Sitting here reading the SDMB with **Animal House ** on SpikeTV in the background and I notice that the oddest parts of words are being edited out.
Belushi has gone into a rant about the bar being taken from the Delta house. He screams “Godddamn! sonuvabitch! ass(silence)!”
Since when is “hole” a swearword?
And why do they cut the “God” part out of “Goddammit”? I always thought the “dammit” part was the dirty bit. What gives?
I don’t know why they even bother to run certain movies on channels that are going to edit out the naughty words: Porky’s, Animal House, and The Breakfast Club are three that come to mind right away.
They say “shit” constantly on F/X in various shows and movies.
The God part is definitely the part that believers find offensive.
According to fine fellows over at findlaw the FCC banned certain words from being on TV and radio.
The original seven words were, shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, mother-fucker, and tits.
I noticed on tv, such a Beavis and Butthead, you could say asswipe, assmunch, assgoblin, etc. But you couldn’t say “asshole.” What’s up with that?
Also, you will, to this day, hear euphemisms for “ass” and “bitch” on certain edited-for-TV movies, when today these words are well-acclimated to prime-time. This is nothing but an issue of economics, since it would cost to re-dub these older prints on which such editing was called for.
Is this some of the inconsistency you had in mind?
Well when you say the word ass you are referring to a donkey. When you say the work asshole you are referring to an asshole, can you see the difference? Damn has not been censored on TV for many years before they started saying shit. Goddamn is blasphemy.
Its not complicated if you think about it, just dumb.
True. That’s what they mean when they talk about “taking the Lord’s name in vain.” Swear words are not inherently sinful – it’s just a social taboo. It’s when you use God’s name as a swear word (ie, “God dammit” or “Jesus H. Christ”) that you run into trouble morally. It’s a form of blasphemy, albeit a very minor one.
I recall the scene on the Simpsons where the Flander’s house was destroyed by a tornado and Todd & Rod got clothes from a donation bin. Todd is wearing a Butthole Surfers T-shirt, as he proudly announces, “Look Daddy, I’m a surfer!” To be fair, I think you could only seen “utthole Surfers”, so maybe that makes it OK.
It seems to me that something similar to the monkey/dartboard method is used.
I’ve wondered about this myself! The other night, Liar, Liar was on network TV and was edited for content. The scene where he insults his boss during a board meeting originally contained this line from Jim Carrey:
“He’s a pedantic, pontificating, pretentious bastard; a belligerent old fart; a worthless steaming pile of cow dung…figuratively speaking.”
The line was edited to say:
“He’s a pedantic, pontificating, pretentious bastard; a belligerent old fool…”
Whaaat??? You can say BASTARD, but you can’t say FART?
In the showing of Life on some channel ( I think it was TNT if memory serves correctly) they kept the N word in all of the lines.
Not that surprising. Fart is a vulgarity, in all cases. Bastard is simply a term describing a child who was conceived outside the bonds of matrimony. In fact, back in the 60’s there was an episode of Bonanza, the title of which was “The Bastard.”
In 1996 when The Butthole Surfers were on The Late Show, their names appeared onscreen during the opening guest list as “The B***hole Surfers”, but announcer Alan Kalter was allowed to say “The Butthole Surfers”. Go figure.
Tapioca Dextrin, I think you’re misreading the Supreme Court’s decision in the Pacifica case. The seven words list was George Carlin’s invention; the FCC and the courts were asked to make a ruling on them after the fact. The FCC is loathe to make absolute proscriptions against any particular words, as that would constitute pre-censorship.
The Supreme Court in its majority decision in Pacifica neither said that offensive words were limited to those seven, nor did it say that those words could never be used on television or radio.
True, but the “seven words you can’t say on TV” has since become a famous phrase. And the FCC always make rulings after the fact. They can’t do otherwise.
Then why did you claim that “the FCC banned certain words from being on TV and radio”?
You must remember that the FCC has little to no jurisdiction over cable. Hence the rather fast & loose rules for channels like FX and Spike. Comedy Central has been letting South Park say ‘asshole’ for, well, since it started.
In fact they run the South Park movie completely uncut (f*cks galore) repeatedly during their late night “Secret Stash” as well as Richard Pryor and Chris Rock concert movies.
The networks won’t even allow a ‘goddamn’ during primetime.
On an episode of Dr. Phil (which I did not watch by choice, I swear), there was one exchange where they bleeped out “bitch” but did not bleep out “dick”. Basically, he was calmly talking to a couple and recounting some of the things they’d said to one another, and said to them, “You called her a b**ch, she called you a dick.”
Seemed like an odd choice.
Not to mention the South Park episode where they said “shit” uncensored over 100 times, and even had a little counter in the corner of the screen tallying how many times it’d been said. Then again, popular conceptions of and reactions to vulgarities was the point of the episode; it starts off with adults getting all excited over how a NYPD Blue-like show was going to say “shit” on primetime TV.