Sons of Anarchy is a strong TV series, and most of the time it offers violence as main subject. This week Sons of Anarchy featured a storyline based on a school shooting, and the Parents Television Council (PTC) has expressed their disappointment through the media.
According to the PTC, the other offending moments besides the school shooting were a simulated rape scene, torture of women, and a man who was drowned in a bathtub of urine:
“Think about the parents who have been personally affected by real-life school shootings – even they were forced to contribute to FX on their cable bills. This is an outrage, and the time for consumers to have real choice has come”.
The creator of Sons of Anarchy Kurt Sutter chose to respond personally to PTC and he was not kind:
“The PTC — I would imagine these are not evil people, but they’re just not very intelligent or intuitive people. … The fact that these people want to be monitoring what my children watch is terrifying. Whenever that stuff crosses the line into censorship, it’s just scary, not just on a creative level but on a personal level. The school shooting scene, while devastating, served as purpose to the plot, as the show’s anti-hero raises young boys and also deals in guns. To suggest that a piece of his life could not impede and bleed into the other areas of his life and that he’d be able to keep them separate — to me that’s irresponsible. These guys are turning these guns out on the street, selling them to people, unaware of who’s using them and what they’re being used for — to suggest that those guns could not fall into the hands of people that were going to hurt other people, including children … that’s ignorant … that’s almost more irresponsible. So again, a big thank you for the people who are tuning in, and until somebody kicks in my door and tackles me to the ground and cuts off my fucking hands, I’m going to keep doing what I do. So fuck them and thank you”.
Personally I think that Television can show almost everything, even plot based on real facts, because it’s fictional. If some people cannot distinguish between reality and fiction, it’s their problem. What do you readers think?
