Weird episodes in censorship

[Mr. Blue Sky]

The "Favorite Cartoon Character" thread reminded me of an odd case of censorship I witnessed.

The show: Rocko's Modern Life (Nickelodeon)
The situation: a steer and a milking machine.
The story: Rocko (a wallaby) takes his friend Heffer (a steer eaised by wolves!!) to his uncle's ranch. While there, Heffer decides to "rough it" and sleep outside with the "wild" steers (they all sleep standing up in a row). Heffer, being the goofball he is, falls over and knocks the entire row of sleeping cattle. Rather than face their anger, he decides to sleep in the barn. The next morning, Rocko's uncle comes in to hook up the cows to the milking machine. When comes to Heffer, he shrugs and hooks HIM up also and starts the machine. The look on Heffer's face was absolutely hilarious!! At the end of the episode, Heffer has a sad parting scene with the machine. These two scenes have now but cut from this epsiode!!

OK, OK, I understand WHY, but it's still a bit silly and I have seen worse things in "kid's" cartoons.

Anybody see something like this?

Oh, BTW, there's an episode where Rocko's neighbor (a frog) hits on him when her husband stops showing her affection that has apparently been cut entirely!!

[Mac]

A commercial in England for a soft drink called TANGO. It had a short orange fat guy that ran around and slapped people on both cheeks. Very funny (you had to be there) only problem kids were slapping each other in the ears and busting eardrums. That one
was pulled real quick. About a month later after all the bad publicity had run it's course, it ran again the whole room stopped to watch. But they had changed it from a slap to a kiss on the mouth the narrators quld be heard in the background "I dont think he was expecting that. I dont think I was expecting that".
It was an exellent way to change bad press to good.

"YOU KNOW WHEN YOU'VE BEEN TANGO'D"

[ChiefScott]

Underdog and his pills.
Mighty Mouse snorting his flower.
And the Nike (Reebok, Converse, who can keep 'em straight?) bungee jumping spot where the jumper came out of his shoes and, supposedly, plunged to his untimely death.

[DoctorJ]

My favorite bizarre moment in censorship was the request (by the PMRC, I'm pretty sure) that Frank Zappa's "Jazz from Hell" album be given a "Parental Advisory-Explicit Lyrics" sticker.

It is, of course, an instrumental album.

Of course, it is called "Jazz from Hell", and it does contain the song "G-Spot Tornado", but it's still funny.

Dr. J

[Omniscient]

On Howard stren's TV show there are frequently men kissing women, but when two women kiss they blur out the mouths. This seems really stupid to me, and I supose it could be argued that its prejudicial.

[Eutychus]

Watched "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" on broadcast tv this afternoon. There's a scene where one of the weasels reaches down Jessica's cleavage and gets a bear trap on his hand as a reward. Eddie Valient originally said "Nice booby trap" but the line has been changed to "Nice going, Jess" completely ruining the joke.



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Saint Eutychus
www.disneyshorts.org (http://www.disneyshorts.org)

[Rich Barr]

Back about 20 years ago, Colt .45 malt liquor had a commercial with a submarine crusing under the Arctic ice--it launched a can of Colt .45, much as a missile sub would. It was pulled pretty quick--I've always suspected because someone with a tiny little mind thought it was advocating a nuclear strike.

There was also an interesting episope years ago in which Canadian authorities seized copies of the Disney movie "The Black Hole." None of them knew what it was about, but apparently they thought black holes sounded pronographic.

I'd also point out that in most showings of "Looney Toones" Wile E. Coyote is no longer shown hitting the ground or blowing up--somebody decided this was too disturbing for kids to watch. Instead, they can now assume he miraculously teleported to safety at the last minute, or some such thing.

Stupid human tricks abound....

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Rich Barr
massivemaple@hotmail.com
AOL Instant Messenger: Hrttannl

[Persephone]

This is censorship on a mass scale, but why do they show everything BUT condom ads on network TV? I see the Trojanman commercials on cable, but not on network. Or maybe they are showing them, but I don't watch enough network TV to see them?

[Pooch]

In the 5th grade, the teacher put masking tape across my mouth for talking in class. I had to wear it for about a half hour and she said I had to wear it as I walked to my next class as well.

[Louie]

There was an episode of Tiny Toons Adventures, where Buster wanted to buy a new bike. He saw a commercial of a guy selling bikes, and the guy said "If I give you a bad deal, then I'll eat a bucket of scorpions." And he eats a scorpion. Later at the end, when he got caught giving a bad deal, he swallowed down the bucket of scorpions.

A few weeks later, they showed the same episode, only with the scorpion-consuming cut out. I guess the censors thought that kids would think scorpion-eating was alright.

