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We had an interesting discussion about censorship changes and ratings with the MPAA/Australian Censorship Board/UK system/etc in the Stupidest poo poo You've Ever Heard thread (starting here) but decided to create a new thread dedicated to the topic. To start with, I think it's interesting how film makers will use decoys of objectionable content to intentionally get a film rejected by the MPAA only to turn around and revise it to have even raunchier content, resubmit it, and then get it approved for the R rating or whatever target rating they're looking for (for example, the South Park movie was originally titled as "All Hell Breaks Loose" and then revised to "Bigger, Longer, and Uncut" to juke the MPAA). As the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated points out, the standards for whether a movie will be approved or rejected by the MPAA are byzantine and often capricious or random, so it's sort of a crapshoot for film makers wanting to push the edge questionable content. This is important to note since, as the film industry is a business like any other, most theaters (in America at least) will refuse to carry NC-17 rated movies as they are seen as a guaranteed money loss, so the MPAA ends up using the NC-17 rating and rejection as clubs that film makers who, in their need to get screen space, must adjust to accordingly. South Park seems to have a history of thumbing its nose at censorship boards in particular, infamously with the Stick of Truth game literally using a crying koala and a message about how Australian censorship sucks in the Australian release of the game, seen here complete with digeridoos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia5Z1-dewEI (Skip to 0:32). Matt Stone and Trey Parker's Team America: World Police also used the over-the-top puppet sex scene as a decoy to distract the MPAA from the other content in the movie and basically to poo poo all over them (  ) and get them - a relatively homogeneous group of frumpy old white male conservatives - to go ballistic.That being said, what are your favorite (or most hated) censorship? It doesn't have to be just movies; it could include video games, paintings, comics (like with the infamous Comics Code Authority in the 1920s-40s), literature, sculptures, etc. Discussion of the history of censorship as well as censorship organizations like with the Hays' Code is strongly encouraged! Discussion of the modern era of politically-charged censorship as with Twitter in countries like Turkey or Iran or China is also encouraged. Teriyaki Koinku has a new favorite as of 01:17 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 01:01
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Some old favourites: 1) When they replace swear words with other dubbed words for TV broadcast. A particular favourite of mine is "Monkey Feather" for Motherfucker. Or "This is what you get when you meet a stranger in the Alps!" 2) The infamous American TV broadcast of Blazing Saddles where they took out all the fart sounds of the fart scene, and it looked like the cowboys were performing some elaborate ballet by lifting their buttocks in a choreographed performance piece. 3) I am old enough to remember when the rating MA came in in Australia. It came in due to the fact that the film Total Recall was initially rated R (18+), which meant people under 18 could't see it, but then they removed I think 4 seconds of film, (either one slap or one use of the word gently caress), and it became M, meaning anyone could see it, (reccomended for 15 and over). This highlighted teh absurdities of the movie rating system.
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Feb 18, 2016 01:09
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BrigadierSensible posted:Some old favourites: 1) When they replace swear words with other dubbed words for TV broadcast. A particular favourite of mine is "Monkey Feather" for Motherfucker. Or "This is what you get when you meet a stranger in the Alps!" I'm sick and tired of these monkey fighting snakes in this Monday to Friday plane!
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Feb 18, 2016 01:13
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BrigadierSensible posted:Some old favourites: 1) When they replace swear words with other dubbed words for TV broadcast. A particular favourite of mine is "Monkey Feather" for Motherfucker. Or "This is what you get when you meet a stranger in the Alps!" I like "yippee-ki-yay, Mister Falcon". "Mister Falcon" was part of the office vernacular for some time.
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Feb 18, 2016 01:13
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It's too bad, too, because a simple "bleep" works so much better.
