censorship is just stupid

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.

(no subject)

Having fulminated enough for the morning, here is a link to "M E Foley's Anglo-American Experience Blog". Mary Ellen is a colleague of mine from SfEP and blogs about the UK seen with an American eye. I've only dipped into her blog so far, but I find it entertaining, thoughtful, and illuminating.

(no subject)

this is the sort of article that IMO causes people to hate politics and to distrust the media

The thrust of this article seems to be to highlight "the politics of terrorism" and the "complicated -- and politically treacherous -- issues" President Obama's administration faces in reacting to last weekend's attempt to set off a bomb in NYC.

But the Post itself seems to be one one creating controversy out of thin air.( Read more... )