When I was a teenager I had a vast collection of cassette tapes, which I kept stacked high in piles leaning against the wall. Every so often, my mother would stage a raid on the contents of my tape collection, selecting those tapes she felt were “of questionable content”: read “Satanic.” These tapes, which were judged pretty much solely on the cover art, included Motley Crue’s Dr. Feelgood, Ugly Kid Joe, NWA, Guns-N-Roses (skulls and crosses? Fuggedaboutit!), Van Halen, and I think George Michael’s Faith. She’d hide the offending tapes, but the thing was, they were always hidden in the same place. All I had to do was glance over my tapes, see some were missing, and hie it down to the kitchen spice rack and feel around behind it.
We were also banned from watching MTV, which of course made us want to watch it all the more and would turn it on every time Mom went upstairs. I still remember it was channel 71; and she’d check the cable box too.
The best one, though, was when a friend and I were at my house watching Bachelor Party. You know the part where the stripper is dancing around about to have sex with the donkey? Mom leapt in front of the tv set, spread her housecoat like a pair of wings, and obstructed the screen until the donkey ate all the drugs and died.
Mom’s lightened up a lot, and these tales aren’t so much deep emotional wounds as warm fuzzy anecdotes to me. So spill, people. Tell me some tales of parental censorship, when Mom and Dad doled out the timeless wisdom of “because I said so” in defiance of your plaintive, puling pleas for lenience. Also welcome, of course, are tales of your own parental censorship.
Lessee, my parents the missionaries, neglecting to tell about the lesbian great aunt or the gay uncle. Somehow, I think that qualifies as censorship. The old man still hasn’t 'fessed up about his brother citing a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
The ONE AND ONLY advantage to being the youngest of three siblings (one 4 years older, the other 5 years older) is being brought to rated-M movies (for “mature,” in those days) movies suitable for the rest of the family but not really for you.
I remember casually mentioning to my fourth grade class that the last movie I saw was The Graduate. I don’t think they cared, but the teacher’s jaw dropped.
Some of the movies I got to see were tittilating in some mysterious hormonal way to the pre-adolescent me, but frankly, most were just boring. (All that kissy-kissy stuff, you know.)
Today, a fourth-grader who has seen the 2002 equivilent of The Graduate would likely be laughed out of class.
I remember my mom wanted us to watch Captain Kangaroo in the mornings instead of Ray Rayner. Some kind of prejudice against the cartoons on RR - which were mostly classic WB Bugs/Daffy/Road Runner. So I would have to change the channel back and forth from 2 (CK) to 9 (RR) when I thought my mom was near. And this was in the days before remotes were ubiquitous.
Also, no afternoon TV. Yep, no Garfield Goose (before they moved to a.m.), no Space Ghost, no Speed Racer, no Dark Shadows. Would have to sneak over to my buddy’s house down the block for my fix. No censorship of content, just the belief that I should do something better with my time than sit in front of “that idiot box.” Maybe “go outside and get some fresh air.”
I’m not sure what was more noteable when we got color TV - the TV itself, or that my mom let us watch Bozo’s Circus that day (and only that day) over the lunch hour. Man, that clown’s hair was red!
Oh yeah - Laugh-In was inappropriate when it first came out, though we wore her down.
Funny thing, some of my fondest memories of my mom were when we used to stay up late and watch Mary Hartman Mary Hartman, Fernwood Tonight, and Monty Python together. And she became a BIG fan of Ray. Apparently her tastes changed as I aged.
Here’s another one, not quite on topic, dealing with a different media. I’m sure it will shock you to hear that when I was a teenager I had a stash of dirty mags. Mostly Penthouse and Playboy, with a Hustler or High Society or 2 thrown in. Whatever I managed to steal from the barbershop, come across (pun intended) during a boy scout paper drive, or find without a cover in the gutter.
One day I came home to find my stash lying on my bed. My mom had apparently done some cleaning in my room, and discovered my (none-too-secret) hiding place. On top of the pile was a nice Hustler spread, with a note in my mom’s handwriting saying If you like this sort of thing maybe you should plan on being a gynecologist.
