Comments on: MTV Gets Some Skin in the Game http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2011/01/21/mtv-gets-some-skin-in-the-game/ Responses to Media and Culture Fri, 12 Feb 2016 19:35:04 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.5 By: Bärbel Göbel http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2011/01/21/mtv-gets-some-skin-in-the-game/comment-page-1/#comment-67304 Sun, 06 Feb 2011 17:24:45 +0000 http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/?p=8053#comment-67304 Last year I made a syllabus for Media Studies and American Studies, comparing Skins (series one and two) and its social realist comedy with developments in US teen television, which I believe is mostly void of addressing real issues in a serious fashion, but focuses on “how to be in”.
Although I am well aware that my students are adults, I never quite got positive reactions to the proposed syllabus, because the UK material is so not “proper” for the US.
Now I can rewrite it by directly comparing the two versions and I think this post, Kyra, is boiling it down quite nicely, cultural differences and industry standards will come to the foreground in a series that received critique from all sides before and during its run on TV, in both the UK and the US.

I am looking forward to more posts from you as the US version develops on TV and online.

]]> By: Faye Woods http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2011/01/21/mtv-gets-some-skin-in-the-game/comment-page-1/#comment-62566 Sat, 22 Jan 2011 15:55:13 +0000 http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/?p=8053#comment-62566 Nice post Kyra, I feel that the differences and distances between excess and ‘realism’, fantasy and ‘authenticity’ are at play across the UK Skins and are tied into British televisions relationship with both social realism and surreal comedy. I’ll be interested to see hear how these play out in the US Skins which exists in such a different climate of US teen TV.

Arguably, UK Skins (the fact that the MTV version is debuting at the same time as season 5 of UK Skins with its new cast provides flashes of confusion for the cross-Atlantic internet viewer catching promotional ads) positions its characters within a world which combines teen ‘issues’ within fantastical excess – the Skins Party, never ending drug-taking etc – and comedic parental characters, yet with a central core of emotional realism. (I only comment for season 1 and 2 as the new cast brought a further push to sensationalism that didn’t sit well with me).

Matt Zoller Seitz at Salon called MTV Skins “a racy daydream of adolescence” and one review, I can’t recall whom, referring to the aspirational elements of the original, talked about the teens carrying themselves like rockstars. There’s this edge of hallucinatory haze that Skins often plays through that makes moments of dramatic clarity all the sharper. However, just as UK Skins markets its ‘reality’ with little admission of its fantasy (yet my students are well aware of the latter), MTV sought to position its Skins within a brand identity of ‘authenticity’, before falling foul of the PTC’s charges of child pornography due to that very ‘authenticy’ of underage actors and sexual activity. (MZS at Salon is doing a nice job chronicling it). Whilst the PTC’s charges are often a badge of honor there is a sense that MTV seem to be ever so slightly running scared now. (Whilst UK Skins heard lots of rumbles of complaint originally from the tabloid press, we have no comparative campaigning groups causing trouble. Now its just a weary sigh and ‘oh, that again’).

i’d challenge that seasons 1 and 2 eventually did present cautionary tales common to any US teen tv though – the smart girl has sex and gets knocked up, the biggest consumer of drugs pays a tragic price and Tony’s arsehole smugness and borderline sociopathy is punished in a way it takes most of the second series to put right again. It may not be Abby falling off a pier because she drank booze in Dawson’s Creek, but it’s still there!

]]>