So I was at home watching MAXXX, Sky Cable's answer to JackTV, and an episode of "Lucky Louie" was on. This is the now-defunct, but nonetheless superb sitcom by America's greatest living stand-up comic, Louis CK (here's a sample of his genius on Youtube).
Anyway, two minutes into the episode I suddenly hear the phrase "fucking up the asshole", in all its unedited glory. I wasn't really shocked so much as amused. I was sitting at our couch thinking to myself, "hey, MAXXX is officially the coolest cable channel ever!" I mean, sure it was 11:30 on a Saturday night, but still, they're pulling this off before midnight.
A few seconds after the first commercial break, however, they bleep out "motherfucker". At which point, my forehead curled into a serious "huh?" You just let anal intercourse slide and now you're too righteous for mothers having sex? Well, I guess it can be argued that the latter is more unacceptable than the former, especially on a personal level. But that's what's weird about it: that an argument should exist at all.
I thought censorship was about sparing helpless people from "immorality". I didn't know that the degree of "immorality" mattered.
I've always wondered who was in charge of on-air, real-time cable TV censorship. Back in the mid-90s, I always pictured some half-stoned dude sitting in front of a switchboard whenever a blank white screen blocked a nude or sex scene being shown on NHK, WowWow, or some other lax cable channel that doesn't exist anymore.
I remember watching that part in "Born on the 4th of July" where Tom Cruise has sex with a prostitute in Mexico, and the whole time that damn white screen was playing censorship peek-a-boo. "Whoa, boobies, enter white screen...she's got her back turned, remove white screen...okay she's walking around naked, gotta bring back the...oh, back turned again...nope she's bouncing up and down Tom Cruise's lap...white screen." Same thing happened when NHK showed "Pretty Baby", the lesser known Brooke Shields pre-teen exploitation movie from the 70s. Susan Surandon was posing topless in front of some painter guy and the white screen was fluctuating precariously as if Susan Surandon's breasts were just too powerful to be defeated. Of course, the boobs always win in the end.
My favorite success story of cable TV's blank-white-screen era was the time in '98 when the French channel CFI showed three straight music videos by French pop star Mylene Farmer.
See, I fell in love with Mylene Farmer during my pubescent years via her early 90s video for "Que mon coeur lache" (check it out on Youtube, it's the "Citizen Kane" of campy videos), which inexplicably received heavy airplay on MTV at the time . So imagine my sheer awe when switchboard stoner dude fell asleep for the single-most dumbfounding 15-minute stretch in television history. Those three videos that CFI showed were all plot-based, all set in 18th-century France, and all featured nudity by no other than Madamoiselle Farmer. And I was witnessing all this at 10:30 in the morning! God, I miss college.
These days, TV censorship is supposed to be tighter, although I'm no longer sure about MTRCB's criteria of what's appropriate or not. Maybe we've just evolved? Devolved?
For instance, are we sure we've reached a point where TV characters can say the word "pokpok"? As in this exchange in GMA's "Ang Babaeng Hinugot Sa Aking Tadyang":
SOME ACTOR I DON'T REMEMBER: Pok-pok 'yang si Proserfina!
DINGDONG DANTES: Hindi siya pokpok!
FORGETTABLE ACTOR: Pokpok siya, sabi eh!
DINGDONG DANTES: Hindi nga siya pokpok!
TALKING PROP: Pokpok! Pokpok! Pokpok!
Okay, I made the last three lines up, but they might as well have went on like that. Seriously. Although, I guess after Anne Curtis' famous "I may be a slut, but I'm the best slut in town" line, this could only be the logical next step. Plus, the concept of "pokpok" has long been visually familiar to kids anyway, thanks to Wowowee and Eat Bulaga, so we should probably just let them say the damn word already.
I'm actually not indignant about how "morally" ambiguous TV has suddenly become; in fact I have all sorts of problems with the word "moral". I'm mostly fascinated and amused with how arbitrary TV censorship has become, while the whole "morality" card is still being used ad nauseum. We're not allowed to see Rufa Mae Quinto's cleavage, meanwhile Willie Revillame's girls can keep doing dance moves previously unseen by the non-beer-house-dwelling populace. Why? Well, "morality", of course!
Here's another head-scratching TV moment over the last week, this time courtesy of the emotional Memorial Service dedicated to the victims of the bush fires in Australia.
That's right, they're singing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". Yes, the song popularized by the late Jeff Buckley, which I thought has been inappropriately used by countless TV shows and movies enough times by now, but this one clearly takes the cake. They're singing a song that subverts biblical imagery (and, at times, putting it in sexual context) to illustrate the glorious and heartbreaking nature of love and life. I mean, when was the last time you heard a church choir belt this out?:
"You say I took the name in vain...I don't even know the name...But if I did, well really, what's it to you? There's a blaze of light in every word...It doesn't matter which you heard...The holy or the broken Hallelujah"
Yes, they sung that in a religious ceremony dedicated to lost loved ones. In a religious ceremony broadcasted in BBC World. In an era when the Vatican pretty much rejuvenated sexism by declaring: "there is no sexual equality when it comes to sin" (I swear this is an actual quote).
Do you have any idea how much cooler the entire world would be if every country mourned this way? That's it, I'm moving to Australia. I'll use toilet paper to wipe my ass, I don't care.
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