Now, they show the same epidose with the scorpion-consuming parts put back in. Geez, make up your minds, stupid censor people.

[Catrandom]

Remember when Pink Floyd's "Money" was only played in the "goody-good bull*bleep*" version, and in "Aqualung," an "offending" line was masked over to be "got him by the fun"?

I believe the Who's "Who Are You" contained the first "f-word" to make it unexpurgated onto both FM radio and the early music video shows (it was before MTV).

Catrandom

[BurnMeUp]

Private Parts was on USA this weekend. In one of the most ridiculous items of censorship, there was a scene where Howard is kissing his wife and he reaches up and puts his hand on her clothed breast. It was "pixeled" out.
Later on I saw a madonna video of her feeling herself up... no pixels.

So we are saying that it's not ok for a man to touch his wife through a shirt, but as long as you're wearing an S&M bra you can feel yourself up on tv.

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To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.

[pldennison]

I always thought that the fact that ABC prefaced Ellen, which ran at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, and in which the title character was a lesbian, with "Parental Advisory" messages; but allowed Spin City, which airs at 8:30, features a gay male character, and often makes his behavior, or homosexuality in general, the topic of ridicule, featured no such parental advisory, to be the height of inane and hypocritical bullshit.

[BurnMeUp]

On the song censorship issue, I have seen the same type of thing:

On the Offspring's song "get a job" they have lines referring to a guy's girlfriend as being a bitch and the boy friend being a dick. In WA state they play them openly on the radio, in Slat Lake (on a trip to visit family) the censored dick and bitch... I'm sorry censoring BITCH???? What's up with that?

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To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.

[Diceman]

Have you heard Everlast's "What It's Like" on the radio? They censor EVERYTHING around here (Michigan). In the last verse, they even censor the words "drugs" and "gun." I know of no other song that has ever been this drastically cut up. It's so severe that I must suspect that Everlast is being singled out for some reason. Whatever the case, I'm happy to report that the censors' efforts failed. I bought the CD so I could hear the song properly. :)

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"I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms." -The Secret of Monkey Island

[Rich Barr]

Remember the Washington Bullets NBA team? They changed the name to "Wizards," apparently on the grounds that bullets are politically incorrect. Bad bullets!

(Though it was also a good way to get fans to buy more overpriced merchandise.)

[Rich Barr]

Remember the Washington Bullets NBA team? They changed the name to "Wizards," apparently on the grounds that bullets are politically incorrect. Bad bullets! ("Wizards" are leaders in the Ku Klux Klan...but I guess nobody's supposed to make THAT connection.)

It was also a good way to get fans to buy more overpriced merchandise...but that had nothing to do with it. No, certainly not....


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Rich Barr
massivemaple@hotmail.com
AOL Instant Messenger: Hrttannl

[dougie_monty]

About the time The Three Stooges started making features films--the shorts were discontinued when Harry Cohn died--Moe stopped poking people like Larry or Curly Joe in the eye, as he had done with Curly, Shemp, and Joe Besser. He even alluded to this in The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze; they were captured by the Chinese Army and Curly Joe's and Larry's captors, who now looked like their captives, were going to poke the Chinese general in the eye. Moe said, "Uh-Uh--we don't do that any more!"

[HeadlessCow]

In the Everlast song it was apparently mostly the choice of the band to censor. They thought it would sound better with all the rhyming lines weirded out than just leaving half a rhyme.

[AWB]

The inconsistancies of censoring "shit" on the radio.

There's three songs: 1) a Steve Miller song I can't recall; 2)the aforementioned "Money" by PF; 3) "Hand in My Pocket" by Alanis Morrissette (sp?). I've heard all three with their "-shit" word (bullshit, chicken-shit) broadcast many times. But now in "Money" they do some BS with "BS" and it's just "bull".

In Maine in 1996, AM's song was very popular, and the "... brave but chicken-shit" phrase was uncensored. But when I came back to DC, I was singing along and hit the censored phrase "chicken-chicken". I just burst out laughing.

I guess Mainers can deal with shit better than Washingtonians.

[EnigmaOne]

{{{...and in "Aqualung," an "offending" line was masked over to be "got him by the fun"?}}}---Catrandom

Yeah, I remember that one....Locomotive Breath, and the original line was, "...and the all time winner has got him by the balls." None of the radio stations would play the original version then, but they don't seem to have a problem with it now.

"...and a happy who-ya to-ya!"


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--Kalél
Common ¢ for all ages...
The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earth worms dizzy. It will however, make cats dizzy. Cats throw up twice their body weight when dizzy.

