Simpsons 'pornographic and extremist'

25 Sep 2008, 10:42 am   -   Source: AFP
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Cartoon family, the Simpsons (AAP)

Cartoon family, the Simpsons (AAP)

Pornographic, extremist and immoral -- that's how Russian prosecutors are describing popular US cartoons like The Simpsons, Family Guy and South Park.

Pornographic, extremist and immoral -- that's how Russian prosecutors are describing popular US cartoons like The Simpsons, Family Guy and South Park.

The channel that carries them has been forced to suspend broadcasts of the offending programmes pending legal action and throngs of teenagers have taken to the streets to demand their favourite cartoons back.

On Wednesday, a meeting of a government monitoring agency could take channel 2x2 off the air starting next month after a protest campaign by religious groups against the irreverent US cartoons.

Fans of the cartoons say critics just don't get the joke and are engaging in Soviet-style moral censorship, while opponents say the cartoons are poisoning the minds of Russia's young.

Pastor raises objection

"I've got no problem with my sense of humour but any satire has its limits," says Konstantin Bendas, a Pentecostal pastor and father of three who is heading the campaign and has written a formal complaint to prosecutors.

"If a character in a cartoon says 'All Jews are stupid' is that funny? If Christian communion is compared to eating faeces, is that funny?," he asked, referring to some of the 20 episodes of South Park he has watched.

Following Mr Bendas's complaint, channel 2x2 now also faces a criminal investigation under strict new Russian legislation against extremism for broadcasting the notoriously foul-mouthed South Park.

Judging by a highly critical statement issued by the prosecutor general's office this month, the prospects for the channel and its cartoons appear bleak in a Russia that commentators say is becoming increasingly conservative.

"The cartoons broadcast by 2x2 propagandise violence, cruelty, pornography and anti-social behaviour," the statement says.

Children 'terrorised' by programs

"They are full of scenes of mutilation and infliction of physical and moral suffering that evoke fear, panic and terror in children.

"This media product is of low moral and ethical content and has an extremely negative effect on children; it perverts their moral orientation and increases the danger of panic and neurotic ailments."

Prosecutors also said the channel was in breach of legislation for the protection of children and rules against "the proliferation through the media of material propagandising pornography, a cult of violence and cruelty."

A spokeswoman for 2x2, Maria Telesheva, dismissed criticism of the cartoons.

"We hope the federal broadcast monitoring service takes into account the opinion of our 11 million viewers and the support that we've had in the past two weeks," Telesheva told AFP, adding that viewers liked the cartoons.

The channel also insists in its defence that any violent cartoons are only shown at night and are not aimed at a children's audience.

Youths protest

The Federal Service for Monitoring in the Sphere of Connections and Mass Communications is set to meet on Wednesday to discuss whether or not to renew the channel's licence, which runs out on October 17.

In the run-up to the ruling, teenagers dressed in black -- some with studs and punk haircuts, others dressed as South Park characters -- have protested in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the two cities where the channel is shown.

So far the dispute seems a classic generational conflict, with defenders of morals on one side and a thriving Russian counter-culture on the other.

But channel executives have suggested in recent interviews that the religious campaign could just be a cover-up for corporate raiding.

"Someone apparently needs our frequency... There's this bloodlust, there really seems to be an organised campaign against this channel," 2x2 director Roman Sarkisov said in an interview with the Kommersant daily this month.

Pro-Kremlin member of parliament Pavel Tarakanov on Tuesday said the channel's frequency could be taken over by a new state-controlled patriotic youth channel instead of cartoon "pornography".

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