgettable entertainment. If that were true, why would we be so hot to buy it and have it in our homes? I don't understand the viewpoint that the 50s were somewhat "better" than today, or somehow more wholesome or pure. Trust me when I tell you--everything that's going on today was going on then too. It's just that you seldom heard about those things because in a constrained society, people were uncomfortable discussing those things. My mother was in her 20s; she says she knew all the stuff that was doing on with drugs, racism, abortions and what-have-you...but she also says that nobody openly discussed them. People tried to pretend they didn't exist. And if tolerance is somehow leading to the decline of Western Civilization as some seem to feel in this thread, then let it decline. I don't think it's a good thing to let the pendulum swing back the other way. I absolutely have no interest in a world wherein gays, ethnic groups or unwed mothers are somehow marginalized, ignored or shunned. "Entertainment" is always going to be subjective. Remember, horror, war and crime shows are also considered "entertainment" by those who enjoy them. They are no less entertaining to those who love them. But note Grant's short comment above. With dvd, you get the best of all possible worlds: you get vintage television and current shows, and a fair sampling of all genres therein. You get to choose what you want to watch and that's the most important part of this argument. In fact, that's all that's important when discussing television on dvd--you get a choice, which no one had in the 1950s.

 

[TravisR]

^ Great post. It's going to be largely ignored but still a great post.

 

[Gary OS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TravisR

^ Great post. It's going to be largely ignored but still a great post.

I won't ignore it. I just don't have time to post a proper response at the moment.


Gary "even though I disagree with Ethan's take on this subject, I appreciate him taking time to post" O.

 

[Richard V]

A requirement should be that the person should be able to spell commencement in order to give the speech.

Amen, brother.

 

[Neil Brock]

Until Gary has a moment, I'll add my two cents for a response. Children watch TV and I don't know about now, but at least when I was growing up, children watched a lot of TV. And many children's viewing is not monitored by their parents. Is it really beneficial to them and to society to have them exposed to everything that exists in the world? Take a show like Two and a Half Men for instance. Popular and now running in syndication at all hours all over the country. I've seen it a couple of times and that is a rude and vulgar show. Every joke in the show practically is a sex joke. I realize that network's Standards and Practices divisions don't exist anymore. Is it really better that we now have no standards? True, there is nothing around now that wasn't around 50 years ago. Then, everything wasn't out in the open for all the world to see. Was it really so bad not to know about all of the depravity and deviancy that exists in the world? I don't feel my childhood would have been enhanced any by what children know and see today. Maybe not in the 50s but by the early 60s there were shows like The Defenders, East Side West Side and others which dealt with all manner of social and societal ills and those were great shows. But they were dramas, not sitcoms and likely were only watched by adults. I don't need social lessons in my sitcoms and while AITF was very funny, it was such a slanted, one-sided show that it became grating after a while. Maude was even worse because there wasn't even a character in the show to counteract her extremist views, which were those of the producer. Now today, most shows have lead characters who range from severely flawed to out and out criminals. Everybody loved The Sopranos - great, a show about a lovely family where the father is a murdering mafia kingpin and his fellow thieves and murderers. Silly question but is there even a show on the air anymore about a traditional family with a husband and wife and children? Or was the much criticized According to Jim the last one?

 

[Walter Kittel]

Silly question but is there even a show on the air anymore about a traditional family with a husband and wife and children?

Well, there are the ABC comedies The Middle and Modern Family (parts of it are traditional. ). And as far as family goes, Blue Bloods is about as traditional as you can get, at least in terms of inter-generational relationships. I'm sure there are others, but those are some of the ones that I view on a regular basis. - Walter.

 

[Gary OS]

Thanks for another great response, Neil! You said just about everything I was going to say. You hit the nail on the head as far as I'm concerned.



Gary "you are spot on, Neil, about the Lear sitcoms and how one-sided they often were" O.

 

[TravisR]

Children watch TV and I don't know about now, but at least when I was growing up, children watched a lot of TV. And many children's viewing is not monitored by their parents. Is it really beneficial to them and to society to have them exposed to everything that exists in the world? Take a show like Two and a Half Men for instance. Popular and now running in syndication at all hours all over the country. I've seen it a couple of times and that is a rude and vulgar show. Every joke in the show practically is a sex joke.