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Feb 18, 2016 01:17
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Here's a quick rundown of why the ratings boards and censorship got started in the first place: http://filmmakeriq.com/lessons/the-history-of-hollywood-censorship-and-the-ratings-system/ It's not totally comprehensive but it's interesting seeing how the bullshit got started. Here's the US Seal of Good Practice, adopted in 1951: http://www.tvhistory.tv/SEAL-Good-Practice.htm When I was a kid I used to think that married adults really did sleep in two different beds, like they did in old shows like "I Love Lucy" and that people really did say "with child" instead of "pregnant." The old production code was really bizarre. E: Also the Janet Jackson nipple thing was just ridiculous. That it was even an issue at all is just loving amazing. Scathach has a new favorite as of 01:26 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 01:20
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Scathach posted:When I was a kid I used to think that married adults really did sleep in two different beds, like they did in old shows like "I Love Lucy" and that people really did say "with child" instead of "pregnant." My parents did! 
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Feb 18, 2016 01:21
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It didn't really get answered in the Stupid poo poo thread, but why does the AO rating for video games even exist? I don't know of any games that are even released with an AO rating. I guess there's hentai/sex games, but I'm pretty sure those don't get released in the US. Even then, dating sims and the like on Steam get a Mature rating, if that. AO video games are rarer than NC-17 movies in the US, the latter of which still get run in art house theaters and the like.
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Feb 18, 2016 01:25
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:It didn't really get answered in the Stupid poo poo thread, but why does the AO rating for video games even exist? I don't know of any games that are even released with an AO rating. Looking at the list on Wikipedia, it's pretty much all hentai games and other such stuff with really explicit sexual content (like San Andreas during the Hot Coffee situation), with some games with really gruesome violence. Most of the bigger games there chose to make edits to get a lower rating; the only one that didn't that wasn't outright made as pornography anyway was Hatred.
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Feb 18, 2016 01:34
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I'd wager the biggest reason they exist aside from segregating porn is so kid-friendly shops can still stock and sell M games (even if not to kids) but point to AO and say "no, we're not selling the worst rated games!"
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Feb 18, 2016 01:41
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Sentient Data posted:I'd wager the biggest reason they exist aside from segregating porn is so kid-friendly shops can still stock and sell M games (even if not to kids) but point to AO and say "no, we're not selling the worst rated games!" This, basically. All major retailers refuse to sell AO rated games. So, if you want to make money, you need to keep it at M.
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Feb 18, 2016 01:45
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Do non-pornographic movies still get released with an X rating? It looks like X got changed to NC-17 for mainstream movies after the 70s and 80s in the U.S., but there's still an informal use of X and XXX ratings for softcore and hardcore pornography respectively. The split in commercial mainstream and pornographic film from the 1970s seems interesting. Speaking of which, were there really porno film houses in the 1970s? It's kind of incomprehensible to imagine going to watch porn in public theaters with other people that aren't in a seedy sex shop.  E: There's also some interesting history on the legal definition of pornography and obscenity with the Supreme Court in the 1970s and the murky gray area of "I'll call it as I see it" legal rulings with Justice Potter, etc. Relevant Wikipedia articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscenity#United_States_obscenity_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_rating E2: I'm also curious about minced oaths (eg Jiminy Cricket instead of Jesus Christ, crud versus crap or poo poo, etc) with Christian/Catholic Church censorship of blasphemy, and of course to things like Looney Tunes' Sylvester "Sufferin' succotash!" Plus the whole bit of iconoclasm with Byzantium and the Prophet Muhammad in Mecca. Teriyaki Koinku has a new favorite as of 02:10 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 01:58
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Lava Lamp Goddess posted:This, basically. This also makes it into a threat for the ESRB to use similar to how the MPAA now uses NC-17. It will basically mean a product is guaranteed to fail, so they can slap it on something they don't like until the publisher does whatever they want. The last big thing I remember reading about it was years ago when Rockstar made Manhunt, and the ESRB said it would be AO almost sight unseen. Rockstar cut enough to eventually get it down to an M. Violence isn't as big a concern for them anymore, it seems though. It's basically just sex that gets everyone up in arms now. Your Dunkle Sans posted:Speaking of which, were there really porno film houses in the 1970s? It's kind of incomprehensible to imagine going to watch porn in public theaters with other people that aren't in a seedy sex shop. Dude, there were porn theaters in Times Square until the 90s. Disney decided they wanted to get into Broadway, bought a theater, and basically started throwing money at the city to clean up the area and make it suitable for families to come to see a show with Disney's name on it. Poor Miserable Gurgi has a new favorite as of 02:15 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 02:08
