It occurred to me recently that, to me, there is something inherently funnier about profanity which has been “bleeped” than profanity that has been left intact (this regards verbal profanity). What made me dwell on this most recently was Craig Ferguson’s cold open from his show Tues. night. By the end of it I was laughing hysterically, especially at the very end. I swear that I could actually lip read the puppet.
Now, part of the humor in this particular case is a cute fuzzy bunny rabbit puppet with a foul mouth. But it seemed to me that, had I been in the studio audience hearing the unedited version, it might not have been quite so funny, and I was trying to puzzle out exactly why this is. It’s not that there’s any real mystery; in virtually every case my mind can easily supply the missing word. It’s got nothing to do with my personal sensitivities; I can be as foul-mouthed as anyone depending on the setting, and profanity generally doesn’t offend me at all.
The best I can come up with (and this is armchair psychology at its finest) is that the censorship of the particular words actually highlights their “offensiveness.” In unedited, uncensored speech, particularly with as many profanities as this puppet unleashes, I think my brain maybe just starts glossing over the foul language as foul language; it just becomes another adjective, interjection, or other part of speech. The “bleep” therefore serves as notice that the word which was expunged is OFFENSIVE, and makes me pay more attention to it in that light.
Not a very well fleshed-out theory, I know, but I wondered if:
[ol]
[li]Other people found the same thing; that “bleeped” speech is often funnier than the exact same thing unedited, and,[/li][li]Anyone had any other thoughts on why this is.[/li][/ol]
It can be, for example on Arrested Development used it very well. Buster gives a bleep laden rant that you just know was bizarre, the looks on his family’s face was awesome.
Yeah I do. Especially if they dub it over with some really silly attempt at replacing the vulgarity. My favorite is from Fargo, “Is this a frizzin’ joke?”
Jimmy Kimmel has a recurring segment called Unnecessary Censorship. Mundane, non-profane video clips are shown with certain words bleeped out from time to time, giving the impression that the speaker is swearing like a sailor, or discussing subject matter they are not actually discussing. It can be pretty funny, since many times the speakers are people who have never been seen swearing in public.
Context determines which one is funnier, but by and large censored wins out. It lets you fill in the blank in your own mind, and whatever you come up with is automatically going to be funnier than what was actually said.
When I read the title of this thread, I decided to post about that very scene. And there was another similar one where Michael responds with “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, buddy.”
Yep, in cases like this, the bleeping can make it really funny.
See, this is the sort of censoring that i hate.
There’s nothing inherently funny about profanity, but there are times when it’s perfectly appropriate to the situation, and when it gets bleeped because of stupid prudishness, then it pulls the viewer out of the movie, and ruins the experience.
There’s a classic rant from the first South Park episode (“Cartman Gets an Anal Probe”) that uses bleeps magnificently. Kyle’s younger brother Ike is abducted by aliens, and Kyle tries to use a “I’ve learned from this experience, I love my brother, please learn about human emotions”-type speech to get the aliens to experience empathy and return his brother. When that doesn’t work, he lets out a heavily-bleeped stream of abuse and profanity that sometimes is only punctuated by innocuous words like “and” sticking out amongst all the bleeping. It’s hilarious, even outside the context of it being the first episode and thus being more shocking, and I really think it wouldn’t have been as funny if you could hear the swearing.
I was just going to link to this–one of the funnier muppet parodies on YouTube. I love that some sick mind could see that by bleeping that song in those spots most people would immediately go there.
In Blazing Saddles there’s a scene of the townfolk of Rockridge in church after being stampeded by a gang of villains. They sing a hymn which includes the lines, “… Should we stay or should we quit? There’s no avoiding this conclusion, our town in turning into shit.”
On the DVD, they just sing it. And I guess the first time you hear it you are amused that they sing that lyric so reverently. But when shown on TV, they replace the word with a jarring chord from the church organist, which I sort of find funnier.
Heh, I was going to link to the Censored Count. A truly disturbing video. I wonder what the songwriters were thinking in the first place, with lines like “Slowly, slowly, slowly… getting faster”. That whole delivery- well, even if I hadn’t seen the censored version I’d probably be raisin’ an eyebrow. :dubious:
Oh, um. The OP. It depends on the context. If it really is censorship- trying to keep it G-rated while still having a potty-mouthed character- it just doesn’t work. Like in some Young Adult novel where the villain tells to the heroes to bleepity bleep off or he’ll bleeping bleep them. (Or in a poorly-done book for a religious audience, which is what I’m remembering right now). Either make do without the swearing, or write it down in all its sizzling blue glory. You can’t have it both ways.
The same goes for characters that in real life probably couldn’t go for five words without scatological expletives, but only say things like “darn it!” Unless it’s done intentionally for comic effect, I can’t suspend my disbelief.
In general I don’t find cursing funny or clever, but it has its time and place. (See here, for instance).
I find nothing wrong with (for an off the cuff example), “His face grew red and strained, and then he erupted forth with a stream of profanity that made the men blush, the women faint, the flowers die, and which caused the bible he was holding to burst into flame”, despite the lack of explicit profanity. So there are ways to do it…in prose. Not so much in video.
Generally, yes. I think Adam Sandler’s “Ode to My Car” is much funnier in the version with with car horns beeping out the obscene words.
One of the funnier bits on “I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again” was the “Julie Andrews Songbook (expurgated version)”. They played her performance of songs from “My Fair Lady” with harmless words beeped out.
The “clean” version of the Jay-Z song “Can I Get A…” on a Def Jam compilation CD a friend of mine had always cracked me up. Dogs woofing, whistles, car horns, all for less than half a second each. On top of replacing the lyrics “Can I get a FUCK YOU” with “Can I get a what-what”. It’s like they went waaaay over the top to show how fundamentally “unclean” their hip-hop was/is, that to sanitize it was to sillify it. (Not that it didn’t prevent Jay-Z from becoming a humungous kajillionaire on the backs of the radio plays of the clean versions.)
(Damn, that song is 12 years old already? Where’s my bifocals?!)