I wasn’t allowed to listen to the radio because of the “Devil Beat”. I was allowed to attend school dances because of the promiscuous styles of popular dancing - ??? I was given a bra check each morning before leaving for school. I’m not sure that counts as censorship. My boobs felt it was. I always took it off a block away and stuffed it in my purse, anyway.
My siblings were much older than I was (closest was 9 years away), and I did what they did, so I was the only kid in my first grade class who watched Saturday Night Live, and/or listened to Richard Pryor and George Carlin records on a regular basis. I was also taken to see various R-rated movies from the time I was 4, with the full knowledge of my parents (who themselves took me to watch porn movies with friends when I was about two; they figured I wouldn’t really know what was going on, but apparently I mistook the movie “actors” for my grandparents :eek: so we had to leave).
By the time I was 10, however, my brother and sisters were out of the house, and then suddenly my parents became “protective”; I wasn’t supposed to be watching cable TV at all, or seeing R-rated movies (both of which I did at friends’ houses)–and this went on until I was in college.
Also, my mother objected to certain songs specifically:
[ul]
Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, by Wham–because, according to my mother, he was singing about drugs (“I wanna hit that hiiiiiiigh…”)
Panama by Van Halen–“I reached down… buh-tween mah legs…”
Roxanne by The Police–obvious reasons[/ul]
… the list goes on.
Thing was, she was never sure, when we were in the car, if I was listening to a tape or the radio, nor did she really know how to shut the thing off. She’d just start punching buttons, when she heard something offensive, until the music went away.
Good times, good times. 
my sister and I were forbidden from singing certain songs as children because they were “not nice songs that nice children should sing”. Among them were Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini and Yummy Yummy Yummy I’ve Got Love in my Tummy :eek:
Xizor, I can’t believe you can’t see the evil in those songs!
The latter is the resulting effect of the former.
Think about it. 
Xizor, I can’t believe you can’t see the evil in those songs!
The latter is the resulting effect of the former.
Think about it.
Last summer I lived at home (I was 21), I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to go to a Joan Baez concert 'cause they were concerned about the ‘sort of people I’d meet there’.
During the Detroit riots, (we lived in a neighboring county, some 40 miles away from the riot area), I wasn’t allowed to go out of the house, not even to the corner one house away to mail a letter.
I knew a guy while I was in High School who joined the Marines (this was during Viet Nam), then deserted. I wrote him a letter, discovered later that mom had taken the letter. I figured it out 'cause she saved the stamp (about 6 cents if I recall correctly - yes, I’m that old).
On the Other hand, from the time I was about 11 til I moved out, every Christmas, my folks would buy me a bottle of booze. Go figure. (oddly enough, neither my older sister nor younger brother got this, just me)
I remember not being allowed to watch Saturday Night Live, and being probably the only kid in my class who wasn’t. I recall the night my dad came into my bedroom, though, and told me “You can come watch SNL for a few minutes… that weirdo singer you like is on.” It was Bowie, and I still have a little thump of affection for my father when I think about that. My choices in music were never censored, although my mother about choked on her breakfast the first time she heard Aqualung.
I am a HORRIBLE censor where my child is concerned, though. Maybe I’m just getting old, but I really do think there’s a significant difference between the stuff my parents had to be concerned about, and the stuff I have to be concerned about. My mother wasn’t happy that I listened to a song that had the word “snot” in it. I have to worry about Eminem, Linkin Park and whoeverthehell else is out there.
My parents were very liberal about letting me read or see whatever I wanted to read. My mother bought me a copy of National Lampoon magazine when I was 12. When I was 12, my dad took me to see The Godfather and Deliverance, and then A Clockwork Orange (the R-rated version) and The Exorcist when I was 13.
What could I rebel against?
The only real censorship that I had to endure when growing up was an absolute refusal on my mom’s part to let me watch ‘The Brady Bunch’ or ‘Speed Racer’. Her reasoning? They were asinine shows. I was also only allowed to watch ‘Little House on the Prarie’ and ‘The Waltons’ when she wasn’t home, because they made her cry, and she certainly didn’t want to cry at such sappy shows.