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I still don't get it. It just feels like something that'd be covert and secretive like going to a swingers' party versus having it right out in the open and public. I'm not a prude about it, I just find it incomprehensible, especially when you think of the past being more prudish (in public consciousness) than today. E: Speaking of video games, people were freaking out about nude bodies despite the censor blur over clothes in the Sims 1 as well as the character models in Oblivion. I'm pretty sure it was just Barbie doll nakedness in the Sims while there may have been nipples (Oh no!  ) in Oblivion.It seems like ages ago when people like Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton led a crusade against the "corruption" of video games back in the 90s when video games were much more of a sub-culture than the mainstream they are today. People getting up in arms about sex or even just nudity when ultra-violence is A-OK, especially in America, is kind of silly. We did mention about the double-standards when it comes to female vs male sexuality as well as minority versus white scenarios and film ratings in the Stupid poo poo thread. Teriyaki Koinku has a new favorite as of 02:29 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 02:17
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Practical Demon posted:Dude, there were porn theaters in Times Square until the 90s. Disney decided they wanted to get into Broadway, bought a theater, and basically started throwing money at the city to clean up the area and make it suitable for families to come to see a show with Disney's name on it. I was in San Francisco like ten years ago and they had porn theaters. Pretty sure they still have 'em all over the big cities.
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Feb 18, 2016 02:35
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Cleretic posted:San Andreas during the Hot Coffee situation This is my favorite. It's nowhere near sexy, even with this weird bondage poo poo which I believe is some mod also. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OsimTih2dE In GTAIV they make fun of it when Niko asks Michelle to come in for "coffee" she says "I'd let you but it would cost almost 20 million dollars". E: and the Statue of Happiness having Hillary Clinton's face because she was one of, or the, the main people who complained about it. Thin Privilege has a new favorite as of 02:53 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 02:48
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I'm not really sure why Hillary gets so worked up about children and video games. It just seems like a relic of the moral panic about video games in the 90s with things like DOOM and Mortal Kombat.
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Feb 18, 2016 02:57
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:I'm not really sure why Hillary gets so worked up about children and video games. It just seems like a relic of the moral panic about video games in the 90s with things like DOOM and Mortal Kombat. Moral Panic is a great vote winner. Especially when you are a 'concerned parent/grandparent' see also war on drugs/crime.
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Feb 18, 2016 02:59
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If it's okay with you guys I'm just gonna quote the post that I made in the other thread because it's still one of my favorite bits of trivia while also showcasing the double standards of the MPAAHappy Landfill posted:Tina Fey has mentioned that the MPAA wanted to give Mean Girls an R rating based on the line, "Somebody wrote in that book that I'm lying about being a virgin, 'cause I use super-jumbo tampons, but I can't help it if I've got a heavy flow and a wide-set vagina!" She had to go in and argue that in Anchorman, which had just come out if I'm remembering correctly, featured Ron Burgundy with a full-on raging boner and was only PG-13...but a teenage girl talking about her vagina in a non-sexual manner was apparently too much? They relented and gave it PG-13 in the end. BrigadierSensible posted:Some old favourites: 1) When they replace swear words with other dubbed words for TV broadcast. A particular favourite of mine is "Monkey Feather" for Motherfucker. Or "This is what you get when you meet a stranger in the Alps!" quote:-In the NBC TV version, there are several changes. When Happy first sees Shooter before he plays golf the first time on the pro course, instead of saying "If I saw myself in those clothes I'd have to kick my own rear end" he says "...my own butt." In the bar scene Happy says to Shooter about bieng on the Tour "...Now I got a new reason: kicking your head" instead of "...your rear end." When Happy and Bob Barker fight, when Happy says "The price is wrong, bitch" the "bitch" is removed, among many other small changes in the film.
