So I’m watching TV last night, and come across the movie “Starship Troopers” on the F/X network. (F/X is owned by Fox/News Corp.) Because I have a soft spot for this incredibly silly, hopelessly miscast movie, I decided to watch a bit. I came in just before the first attack on Klendathu, the bug planet.
I ended up watching quite a bit, and was more than a little surprised by what I saw in terms of editing. Which is to say, there wasn’t any. Well, I take that back. There didn’t appear to be any editing for language–within the first few minutes of watching, I heard the word “goddamned,” which is nearly always edited to “damned” for broadcast. More to the point, there didn’t appear to be any editing for violence. I’ve seen the movie twice before, and I didn’t notice a single cut. Beheadings, impalements, dismemberments, people being burned alive, scores of dismembered bodies in a heap – all left intact.
What was edited? Nudity. When Diz is getting it on with Johnny and takes off her shirt, the frame was cropped to show actress Dina Meyer from the shoulders up. And when Michael Ironside comes into their tent and she dives under the covers, the scene was subjected to slo-mo, with just Johnny and the covers visible.
I’m well aware that we Americans have bizarrely Puritanical attitudes towards sex and nudity but not towards violence, and I’ve seen it for many years as a TV viewer. But given the level of graphic violence in this movie, the fact that so much was left intact while a couple of brief boob shots were taken out really surprised me. So much so that I composed a brief letter which, when I find the name and address of the S&P person at F/X, I’m going to send it:
Dear __________:
On Sunday, June 17th, I was watching television in the evening and happened to come across F/X’s airing of the film Starship Troopers. I joined the movie about 45 minutes in, and watched for about an hour. I’ve seen the movie several times, and am quite familiar with the content, so I was interested to see to what degree F/X would be editing the movie. What I saw was by turns amusing and troubling.
Much to my surprise, the majority of the film’s graphic violence was left intact. I noticed very few edits for content as far as violence – dismemberments, decapitations, impalements and the like were all depicted in their entirety. I didn’t notice any edits for language, either; even the usually-edited “goddamn” was given a pass. What did appear to be edited, and in fact appeared to be the only thing edited, was nudity. Although I missed the “co-ed shower” scene that appears earlier in the movie and so cannot comment, I did catch the liason between characters played by Casper Van Diem and Dina Meyer, in which Meyer appears topless. As she takes off her shirt, F/X cropped the scene to include the actress only from the shoulders up. As she dives under the covers when another character intrudes, F/X subjected the scene the slow motion, and in fact eliminated Meyer from it entirely.
I’m curious as to what standard F/X was employing in choosing to edit this movie for broadcast. I myself have no problem with graphic violence or with nudity, but the FCC does in certain cases and some viewers certainly do. Considering that this movie aired on basic cable on Sunday night (the most-watched night of television in the country) during prime-time hours leads me to wonder how your Standards & Practices department made decisions as to content.
In the satirical movie South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, one character, on a misguided attempt to “save the children” from the “evil influence” of Canadian culture, states, “Just remember what the MPAA says: Horrific, deplorable violence is okay, as long as people don’t say any naughty words!” I’m aware that F/X and News Corp. are not responsible for creating the culture and political climate in which we live, but it does seem to be a questionable programming decision to allow repeated, lingering shots of horrifically dismembered and mutilated human bodies, and to show those dismemberings and mutilations in progress, while eliminating two innocuous shots of a pair of breasts on a living woman.
This kind of double standard is, to say the least, baffling. Furthermore, I believe it contributes to the continuing controversy over media content to allow graphic violence but edit out female nudity. With Sen. Joe Lieberman and Congress again threatening the entertainment community with outside policing, it seems as if it would be in the best interests of programmers like F/X to adopt an all-or-nothing approach. Put the programming out there and allow the viewers to decide what is and is not acceptable. But to exercise this kind of questionable judgement and selective editing will only fuel the fires of the “moral cesspool” crowd.
I hope you can offer some insight as to F/X and News Corp.’s Standards and Practices decision-making process, in this case and in general, and I’d be interested in your thoughts on the violence-and-nudity debate. Thank you for your time,