BurnMeUp: Undoubtedly the funniest thing about showing "Private Parts" (aside from the inane censoring of a man caressing his own wife's clothed breast, of course), was that most of the 'bleeping' was so fucking uncoordinated that it tended to miss the 'offensive' syllables and snag the ones before or after them. My SO and I were practically falling out of our chairs listening to it! I gotta go rent that sucker!

[Cap'n Crude]

A question on something uncensored, while we're at it:

Back in the 1970s, there was a TV movie or Afterschool Special (I have no idea what it was called, or what it was about -- I merely saw it mentioned on a TV special several years ago) that involved the rape of a teenage girl by several of her "friends." The scene in question took place in a bathroom in the girl's house, and consisted of quick cuts between close shots of some kids holding the victim down (some of these were other girls, it so happens) and medium shots from behind the rapist, his body positioned so that only the guaranteed-censored bits were obscured.

A) How did this get onto the tube in the 70s?

B) Has it been shown since, outside of the documentary I vaguely recall?

C) What was the title, the plot/purpose, and can the film be found anywhere?

It was very disturbingly filmed, whatever it was. Perhaps such a dose of reality served a purpose. Perhaps not. The scene in question seemed almost pornographic, snuff-filmy.

--Da Cap'n

[Gaudere]

In the Everlast song it was apparently mostly the choice of the band to censor. They thought it would sound better with all the rhyming lines weirded out than just leaving half a rhyme

I heard that the band send tons of versions of that song to the radio station, with almost every possible combination of censored/uncensored words. As you flip radio stations or move around the country you'll hear different combinations. I was in Florida last week, and they didn't censor the "gun" "drug" and "colt 45", but in Illinois just about everything's bleeped.

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"Eppur, si muove!" - Galileo Galilei

[elbow]

Several years ago I went to see the movie 'Poltergeist' in Singapore, a land where 'Puff the Magic Dragon' and 'Mr. Tamborine Man' are still banned for suspected drug references.
So, if you remember this film, you'll recall that the parents, early in the film, retreat to their bedroom pull out a cigar box, roll up and smoke a doobie. There it was, clear as day, uncensored.
After the film, I asked my chinese friend how this made it through the censors untouched. She pointed out to me that no one in the film had made any overt reference to what they were doing. (i.e.,'Gee, honey let's smoke some marijuana). And the censors really weren't familiar enough with drug culture to catch it on their own!

[BurnMeUp]

Yeah the scene where Pigvomit screamed Fuck You they missed the Fuck completely it was pretty good.

The movie itself is pretty funny.

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To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.

[Mojo]

If anyone ever bought the edited version of NWA's "Straight Outta Compton", they would've found that, according to the revised lyrics, NWA stands for "Brutha's With Attitude".

The censored version of Wu-Tang's "36 Chambers" album has a song called "Shame on a Nuh" and Ol' Dirty Bastard is only referred to as "O.D.B.".

When MTV airs Tom Petty's "You Don't Know How It Feels" video,the words become:
"Lets get......to the point
Lets roll.....(garbled) on down the road"

And when they aired Tool's "Stinkfist" video, the title was changed to "Track #1". I guess "Stinkfist" is the eighth dirty word.

[Cap'n Crude]

Thanks, DIF. I have no idea if that's it, but now I have something to work with.

Of course, one could make some disturbing inferences about my interest in this film, but trust me when I say it's all more or less academic curiosity. If not -- hey, I *am* Cap'n Crude ....

[Mr. Blue Sky]

I recall a recent Honey Nuts Cheerios commercial based on Little Red Riding Hood. The wolf (a cartoon character) says to Red at the end of the commercial: "Sorry about that "eating you" thing". This line has been taken out!

Also, the Steve Miller song was "Jet Airliner". There is a "clean" version in which he says: "Funky KICKS goin' down in the city".

Cap'n, here's a link to what I think you are looking for:
http://allmovie.com/cg/x.dll?UID=12:57:32|PM&p=avg&sql=FBorn|Innocent

Hope that link works for you. I believe the movie you are describing is "Born Innocent" with Linda Blair.

[UncaStuart]

Not censorship per se, but related to the theme of commercials modified under public pressure:
In the mid sixties Granny Goose changed its image by introducing TV commercials with a Bond-like character performing some feat of derring-do and capping it off by ripping open a package of potato chips with his teeth; the tagline: "Are you man enough to eat Granny Goose?" Not long thereafter, and to the regret of college students everywhere, the tagline was changed to "Are you grown-up enough for Granny Goose?" in response to the predictable outcry from certain quarters.

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

In the movie "Fort Apache, the Bronx," when it made its network TV appear some years ago, numerous 4- and 12-letter words needed to be bleeped. One of the more humorous substitutions was where one character referred to another as a "mother-grabber."

