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I’m Dumping HBO: Here’s Why
We have Direct TV bundled through our local phone company. To keep costs down, I call to see what deals are offered and how I can cut our expenses. Right now, we have a very low rate on movie packages for a year, including HBO. They push HBO all the time. However, I’ve noticed that HBO content has been offering more controversial and explicit material. I’ve flipped through channels of the same old tired movies to “documentaries” and other programming that is actively pushing alternative lifestyles, sex, and drugs. I just read a story that has pushed me to cancel HBO.
Here is the story from Fox News that pushed me over the edge, a show called “Euphoria“:
The show is created by Sam Levinson, son of Hollywood uber-director Barry Levinson, the drama series follows a group of high school students “as they navigate love and friendships in a world of drugs, sex, trauma, and social media,” per the show’s official logline. But the series has come under harsh criticism by some, who find its content far too graphic and explicit for the teen audience it seeks to attract.” In one episode, per the Hollywood Reporter, “close to 30 penises flash onscreen” and in the premiere one character “commits statutory rape with a 17-year-old trans girl” and the show’s lead, Zendaya, 22, overdoses on drugs.
This is supposed to be “entertainment?” Director Barry Levinson gave us movies like Rain Man, Good Morning Vietnam, Bugsy, and Wag The Dog. His son Sam, according to Wikipedia, has been an actor, screenwriter, and director since 1992. He comes from a talented family, but he seems to be exploiting the decadent thinking that is prevalent in the entertainment world today.
HBO programming’s new president Casey Bloys previously insisted, “Euphoria’s not for everyone” — it’ll inevitably get people talking” but “it’s not sensational to be sensational”, and supported Levinson’s darker-themed approach to growing up a teen in 2019, because many the scenes are taken directly from his life.
Really?
“HBO did “reportedly push back on two scenes”: a graphic birth scene that featured a close-up of a vagina and a scene in the second episode which depicted dozens of naked boys. Bloys pointed out that HBO’s parent company rarely interferes with the premium network’s creative process.”
How responsible of them.
“No one has come to us and said, ‘Hey, tone this down,'” he admitted. “The only thing they’ve done is given us more money and said, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing.'” The show, which is loosely based on the Israeli TV show of the same name, also stars Maude Apatow, the daughter of Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann, and is executive-produced by Drake and Future the Prince.“
What? Who are these people?
The exploitation of youth in our current culture is unbelievable. The rapid pace of garbage that is being spoon-fed as the new normal could not be more disturbing. I hope that more people will boycott this kind of programming by canceling subscriptions and changing the appetite for this kind of garbage. If they only recognize a loss of money as a wake-up call, I am more than happy to do my part.
HBO is owned by AT&T, another all-American company that supports many questionable themes and endeavors. I was thinking of changing cell phone carriers to AT&T; now I am rethinking that. Interesting, once you peel back the onion layers, what your money and support are going towards may not be what you think.
Published in General
I fully expect to hear conservative commentator who think Trump is beyond the pale to go on at lenght about how great this show is, and devote whole podcasts to it.
After all, they did it with Game of Thrones, which had graphic rape of a 14 year old character.
How dare you criticize a show you haven’t even seen. (That’s an oldie but goodie.)
Yes exactly
Absent an organized movement no one is going to put two and two together and come up with four in this situation.
Pressure needs to start in Dallas-Ft. Worth. The newly reconstituted AT&T, built from the ashes of the antitrust suit and Southern Bell, is located in Dallas. Their name adorns Jerry World, the home of the Cowboys. And the home of the San Antonio Spurs. People like Jerry Jones need to be asked if he wants to be associated with crap like this. The same for Jordan Spieth. If you don’t directly pin this on AT&T nothing changes.
I don’t know why you are so upset. It’s not like the teens are doing something bad like smoking cigarettes or going to church.
HBO sucks.
I don’t understand why anyone would pay a nickel for HBO.
And it’s aimed directly at teenagers, who are already confused about sex.
They’re confused about a lot of things that the “adults” in society are pushing as normal – isn’t it hard enough emerging from childhood into your teen years with peer pressure, and all the normal things that kids and teenagers experience? This is in the category of child abuse.
It’s nice to know they have standards . . .
Thank you for that information – I am going to contact the AT&T executives who are involved with Direct TV specifically and HBO. I’ll keep you posted.
Conservatives need to make shows. It isn’t enough to complain about leftist nonsense.
But complaints should be heard anyway.
The best pressure is to stop pouring our dollars into their coffers. We canceled HBO years ago and haven’t missed it one iota.
I have never had HBO and I figured out why when I bought a set of DVDs from a series called “Rome.” Yikes ! It wasn’t exactly “Decline and Fall of the…” It was closer to “Porn and fall of the…”
Sex sells. Bread and circuses for the next generation.
Well, their recent miniseries Chernobyl was phenomenal. Seek that out if you can. It’s a chilling watch and another great reminder of how much communism sucks.
And that was one of the better shows…
What do you mean? Have we become Rome?
It’s not enough to say so. We also need to invest in the talent.
Film schools and entertainment guilds for conservative and Christian (not necessarily co-linked) academies would be worthy investments so those with talent have a place to learn and grow in skill.
Interesting organization.
http://civa.org/about/mission/
It’s set in a culture where a standard household accessory was a statue of a god shown with a fully erect penis and the warning that trespassers would be sodomized.
Don’t let the posh accents of Brits in Roman movies fool you into thinking they had ideas anything like ours in terms of sexual propriety.
And don’t look up Catullus 16 if you want to keep your illusions of posh and dignified Roman artists.
No, the opening scene was a couple having intercourse. Pretty graphic. I don’t mind porn but this was supposed to be history, I thought.
Any gratuitous nuclear nudes?
Years ago SNL had a sketch where they joked that the HBO show Game of Thrones was written by George RR Martin and a 13 year old boy. The 13 year old just walked around as they were filming each scene and said “we need more boobs.”
I haven’t seen the last episode, but the closest they got was a first responder in his whities waking up to the explosion.
Yes, but not what most would call titillating …
The nuclear core starts burning through the concrete foundation of the building. To prevent it from doing so and thus contaminate the ground water, they decide to build a heat exchanger. The problem is that this means digging by hand under a burning building where you can’t use fans because of the risk of irradiated surface dust entering the lungs. Cue a couple dozen hairy men in their 40s with beer bellies wearing nothing but boots and hats.
Gratuitous, and yet also neither erotic nor titillating whatsoever.
I’ve published several novels and have written more. Doing my part . . .
To film, or write screenplay?
Chernobyl is a docudrama, which massively exaggerates or invents new situations. For the love of God, do not use it as a reference. It even manages to exaggerate the horrors of communism. 1986 was not 1936, although it was plenty bad.