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Degrassi: The Next Generation on The N Network
04/13/2008 The N Network’s slogan is: Real. Life. Now. But how realistic is it? There is cause for concern for parents whose children watch the racy original program on The N, The Network for Teens, called Degrassi: The Next Generation. Degrassi: The Next Generation is The N’s top rated original program now in its seventh season. The show touches on difficult subjects such as racism, abortion, adoption, homophobia, drugs, drinking, drug dealing, sex, oral sex, teen pregnancy, death, arrest, infidelity, condoms, college, violence, school shootings, stress, peer pressure, military, religion and homosexuality. Degrassi is a teen soap opera drama about the fictional Degrassi High School. The show has won two Teen Choice Awards, which were decided by voters aged 12-19. University of Georgia student Sophie Ellis had not seen an episode of Degrassi before and decided to check one out. “I watched about five minutes of an episode and it was ridiculous,” Ellis said. “A female character was arguing with her parents, and when they left a couple of her male friends walked in tossing a pornography video back and forth. The female character decided she would ‘show her parents’ by going in their liquor cabinet and stealing their liquor.” “The episode switched to another scene where a group of guys were,” Ellis said. “One of the guys had just gotten a new tattoo. Some other guys were playing cards and gambling, and all of the sudden two of the male characters started making out.” “Again the scene switched back to the female character with her two male friends,” Ellis said. “The girl had gotten drunk and one of the friends was trying to take away the alcohol when the bottle smashed into a mirror. The girl started crying and said it was because she had ‘lost her baby’.” All of this drama happened in the first five minutes Ellis had turned on the TV. “It was like the writers for the show wanted to see how much trashy drama they could fit into one show,” Ellis said. “I do not know many kids who actually faced issues like these in high school. These things do happen but not often.” With such serious issues being presented to a young crowd Ellis said, “I am not sure if they are helping kids with these life situations as much as they are reinforcing these poor behaviors.” Ellis, who does not have children, said, “If I did have kids I would not want them watching a show like Degrassi, that’s for sure.” In 2004, 10 elementary students at a Québécois school mutilated themselves by using compasses to cut their arms after watching an episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation in which a character mutilated her own body, Laura Czekaj said in her article for Canoe online. Also in 2004, The N decided that it would not show an episode about a 14-year-old character having an abortion in the U.S. until it had been edited. The unedited show had already been aired to Canadian viewers, Dina Kok said in one of her online articles for The Interim. Kok quoted the girl in the episode discussing her decision on whether or not she would keep the baby saying, “I’m just trying to do the right thing here. For me. For everyone, I guess.” In October 2004 Degrassi: The Next Generation had a record breaking episode with 930,000 viewers. The episode was about a school shooting that left one student critically injured and the shooter dead, according to a press release by Canadian Television. A month later the show broke its viewing record with 1 million viewers for an episode about oral sex, a CTV press release said. The N, a Viacom Network, started out in 2002 as a late night programming network sharing a channel with Noggin. As of 2008, after the many issues the show has caused, it has become a 24-hour network replacing the Nick Gas channel on digital services and most cable services. Comments [post a comment]
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Saturday, March 13, 2010
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