What kid understands sex jokes though? I've never seen Two And A Half Men but I saw things like Soap and Three's Company when I was young and I didn't understand any of the sexual innuendo in those shows. I just laughed when someone fell down. I doubt kids are all that different today.

 

[JoeDoakes]

Yes Neil, I agree. As for "artistic freedom," I think that it is overrated and that it exists less today than one might think. The best period Hollywood ever had was in the late 1930s and the early 1940s right after they started enforcing the Hays Code. I am not an expert on the Hays Code and would not want to defend it in all it's aspects, but I think that the history shows that less artistic freedom wasn't necesssarilly such a bad thing. To be fair, Hollywood had a pretty good record in the early to mid 1970s right after they stopped enforcing the Hays code but there seemed to be a real emphasis during that period on creative story telling. Today, there is plenty of artistic freedom to include crude or exploitation type material in tv shows or preachy social liberalism, but how "free" would a tv producer be to avoid all of that. Judging by what is on tv today, I don't think there is much real freedom at all. The biggest problem is that when tv relies on being edgy to attract viewers, it results in a downward spiral of programming as shows become progressively more crude. When Seinfeld started, the crude aspects of some of its story lines turned me off but, especially after the first few seasons, I think that it produced a lot of truly creative, inspired comedy. Because of Seinfeld's success, producers of other shows tried to imitate it. However, creative, inpired comedy is hard to find. What was easy to reproduce was crude subject matter, and so television was inundated with a lot of it. Most sitcoms today strike me as something that would be produced by fifteen year old morons who believe themselves to be smarter than anyone else.

 

[smithb]

What kid understands sex jokes though? I've never seen Two And A Half Men but I saw things like Soap and Three's Company when I was young and I didn't understand any of the sexual innuendo in those shows. I just laughed when someone fell down. I doubt kids are all that different today.

Kids are very impressionable and have difficulty separating fiction from reality. While there are plenty of studies I imagine it is hard to equate the full impact over many years of watching as one grows up. One benefit I see in today's programming is that there is more emphasis on quality programming for very young kids. I have two daughters that are 4 and 8 years old. All they know of TV is NickJr (formally Noggin) and what we watch together before bed time. NickJr has quality programming that has no commercials to deal with (e.g., merchandising, other shows that may be inappropriate). Each show identifies the social and educational benefits before airing. Now obviously not all channels are as kid friendly, but it is good to know that some are. Generally, before bedtime we watch shows from the 50's and 60's. As good as they may be they can use some explanation for small children at times. But I'd rather sit and explain them then the majority of other programming currently available today.

 

[TravisR]

Kids are very impressionable and have difficulty separating fiction from reality. While there are plenty of studies I imagine it is hard to equate the full impact over many years of watching as one grows up. One benefit I see in today's programming is that there is more emphasis on quality programming for very young kids. I have two daughters that are 4 and 8 years old. All they know of TV is NickJr (formally Noggin) and what we watch together before bed time. NickJr has quality programming that has no commercials to deal with (e.g., merchandising, other shows that may be inappropriate). Each show identifies the social and educational benefits before airing. Now obviously not all channels are as kid friendly, but it is good to know that some are. Generally, before bedtime we watch shows from the 50's and 60's. As good as they may be they can use some explanation for small children at times. But I'd rather sit and explain them then the majority of other programming currently available today.

I think that's great that you spend that kind of time with your children and that you look at the TV as more than a babysitter (it'd be a better world if everyone did that) but it doesn't really address my point that children don't know about sex and wouldn't understand jokes relating to it in a sitcom. If they do know about sex, they've got bigger problems than watching lame or vulgar sitcoms.

 

[smithb]

I think that's great that you spend that kind of time with your children and that you look at the TV as more than a babysitter (it'd be a better world if everyone did that) but it doesn't really address my point that children don't know about sex and wouldn't understand jokes relating to it in a sitcom. If they do know about sex, they've got bigger problems than watching lame or vulgar sitcoms.

