Parent Advisory Board: No Swears (Sort of)

I love movies. I also love films. And yes, there is a difference. When I was in the tail end of my college years, my school was endowed by a wealthy actor and former football player (AKA The Bandit) with a funding for a film school. In preparation for this endowment, "Humanities in the 20th Century" was offered and could count as a Humanities credit. Sure, we studied some modern "art" like Dali, Pollock, etc and even covered some architecture by Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright, but the course was mostly focused on one of the most accessible forms of art today-the film. Our professor had warned us that we would never watch movies with the same eye after taking his course. And I concur that he was quite right about that.

We had to view movies that were shown at the student union on Tuesday evenings. Each week a different cinematic theme was covered. For example, we watched Double Indemnity for mis en scene. We watched Bladerunner for sound editing. We saw Cabaret during the editing week where we learned about montages and sweeps and camera pans. There was the surreal week too where we saw an eyeball getting cut. And this was before Reservoir Dogs where the cutting of various facial body parts became cinematic gold. The course culminated with the viewing of Citizen Cane where all the techniques we learned were evidenced in this masterpiece (AFI said so). So when I watch movies, ahem films, I always remember that class and what I learned.

Now movies are another story. These are the works of art that serve purely as entertainment value. Granted, there are some movies that can be considered films and I guess some films have been marketed as movies. Semantics, you may say, but there is a difference. I'm not a snooty and pretentious person so I would be the first to admit that I actually went to the movie theater to watch "Alexander" when I could have gone and seen "Sideways" instead. One appealed to my basest yearnings, hello Colin Farrell naked (I'm so disappointed that I never got to see his racy video before it was stopped by a court injunction, not that I'm into porn by any stretch of the imagination, especially grainy low quality porn-like the Tonya Harding tape where Jeff Galooly went on and on forever-Ick!). Needless to say that was a big mistake and I eventually watched "Sideways" on DVD. But my husband gives me a hard time about that one to this day. We don't get out to the movies hardly ever. So you'd think we'd be more choosy.

Anyway, I will finally get to the true point of this post, but felt compelled to give all this needless background information about movies and films, blah, blah, blah, and The Bandit and Orson Welles blah blah blah and rehashing college learning without even mentioning drunken frat boys and keg parties which, face it, is some of the best parts of college life. But the true intention of this post was to lodge a complaint about movies that are shown on cable television. Specifically, I'd like to know whose in charge of editing out the bad language and offensive parts? Is this a central operation secretly headed by the FCC or Tipper Gore? Do screeners sit around and watch the movies and note all the "bad" parts that need to be changed? Then do they have someone else fill in all the "bad" parts with "good" parts or in some cases "not as bad" parts? Then are the cleaned up versions of the movies distributed to all the stations? Or is it that each station takes the movies they want to show and clean it up themselves? Inquiring minds want to know. Maybe I should know this, but do not.

So my complaint is that I think I would rather listen to the beep beep beep popularized by the Jerry Springer Show (does anyone really have that much of a potty mouth?) then the stupid drivel they have replaced all the naughty parts with. Likewise. they sometimes cut out crucial parts of scenes so that the offensive gesture or action is left out which leaves the viewer who may not have been fortunate enough to have HBO or to have seen the movie in the theater when first released wondering what the hell just happened. Or they may even take a little liberty with the original movie quote and change it to something slightly less offensive, but offensive nonetheless to some folks. Even though the said offensiveness might be very relevant to the scene in the movie, so why are they messing with it???

The inspiration for this post occurred when I was listening to (not watching) Grease on VH1 when I was cooking dinner the other night. By the way, I used to lock myself in my room, put on the Grease soundtrack (on LP), and pretend to be Sandy. I sometimes dressed in costume (oh how I wanted a real poodle skirt). And in case you were wondering, yes, I was a dork, but I refuse to mention the Bee Gee's poster where they are dressed in white suits and there are clouds around them like they are in heaven that adorned my wall around this same time because then it would really hinder my coolness factor, and I can't have that guy Anonymous all getting mean with me and telling me I'm stupid, blah, blah blah. Besides we all can't be be held responsible for the things we did when we were 8 or 9 or 19? But, with age comes maturity and I eventually moved on to re-enacting Xanadu.

So here are a few examples of movie "changes" that I have issue with (this is not exhaustive by any means):

Grease: During the notorious Greased Lightning number there are several offensive lyrics. You know this ain't no sh*t, we'll be getting lot of tits" has now been changed to something indecipherable. Something about town, or down. I couldn't quite make it out between the dicing and boiling that was going on in my kitchen at the same time. However, I clearly heard the lyric "You know this ain't not bragging, she's a real p*ssy wagon" Plain as day. Hello! I'm easily offended by this crude slang, unless of course he planned on driving around a lot of cats. And also apparently chicks are still allowed to cream over this mythical car. And that's not the least bit offensive to Mr. Movie Censor. Get out your whisks girls!

Urban Cowboy: On the subject of John Travolta, Urban Cowboy cuts out the part where Sissy shoots a bird at Bud. You remember towards the end of the movie after they got in the big fight about Sissy riding the mechanical bull at Gilley's and Sissy was all flirty with the ugliest pock faced cowboy. Then Bud hooked up with the weathy Houston girl who wanted her a real cowboy and when Sissy came and cleaned up the trailer for Bud after they were separated and left the note for him and rich girl hid the note and took credit for the cleaning. Well Sissy was mad because she didn't know the part about the rich girl hiding the note, so she was left to assume that insenstive Bud didn't have the decency to reach out to her so they could get back together and the credits could roll and "Looking for Love" would play and the personalized license plates would be restored to their proper place in the truck's back window. So when she was out hitching a car on her tow truck and Bud drove by and waved at her, she was supposed to flick him the a bird. However, in the censored version that small part is cut out. So we're left to wonder why Bud gets so mad at Sissy because the rest of the world didn't see Debra Winger's middle finger. I guess we're just supposed to believe that he gets angry at him for ignoring him, hitching a car (we already know that Bud couldnt' handle his wife particpating in manly activities), or what?

Vacation: Oh, I fondly remember this movie. "Sorry folks park's closed the moose outside should've told you so." Chevy Chase, the world never understood your comic genius until of course you came out with Fletch and then Fletch Part 2 which for the life of me I can't remember the title of and I'm way to lazy to look it up right now. But it might have had a catchy name like Fletchier. Anyway back to Vacation, in the part where the Griswold family visits their white trash relatives they have totally cut out the pot smoking scene (which by the way they did the same thing in the Breakfast Club so we're supposed to believe that these vastly different kids on detention decided to open up to each other because....? It couldn't be the pot that made them do it. They can only show this if there are negative counsequences involved like jumping out of windows). But the other part they screwed with is the girl cousin's line: "I'm the best french kisser, my dad said so." They have replaced this dementedly humorous line with "I'm the best french kisser, my science teacher said so." Apparently incest is a big no-no, but pedophilia (with a trusted teacher) not so much.

I know there are many more examples of this travesty aimed at cleaning up cable TV. So my protest is that when I want to hear swear words or see blasphemous gestures or delve into touchy topics then I will rent the real movie. I'm old school like that.