Let me move on to comercials - I can’t stand the one about some high-speed internet, where they guy cleans up a kitchen really fast, and his girfriend says, “Holy sh…”
and the scene ends.
Or the car commercials, where somebody gets into, or narrowly avoids an accident, and someone says “Holy sh…” and they cut.
My opinion is I wouldn’t care if they said “Holy shit” out loud. I’d probably get tired of the commercial sooner, but that’s it. The producers of the commercial know the rules - they’re writing the scripts - if they don’t want to offend, then I say don’t write the psudeo-profanity into the commercial.
It’s just sophomoric to “kinda sorta” write it in, then cut it back out.
Actually, these particular commercials have a point to them. Right after the actor begins to say “Holy shit,” it cuts to a shot of the car with the words “Safe Happens.” It’s a play on “Shit Happens,” so the wink at “Holy shit” is relevant rather than gratuitous.
When President Bush told another politician that he believed that Hezbollah should be told to “stop this shit” earlier at the G8 meeting, most news networks left the “shit” unbleeped because of President Bush’s position. Ironically, in the FCC’s recent ruling that uses of “shit” and “fuck” during live awards shows were not indecent, part of the FCC’s reasoning was Bush and Cheney’s uses of these words.
As for The Daily Show, I believe the reason it is bleeped is because the show reairs during the daytime as well. When the author of the book On Bullshit guest-starred, Jon Stewart made a big to-do about the fact that since the book was all about the word “bullshit,” the word would be unbleeped during the regular 11:00 broadcast but bleeped on the reruns. (Sometimes The Daily Show does leave some swears unbleeped- besides the Bush case, there was also Robert Novak’s infamous “This is bullshit” comment on CNN. I can also recall a Stephen Colbert [I think] piece in which either “shit” or “fuck” was used unbleeped, as well as a recent- presumably unintentional- case in which Jason Jones called an interviewee “fucking pathetic.” Although it was bleeped, the word “fucking” could clearly be heard over the sound of the bleep.)
She sure was. She was talking about how she wouldn’t go on another date with a particular guy because he was a “clit-flicker” and then went on for several sentences about the flicking (including hand gestures if I recall correctly) and its aftermath.
Whereas she was bleeped when telling the story of how, when she lost the Emmy to “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” she flipped them off and yelled “Suck my dick!” They bleeped the word “dick” but did not IIRC blur her illustrative hand gesture. Completely schizophrenic in approach.
We have the Venture Brothers (Season 2) DVDs at home, and I was very surprised to learn that things that are bleeped out during the [adult swim] broadcasts were also bleeped out on the DVDs.
I don’t think there’s any rational explanation whatsoever other than the belief that the censoring is for added comedy.
I was going to mention this. This was after Michael Richards’s nigger incident, and the question was if it was okay for blacks to continue to use the word. I believe John Oliver was with Wilmore, but since Wilmore was black, it was okay for him to say it, so he’d just go over to Wilmore each time. There was a bit at the end with other slurs said by people, such as a gay saying “faggot” and Dan Bahkedhal saying “Dan Bahkedhal.” Who that offends, I have no idea.
On Comedy Central there was a stand-up show that followed several comedians along on a tour, and Patton Oswalt opened up a show discussing the rules that were handed to him regarding acceptable words and unacceptable words. It said that the word “dick” could be used to describe a person, but not as a reference to male anatomy. So, he says, “Well what if my penis is really disrespectful of women? I can’t say that my dick is a dick?” They bleeped the first one and let the second one air. Tears in my eyes.
One of my favorite episodes of The X-Files has Mulder saying the “s” word right as the teaser cuts to the opening credits. I laughed so hard I fell off the bed the first time I saw it, and I knew right then that it was going to be one of my favorite episodes.
TNT and FX (which I believe are owned by the same company) seem to be fairly liberal with the swearing. On “Saving Grace”, Holly Hunter’s response to meeting an angel of God: “Holy Shit!”
That was “Bad Blood”. The X-Files producers liked to mess with the Fox censors. There was reportedly a huge fight over whether Mulder could say “Crap!” after being splattered with dung in “War of the Coprophages”.
“Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’” makes a running gag of Scully saying “bleep” and “bleeping” whenever she has to quote the foul-mouthed local police detective. At the end, the detective stares at the final crime scene and says “Bleep!”