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Feb 18, 2016 03:20
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The R rating for games thing in Australia is super super dumb because all it actually means is that some stuff that would have been MA gets bumped up, the ACB still bans whatever the gently caress. My favourite part though is GTA V. IV was pre-R, and so got MA with the expected laundry list of reasons. As you'd probably also expect, V got an R. But because the laundry list of reasons was supposedly fine at MA, all the label says is objectionable about the game at all is drug use. AlphaKretin has a new favorite as of 04:18 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 04:13
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Any idea why Australia seemingly gets its collective panties in a bunch over depictions of drug use in Mature games? While we're at it, why are video games so bloody expensive there relative to the rest of the world?
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Feb 18, 2016 04:32
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My favorite has to be the insane reaches 4kids went to making One Piece "family-friendly" this included replacing cigars with lollipops and a blunderbuss with a completely made up thingamajig.
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Feb 18, 2016 04:34
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"Curse like a sailor / drink like a mick / my only words of wisdom are / <radio edit>" - Kid Rock
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Feb 18, 2016 04:48
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:Any idea why Australia seemingly gets its collective panties in a bunch over depictions of drug use in Mature games? Same reason the US gets all hot and bothered about sex, that is to say:  quote:While we're at it, why are video games so bloody expensive there relative to the rest of the world? 
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Feb 18, 2016 04:50
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BrigadierSensible posted:Moral Panic is a great vote winner. Especially when you are a 'concerned parent/grandparent' Serious truth here. If you can frighten people then lie and say you saved their kids from some great horror you get their votes. Hell in the US people are still panicking over Satanic ritual abuse when it was proven time and time again to be a hoax. E: found relevant thread content about the "parental advisory" crap they put on CDs. quote:Satanism sold in the eighties, and terrified parents dealing with rebellious teenagers – especially Christian parents – practically ate out of the hands of people like Warnke and Pulling. As D&D lost its ability to scare and became more mainstream, heavy metal music became a more appealing target. In 1985, Tipper Gore and a group of similarly bored and easily frightened Washington wives formed the Parents Media Resource Center – the PMRC – and succeeded in organizing a series of hearings in which both heavy metal musicians and “experts” on Satanism and other salacious topics, testified for and against claims that music was driving children to suicide, Satan, drugs, or sex. The hearing resulted in the Recording Industry Association of America voluntarily adopting “Parental Advisory” stickers that warned parents about the “explicit content” to be found in the albums they were affixed to. Scathach has a new favorite as of 06:24 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 04:53
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Parahexavoctal posted:"Curse like a sailor / drink like a mick / my only words of wisdom are / <radio edit>" - Kid Rock It's a good thing they left that racial slur in there otherwise we wouldn't know what the censored part rhymes with.
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Feb 18, 2016 05:44
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rodbeard posted:It's a good thing they left that racial slur in there otherwise we wouldn't know what the censored part rhymes with. Yeah, I was gonna say...
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Feb 18, 2016 05:46
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Scathach posted:Hell in the US people are still panicking over Satanic ritual abuse when it was proven time and time again to be a hoax. If Prester Jane's ACE thread is any indicator, the real ritual abuse comes from Christians.
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Feb 18, 2016 05:48
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Oh man I just remembered Ubisoft's Just Dance series. It's been too long since I've given it a go to give you many specifics but they often bleep explicit versions of songs instead of using radio edits, and censor way more than any radio or the ERSB would require them to, most notably "cherry" in I Kissed a Girl.
AlphaKretin has a new favorite as of 05:52 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 05:49
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Pixeltendo posted:My favorite has to be the insane reaches 4kids went to making One Piece "family-friendly" this included replacing cigars with lollipops and a blunderbuss with a completely made up thingamajig. For reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckVJVoU6g6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuOIKGD5_r0 Those are only two examples but there are countless more. Honestly, just do a youtube search for 4kids Once Piece dub. My personal favorite is DIC cutting the two last episodes of season 1 of Sailor Moon so much (basically cutting out all the death, having the senshi sent "to the Negaverse" instead.) that it became one poorly paced episode.
