I can forgive it when producers cut raunchy trailers for their movies, post on YouTube (which is an open platform) and then go on national TV to say that their movies are rated for adults, hence not taking any form of responsibility for who sees it. But what I cannot forgive is seeing such recklessness on national television.
While I cannot say for a fact that I have seen any trailer on TV that shows explicit sex scenes like the ones that pop up on the internet, I have noticed with growing concern, the increasing use of obscene language on TV. It is just not right to hear something like “…next time, I will be fucking your wife on your bed” on national TV at any point in time, but is it particularly reckless when this happens as early as 9am. The first time I saw the trailer for ‘Seduction’ was on a Sunday, after I had finished watching some gospel music videos on Metro TV. I said to myself that perhaps it was a slip, but since that day I have seen the trailer on other channels at all sorts of improper hours.
Although this was not the first time that I had noticed this ineptitude, for me it was the all-time low because of the meaning of the expression. In most of the other instances, the ‘f’ word was used to show the pointless ‘hardness’ of certain characters in those movies. Therefore it has been too common in the trailers for movies such as ‘Trinity’, ‘Luv and Bullet’ and several others that reflect a poor attempt at Hollywood ‘gansterism’ and criminality. I like to term this as copying Western cultures blindly and I keep wondering how many Ghanaians would use the word under the circumstances portrayed in the movies. Maybe my friends aren’t modern or hip enough but whenever any of my friends use the ‘f’ word, it is usually to describe a sexual activity. Any other form of usage is usually under the influence of alcohol. (Laugh out loud)
Anyway, I think it’s about time that we put an end to this recklessness. Even in the West where these words come from, they know how and when to use it on national TV, and most often unless on cable TV, any such obscenity is bleeped out. So why do our television stations allow such trailers to air without bleeping out such vulgarity? Why do producers put these scenes in trailers for public consumption in the first place? What are bodies like the censorship board and National Media Commission doing about this? Enough is enough!
