August 10, 2005

TV censorship

Ok... I'm not waiting for the new blog and changes to start the fun. Let's kick of some of the new categories with this post.

Remember the famous "Shit" episode of South Park? It was based on some primetime show (probably NYPD Blue) that added the word "shit" to it's script for realism. It was only heard in the mature time of night. It seems 10pm is the mature time now. You can basically do anything on TV as long as the kiddies are asleep which is projected as 10pm barring the fact that parents raise their kids in the Donna Reed era. Today, if I go to the movies and it's a midnight show, at least 3 couples will have their 2 years olds and such screaming. You think they'll do anything different when it comes to home? Didn't that 3 years old die choking on popcorn at a movie theater in Queens at an after 10 pm show? Was that gods way of saying they were bad parents?

Anyway...I totally left the center of where I was going.

There's something far more impressive about television realism with a few real life expletives NOT deleted. I got so sick of hearing silly made up words like "friggin' " and "jaggoff". What the fuck is a "jaggoff" anyway? Is it a jaguar tipped off a tree? I'd rather they just used the real words and then bleep them like South Park. Well, at least it's better than the words they substitute when censoring movies. "Airhead" does NOT have the same effect as "asshole". I laughed the hardest when I heard the words "mickeyfickey" in place of "motherfucker". I spent days afterward calling people "mickey fickey" and giggling. I figure he must be the bastard child of Mickey Mouse.

TV outside the U.S. Is so much more real. Granted they only have like 4 broadcast channels vs. our 7, but that's why there's cable. The point being is that there's nudity, realism and real words on television shows in the European countries. There's no anal FCC to crawl up into an ass and fester. The second point would be that if you're going to imply foul language, just do it. Stop skirting it. You're not insulting my intelligence.
If I was going to be offended, maybe I'd actually pay attention to those ratings we give tv shows now. Oh thats right... We pay about the same attention to those as we do the movie ratings. Just ONCE I'd like to see someone turn away an underaged person at a movie. Just to show that NO ONE gets into "Terrence and Phillip in Asses of Fire" without proper I.D.

I was originally going to speak on something else in this post, but it took a mind of it's own, so I'll leave that for another post.

...and lastly on of TV realism...

There are two kinds of cable TV stations. Those that advertise and have censorship and those who don't.

For the longest time, only HBO, Showtime, Cinemax and the like allowed uncut raw cursing in it's media. Be it movies, series shows, documentaries...whatever, you expected that for your paying dollar you got what you subscribed for. Then came the "free" cable stations. Y'know...the ones you got with the "basic" package. Usually the Ted Turner tirade was to censor anything and everything all for the sake of the sponsors I suppose. But recently, I noticed that's begun to change. A&E shows like "Intervention" have upped the de-censorship scale with the allowance of the word "shit".

Recently they seem to be changing that. Realistic shows like "Wanted" on TNT, "Rescue Me" on FX and "INtervention" show that the FCC is starting to let up, even if its in the slightest way.

Cast my thumbs up into the air for the new millenium cable tv.

Posted by Darkstar at August 10, 2005 12:50 PM