I saw the most amazing thing on TV last night. In a show about the human body on the Learning channel devoted to reproduction, not only did they show lingering shots of a woman’s breasts as her pregnancy progressed (kind of a time lapse thing, very cool) and a perfectly clear dead on shot of the baby emerging, (very cool) they also showed, no lie, drum role please… a come shot. Top 1/2 inch of the man’s penis and the semen pouring out. I kid you not, I exaggerate not. In vivid color, up close and personal.
Fucking amazing.
And I say GOOD FOR THEM!! Not that I’m promoting come shots on TV, but in an educational program, I thought that was very hip of them.
Just needed to share, curious what y’all think.
Are YOU ready for Y2K? Take my advice: Panic early and avoid the rush.
I’m all for it. I can’t STAND “educational” programs about sexuality that tippy-toe around what reproduction is actually like. Who knows? Perhaps if more people saw what childbirth really, really looks like (with the mom vomiting from pain and liberal amounts of blood splashed all over) they might be fewer unplanned pregnancies!
(Okay, probably not. But it sounded good as I was typing it.)
Did you tape it? I’ll trade you for a copy of the X-rated Sears catalog! Lol!
Seriously, I once saw a penis piercing, among other things, on my local cable access. And last night MTV showed Scared Straight '99, complete with all the F-words, MF-words, etc.
Are non-broadcast basic cable channels bound by the usual FCC rules? Does the FCC sometimes grant permission to broadcast certain things? I remember a local UHF station in Chicago broadcast The Deer Hunter uncut once.
I saw the show you’re talking about (or one very similar to it) back in highschool (the mid-eighties) and again, not long after that, on PBS. It was, as you said, “fucking amazing”. It was not sexual. It was real. As real as nature gets.
I can’t believe that the FCC will allow as much violence on the tube as they do, but are so uptight about sex and language. I would rather my children see a breast or butt than see somebody get blown up or shot or beaten to a pulp, with extra blood spewing around, just in case we didn’t get the original idea. And let’s not even bring up the nightly news.
I was watching a repeat of MAD TV on Friday night. They had a “Tool Time” satire, where this Al Borland look-alike was cutting up his hand/smashing his fingers/etc., with the blood just squirting out. Then in the next skit, they bleep out the “god” when somebody said “god damn it!” and bleeped out what I believe was the word “shit”. What’s wrong with this picture? It’s ok to have your kids see guts and gore, but oh no, don’t let them say a naughty word! “That might make a lasting impression and we don’t want our kids to go around talking dirty. But shooting somebody is just fine in our books.” I just don’t get it.
I’m totally with you, Dirty Devil. For all the strange messages they gave me, my parents did manage to get a good one through: Sex is normal and good, violence is abnormal and bad.
I have been astonished at the number of people who disagree with that. I remember about 12 years ago being in a lecture hall in college. The teacher asked the class: “If the choice were between sex and violence, which would you rather have your child see?”
I was the only on in the entire room who said they would rather have their child see sex than violence.
The rest of the class thought I was nuts. Even more so when I loudly called them all a bunch of sick perverts.
I was watching “Trauma-life in the ER” on TLC last night and they had some nasty gun shot wounds and hairy surgeries, up close in living color. Fine, I have no problem with that (in fact, it’s probably a good thing in case any gangbanger types run across it and see just how bitchen getting shot is). But what made me laugh was that they blurred out the genitals on the nude victims being prepped for surgery. yes, we can see their torn up guts, but not their penises!
Is it any wonder we have so many sexually fucked up weirdos?
Are YOU ready for Y2K? Take my advice: Panic early and avoid the rush.
I saw that show, I think it was called Intimate Universe. I thought it was just wonderful. I hope they show it again, because I didn’t get to see the beginning of it. I believe they made some follow-up shows (different kids, same premise) where they discuss learning patterns and stuff from infancy through adolescence.
I’m reminded of a new story I saw several months back. It was in the middle of Clinton’s whole impeachment debacle, and the story was about how the story of Clinton’s affair was playing in other parts of the world. The best quote was from the Australians:
“Thank God we got the prisoners and they [America] got the Puritans!”
