Miley Cyrus And Britney Spears Videos Banned From Daytime TV In France

c’est feu

France doesn’t have a reputation of being a prude nation, au contraire, right? Well, think twice before you read this: Music videos by Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears have been banned from daytime TV in France because they were too damn sexually explicit! Cyrus’ video for ‘Wrecking ball’ (which, as everyone knows, shows the hyper-sexualized young pop star naked on her ball, licking a sledgehammer) and Spears’ video for ‘Work Bitch’ (which shows her in bondage gear) can only be broadcasted after 10 pm, due to a decision of the Conseil Superieur de l’Audiovisuel  which judged the videos depicting ‘a sadomasochistic universe representing women in a way that risks shocking many viewers’.

I am not at all for censorship and this cannot even be regarded as censorship, since the videos are still shown, only during hours when young children aren’t usually without parental supervision. That’s interesting because France isn’t exactly a shy country regarding to sex, French people always say to me that Americans are the ones being prude with a problem regarding sexuality! So this is interesting.

I haven’t even really watched these videos but I have seen enough of the one with Cyrus to not find it very sexy, Miley doesn’t do anything new or even bold, she just has this young androgynous body made to confuse people about their own sexuality! Getting naked when you look like a 15-year-boy/girl is the easiest way to attract lots of attention, it’s not an accomplishment! Sex sells and will always do, we are wired for it, and if you want to awake an audience sleeping in front of you, just mention sex once and you will instantaneously get their attention, I know this too well, I teach adolescents! But again, it’s way too easy! It’s much more difficult to get their attention with innovative and challenging ideas.

What I mean is that these videos use the easiest trick in the world, as we have lowered our standards in music videos more than in any other art form, this has reached a ridiculous point! This is not art, it’s fast food porn feeding people’s basic needs and lowest intellectual demand. These films even distract the public from the music, which could become as bad as it gets, but people would not even notice. Nobody has a real opinion about Miley Cyrus’ music because they are obviously not paying attention to it. Honestly, I don’t expect Spears or Cyrus to release challenging videos with even the most remote sign of intelligent idea, but at the end, I don’t see the ban on these videos as prudery; at best, it’s a punishment for a lack of originality… even though I doubt it was the reasoning behind the decision of the Conseil Superieur de l’Audiovisuel.