Thursday, March 5, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvNkzsdakQE
This clip is a compilation of scenes of Adrianna's pregnancy on the new 90210. We learn that Adrianna finds out she's pregnant when it's too late for her to make any other decision other than carrying the child to term. I wonder what the CW11's reason was behind this. Did they want to ignore the abortion issue by making it not even an option for Adrianna, or did they want to increase drama and entertainment by ruling out some of Adrianna's options? This seemed to me like an easy way of not dealing with abortion conflict among viewers. If Adrianna chose an abortion, would the show lose ratings or viewers? We, as viewers are led to believe that Adrianna would have considered an abortion, yet CW11 won't consider it at all. If a pregnant high school girl watches this, what will she learn? She should find out she's pregnant early and terminate the pregnancy, or feel that having the child is the appropriate choice. If she sees glamorous women such as the women on 90210 having children, well, that just must be the right choice to make....right?
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Actually, I think this might be more a reflection of the show's writers responding to the viewer demographics.
ReplyDeleteIt may be the case that the new 90210's demographic information revealed that a larger portion of its viewers, and more importantly areas of loyal viewership, were concentrated in conservative US states. Not wanting to sacrifice this loyal viewership by creating an inherent conflict with values of the region, the producers decided to cut the story elements that could offend this audience.
While I doubt the writers wrote the story with this in mind, it probably did have some impact in cutting out those "lets think of abortion" scenarios, as it would be counter-intuitive to drama-show writers themselves to think that abortion indecisiveness wouldn't make excellent TV drama.