Okay, it’s all right in US television to show male nipples, but not female ones (it’s a weirdness I can’t understand)
So, I’m wondering, what would be ‘protocol’ for an unknown nipple? A close up on an anonymous one?
(Yes, I know it’s generally up to the program or the station, but I’m wondering if there’s either any precident for this or if any dopers work in a TV station that could give an informed answer for this?)
And please don’t ask why I even thought of this question. It’s better you don’t know.
Um, well, generally the female (adult) nipple tends to be quite a bit larger than the male, so I don’t know that there would be much doubt in anyone’s mind which sort was being featured.
TV censorshhip is a curious thing. There are lot of things in the vast gray area between what is okay and what is absolutely verboten and nipples are a good example. Yes, you can show nipples on US broadcast TV, you just have to be really careful about it. This doesnt mean Skinemax is coming to broadcast any time soon but I’ve seen a demonstration of a self breast exam on PBS and IIRC Shchindler’s List showed full frontal nudity when it was broadcast in prime time.
What I found interesting was a commerical I saw for Old School last night during Survivor. Will Farrell appeared topless and they blurred it out. The irony being that this was during Survivor which features plenty of shirtless guys.
falls out of chair laughing you cannot show something as simple as nipples on TV? Something as perfectly human? Methinks you live in an overcensored society
Tell us something we dont know. The irony is that it’s perfectly o.k. to show people getting their heads blown off ad nauseum, but God fordid we see a nipple.
Im still waiting for some show (probably on Fox) where they show a topless well endowed female with black tape covering her nips. I wonder if they would argue the fact of whether the tape was rectangular or circular.
LA Times columnist Jack Smith had a high old time with this subject in a column 40 years or so ago.
LA City Council member Kenneth Hahn (father of the current mayor I believe) had proposed a city ordinance to ban strip club woman performers from showing “any part of the breast that signifigantly differs in color from any other part.” That linguistic monstrosity set Smith off on a rollicking column that I’ll be Hahn never forgot.
The general rule is that you can’t show any “nudity” (including female nipples) in a sexual context. In a show about breast cancer or Schindler’s List, the nudity is nonsexual, so they can show it, but if it’s just some actress being nekkid for the sake of looking hot, no.
It does take an awful lot of violence before the TV censors say anything, though.
The commercial was a parody of the ads for “Girls Gone Wild” videos (I think they used the phrase “old men gone wild”). So they used the screen blurring from those ads.
Slayer: Although your boob covering example has not occurred yet, to my knowledge, I do know that on an episode of the Man Show they toyed with the fact that Com. Cent. told them that they could show 75% of the female backside. So a similar half-covering of breast would not be unprecedented, albeit on cable.
E! pixelated bare breasts of a man (who claimed to be straight) who had a breast augmentation procedure.
Odd.
And how is an attractive woman exposing her nipples sexual, if it isn’t in a sexual context? (i.e. at a car wash.) The censors assume a sexual context in the viewers’ minds?
In that case, children shouldn’t be shown on television, because some perverts see them in a sexual way.
That’s not true. I think the word you are thinking of is “indecent.” Once in a while The Learning Channel airs a program on human sexuality, and it shows a female nipple getting erect while she’s sexually aroused. It’s definitley a sexual situation, just not indecent. Maybe I’m wrong and there’s another term out there that the FCC uses, if so maybe someone will correct me.
Can anyone tell me why in the world a woman would be exposing her nipples at a car wash, if not to tittilate viewers? That’s not a non-sexual context, that’s no context at all.
The TLC example does seem qualitatively different to me, though I can’t pin down why. But I’m not sure if it’s relevant, since you can get away with showing boobies on cable.
The PBS miniseries Tales of the City (1993) had bare female breasts. Local affiliates were given the option of showing a blurred or non-blurred version. Thankfully, my affiliate protected me from the corruption bare titties could have caused.
The definition of obscene, from the FCC web site, is:
*To be obscene, material must meet a three-prong test: (1) an average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the material, as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (2) the material must depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable law; and (3) the material, taken as a whole, must lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. *
The FCC does not have censors looking for problems. They wait for consumer complaints, then make a judgment.
Channels that appear solely on cable are exempt.
As for why so much violence is permitted, I could not find any FCC rules restricting it.
