My wife and I recently visited Vancouver. Before going to bed, I watched about half an hour of From Dusk Till Dawn on Citytv.
From previous visits, I had remembered that Citytv featured movies with nudity and unbleeped bad language.
This visit, I noticed a) nudity, b) lots of unbleeped uses of the word “fuck” in its various permutations, and c) that, on the other hand, the word “pussy” was muted every single time it was used. Which made Cheech’s “welcome to the Titty Twister” monologue extra funny.
This got me wondering: what are the obscenity rules on Canadian TV? Did Citytv just decide that “pussy” was more offensive than “fuck,” and therefore unacceptable, or are there province- or country-wide rules about this? If so, what are those rules?
Canadians don’t usually get their knickers twisted over bad words or nudity shown on TV late enough that the kiddies are in bed. They tend to get more upset with racial and gender stereotypes. I am sure that the CRTC would penalize a TV broadcaster if it received enough complaints, but using a word like fuck or pussy on a midnight TV show would not violate “community standards” – which are used as the arbitrary marker, rather than a specific list of words that can and can’t be said. There is a lot of inconsistency between what gets bleeped depending on the time of day, warnings given with the show, which channel and the whims of the bleeper. CityTV does show some softcore porno films; Canada is not as liberal as many European countries in this regard. Canadians cared less about Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction.
The CRTC is the arbiter, and most of its rulings come down on “community standards” AND time of day. What’s acceptable at 10 pm on a Sunday night (The Sopranos, uncensored, with a warning at every commercial break) wouldn’t fly 3 pm on a school day. IIRC the time between midnight and 6 am is officially regarded as a no-man’s land, where any station can air whatever they want (the rationale being only adults are up that late).
CityTV became popular in the early 70’s as a local Toronto station showing “baby blue” movies (low production value soft core porn) on Friday nights. They’re still more risque than networks like CTV (and even CTV showed The Sopranos essentially uncut* during prime time), but hardly the most “out there” anymore (that mantle has certainly been picked up by Show Case, [Canadian] Bravo! and The Movie Network). One more censorship decision by CityTV that most of us find amusing is their propensity for bleeping “mother” out of “mother fucker.” Presumably, they want to tone down the phrase without completely eliminating the artistic merit of a good “fuck.”
I say “essentionally” uncut because the shows were edited for length, but not for content. Most of the stuff edited out was not the violence, bad language or nudity.
