I saw something on TV last night that I found really confusing and upsetting. Well, I guess if you include the Lakers embarrassing loss to the Blazers I saw two things which upset and confused me, but that's not what I'm referring to. Last night as I went to get in bed, I saw that Spun was on cable, and having seen it already and finding it to be entertaining, I thought I'd watch it for a while. Now Spun was an unrated movie because there was a scene or two which were apparently too sexually suggestive for the MPAA (and interestingly enough, these sexually suggestive scenes were mainly done in the form of really abstract animation). The movie is about speed freaks, and there's some sex here and there in the movie, but it is one of the most un-sexy movies you'll ever see (people with horrible acne and rotting teeth aren't too attractive to begin with; but in one scene Mena Suvari abruptly stops having sex with John Leguizamo because she is so excited that she's finally able to shit after having not been able to for days because she's been so tweaked out on speed, so you can imagine that the movie is not really "arousing"). Anyway, I was a little confused at first to see while watching it that even though they were allowing shots of bare breasts in the movie, they were blurring out a woman who was bottomless and they were blurring out the cartoons (?). I couldn't really remember exactly what happened in the cartoons, but I figured it was probably just really racy and didn't really think about it too much at first; but then at one point there was a scene where Mickey Rourke makes a speech about how much he loves pussy, and they bleeped out the word 'pussy' every time he said it! I couldn't believe they were bleeping out swear words on a pay cable channel, so I checked what channel it was just to be sure, and sure enough it was Showtime. I couldn't believe it. With all the stuff that gets shown on pay channels like that, they were bleeping out the word 'pussy'? Anyway, it was late and I turned off the TV and went to bed and basically forgot about it till I read this article about how after literally more than a decade the US government is spending millions of dollars to try to bring anti-obscenity cases to trial in an effort to stomp out porn completely. Check out this quote from the article:
- investigators and a handful of FBI agents are spending millions of dollars to bring anti-obscenity cases to courthouses across the country for the first time in 10 years. Nothing is off limits, they warn, even soft-core cable programs such as HBO's long-running Real Sex or the adult movies widely offered in guestrooms of major hotel chains.
Is this gonna be the new prohibition or something? Even though we've had an enormous porn industry in this country (and around the world) for decades, they think that now they are going to try to eradicate anything out there that is racy or could be considered "lewd"? Here is more from the article:
- In a speech in 2002, Ashcroft made it clear that the Justice Department intends to try. He said pornography "invades our homes persistently though the mail, phone, VCR, cable TV and the Internet," and has "strewn its victims from coast to coast."
Given the millions of dollars Americans are spending each month on adult cable television, Internet sites and magazines and videos, many may see themselves not as victims but as consumers, with an expectation of rights, choices and privacy.
Ashcroft, a religious man who does not drink alcohol or caffeine, smoke, gamble or dance, and has fought unrelenting criticism that he has trod roughshod on civil liberties in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, is taking on the porn industry at a time when many experts say Americans are wary about government intrusion into their lives.
What the hell is the government thinking? They think that Americans who are worried about the threat of terrorism somehow equate that unease about their safety with the "dangers of porn"? I guess I can only hope that this is all just some window dressing-like effort to appeal to the arch conservatives who beat everyone they know over the head with the Bible; as opposed to this being some legit plan of the government's. I dunno though, either way, for the first time that I can ever recall, last night I heard swear words bleeped out on pay cable, which I think is an ominous sign of censorship's ever-growing foothold in this country. Considering they do show soft-core porn and stuff like Real Sex on cable, I was really shocked to see them editing a movie which, like Requiem for a Dream, is a strong anti-drug use movie, and which is in no way arousing at all, simply because of some nudity and/or swear words. Maybe the people who are behind the censorship in this country are so uptight that the sight or sound of anything sexually arousing just repulses them, so when they see a movie which is equally repulsive to the rest of us, they can't tell the difference.
Comments (7)
By the way, if anyone reads this and wants to follow up on this stupidity, here's a great link I got from Boing Boing. It seems that even Harvard Republicans are up in arms over this nonsense:
If someone buys or sells images of adults having sex--even weird, gross or unsettling sex--whose rights is he infringing? Why would it be any of the government's business to stop him? Nobody is making John Ashcroft pay for or watch "Wicked Temptations", and it's none of his business if his neighbor does so in his own home.
Weren't we supposed to be the party of small government or something?
Posted by Yams | April 7, 2004 6:35 PM
Posted on April 7, 2004 18:35
Even more reason to vote Bush out of office this year. Otherwise, welcome to four more years of the American Taliban. :P
Posted by Koganuts | April 8, 2004 12:20 AM
Posted on April 8, 2004 00:20
BTW, BuzzMachine has been a great source of information regarding all of this censorship bullshit.
Hopefully this is not considered spam, Mr. Yams. ^_^
Posted by Koganuts | April 8, 2004 1:59 AM
Posted on April 8, 2004 01:59
:lol No, Mr. Nuts, that is not spam. Links that are on topic are no more spam than my first comment in this entry was. Posting a random link to something completely unrelated as a way to advertise some other site... Well, you tell me what you'd call that. :wink
Posted by Yams | April 8, 2004 12:00 PM
Posted on April 8, 2004 12:00
UPDATE: "This is getting to be re-goddamn-diculous"...
The Daily Stern: Bulletin:
http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2004_04_08.html#006786
Howard Stern Dropped After FCC Threat:
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040408_1552.html
Posted by Koganuts | April 8, 2004 2:07 PM
Posted on April 8, 2004 14:07
Wow, those links are fucking scary. Did you see the link at the bottom of that first one you listed, discussing how the DOJ might possibly go forward in trying to eliminate porn from America? Check out an excerpt:
"Going after cyberporn isn't really that tough -- if you require every service provider in the nation to block access to all sites that are on a constantly updated government-run "Forbidden Off-Shore Site" list. Of course, there couldn't be any trials applying community standards and the like before a site is added to the list; that would take far too long. The government would have to be able to just order a site instantly blocked, without any hearing with an opportunity for the other side to respond (since even that would take up too much time, and would let the porn sites just move from location to location every several weeks).
Sure, that sounds like a violation of First Amendment procedural rules, even given that obscenity law is substantively valid. Sure, that would make it easier for the government to put all sorts of other sites on the list. Sure, it's a substantially more intrusive step than any of the Internet regulations we've seen so far, and is substantially more intrusive in some ways than virtually any speech restriction in American history (I say in some ways, not in all ways, since it would have a limited substantive focus -- but the procedure would be unprecedently restrictive, and First Amendment law has always recognized the practical importance of procedure). But it's the only approach that has any hope of really reducing the accessibility of porn to American consumers." link
That is absolutely terrifying when you consider that the government might use going after porn as a smokescreen to basically set up a Ministry of Propoganda by eliminating the flow of outside news into the US by blocking a long list of sites on the web. :eek
Posted by Yams | April 8, 2004 4:59 PM
Posted on April 8, 2004 16:59
You know, I used to think political bullshit like this was science-fiction, but I've been noticing that it's become more of a reality with every passing day. *sigh*
Posted by Koganuts | April 8, 2004 5:12 PM
Posted on April 8, 2004 17:12