Too much: a scene from the TV series Sherlock, left,
and an explicit pose from Lady Gaga
"Three million people saw your bottom!” So ran the shocked letter I received
in the late 1960s after I had presented Late Night Line-Up wearing a
daringly short skirt. Back then, minis were still news: Jean Shrimpton had
recently caused an international storm by wearing one at the Melbourne races
in Australia. Certainly, no women wore them to present BBC chat shows – no
women presented chat shows in those days.
Looking at the pictures today, a miniskirt seems harmless. But some people took offence: they felt mine was too raunchy. They were alarmed, convinced that such clothing somehow put the morals of the nation at risk. It might enflame people’s lusts and prompt them to acts of sexual behaviour that, by the standards of the day, were to be deplored: sex before marriage, for example.
Sex makes one generation fearful for the next. It has always been so. And in each generation, there are always those who consider the more risqué edges of the entertainment industry to be going too far. In 1890s Paris, onlookers took against the frills and suspenders of can-can dancers. By the 1950s, its Crazy Horse cabaret was making witty mockery of such shows, while itself leaving little to the audience’s imagination. At the same time in Britain, nudes posing in tableaux at the Windmill Theatre were still not permitted to move.
Now I find myself caught up in concerns about the sexualisation of children today. This week, I was quoted as condemning outright Lady Gaga and other performers for seeming obsessed with appearing at their raunchiest in their pop videos and on prime-time television shows. So have I changed sides? Or has the world changed?
It could be that I have grown old. I am now in my late 70s; I no longer belong to the generation that rejoiced in outraging its elders and struggled against the strictures of Mary Whitehouse (I thought she was wrong then, and I still do).
But in my time, I have loved the gyrations of Pan’s People, the Top of the Pops dancers whose routines were flirty rather than raunchy. Late Night Line-Up regularly championed what then seemed like avant-garde works showing life in the raw (in all senses) – films such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and plays such as Nell Dunn’s Up the Junction. Has there been a significant change since then or am I an ageing spoilsport?
In 2001, I made a four-part series for BBC Two called Taboo, which looked back at how censorship had changed over my lifetime. During filming, I broke several taboos of my own: using words that would normally be bleeped out; watching a porn film in production; and being filmed casting an appraising eye over a young male with a sturdy erection. I also had the ''fun’’ of pornography explained to me by young men, including Toby Young, today a pillar of Michael Gove’s educational establishment. None of this, I argued, was harming my moral values. Sex I considered a life-enhancing activity, promoting pleasure, well-being and, if you were lucky, a lasting, loving relationship. But, most particularly, it was watched by adults who were able to judge for themselves, certainly not by children. That is what is different today. Children are the new target market.
What has changed is not the fascination with sex; that will always be part of human nature, and people will continue to find ways of gratifying it. Once, such pleasures were exercises in power, with secret indulgences often illegal. Herod served up the head of John the Baptist to have Salome dance for him. Victorian gentlemen had their cabinets of Eastern erotica. In the 1950s, you had to belong to a private club to be allowed to watch strippers at work.
Looking at the pictures today, a miniskirt seems harmless. But some people took offence: they felt mine was too raunchy. They were alarmed, convinced that such clothing somehow put the morals of the nation at risk. It might enflame people’s lusts and prompt them to acts of sexual behaviour that, by the standards of the day, were to be deplored: sex before marriage, for example.
Sex makes one generation fearful for the next. It has always been so. And in each generation, there are always those who consider the more risqué edges of the entertainment industry to be going too far. In 1890s Paris, onlookers took against the frills and suspenders of can-can dancers. By the 1950s, its Crazy Horse cabaret was making witty mockery of such shows, while itself leaving little to the audience’s imagination. At the same time in Britain, nudes posing in tableaux at the Windmill Theatre were still not permitted to move.
Now I find myself caught up in concerns about the sexualisation of children today. This week, I was quoted as condemning outright Lady Gaga and other performers for seeming obsessed with appearing at their raunchiest in their pop videos and on prime-time television shows. So have I changed sides? Or has the world changed?
It could be that I have grown old. I am now in my late 70s; I no longer belong to the generation that rejoiced in outraging its elders and struggled against the strictures of Mary Whitehouse (I thought she was wrong then, and I still do).
But in my time, I have loved the gyrations of Pan’s People, the Top of the Pops dancers whose routines were flirty rather than raunchy. Late Night Line-Up regularly championed what then seemed like avant-garde works showing life in the raw (in all senses) – films such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and plays such as Nell Dunn’s Up the Junction. Has there been a significant change since then or am I an ageing spoilsport?
In 2001, I made a four-part series for BBC Two called Taboo, which looked back at how censorship had changed over my lifetime. During filming, I broke several taboos of my own: using words that would normally be bleeped out; watching a porn film in production; and being filmed casting an appraising eye over a young male with a sturdy erection. I also had the ''fun’’ of pornography explained to me by young men, including Toby Young, today a pillar of Michael Gove’s educational establishment. None of this, I argued, was harming my moral values. Sex I considered a life-enhancing activity, promoting pleasure, well-being and, if you were lucky, a lasting, loving relationship. But, most particularly, it was watched by adults who were able to judge for themselves, certainly not by children. That is what is different today. Children are the new target market.
What has changed is not the fascination with sex; that will always be part of human nature, and people will continue to find ways of gratifying it. Once, such pleasures were exercises in power, with secret indulgences often illegal. Herod served up the head of John the Baptist to have Salome dance for him. Victorian gentlemen had their cabinets of Eastern erotica. In the 1950s, you had to belong to a private club to be allowed to watch strippers at work.
While our curiosity with sex persists, the means of access to sexual material has broadened exponentially. The media explosion brought on by the internet brings performances within the reach of anyone, children included. And today’s smartphone-savvy youth think nothing of forwarding explicit images and video clips to others’ handsets. This week, a new set of contestants entered the Celebrity Big Brother house to take part in Channel Five’s fly-on-the-wall show whose audience is mostly millions of young people. Prior to his incarceration, one housemate proudly boasted of his intent to have sex on screen – “and none of this under-the-covers ----”.
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