Well...studies have shown that forms of violence in TV and things that ultimately scare them can have an impact (and what you might think they find scary and what they actually do find scary might be surprising). As far as sexual jokes and innuendo in TV that they don't understand, I would say it is probably hard to tell what impact it might have initially, but It still all serves as inputs being collected in a mind that is starving for information. And repeated exposure with a slowly evolving understanding of its meaning could have an impact. A quote from a study that just came up in a search “Children learn from media, and when they watch media with sexual references and innuendos, our research suggests they are more likely to engage in sexual activity earlier in life.”

 

[Professor Echo]

For the last fifteen years most of my scholarly study as a film historian has been focused on the so-called "Pre-Code" era of American film, which more or less is defined by the late 20's to the second half of 1934 when a restrictive code which had been established earlier, began to be enforced in earnest. I contrast that with the early to late 60's when the code began breaking down and was eventually replaced with the more mature and realistic ratings system, as flawed as that has turned out to be in and of itself. For all my research into these pivotal periods of film history I have come to the conclusion that blanket censorship did indeed yield challenges for artists to be more creative within a repressive system. However, seeing those pre-code movies of the early 30's are a revelation in that they give you a bit of a reflection of what people were dealing with at that point in world history. Mostly regarded today for their unflinching and, yes, often salacious takes on sex and violence, they nevertheless offer a window into some basic, timeless issues affecting humanity which were rarely ever addressed again by Hollywood for the next thirty years. Helping the rawness of that fascinating time of the Pre-Code were the still relatively primitive filmmaking techniques employed for the new all talking pictures, something that only seemed to increase their effective realism. But it's interesting, by the time the code starts being enforced in 1934 movies are already more polished and slick and after the code application, they become very, very sanitized, not just in content, but in every aspect of the finished product. Although many film masterpieces came out of those code strict decades, it's actually quite sad to see this rather "fake" world evolve and prosper.Some writers and directors were able to achieve little victories here and there over the censors and many were quite admirable in what they accomplished within the code, meeting the challenge with great wit and wisdom, but for me it does not justify censorship.


Now having said that, I want to illustrate the most negative aspect of an artistic medium which offers complete free rein to express yourself without any imposed restrictions or limitations. You suddenly no longer have any challenge to overcome, no boundaries for which you must endeavor to straddle or cross with creativity and imagination. Even the filmmakers in the Pre-Code era were bound by certain standards and did not have the authority nor the audience's complicit acceptance to do anything they wanted. But now we seem to have very little inherent rejection of anything, save for an instantaneous judgment anytime a celebrity does something the greater media at large deems to be, not wrong anymore, but "inappropriate." Do that and we sheep ourselves to the gods of the 24/7 media and offer our severest verdicts on their contemptible behavior, never mind that our popular culture depicts such transgressions as "entertainment" every hour of the day and night.


People who work in creative jobs are no different from anyone in any job: Remove any structure or guidelines for them to follow and you are offering them the potential to become extremely lax and lazy in their work. And that sums up why every sitcom nowadays has one sex joke after another. It's a fast, cheap and lazy way to get a laugh, the same as it was when we were little boys in grade school. As for dramas, well, if anything goes, let's concentrate on the most shocking, reprehensible and taboo breaking subjects we can JUST BECAUSE WE CAN and because it will make everyone sit up and take notice. A unwed pregnant nine year old girl about to be beheaded by a serial killing pedophile who eats dogs and cats and may be responsible for a killing a hundred years ago on another planet, but only blood work can prove it!? Why not? Think of how we can hype that between all the hypes for your local news and the latest scare about dog meat eating interplanetary serial killer pedophiles! Cheap, vulgar, sleazy, exploitative and unrepentant in its veneer of being REAL. That's what we are faced with in our media now.


So I see Ethan's point, I see Gary's point, but the truth for me is in the same place it almost always is, in the middle, in the grey. I don't want censorship, but I do want personal responsibility for you own uncensored actions. I want self-discretion and self-restraint, I want self-worth. I want a writer to sit down the way I do when I am writing my fiction and think, "What am I about to unleash upon the world? My mother will read this, my kids will read this, my third grade teacher will read this. What I am contributing here to make this art worthwhile and meaningful?" Don't tel me what I can and cannot write, but tell me to think and act like a responsible human being in a civilization of responsible human beings.

