Katy Perry song banned from Sesame Street Season 41

[MelissaY1]

I've noticed there are two kinds of parental groups. PC types that don't like violence and force them to add characters to round out ethnicity and prudish old groups that whine about how much more the current generation can get away with vs. their own. Again, the latter group is made up of people who still object to women wearing pants. Both of them are a fatal combination of destroying reality.

Face it, if your kid goes out in the world and sees people on the street, they'll see stuff that makes Katy Perry's clothing look like a full body Disney Walkabout costume. Men AND women. I've seen action figures get away with stuff I really didn't want to see (If anyone's got the "Battle of the Planets" Ken action figure, you'd probably know what I mean). Sex sells product, and it's part of our innate animal instinct. There's a lot of debate about that I don't want to go into. And of course, let's not forget that kids are way too young and pure to know or care about that stuff. Meanwhile, if your kid hits the remote button by mistake, you'll see Maury talking to people with multiple partners asking who's the babbydaddy among other things on daytime.

I've been saying for YEARS that kid's programming is ridiculously over-regulated (down to the advertisements now) and even some shows get unnecessarily censored, but they allow the evil, backstabbing, worst of humanity in reality programming. And they talk about morals and decency. There's no decency until Survivor finally gets canceled. It's all blatant hypocrisy.

I say, refilm the segment and make Katy Perry wear an ugly sweat shirt. That way the PC and Prude police will be happy, and can spend the rest of their highly valuable stuff watching things to purposely get offended and write letters to sponsors they don't even buy products of.

Well said. 99.9% of the monitoring going on is the pressure because of people like you described weighing in on these networks, producers, etc. and forcing the lawyers and censors involved with these projects to get really paranoid and jump on the "We can't do THAT" band wagon.

It's total lunacy.

 

[matleo]

hey gang,

I gotta say I back SW on this decision. I like breasts as much as the next guy but that dress was, in my opinion, a bit too revealing for a show directed at 3-5 year olds.

We're not talking about politico groups here. We're not talking about network censors. We are talking about parents who work hard to raise their kids as best they can and that's hard enough in this day and age. As a parent, I personally would have felt very disappointed if the one place I knew was kinda safe and kid-friendly for my daughter, wasn't as kid-friendly as I've always known it.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. I'd be interested in hearing the thoughts from some of the other MC parents.

--Matt

 

[Frogpuppeteer]

hey gang,

I gotta say I back SW on this decision. I like breasts as much as the next guy but that dress was, in my opinion WAY too revealing for a show directed at 3-5 year olds.

while this is true and i agree with your first statement...breasts didn't even cross my mind when i watching this clip

 

[dwayne1115]

they can have a woman breast feadding but that gets banded lol

 

[Mupp]

Its still available here, on Katy Perry's official youtube channel;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHROHJlU_Ng

 

[Drtooth]

hey gang,

I gotta say I back SW on this decision. I like breasts as much as the next guy but that dress was, in my opinion, a bit too revealing for a show directed at 3-5 year olds.

We're not talking about politico groups here. We're not talking about network censors. We are talking about parents who work hard to raise their kids as best they can and that's hard enough in this day and age. As a parent, I personally would have felt very disappointed if the one place I knew was kinda safe and kid-friendly for my daughter, wasn't as kid-friendly as I've always known it.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. I'd be interested in hearing the thoughts from some of the other MC parents.

I'd agree ONLY if SW didn't suggest that she wear a body suit right under that. And I guess SW haggled her down to wearing that as a compromise. I still think they could have been a little more strict about that. That's their only fault in the matter.

But make no mistake. This isn't about how she's dressed (I swear I've seen people wear more provocative stuff on the show... if not, again, it's a full body Disney walkabout she's wearing compared to the stuff you'd see on a typical day anywhere). it's mainly because of lyrics to another song not being kid friendly.

