So I just watched the second trailer for ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ and was amused at the line ‘Don’t touch those squirrel’s nuts!’ regarding some squirrels with walnuts or somesuch.
And it got me to thinking…artists and writers and such don’t always get away with it.
Frank Cho, of Liberty Meadows fame (and others) once had a strip in which a female character, Brandy, was holding a beaver (having captured it) and one of the other characters shouts ‘NICE BEAVER, BRANDY!’.
His editors pulled the reference, according to Cho and he had to re-write the strip…one of many he had to rework due to such restrictions.
What other similar spots can you find folks think of where a creator either ‘got away’ with one or attempted and failed?
There’s the legedary Science Fiction story (I don’t recall which story or which author). To get around a censorious editor, the story refers to a “ball bearing mousetrap” on one page, and reveals it to be a Tomcat on another.
Robert Heinlein had to deal with a similarly prim editor, and in The Star Beast (which was a juvenile novel, fer cryin’ out loud) gave her “owner” the name John Thomas (the same name of a succession of males in the family, all of wghom “owned” the Star Beast). Later, seeing things from the Beasts point of view, there’s a line that “She had been raising John Thomases for years, and intended to keep on doing so.”
There are some notable battles between the writing staff of Saturday Night Live and the network censors, particularly back in the late '70s. After the SNL staff wore out the first censor, NBC countered with a dowdy, prim, middle-aged woman who had apparently spent her life learning obscure subculture terms, bizarre sexual references and the foreign language equivalent of every potentially offensive word imaginable. They couldn’t put anything over on her.
I was just watching my DVD of Popular (WB, 1999–2001), and there’s a segment mentioning a student named “Wendell Smegma.”
Oh, there was also an episode in which Mary Cherry (the brillant Leslie Grossman) was writing her memoirs: “No Matter How Hard You Try, You Can’t Bust This Cherry.”
I honestly think tyhis is really the result of a much more innocent time, and not anyone trying to “get away with” anything.
On the other hand, it was years before I realized the implications of “Hooterville” on Petticoat Junction, and I certainly think *that[i.] was intentional.
By the way, I don’t think that deliberate double-entendres that never stood a chance of being blocked really belong here. So “What Knockers!” from Young Frankenstein and “Nice Beaver!” from Naked Gun, which never were in danger of being blocked, don’t really belong in a thread with examples where the writers had to use ingenuity to circumvent some overseeing censor. Ditto for just about every joke in, say, Striperella
My favorite from the Simpsons was Comic-Book Guy eating marshmallow Peeps one after another. “Ah, if only real chicks would go down this easily!” That episode (Homer vs. Dignity) was just on, and it was full of censor-baiting.
“Gunsel,” used constantly by Spade in “The Maltese Falcon” (the movie; I don’t recall if it was in the book or not) to refer to gun-toting thug Wilmer. Everyone assumed it was slang for someone who carried a gun. It’s actually a dutch (?) word meaning catamite. It makes Wilmer seem a much less unreasonable character when you know what Spade was really calling him.
Thanks!! That was the best belly laugh I’ve had in days!! Still laughing!
What comes to my mind on the OP is the song Take A Walk On The Wild Side
where Holly, from Miami F L A, “never lost her head, even when she was giving head” by Lou Reed. This played on AM radio at a time when they were Bleeping out words like Paul Simon’s “When I think back on all the crap I learned in High School”. I believe Reed got over on that one.
Also, I liked the SNL skit where the people dressed in Kid TV type outfits with the letters U C K on them and Will Ferrel comes out screen-right dressed with a F and starts dancing to place himself at the front of the line. Almost gets there on several attempts. That was truely skirting the edge.
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As I’ve often pointed out, it also means that Guttman is gay.
Someone here pointed out that an episode of Arrested Development managed to sneak “fucking” onto the air. It was broken in half and shown in two segments so that a scene began with the end of the word (-king $3000 suit), and a later flashback scene led up to that, cutting just after the beginning of the word (Are you kidding? I’m the man with the fu-).
There was also Tobias saying to Lindsey. “Listen, you cunt–try music loving lady” along with many of Tobias’s gay double entendres (I blue myself).
From 42nd Street:
Man: Sit on my lap. Woman: I ain’t no flagpole sitter.
From Hamlet:
Hamlet: May I lay in your lap.
Ophelia: No, my lord.
Hamlet: I mean with my head in your lap.
Ophelia: Yes, my lord
(Hint: Why do you think Ophelia changes her mind?)
Hamlet: Do you think I mean country matters?
(It’s fascinating to see how high school texts try to rationalize the meaning of “country matters,” which is, of course, a pun.)
From Andrew Marvel’s “To His Coy Mistress”
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust: 30
The grave 's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
“Quaint” here is a pun, too.
Many people miss the point of this exchange from Monty Python (it’s on Monty Python’s Previous album, but I don’t think it was used on the broadcast).
Michael Palin announces he can’t say the letter “C” and always pronounces it “B.” It’s suggested he substitute “K” for “C” – “Spell bolour with a ‘k’? Kolour.” When he realizes this solution, he says, “What a silly bunt.” Think about it.
There’s a game on Whose Line where certain letters have to be replaced with different letters by the performers (every time you would normally say an F, you have to say a B). The performers regualrly see how far they can take that. They usually make it pretty far on-air, too.
Cairo too, I was surprised with some of the blatant hints Hammett made. I guess Wilmer is more likely to be with Guttman, since he’s the man in charge?