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Feb 18, 2016 06:09
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4Kids single-handledly ruined America's impression of One Piece. While it is super popular in Japan and elsewhere in the Western world, it's more or less flat-lined in the US. Some people like the "Yohoho! Get a bite of that Gum-Gum!" rap unironically, others (like me) hate the poo poo out of it.  e: My favorite censorship in 4Kids One Piece, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw1u7YvGmYQ For context, the crew is supposed to run into a whale named Laboon at the base of Reverse Mountain, whose relationship with a certain character they meet much later plays a pivotal role in the story. For whatever reason, 4Kids chopped huge parts of the story out (including the entire Little Garden arc) and here, to skip over the Laboon segment, they replaced the whale with a lovely photoshop of an iceberg. It's pretty funny how shoddily they handled everything in the initial dub, from the goofy voices (including Sanji's retarded New York-ah accent) to the edits to... Well, basically everything. It's infamously bad. Teriyaki Koinku has a new favorite as of 06:19 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 06:13
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Come to think of it we can probably blame 4kids for the sub vs dub debate. 4KIDS!
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Feb 18, 2016 06:16
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Edit: nevermind
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Feb 18, 2016 06:17
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:4Kids single-handledly ruined America's impression of One Piece. While it is super popular in Japan and elsewhere in the Western world, it's more or less flat-lined in the US. One Piece was already loving garbage.
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Feb 18, 2016 06:29
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ITT nobody actually knows what "censorship" means.
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Feb 18, 2016 07:04
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Sleeveless posted:ITT nobody actually knows what "censorship" means. Care to enlighten us, then?
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Feb 18, 2016 07:06
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My favorite anime censorship situation was Yu-Gi-Oh's. I'd say Yu-Gi-Oh's censorship was lazy, but it really wasn't, because most of the violence in the seasons we got was supernatural. Not a lot of blood to photoshop out when Yugi's just killing people via psychic powers. A lot of pointing where there were guns, admittedly. What they did do was scrub any mention of death or explicit violence from the (remarkably murder-happy) show, usually replacing them with something about the Shadow Realm. Kaiba's 'ghost' turned up at one point, which was especially unbelievable because nobody in the dub tried to kill him. Later, Kaiba's threat of suicide if Yugi didn't forfeit their duel turned into... basically nonsense, because his threat of self-harm had to have any elements of self-harm taken out of it. The best poo poo came with the Battle City arc, though, where like every bad guy had set up a Saw trap for some reason. But the dub couldn't talk about actual death or violence, so we got things like a trap in the dockyard that would
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Feb 18, 2016 07:07
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Sleeveless posted:ITT nobody actually knows what "censorship" means. And oh no, people are posting cute videos in the cute pictures thread!  Overreaching, nonsensical localisation changes are certainly close enough, I'd say.
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Feb 18, 2016 07:07
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Malaysian public radio: Katy Perry: I [bleep] a girl and I like it Lady Gaga: No matter [bleep] straight or [bleep]; [bleep] [bleep] life; I'm on the right track, baby; I was born to survive
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Feb 18, 2016 07:45
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When I was in high school I remember Eddie Murphy's Nutty Professor being shown on TV with the line "man, everyone here has a nice BUTT... this must be the nice BUTT section." I also seem to remember Friday with the terrible reading of "that STUFF is FUNKED up". The thread title is interesting because Matt Parker and Trey Stone claim the original subtitle of the South Park film was "All Hell Breaks Loose", but the MPAA complained and they came up with the dick joke "Bigger, Longer, and Uncut." The MPAA claims they never sent it with that name. Another movie that snuck something past the censors was Fight Club. There is a pillow talk scene where the love interest proudly exclaims "I haven't been hosed like that since kindergarten!" The original line was "I want to have your abortion." The director, David Fincher, promised to change it if the second line would definitely be kept, and came up with the much riskier in my opinion kindergarten line. And in the last example I have from poo poo I loved in high school, Um Jammer Lammy was a sequel to Parappa the Rapper with a guitarist instead of a rapper. The second to last stage originally took place in Hell, but the US version was changed so Lammy travels back in time or something like that. It really doesn't make much sense, but it fits the wacky humor of the game well enough (though the US missed out on a great meta-joke!). The fact that it is Hell made so much sense to me because the song was awful, the singer was an annoying parody of Yoko Ono, and the stage was aggravatingly hard. Here's a pretty lovely video with both intro scenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrlPQvzyHAY I hated this stage so loving much.
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Feb 18, 2016 07:49
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