[asstro]

The one that always bugged me was MTV editing the word "prophylactics" out of a Tribe Called Quest song about 10 years ago. What could be so damaging about that word?

[realm505]

I rember this old cartoon on the bugs n' tweety show
it was about a flea apperently a red neck
attacking a dog at the end the flea was carrying the dog on a silver platter. the flea passes a cat taking a nap. the cat see's this and the cat says to the camera "well, now I've seen it all" and pulls out a 45 and blows out his brain. I was 10 and I wasn't imanging it, the shocker is that was 8 years ago. someone please back me up here

[Chef Troy]

I'll back you up, I've seen that one too.

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Live a Lush Life
Da Chef

[RealityChuck]

The weirdest I can think of was part of the comics code. It banned the use of the word "flick."

Now you might think you can guess the reason -- that there's something that was considered smutty about the term. But as far as the comics code authority was concerned, the censoring had nothing to do with any off-color meaning ("flick my bic" was years away).

The reason was that words in comic books are written in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.

Not obvious why that was a problem? Write it out on a sheet of paper: FLICK. And see what happens when the L and I get a bit too close together...

Other examples:

Cole Porter's line in "I Get A Kick Out of You" was changed from "I get no kick from cocaine" to "Some love the perfumes in Spain." Porter made the change himself for the first movie version of the song. The real lyrics didn't appear onscreen until BLAZING SADDLES.

In the early days of movie censorship, you couldn't end a sentence with the word "behind." Thus the sentence "Can spring be far behind?" was banned.

An author once slipped the term "ball-bearing mousetrap" past the censors at Astounding Stories. He was referring to a tomcat.

There are many more examples. Censorship always ends up looking silly.

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www.sff.net/people/rothman (http://www.sff.net/people/rothman)

[neuro-trash grrrl]

Weird censorship I've seen:
In the eighth grade, my English class read a book entitled "Red Sky at Morning", excellent book, by the way. This book, as it happens, contains lots of profanity, much of it in Spanish, being set in New Mexico, and some sexual innuendo, being set in high school. Anyway, our class watched the movie version after we finished the book, but the censored version was all my teacher could find. The line, as spoken by the character of Marcia, "Are you going to talk to me, or do I have to become a lesbian?" became "Are you going to talk to me, or do I have to become a" and at this point, Marcia's lips form the word "lesbian", but not a sound, not even background noise is heard. Then, when her lips stopped moving, a much lower voice came in with the word "nun". Needless to say, the class broke up. Another gem from that movie was when one of the Hispanic characters was complaining about how "we got this chingao wind last spring..." This was censored to "we got this ah-HOH wind.." Rendered in proper Spanish spelling, this articulation would be spelled "ajo". This word means "garlic".

In songs:

Marilyn Manson's "The Beautiful People"- The word "shit" is cut out of the line "You can't smell your own shit while on your knees". The result sounds more like "You can't smell your armpit while on your knees"!
Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life"- You know, that really cheerful, upbeat sounding ditty that's really about tweeking and oral sex, the drug reference in "Doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break" is cut so clumsily that even the rhythm of the song is disrupted: "Doing cphblrbph will lift you up until you break". The line "She comes round and she goes down on me" was left intact, which is odd because "go down" was cut out of "You Oughta Know", by Alanis Morrisette on MTV.
Green Day's "Longview"- I have heard three versions of this song, one where the line "Twiddle my thumbs just for a bit, I'm sick of all the same old shit, in the house with unlocked doors and I'm fuckin' lazy" is left intact, one where it becomes "I'm sick of all the same old sh- , in the house with unlocked doors and I'm (fweep)in' lazy", and one where it is rendered "I'm sick of all the same old (silence), in the house with unlock doors and I'm (fweep)(fweep) lazy". Also, in this last version, the final line in the chorus "...and I smell like shiiiiiieeeeeeaaaaahhhh..." is also expurgated somewhat. I didn't even know that there was an obscenity there until I heard that version.

I remain, (until further notice),
your friendly neighborhood neuro-trash grrrl.

[AWB]

Originally posted by neuro-trash grrrl
In songs:
Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life"- You know, that really cheerful, upbeat sounding ditty that's really about tweeking and oral sex, the drug reference in "Doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break" is cut so clumsily that even the rhythm of the song is disrupted: "Doing cphblrbph will lift you up until you break". The line "She comes round and she goes down on me" was left intact, which is odd because "go down" was cut out of "You Oughta Know", by Alanis Morrisette on MTV.

Oh, so that's what they're saying (or what gets cut)! I could never figure it out because the rhythm of that cut always throws me.