The “Favorite Cartoon Character” thread reminded me of an odd case of censorship I witnessed.
The show: Rocko’s Modern Life (Nickelodeon)
The situation: a steer and a milking machine.
The story: Rocko (a wallaby) takes his friend Heffer (a steer eaised by wolves!!) to his uncle’s ranch. While there, Heffer decides to “rough it” and sleep outside with the “wild” steers (they all sleep standing up in a row). Heffer, being the goofball he is, falls over and knocks the entire row of sleeping cattle. Rather than face their anger, he decides to sleep in the barn. The next morning, Rocko’s uncle comes in to hook up the cows to the milking machine. When comes to Heffer, he shrugs and hooks HIM up also and starts the machine. The look on Heffer’s face was absolutely hilarious!! At the end of the episode, Heffer has a sad parting scene with the machine. These two scenes have now but cut from this epsiode!!
OK, OK, I understand WHY, but it’s still a bit silly and I have seen worse things in “kid’s” cartoons.
Anybody see something like this?
Oh, BTW, there’s an episode where Rocko’s neighbor (a frog) hits on him when her husband stops showing her affection that has apparently been cut entirely!!
A commercial in England for a soft drink called TANGO. It had a short orange fat guy that ran around and slapped people on both cheeks. Very funny (you had to be there) only problem kids were slapping each other in the ears and busting eardrums. That one
was pulled real quick. About a month later after all the bad publicity had run it’s course, it ran again the whole room stopped to watch. But they had changed it from a slap to a kiss on the mouth the narrators quld be heard in the background “I dont think he was expecting that. I dont think I was expecting that”.
It was an exellent way to change bad press to good.
Underdog and his pills.
Mighty Mouse snorting his flower.
And the Nike (Reebok, Converse, who can keep 'em straight?) bungee jumping spot where the jumper came out of his shoes and, supposedly, plunged to his untimely death.
My favorite bizarre moment in censorship was the request (by the PMRC, I’m pretty sure) that Frank Zappa’s “Jazz from Hell” album be given a “Parental Advisory-Explicit Lyrics” sticker.
It is, of course, an instrumental album.
Of course, it is called “Jazz from Hell”, and it does contain the song “G-Spot Tornado”, but it’s still funny.
On Howard stren’s TV show there are frequently men kissing women, but when two women kiss they blur out the mouths. This seems really stupid to me, and I supose it could be argued that its prejudicial.
Watched “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” on broadcast tv this afternoon. There’s a scene where one of the weasels reaches down Jessica’s cleavage and gets a bear trap on his hand as a reward. Eddie Valient originally said “Nice booby trap” but the line has been changed to “Nice going, Jess” completely ruining the joke.
Back about 20 years ago, Colt .45 malt liquor had a commercial with a submarine crusing under the Arctic ice–it launched a can of Colt .45, much as a missile sub would. It was pulled pretty quick–I’ve always suspected because someone with a tiny little mind thought it was advocating a nuclear strike.
There was also an interesting episope years ago in which Canadian authorities seized copies of the Disney movie “The Black Hole.” None of them knew what it was about, but apparently they thought black holes sounded pronographic.
I’d also point out that in most showings of “Looney Toones” Wile E. Coyote is no longer shown hitting the ground or blowing up–somebody decided this was too disturbing for kids to watch. Instead, they can now assume he miraculously teleported to safety at the last minute, or some such thing.
This is censorship on a mass scale, but why do they show everything BUT condom ads on network TV? I see the Trojanman commercials on cable, but not on network. Or maybe they are showing them, but I don’t watch enough network TV to see them?
In the 5th grade, the teacher put masking tape across my mouth for talking in class. I had to wear it for about a half hour and she said I had to wear it as I walked to my next class as well.
There was an episode of Tiny Toons Adventures, where Buster wanted to buy a new bike. He saw a commercial of a guy selling bikes, and the guy said “If I give you a bad deal, then I’ll eat a bucket of scorpions.” And he eats a scorpion. Later at the end, when he got caught giving a bad deal, he swallowed down the bucket of scorpions.
