First Contact Censorship?

[Christopher]

Relayer1 wrote:

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But what if the 'offending' phrase isn't actually being incorrectly used ? Maybe the character is genuinely imploring the deity of their choice to damn someone ?

It would depend on the context, I suppose. If it were a priest delivering a sermon about how God would damn sinners, then it might be allowed.

This is similar to how the original Star Trek handled "hell" and "damn." They were able to use "Hell" as a reference to the underworld on several occasions: "I'll chase you to the very fires of Hell!" in "The Alternative Factor," "It is better to rule in Hell than serve in heaven" in "Space Seed," and "They say there's no devil, but there is. Right out of Hell, I saw it!" in "The Doomsday Machine." They were even able to use "Hell for leather, right out of history" in "Spectre of the Gun," because it was a descriptive phrase, not an expletive. But they had to fight the network censors to be allowed to have Kirk say "Let's get the hell out of here" at the end of "City on the Edge of Forever." (Chakoteya's transcript of "A Piece of the Action" claims that Krako says "How the hell'd I get here" after being beamed aboard the Enterprise, but it sounds to me like "Ho-how di--how'd I get here?") By the same token, they were able to use "damn" literally as a verb -- "The evidence... was damning" in "Court-martial" and "I can't damn him for his loyalty" in "Journey to Babel" -- but never as an expletive or curse. Context is key.

[ssosmcin]

I was watching an episode of The Untouchables last night from 1959. At the end of the episode, Nehemiah Persoff is on the floor yelling at Robert Stack (Eliot Ness), "You have no damn heart! You have no damn heart!" All I could think was "wow, how did that stay in there?" I guess if the high body count of the series was okay at the time, then so was this…

[Greg Cox]

Heck, even Disney could get away with "hell" if it was used literally. The theme song for "The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh," which originally aired on Disney's prime-time anthology series back in 1963, featured a lyric about how the Scarecrow "rides from the gates of Hell!"

And that was considered a "family" show.

[JarodRussell]

[Squiggy]

R. Star wrote:

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I was watching First Contact on SyFy today, well had it running in the background anyways. I get they're going to censor a bit of the cursing, blow up the damn ship, to hell with the Phoenix, things like that.

Well what did surprise me is they bleeped out Cocharane's "Sweet Jesus!" when the Enterprise started following the Phoenix.

I mean... come on. Is our society becoming so "politically correct" that we can't even -mention- something mildly religious in public now? Really that's just sad.

It was most likely edited for TV when it came out 17 years ago and hasn't been updated sense.

[bigdaddy]

I love the fact that about 10 years ago I was listening to the radio, a radio is that thing that plays music between the ads, the station beeped out "high" from "getting high" and "bitch" from a Pink song. The same station played the song "Bitch" numerous times, no issues at all!

Never try to figure out stupid censorship.

[CorporalClegg]

bigdaddy wrote:

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I love the fact that about 10 years ago I was listening to the radio, a radio is that thing that plays music between the ads, the station beeped out "high" from "getting high" and "bitch" from a Pink song. The same station played the song "Bitch" numerous times, no issues at all!

Never try to figure out stupid censorship.

Contradictions in song censorship are actually quite common. The reason is because the stations don't do the censoring themselves. They get copies of songs/albums from the studios. Some studios censor and others don't.

This is even more true now that stations are switching to digital media for their music.

[The Mirrorball Man]

Pingfah wrote:

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Not sure what point you are trying to make? I am sure you are aware that the USA has a constitution that makes such a provision, but it cannot force a private TV company to broadcast material they don't want to, and nor should it.

Yeah, sorry, I don't want to derail the thread. Just wanted to point quickly out that the US constitution doesn't actually guarantee freedom of speech, it just prevent the government from putting limits to it. In a world where corporations are the gatekeepers to the media, that provision is meaningless and private ownership effectively trumps the first amendment. In such a system, where actual freedom of speech is not guaranteed, corporate censorship can and does happen and there is nothing one can do to prevent that from happening.

Of course, I realize that this may not be the right place to talk about that kind of thing, so feel free to ignore what I've just said.

[Nerys Myk]

bigdaddy wrote:

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I love the fact that about 10 years ago I was listening to the radio, a radio is that thing that plays music between the ads, the station beeped out "high" from "getting high" and "bitch" from a Pink song. The same station played the song "Bitch" numerous times, no issues at all!

Never try to figure out stupid censorship.

There's a song by Nickleback that has the lyric "We got weeds in the backyard 4 feet tall Cheech and Chong prob'ly woulda' smoked 'em all" And the station my wife listens to always beeps out "smoked". They leave in the references to hitting the bong and drinking beer, but beep "smoked"??????

[trevanian]

I don't think it is EVER possible to figure out what will get censored at any given time.
Back in 1983, my folks won a surprise trip to Ireland on a short-lived daytime network show (I think it was called FANTASIES or something like that.) When the late Meredith Mcrae (still insanely hot nearly 15 years after PETTICOAT JUNCTION, I can honestly add) got my mom to open the front door and told her the news, my mom just kept shouting
OH MY GOD OH MY GOD.

Yet when the show aired (and we still have a wobbly VHS of this), the GOD parts of her speech were simply muted, it was all OH MY ____dead space____ (and REPEAT)

I mean who wouldn't be yelling something like that? Was it going to corrupt some young agnostic's mind? I've never had any belief in deities, but shit, I wasn't offended (sorry, guess that should read _____, I wasn't offended.)

[BriGuy]

BillJ wrote:

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It's still there on both the Blu-ray and DVD versions of the film. I don't waste time with SyFy.

Yeah, who is gonna watch a movie on commercial TV anyway? Edited for time, edited for content, "reformatted to fit this screen," and cut up with commercials.

I especially love seeing a two hour or so movie that takes three hours to watch. (or some variation thereof)

[R. Star]

I just had it going in the background, just happened to be looking that way during that particular scene. The funny thing is they still showed him mouthing it quite clearly.

Sure it's their channel and they can show what they want. Just it's silly at best and more toward the lines of petty to censor that of all things out.

[BillJ]

R. Star wrote:

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I just had it going in the background, just happened to be looking that way during that particular scene. The funny thing is they still showed him mouthing it quite clearly.

Sure it's their channel and they can show what they want. Just it's silly at best and more toward the lines of petty to censor that of all things out.

But it was likely done to satisfy the religious crowd, not the PC crowd.

[MacLeod]

Somes the time of day something airs can have an impact on whether or not something is censored.

[iguana_tonante]

BillJ wrote:

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But it was likely done to satisfy the religious crowd, not the PC crowd.

Good luck in having R.Star admit that.