Yesterday Dan was watching American History X (is that the name of it? the movie where Ed Norton plays the skinhead, anyway...that one) on FX. I had never seen it before and I got sucked in unawares, so much so that towards the end of the movie, I was going "Does he get killed? He does, doesn't he? I can see it coming..." And D was just smirking at me. "Watch. Just watch the movie. You'll find out what happens."
(If you've seen it, you'll appreciate that, um, yeah, I did not see what was coming.)
Anyway, what sort of freaked me out was that, seeing as the movie was on basic cable, they dubbed out all the swear words, the way they do. No fucks, no shits, etc. etc. But then they left in all the horrible, nasty racial, religious, and ethnic slurs the characters used, all those words that absolutely no one says in public anymore. The effect was really bizarre. You had dialogue overdubbed so that a neo-nazi's using the ridiculous euphemism "bullspit" while in the next line he's allowed to say "spic" and worse.
I understand that editing out the hate speech would have seriously diluted the power of the movie. But if you're going to leave in words that are going to make viewers cringe, why edit out terms like "bullshit" that aren't going to offend anyone other than maybe somebody's 93 year old spinster Auntie Bertrice? If anyone can explain this to me in a way that makes any sense whatsoever, I will...owe you one.
xoxo
3 comments:
The thing is, even by being on Basic Cable it's not subject to any FCC regulations or sanctions--the FCC has jurisdiction over language only because the broadcast frequencies are a limited resource. Anything that happens on non-public airwaves (e.g. cable, which is never broadcast and is only available by subscription) has full First Amendment protection.
And I've heard, for example, Jon Stewart discuss Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit on the basic cable Comedy Central with no bleeping at all. Basic Cable can choose to censor in order to not potentially offend their customers, but there's utterly no governmental regulation to require it, and when it interferes with the artistic integrity of what they're transmitting, I think that's a very bad thing.
Hell, it even happened to PBS--so afraid of FCC fines and the cost of fighting them in court, that they had to release two versions of Ken Burn's WWII series, one in which they bleeped out words like "fuck", cause, you know, you can show footage of thousands of people actually being killed, tortured, decapitated, etc... but we all know that good American boys don't actually say "fuck" when they're getting shot at... nor when they're talking about it decades later.
I think that's the real obscenity, altering reality to fit someone's strangely distorted view of same. Even WGBH couldn't make up their mind: I saw a broadcast of the SNAFU episode where they had kept the "fucks" intact (which seems awfully appropriate) yet the same episode broadcast later in the day on their re-run channel 44 had the same words dropped out.
Just one more sop to the Family Values folks. Not one penny for children's health insurance, but they might be mortally wounded by hearing a soldier saying "fuck".
Fuckers.
That's all well and good, but it still doesn't explain why the bullshits are edited out while even more offensive language is left in.
When I was watching it, I was totally thinking of that Pinker article you sent me, about different areas of the brain responding to "bad" language, because I was having a visceral cringe to hearing certain things spoken out loud. If those words are left in because they're crucial to the artistic integrity of the film, then the profanity should be too. If the profanity is edited out because you're afraid of offending someone, why leave in any offensive language at all?
You can't have it both ways.
Or I guess you can, but it'll be fucking stupid. Gah.
"...I was having a visceral cringe to hearing certain things spoken out loud. If those words are left in because they're crucial to the artistic integrity of the film, then the profanity should be too. If the profanity is edited out because you're afraid of offending someone, why leave in any offensive language at all?"
Fuck yeah, I agree 100%.
And I too find those words far more offensive than George Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words". However, the Supreme Court's actually upheld the ruling that those specific seven dirty words are "obscene" and thus the FCC can fine the broadcasting of them over the air. It's highly possible that the network's Standard's & Practices have specific rules to always edit out those seven words, but not "spic" and related offensiveness.
It's still a joke, though.
BTW, I saw Steven Pinker talk yesterday, and although I still think his evolutionary psychology stuff is bullshit, I think the language stuff is pretty interesting, so I'm going to get his new book... especially if it's on sale at The Coop. :)
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