 

[smithb]

So I see Ethan's point, I see Gary's point, but the truth for me is in the same place it almost always is, in the middle, in the grey. I don't want censorship, but I do want personal responsibility for you own uncensored actions. I want self-discretion and self-restraint, I want self-worth. I want a writer to sit down the way I do when I am writing my fiction and think, "What am I about to unleash upon the world? My mother will read this, my kids will read this, my third grade teacher will read this. What I am contributing here to make this art worthwhile and meaningful?" Don't tel me what I can and cannot write, but tell me to think and act like a responsible human being in a civilization of responsible human beings.

Good job Glen...well stated.

 

[Gary OS]

So many comments, so little time. I just want to say I've really enjoyed reading what Joe, Brad, Travis and Glen have said. Everyone is making great points. One thing that I see happening is that Ethan is arguing from a point that no one in this thread is trying to make. At least I don't think anyone has tried to make the point. Namely, that they want to suppress minorities or encourage turning a blind eye to societies problems via TV censorship. I know that I'm not advocating that. So I think, to some degree, we've got a strawman argument going on here. I'd also suggest that just because Father Knows Best, or Leave it to Beaver, didn't have episodes devoted to rape or civil rights doesn't mean they were suppressing important issues of the day. They were sitcoms for goodness sake! I won't speak for others in this thread, but what I am talking about when I say I generally like 50's TV more than modern TV is that everything didn't have to go to the lowest common denominator. If someone needs to hear a toilet flushed, or listen to actors scream profanities, or watch sleazy characters seduce one another - if all of that is necessary to make the TV show "relevant" and/or "real" - then you can have it. I'd like to spend my time watching something that doesn't drag me down into the dirt with it. Why should I subject myself to those things when I'm making a choice to be entertained? It makes no sense to me. And I believe that's where Glen's point about self-discipline from writers, directors and producers comes into play.

The issue at hand is not about sticking your head in the ground and ignoring the problems of society. I'm all for addressing those. I just think we can accomplish that by emphasizing the positive virtues and not playing to the negative ones. Brad said it correctly when he mentioned the effects of TV on children. And not just children. It has an impact on everyone as they watch, whether they want it to or not. That's just the nature of the beast. Garbage in - Garbage out.

I probably fall more in line with Ray when we are talking about the Hays Code. I still think that era produced the greatest number of top notch films. Having said that, I've not made a point of exploring the pre-code days in detail like Glen has. But what I do know is that I prefer films, and TV, when there is a modicum of decency that doesn't offend my sensibilities. Years ago I read an article published in Forbes magazine that so accurately conveyed my feelings on the larger subject we are discussing here that I saved it. I think the author, Peggy Noonan, hits the proverbial nail on the head with her sentiments as it concerns seeing the world change. No, the article isn't specifically about TV shows and how they've changed over the years, but the broader principle applies, IMHO. Since I can't improve on what she said I'll just quote her:

Remember your boomer childhood in the towns and suburbs. You had physical security. You were safe. It is a cliché to say it, but it can’t be said enough: We didn’t lock the doors at night in the old America. We slept with the windows open! The cities were better. A man and woman falling in love could stroll the parks of a city at 2 a.m. Douglas Edwards, the venerable newscaster, once told me about what he called the best time. He sat back in the newsroom one afternoon in the late Seventies, in the middle of the creation of the current world, and said, “New York in the Fifties—there was nothing like it, it was clean and it was peaceful. You could walk the streets!” He stopped, and laughed at celebrating with such emotion what should be commonplace.


You know what else I bet he thought, though he didn’t say it. It was a more human world in that it was a sexier world, because sex was still a story. Each high school senior class had exactly one girl who got pregnant and one guy who was the father, and it was the town’s annual scandal. Either she went somewhere and had the baby and put it up for adoption, or she brought it home as a new baby sister, or the couple got married and the town topic changed. It was a stricter, tougher society, but its bruising sanctions came from ancient wisdom.


We have all had a moment when all of a sudden we looked around and thought: The world is changing, I am seeing it change. This is for me the moment when the new America began: I was at a graduation ceremony at a public high school in New Jersey. It was 1971 or 1972. One by one a stream of black-robed students walked across the stage and received their diplomas. And a pretty young girl with red hair, big under her graduation gown, walked up to receive hers. The auditorium stood up and applauded. I looked at my sister: “She’s going to have a baby.”


