The latest trailer of the highly-anticipated movie "Fifty Shades of Grey" has not only ruffled the skirts of many women, but apparently also the nerves of the people behind the Parents Television Council. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the watchdog group is slamming the "Today" show for airing the trailer during its morning time slot. In the same line, the group also expressed its trouble with the heavy promotion of the film based on one of EL James's erotic book trilogy.
PTC director of grassroots education and advocacy Melissa Henson told THR, "It just really seems kind of excessive. We're talking about basically the equivalent of a dime-store trashy romance novel [in the Fifty Shades of Grey book]. Essentially, what Today's doing is they're promoting what people refer to as mommy porn. That's what it boils down to. Today is helping to promote mommy porn. That's a pretty poor judgment on their part in terms of their attitude towards their audience."
Henson is also lamenting on the fact that the promotion was done on the NBC show, which is aired at a timeslot wherein parents are watching television most likely with the kids around in the room.
Henson believed that the show producers should have aired a disclaimer ahead of the release of the trailer to ensure that parents are reminded that the film teaser is sensitive in nature.
"If they had couched it with very strong disclaimer language about how this is a movie that's romanticizing violence in relationships - sexual violence is basically what this movie is promoting - so if there had been very strong disclaimer language, that might have mitigated against [the impression that airing the clip without a disclaimer created]," she said.
Although co-host Savannah Guthrie did say that they could now broadcast the entire trailer, Henson said that the host's next instructions to check the unedited version of the teaser in "Today"'s website was misleading.
Henson is also hoping that the movie, which stars Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan playing the lead roles, will get an NC-17 due to the S&M content.