A few weeks later, they showed the same episode, only with the scorpion-consuming cut out. I guess the censors thought that kids would think scorpion-eating was alright.
Now, they show the same epidose with the scorpion-consuming parts put back in. Geez, make up your minds, stupid censor people.
Remember when Pink Floyd’s “Money” was only played in the “goody-good bullbleep” version, and in “Aqualung,” an “offending” line was masked over to be “got him by the fun”?
I believe the Who’s “Who Are You” contained the first “f-word” to make it unexpurgated onto both FM radio and the early music video shows (it was before MTV).
Private Parts was on USA this weekend. In one of the most ridiculous items of censorship, there was a scene where Howard is kissing his wife and he reaches up and puts his hand on her clothed breast. It was “pixeled” out.
Later on I saw a madonna video of her feeling herself up… no pixels.
So we are saying that it’s not ok for a man to touch his wife through a shirt, but as long as you’re wearing an S&M bra you can feel yourself up on tv.
To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.
The inconsistancies of censoring “shit” on the radio.
There’s three songs: 1) a Steve Miller song I can’t recall; 2)the aforementioned “Money” by PF; 3) “Hand in My Pocket” by Alanis Morrissette (sp?). I’ve heard all three with their “-shit” word (bullshit, chicken-shit) broadcast many times. But now in “Money” they do some BS with “BS” and it’s just “bull”.
In Maine in 1996, AM’s song was very popular, and the “… brave but chicken-shit” phrase was uncensored. But when I came back to DC, I was singing along and hit the censored phrase “chicken-chicken”. I just burst out laughing.
I guess Mainers can deal with shit better than Washingtonians.
I always thought that the fact that ABC prefaced Ellen, which ran at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, and in which the title character was a lesbian, with “Parental Advisory” messages; but allowed Spin City, which airs at 8:30, features a gay male character, and often makes his behavior, or homosexuality in general, the topic of ridicule, featured no such parental advisory, to be the height of inane and hypocritical bullshit.
On the song censorship issue, I have seen the same type of thing:
On the Offspring’s song “get a job” they have lines referring to a guy’s girlfriend as being a bitch and the boy friend being a dick. In WA state they play them openly on the radio, in Slat Lake (on a trip to visit family) the censored dick and bitch… I’m sorry censoring BITCH??? What’s up with that?
To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.
Have you heard Everlast’s “What It’s Like” on the radio? They censor EVERYTHING around here (Michigan). In the last verse, they even censor the words “drugs” and “gun.” I know of no other song that has ever been this drastically cut up. It’s so severe that I must suspect that Everlast is being singled out for some reason. Whatever the case, I’m happy to report that the censors’ efforts failed. I bought the CD so I could hear the song properly.
“I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms.” -The Secret of Monkey Island
Remember the Washington Bullets NBA team? They changed the name to “Wizards,” apparently on the grounds that bullets are politically incorrect. Bad bullets!
(Though it was also a good way to get fans to buy more overpriced merchandise.)
Remember the Washington Bullets NBA team? They changed the name to “Wizards,” apparently on the grounds that bullets are politically incorrect. Bad bullets! (“Wizards” are leaders in the Ku Klux Klan…but I guess nobody’s supposed to make THAT connection.)
It was also a good way to get fans to buy more overpriced merchandise…but that had nothing to do with it. No, certainly not…
About the time The Three Stooges started making features films–the shorts were discontinued when Harry Cohn died–Moe stopped poking people like Larry or Curly Joe in the eye, as he had done with Curly, Shemp, and Joe Besser. He even alluded to this in * The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze; * they were captured by the Chinese Army and Curly Joe’s and Larry’s captors, who now looked like their captives, were going to poke the Chinese general in the eye. Moe said, “Uh-Uh–we don’t do that any more!”
In the Everlast song it was apparently mostly the choice of the band to censor. They thought it would sound better with all the rhyming lines weirded out than just leaving half a rhyme.
