Apparently, DVD players that can censor out “offensive” content are now available at Wal-Mart. Now, unless DVD makers start coming out with discs that can only be played on machines with the nanny chip installed, this development doesn’t really affect me in the least. It does, however, get me thinking about some of the truly useful possibilities of this technology.
If you could program your DVD player to automatically censor particular kinds of content, what would you have it skip over?
Personally, I’d cut out:
Jokes that are so obvious even a computer could see them coming (“Your contact in Japan is Mr. Roboto”).
Any speech by a detective that includes the line “my methods get results!”
Any scene with Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, Pauly Shore, Gilbert Gottfried or Tom Green.
Any scene where “the believer” demands that “the skeptic” provide an airtight scientific explanation for the mysterious phenomenon they’ve just witnessed in under ten seconds or else admit that “we have to consider the possibility that this was caused by aliens/angels/vampires/the mold in my boxer shorts.”
I’d filter out most gratuitous gore, guts, grossout stuff, you get the idea. I can’t stand this stuff, and many of the movies that I’d otherwise love seem to have it in them. Sublight’s list is good too, especially the part about filtering out Pauly Shore.
“He tampered in God’s domain”/“There are some things that man was meant to leave alone!” morals. (Frikkin’ luddites, Trying to taint our youth, they are.)
Fake (or lame, “low-level”) profanity used in place of hard profanity.
“Hard” profanity needlessly inserted into every other sentance, just to make the movie look “gritty.” (Or to give it a higher rating.)
Shots of actors who’re obviouslyinexperienced with weapons, playing hardcore-killing-machines.
Obvious product placement shots. (You know those dystopian Cyberpunk stories where Megacorps start battling each other openly, with mercenaries? A censor feature like this would be sure to start that happening, IRL. )
Scenes where the Dog dies.
Scenes with heroes going over the top to use “non lethal” weapons and techniques, so the movie can pacifiy the moralists, while still including gonzo fighting and action sequences.*
Scenes with any variation of “You need to do more thinking with your HEART, not with your HEAD!”
Mickey Rooney’s scenes in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
*Actually, maybe to kind of “bring back the balance,” I’ll just have the player superimpose a video clip from any number of WWII/Normandy landing movies, with U.S. troops shooting the Germans trying to surrender.
I’m with you on the grossout stuff. I don’t know if I’m unusually sensitive to such things or what, but when I see a “bodily fluid scene” I’m not amused or even shocked, just nauseated. I mean I’ve actually been on the verge of vomiting and had to fight to keep it down. Not pleasant.
Normally I might agree with you, but that would ruin the wonderful film Punch-Drunk Love, which was my favorite movie of 2002, so it’d have to be a machine that understood “this, but not that” scenarios.
Dad? Is that you? I swear, you sound just like him. He often points out the type of aircraft used in war movies, and points out the inaccuracies. He doesn’t get offended, though. Forgive my ignorance, but are you by any chance a scale modeler?
For myself, I’d censor out:
The love story in Titanic, thereby cutting out 7/8 of the movie.
Any parts of The Phantom Menace featuring Jar Jar or that whiny kid.
Any idiotic romantic subplot tacked on an action movie. That’s not what I came to see.
The Batnipples in Batman and Robin. That was just wrong.
All Steven Seagal movies.
Long, lingering shots of the supposedly dead villain’s face, wherin he/she suddenly opens his or her eyes, proving they weren’t really dead.
Scenes where the supposedly dead sidekick miraculously reappears either in the movie’s epilogue, or just in time to assist/save the leads.
Any and all cute pets/aliens/monsters to provide comic relief. Ewoks, I’m looking at you.
A-freakin-men! This should probably be extended to cover about 97% of animated (cel, or CGI) “comic relief” characters. As the great Seanbaby once said…
For my money, any scene in which an obviously beautiful woman takes off her glasses/lets down her hair and the love interest sees her “as if for the first time.”
“This time it’s personal” or the equivalent.
The scenes where the villains are seemingly dead, and the people who think they killed them, but - and this is the important bit- aren’t the stars of the picture, walk to the body to look at it up close, guaranteeing the “dead person” will kill them immediately.
(I saw The Patriot Sunday and that really pissed me off, especially because I could see it coming.)
[ul]
[li]All the love story scenes from: Pearl harbor, Titanic, Armageddon - That leaves three kick ass 15-20 min. dissaster/war movies[/li][li]The plot from all pornos, actually any and all talking goes.[/li][li]Jar Jar Binks[/li][/ul]
I would add a button to the remote that, when pressed, would:
Destroy the disk;
Send out a radio message to all other DVD players, instructing them to destroy copies of the disk;
Send legal injunctions to all major Hollywood studios preventing them from ever hiring anyone associated with the film to write, produce, direct, act in, or in any other way having anything to do with the production of a motion picture; and,
Serve me a refreshing strawberry daiquiri, to help calm me down after watching such a wretched film.
)