Hmmm…with my folks, it was more age appropriateness than anything else. When I was about 8 years old, I found Flowers in the Attic on my mom’s book shelf and was intrigued by the cover. She said I was too young and promised me I could read it when I got older. When I was in 7th grade, I saw the other girls in the class reading it, so I went home and asked her if I could. She said yes and got it down from the attic for me.
She used to like to watch movies first to see if they were okay for me, but that’s about it. The only thing she REALLY didn’t want me watching was horror movies, because they gave me nightmares and I was too petrified to sleep.
She said I couldn’t watch Married…With Children or In Living Color when I was 11, but occassionally she’d let me. Then she found out I had been watching them upstairs all along and wasn’t really upset.
I’ll probably be stricter-when my sister was 11, she wanted to read Stephen King’s It in the worst way, but I convinced my mother to make her wait.
I was never allowed to watch The Simpsons.
I had a terrible childhood, based upon the previous posts (growing up in the 60s and 70s).
My parents never censored anything - radio, stereo, TV, books, magazines, the lot. Our house was a benevolent dictatorship (shared between Ma & Pa). There never was a need to censor.
Oops, a mistake.
I never could get a subscription to Mad Magazine, despite repeated requests as a birthday present or Christmas gift.
As I said, I had a terrible childhood. 
My mother was one of those moms that was much older than my friends’ mothers. I eventually came to realize her way of thinking was vastly different than just about everyone else’s.
However, this sticks out in my head more than just about anything else she tried to censor during my childhood.
I got up every morning, a bit early, in order to read the funnies (that’s “comics” to the Yankees here ) and Ann Landers, since they were on the same page. (A tad ironic, now that I think about it…but anyway…)
One morning, I was reading a letter from “WhaddoIdo In Muskogee” or whomever, and it concerned somebody having or planning to have an abortion. I was about ten or so at the time. That word had no meaning to me at all, which was pretty uncommon, because I was an avid reader, and thought I knew the meanings to just about every word there was.
I looked up from the paper, and said, “Mama. What does “abortion” mean?”
Well, that was a huge error in judgment on my part. Sparks flew from her eyes, and she threw down her section of the paper in disgust.
“WHAT? Where did you hear that word??”
“Um, right here in Ann Landers…why?” At this point I thought I’d said a really bad cuss-word and was getting ready to duck.
“Don’t. You. EVER. Use. That. Word. AGAIN. Do you HEAR me??” She was absolutely beside herself by this time. I was thinking, Good God, why did Ann Landers use a cuss word??
[sub][sup]“But what does it mean?”[/sub][/sup] Stupid, yeah, but I realllllly wanted to know what that word meant, even if it meant my mother was going to throw me through the plate glass window.
"Only horrible people use that word. Don’t worry about what it means! I never want to hear that word in this house again…do you understand me??
Nodding quickly, and getting the hell out of there as fast as I could, I went on to school. Of course, I went straight to the dictionary and never could figure out why she was so upset I had used that word. It wasn’t nearly as bad as she had been carrying on!
I can only surmise the reason she was so upset (read: pissed) about it was her ten year old daughter was wondering what abortion was. Good girls would never have asked that question, back then. She wanted me to be a “good girl”, I guess.
My father recorded a movie for my brother, but obviously had misgivings about the love scene, because when it finished he rewound it and taped the closing credits over that part of the movie.
My mom wouldn’t let me watch MAS*H during the first few seasons, because she thought Klinger was gay (he wore women’s clothes, so therefore…), and if I watched the show, he would make me gay, too.
Needless to say, he wasn’t and he didn’t…not that pointing this out ever convinced her she was mistaken.
I grew up in the 50’s and there wasn’t anything available to be censored. An example is that there was a movie “The Moon is Blue”, which was censored because someone said the word “virgin”. Does that really qualify? I guess I was deprived and ill prepared to censor what my kids watched and listened to.