I understand and get the logic about American tv, the FCC and expletives, vulgarity on the public airwaves.
Being from a pinko, liberal and (if you believe the myths) hedonistic Sweden, it’s a big non-issue for me. There’s been live intercourse on Big Brother, swearing is legio and acted sex scenes are abundant. n.b. I’m not saying our way is better, just different.
What I don’t get is how tv shows get away with using words like penis and vagina.
Face it, it sounds kinda vulgar.
If the rules are there to protect the li’l ones, having your four year old come up and ask “Daddy, what’s a vagina?” can be kinda awkward, but mostly, the word would’ve come up in a context which might be hard to explain. The dirty word is verboten, but the situation where the substitute word came up is not.
I realize that writers use these words to skate around the rules, which must be pretty obvious to the FCC as well. I guess there’ve been some rulings that set the standards.
So, is there a movement from the morality police to ban these words as well? Isn’t the FCC a bit concerned about it? Wouldn’t sensitive ears be just as offended by hearing “Frikkin’ Vagina”?
Do “penis” and “vagina” appeal to “prurient interest”? Not to mine, they don’t.
Are they “patently offesnive” sexual terms? Actually, they are the “proper” terms.
Are they "language so grossly offensive to members of the public who actually hear it as to amount to a nuisance”?
And even if they sound “kinda vulgar” to you, vulgarity is not against the rules unless it reaches the level of “grossly offensive.”
Finally, let’s remember the words of the late Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart, who said, in a decision about pornography, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…”
Far from being vulgar; I find the words pretty clinical. And my children (2 and 3 years old) know what a penis is – one of them has one, and they bathe together. In fact, sometimes I wish he would stop talking about it.
FWIW, I swear that in the 80s or 90s Phil Donohue broadcast close-up photos of penises and vulvas, on network TV in a midmorning time slot. They were illustrations of what various venereal diseases can do to you, and thus were about as far from appealing to the prurient interest as possible. And of course they warned the audience ahead of time. Still, I thought it was quite remarkable.
You cannot make any rational sense of the restrictions on American tv because the complainers are usually doing so for religious reasons. Not only does this remove any rational basis, but also any consistent irrational basis because our multitude of beliefs and sects have a multitude of behaviors that they consider taboo.
We just muddle along, with the list of banned words and pictures gradually shrinking over the years as religious groups lose their power. To balance that, other words are substituted. Nigger, chink, kike, wop, and other ethnic slurs are probably more banned today than in the past.
Both use and enforcement are inconsistent as well, with time of broadcast, context, and seriousness of use major factors.
Don’t try to make sense of American culture. No head can take the strain.
I don’t really know why things are the way they are. You can’t show nude human beings above the age of about 18 months on commercial TV, and even in films it’s very rare, because the producers want to avoid restricted audience ratings. Even in non porno films intended for adult audiences, bizarrely, the actors stay covered during sex scenes. Right, like most men and women IRL keep their underclothes on when they get it on.
And yet, commercials for impotence drugs are incessant.