The girl was eight months pregnant and had had the courage to go through with her pregnancy and take her finals and finish school despite society’s disapproval... But: Society wasn’t disapproving. It was applauding.


Applause is a right and generous response for a young girl with grit and heart. And yet, in the sound of that applause I heard a wall falling, a thousand-year wall, a wall of sanctions that said: We as a society do not approve of teenaged unwed motherhood because it is not good for the child, not good for the mother and not good for us.


The old America had a delicate sense of the difference between the general (“We disapprove”) and the particular (“Let’s go help her”). We had the moral self-confidence to sustain the paradox, to sustain the distance between “official” disapproval and “unofficial” succor. The old America would not have applauded the girl in the big graduation gown, but some of its individuals would have helped her not only materially but with some measure of emotional support. We don’t so much anymore. For all our tolerance and talk we don’t show much love to what used to be called girls in trouble. As we’ve gotten more open-minded we’ve gotten more closed-hearted.


Message to society: What you applaud, you encourage. And: Watch out what you celebrate.

There are always exceptions, but in general I prefer the ethics and mores that were applauded, encouraged and celebrated in 50's/60's TV over those of today. It's pretty much that simple for me.



Gary "off to watch an uplifting episode of Ozzie & Harriet now" O.

 

[Gary OS]

I just wanted to quote a couple more posts that made some good points:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve...O



Gary "thanks for all the contributions to this thread, guys" O.

 

[DaveHof]

So many comments, so little time.  I just want to say I've really enjoyed reading what Joe, Brad, Travis and Glen have said.  Everyone is making great points.  One thing that I see happening is that Ethan is arguing from a point that no one in this thread is trying to make.  At least I don't think anyone has tried to make the point.  Namely, that they want to suppress minorities or encourage turning a blind eye to societies problems via TV censorship.  I know that I'm not advocating that.  So I think, to some degree, we've got a strawman argument going on here.  I'd also suggest that just because Father Knows Best, or Leave it to Beaver, didn't have episodes devoted to rape or civil rights doesn't mean they were suppressing important issues of the day.  They were sitcoms for goodness sake!  I won't speak for others in this thread, but what I am talking about when I say I generally like 50's TV more than modern TV is that everything didn't have to go to the lowest common denominator.  If someone needs to hear a toilet flushed, or listen to actors scream profanities, or watch sleazy characters seduce one another - if all of that is necessary to make the TV show "relevant" and/or "real" - then you can have it.  I'd like to spend my time watching something that doesn't drag me down into the dirt with it. .

Once again, I have enjoyed reading this thread and while I had planned to respond to Ethan, many of the points I would have made have already been eloquently stated. But I'll throw in my 2 cents anyway. I believe there is a big difference between acknowledging faults, acknowledging poor behavior, acknowledging societal ills, and wallowing in them, or celebrating them, or presenting them as the new norm that replaces those old, outdated values that don't have a place anymore. While some of us find not just entertainment but comfort and an admirable perspective on life in these 50s shows, Ethan seems to be saying, "No, don't just look at the positive! Look at the ugliness! Look at the despair! Don't watch the Nelsons, watch the people in the home on the next block, where little Suzy is pregnant and little Billy is strung out on smack! That's real life!" Well, sadly that is part of real life. But I wonder, if all of the network and sponsor restrictions were removed (and these seem to be Ethan's biggest issue with the era) would we have seen more of these stories on our favorite shows? Or would the writers have still chosen to focus on characters that make better choices, and that love each other, and that try to treat other people with dignity and respect? Because I truly believe that's the way most people tried to live their lives back then. I don't think that is the case anymore. In the 1950s unwed teen pregnancy was a source of shame. Today, it's a punchline or an MTV reality series ('16 and Pregnant'). Which of these scenarios benefits society more?

 

[Gary OS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaveHof " O.

 

[TravisR]

In the 1950s unwed teen pregnancy was a source of shame. Today, it's a punchline or an MTV reality series ('16 and Pregnant'). Which of these scenarios benefits society more?

Like nearly everything in the world, it's not a black and white issue. I've got two sisters and neither of them have been pregnant and I certainly hope they get married before they do have kids. However, if they did get pregnant, I don't think they should be forced to wear the scarlet letter either or hide their face as they walk down the street.