Now, the thing that really bugs me is that 90% of the parents who would complain about that are the same parents that would go out and buy their kids the very same songs on Kid's Bop albums. It's basically people worried that this stuff makes their kids grow up too fast, YET they buy Cheetah Girls and Hannah Montas stuff for very young children. Heck, what about the Bratz dolls that they were supposed to stop selling (but still are) due to a lawsuit from Mattel?

Again, we have to remember, reality is gritty, at times frightening if not disgusting. To parents, your kid will be exposed to nastier things if you take them outside for a walk. People swearing casually too much, women dressed ...errr... barely dressed in things.

And again, we had Richard Pryor on the show once. That guy did more provocative things, he said very provocative things, and it did wind up costing him a network kid's TV show due to ONE southern based station (Pryor's Place/ Sid and Marty Krofft productions), but SS took the chance. There are very few saints out of all the guest stars on Sesame Street... take the people with questionble stuff away and you got Mr. Rogers, maybe Bill Cosby (unless you get him on violence from I Spy). I'm sure a lot of people whined about the hippy culture in the first couple of seasons, but they stood their ground on it.

I still say call her back and refilm the song, dress her up in something less revealing (like kids know what that stuff is even for... they think it's gross. Trust me) and pretend like this never happened. Everyone wins.

 

[Daffyfan4ever]

Thanks for posting that, Sseta. I tried it on the TMZ site, but they only showed a short clip. Just wanted to post here while it's loading and get rid of the 'you haven't posted in a while message.' I haven't had a chance to listen to the full version of that song. Sounds like they might be spoofing the song 'Crush.' We'll see.

 

[SSLFan]

This story is all in the news. Couldn't it very well have been a publicity stunt from the get-go? Seriously, SW KNEW what they were doing when Ms. Perry put on that outfit. They knew they would get some public backlash.

If it sounds like I'm defending those who got the song banned, I'm not, since I'm really upset about the whole situation. Really, this is so unessescary and childish on the act of others. Making such a big fuss out of nonsense. IMO, and generally speaking, the worse thing you can do is try to protect and shield your child from something in which they will end up having to see eventually, and once they do encounter it, they're clueless on how to act on it since they weren't exposed to it sooner. With that said, I gurantee that if this clip was aired, almost all of kids would not even had paid no mind to Ms. Katy, since all their attention would be directly focused on Elmo & Oscar; Katy is something for the adults who watch SS with their child(ren) to enjoy anyway.

And seriously, Elmo is the one who's naked. Why no controversial backlash about THAT?

 

[Daffyfan4ever]

Okay. The song wasn't spoofing 'Crush' it was spoofing 'Hot and Cold.' Lol. I guess that was a dumb mistake on my part. That was a good one, but I can see why people were concered about it. Her dress did seem to be pretty revealing. But I know you see a lot of that on TV these days. It shouldn't have been that big of a deal. Or they could have reshot the scene with her in a different outfit. Just something to think about.

 

[Drtooth]

With that said, I gurantee that if this clip was aired, almost all of kids would not even had paid no mind to Ms. Katy, since all their attention would be directly focused on Elmo & Oscar; Katy is something for the adults who watch SS with their child(ren) to enjoy anyway.

And seriously, Elmo is the one who's naked. Why no controversial backlash about THAT?

Exactly my point. kids don't care. They don't. The only ones that do are people who frankly live in the eternal 1950's (poodle skirts ticked off old folks in those days.. every generation hates something about the next and everyone forgets it).

That said, jeez... if nothing else, graphically alter the darn thing. Call 4Kids... they're not too far from where they are. I'm sure they could make an obvious CGI coverup to make it suitable for 80 year old grannies that pretend to care about children when they're offended by the raunchiness of the font on the box of saltines.

That said, show this skit in almost every other country... they'll say "Uh... yeah, what? Am I missing something?" I hate how prudish this place is. There's a difference between modesty (this day and age wearing clothes IS modesty) and obsessive policing. This is the latter.