censorship is just stupid

[winterbadger]

I recently rented "Le Déclin de l'Empire Américain" and was writing a review of it on Netflix. In closing, and an afterthought, I mentioned that I thought it was typical American prudishness that when the film poster was reissued here in English, the papers that the two figures are holding had the comic drawings of a penis and a pair of breasts replaced with the letters "SE" and "X!" I mean, how *sad* is that, that people feel we need to be protected from comic drawings of body parts on a film poster, but that the word "SEX!" is somehow better.

And then I discovered that the word "penis" is taboo in a Netflix review. (So, it turned out when I commented on this, is the word "Netflix"...)

In addition, as I mentioned in a Facebook conversation about my post on "Harlem in Montmartre", I found it kind of pathetic that PBS pixelated the breasts of two seminude dancers (in archival footage of 1920s France, no less). Oh my golly! If I (or a 12-year-old boy) saw Josephine Baker's breasts, the world might end! I mean, children should definitely be taught that nakedness is shocking and shameful and needs to be hidden--if they're not, where will they get their sexual dysfunctions and neuroses from? But in the same documentary, it was apparently fine to show the strangled, mutilated, and in some cases charred bodies of Blacks who had been lynched (returning soldiers from WWI, incidentally, who had gotten "ideas above their station in life" by being in the Army--ideas like "I'm a citizen and served my country, so I as good a man as any other").

So the bodies of horribly murdered people are just fine for small children to see, but those of healthy and happy adults are too shocking to be broadcast? I had really expected better of PBS. I look forward to someday living in a country that isn't, for lack of a more complex term, so sick. I wish I thought it would even be this one, but I don't hold out much hope, as long as everyone accepts that the most craven and most twisted should be arbiters of our national morality.

Comments

[ticktockmary.livejournal.com]

So the bodies of horribly murdered people are just fine for small children to see, but those of healthy and happy adults are too shocking to be broadcast?

This seems to be true in all media, and it makes me crazy. I agree totally with you.

Of course, this is the country where even drawings of naked breasts are covered up, i.e. Cucinelli's "more modest" Virginia state seal (which he has since backed away from given the national outcry)

[winterbadger]

Yeah, I gots me my unadulterated VA icon, and I ain't given it up lessen they pry from mah cold, dead keyboard.

I loved the spot he put himself in with the stupid new-look lapel pins. He got criticised for spending taxpayer dollars on them, at which he said "No, no, my political action committee paid for them!" OK, so what you're saying is you are using political money to give gifts to your AG Office staffers, who are Commonwealth employees? That is *so* much better, of course! He's an idiot.

I have to say, having switched jobs, I have to drive much further to get to work. The temptation to move back to VA occasionally strengthens. And then I'm reminded what a conservative state it is and reflect that it's worth it to me to drive a bit further and avoid sending any tax dollars to Richmond for the likes of McDonnell and Cucinelli to spend.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I figure PBS does what the FCC tells them to do. PBS can ill afford to pay out a multi-million dollar fine. I don't think that would go over very well at the next fund-raising drive.

[winterbadger]

Actually, what my friend who works at PBS said is that they do what their members stations tell them. My interpretation of that is that if they're reasonably confident (based presumably on past incidents and formal and informal contacts) that a large number of member stations won't broadcast something because they feel it will upset a significant proportion of their viewers, PBS takes that into account when creating programming.

[schizokitty.livejournal.com]

Argh, I had a whole rant going about the sick way we view sex and violence in this Puritan-based society, but I realised that I'd just be preaching to the choir, and it would only get me all worked up, which I do NOT need. Imagine, instead, that the rant is written and we mostly agree and everyone is feeling that welcome catharsis that comes from knowing we're not among the idiots that think violence and death are more acceptable than sex.

*growl*

[la-renardine.livejournal.com]

Check out This Film is Not Yet Rated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Film_Is_Not_Yet_Rated
- all about how these things are censored and rated. Available on Netflix, if you're not boycotting :-)
More than the way sex and violence are treated in the media and the puritanical national morality police at work in our society, it's the damn hypocrisy of it all that really works me up.

[winterbadger]

Hypocrisy is right. The first thing that I wonder when I see a conservative politician bloviating about sexual immorality or the evil of gay rights is how soon we're going to hear about his extramarital affair, whether the other party(ies) are going to turn out to be male or female, and how many of them are either underage or on his staff. If it's the wicked world of drugs I wonder how much his pusher will get from the tabloids. It seems that conservative politicians can't speak out on subjects they don't have any experience of...