If my c-section was videotaped and broadcast, I think the unplanned pregnancy rate would not only plummet, but some kids may line up for voluntary sterilization! (My section was pretty gross- hip to hip, lots of blood loss, etc.)
But seriously, I agree with all that’s been said here so far. It’s a sad world that censors two loving people making a baby, but can show people killing each other.
PR
If you’re not part of the solution you’re just scumming up the bottom of the beaker.
Harvey and Dirty (sorry if that sounds bad), the FCC doesn’t have the power to forbid anything, or to permit anything, to be broadcast over any channel. (For the most part, pornography being an exception.) Any broadcast station in your area could, if they wanted, broadcast as many nude women and “bad” words as they wanted. By convention, they do not, because:
–it limits the audience;
–if someone complains to the FCC, they do have the right to fine the station in question for violating their license;
–if enough people complain at license renewal time, the license may not be renewed.
They can only fine the station if somebody complains? So if some station broadcasts the word “fuck” constantly for sixty seconds, but nobody bothers to send a letter, the FCC doesn’t do anything?
There’s a certain educational show about evolution that used to come on basic TV (not even cable). It was mostly boring interviews, but inbetween, when the announcer was talking, you saw these two men and one woman dancing interpretive dance, and all 3 were topless. When I was 12, man I loved that show!
AuraSeer, pretty much. A broadcast license specifically mentions serving the community interests. If nobody in the community appears to have a problem, no license violation has occurred. Remember, the FCC was only able to fine Howard Stern because of the concerted efforts of a handful of letter-writers.
Phil’s right, for a very simple reason. The FCC can’t possibly monitor every moment of every broadcast in the country. I suppose if an FCC agent (or whatever you call them) happened to be listening to your station at the moment you said one of the seven dirty words on the air, you could be fined, but for the most part the only way they’ll know about it is if someone complains.
Hence one of the first things we learned at our college radio station was: if you slip up and say something “illegal” by accident, try to go as long as you can afterwards without saying the name of the station on the air
Never regret what seemed like a good idea at the time.
The Fish Cheer? Go Haddock? Seriously, what is the Fish Cheer?
Regarding “censorship” on TV, having grown up in Europe I am pretty used to seeing all sorts of stuff on television, especially when I was living in Germany, or here in the the Netherlands, the English were a little less liberal. When I was younger I used to wonder what I was missing out on when my friends in Canada and the US said that they would really like to see the “uncut” versions of films (nothing pornographic BTW), wondering what kind of exiting depravity I was missing out on, until the day I realised that I WAS seeing the uncut versions. They have restrictions here too, however they are pretty broad and the worst excess don’t undermine the fabric of society or anything, mostly they are just embarrasing because they are so ridiculous. The first show like that that I recall was a clone of an Italian game show which had been put on in Germany and was called Tutti Frutti. It was basically a game show where models named after fruit would remove clothing and dance whenever a contestant scored points. I was at an age where this was all tremendously alluring and exiting, but I can’t say it has ever done me any harm. Interestingly, this show ran late late at night and had unbelievably high viewer numbers, but finding somebody who admitted to having actually seen the thing was pretty difficult. Maybe people aren’t so different after all.
Stoidela: You just NOW saw that? I remember seeing that in i believe middle school (ejaculation scene and all). I remember everyone getting grossed out as the baby was coming out LOL. Anyway, TV is slowly becoming less uptight (I stress slowly). In only the last five years or so they’ve let the words bitch, and ass slide on network TV. Who knows…maybe in 20 years you will finally see two breasts on TV in their full glory.
Locally, on our local PBS station they have been showing an anime (Key The Metal Idol) that is really for adults. They liberally show breasts on that show. I think the only stations bold enough to show some nudity are the public television stations.
“Let me show you something
that you’ve never seen before
like a light im gonna shine on you
forever is a word i dont often get to say
but if you say it loud enough i’ll say it too”
(My section was pretty gross- hip to hip, lots of blood loss, etc.)