Nipplegate continues
Feb. 4th, 2004 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerfrom CNN
The head of the FCC thinks that his job is to keep people from being offended, if necessary by fining broadcasters hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars.
Where does it say people have a right not to be offended? Where, in the First Amendment, is there a clause saying that Congress can abridge the freedom of speech for the purpose of protecting Mr and Mrs Smith from the sight of Janet Jackson's nipple jewelry, or from Lenny Bruce's vocabulary? And why are we such a totally uptight country, where it's OK to watch grown men slam each other into the ground while beeing cheered on by scantily-clad bimbos, all in the name of selling more Budweiser, but people have to be shielded from seeing someone without their clothes on running across the field?
Although I had to laugh the other night. I was watching 4 Weddings and a Funeral (which TiVo had kindly recorded for me, knowing as it does my lust for John Hannah). It was being broadcast on the Women's Entertainment channel :-) and, of course, all the naughty language had been removed. Not bleeped over, but actually silenced. So the entire first scene, in which Hugh Grant (yummy!) is reacting to having overslept and desperately trying to get dressed, is silent. His face contorts into one repetition of "fuck" after another, entirely soundlessly.
Then, a later scene, in which the same thing happens (his character is terminally late for everything--no wonder I like him) is all perfectly clear, because the censor-sensor isn't attuned to English, only to American. So every "bugger" and "bollocks" comes through loud and clear, along with the "sodding" and "bloody." Too funny.
Of course, the other annoying thing was that, for some inexplicable reason, they took off the subtitles that appeared when Hugh Grant's character and his brother (who is deaf) sign back and forth to each other. So some of the better comic lines, and the crucial dialogue that takes place in the final wedding, are entirely gone, unless one has can either sign or read lips (I'll have to watch it sometime with Stephanie, and ask her if they're really signing properly). Well, I've watched it enough times that I know most of the lines, but it was a remarkably stupid thing to do.
"I think everybody's focusing on the finale, but a lot of what we've heard in terms of complaints and the breadth of the investigation is a little broader than just that incident," Powell said on ABC's "Good Morning America. "I personally was offended by the entire production."
The head of the FCC thinks that his job is to keep people from being offended, if necessary by fining broadcasters hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars.
Where does it say people have a right not to be offended? Where, in the First Amendment, is there a clause saying that Congress can abridge the freedom of speech for the purpose of protecting Mr and Mrs Smith from the sight of Janet Jackson's nipple jewelry, or from Lenny Bruce's vocabulary? And why are we such a totally uptight country, where it's OK to watch grown men slam each other into the ground while beeing cheered on by scantily-clad bimbos, all in the name of selling more Budweiser, but people have to be shielded from seeing someone without their clothes on running across the field?
Although I had to laugh the other night. I was watching 4 Weddings and a Funeral (which TiVo had kindly recorded for me, knowing as it does my lust for John Hannah). It was being broadcast on the Women's Entertainment channel :-) and, of course, all the naughty language had been removed. Not bleeped over, but actually silenced. So the entire first scene, in which Hugh Grant (yummy!) is reacting to having overslept and desperately trying to get dressed, is silent. His face contorts into one repetition of "fuck" after another, entirely soundlessly.
Then, a later scene, in which the same thing happens (his character is terminally late for everything--no wonder I like him) is all perfectly clear, because the censor-sensor isn't attuned to English, only to American. So every "bugger" and "bollocks" comes through loud and clear, along with the "sodding" and "bloody." Too funny.
Of course, the other annoying thing was that, for some inexplicable reason, they took off the subtitles that appeared when Hugh Grant's character and his brother (who is deaf) sign back and forth to each other. So some of the better comic lines, and the crucial dialogue that takes place in the final wedding, are entirely gone, unless one has can either sign or read lips (I'll have to watch it sometime with Stephanie, and ask her if they're really signing properly). Well, I've watched it enough times that I know most of the lines, but it was a remarkably stupid thing to do.
Re: I forgive Janet
Date: 2004-02-04 01:20 pm (UTC)