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alt title(s): Moral Guardian; Moral Watchdogs 
Careful, now!
"There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue."
—Erich Fromm
Groups of people, stereotypically either conservative bible-thumpers or politically correct liberals, who believe that children — or people in general, but especially children — shouldn't be exposed to what they consider to be excessive violence, sex, foul language, sexism, racial or ethnic stereotypes, etc. Usually, they are self-appointed, and claim vastly larger memberships than they actually have.
The exact mix of what they object to of course varies from group to group, though sex, violence, and "Satanic" or sacrilegious content, as well as the occasional accusation of Subliminal Seduction, are popular complaints. Their criticisms may be Completely Missing The Point; in particularly bad cases, they seize on some sensational-sounding passage out of context, even when the implied immoral message is definitively negated elsewhere in the work. And sometimes, their objections seem downright bizarre. How common certain objections are depends where the group falls on the "political spectrum" (assuming they're on it at all). Of course, this means if they all had their way, the big ratings hit every season would be a blank grey screen (and even then, they would argue about the shade of grey).
They frequently complain to the nearest Media Watchdog, often using astroturfing to lend illusory weight to their complaints.
Enough nattering by them, especially when it's about a relatively young medium (no, not that kind of medium, although that might get their ire anyway), can lead to the creation of a Censorship Bureau. If that isn't good enough for them, they make The Moral Substitutes.
The Culture Police are sometimes Moral Guardians taken to a satiric and/or frightening extreme. The Bluenose Bowdlerizers are a form of Moral Guardians in our midst. Moral Guardians are often responsible for a work being Banned In China.
Examples:
Automobiles
- Way back in 1971, Dodge introduced a car called the Dart Demon, complete with a cartoony pitchfork-wielding devil as its mascot. Some Christian groups complained and two years later the name was changed to Dart Sport.
Anime and Manga
- A similar thing [to the Furry example] happened in the late 1990s with "Hentai FREE", which basically served as a way for ten-year-old fangirls to assure their parents and brag to themselves that their Sailor Moon fan site had nothing to do with those horrid articles about some boy in elementary school getting caught with hentai from the library.
- In 1997, Sailor Moon Stars was dubbed in Italy. Also in 1997, Italian psychologist Vera Slepoy said "Sailor Moon makes little boys gay". Cue the Sailor Starlights (an alien boy band who revert to their true female forms to fight) becoming six people instead of three — with the alien boy band now calling on their twin sisters to fight.
- The TV broadcast of Axis Powers Hetalia was canceled due to a few very vocal South Korean busybodies (who probably hadn't even read the comic) taking umbrage at the portrayal of their country and characterizing it as a right-wing political tract; thanks to Misplaced Nationalism, this has led to some truly awful anti-Korean backlash from some Japanese fans. Also, Korea wasn't planned to show up in the anime anyway.
- Only Japanese fans? The English APH comm in Livejournal witnessed a hissy fit from some English-speaking Fan Dumb, which started spewing all kinds of racist insults against Koreans as a whole. Ever since then, any news-related posts in the comm must be mod-approved.
- "Some" Japanese fans is probably not accurate, either. There is an extremely vocal minority on the Japanese Internet that ridicules Koreans at any chance they get, and whenever any controversy comes up, will gravitate to it to spew their vitriol. It goes both ways (it’s an old, ugly problem). Naturally, the silent majority in both countries may not be 100% hunky-dory about the issues between the two, but certainly don’t have a seriously messed problem like these people do.
Comic Books
- The Comics Code Authority. In the early 1950s, Dr. Frederic Wertham published a book called The Seduction of the Innocent, which was about how comic books were corrupting the youth at the time, which he backed up with many completely unresearched anecdotes. The agency sanitized American comics to an absurd point, so much that questioning authority and scary creatures were banned, and drugs and disabled people could not even be mentioned.
- Wertham, arguably, wasn't a bad guy; he fought racism and supported desegregation when those weren't popular views, and his attitudes toward mental illness were quite progressive.
- And Wertham didn't even want the CCA in the first place. He just wanted a ratings system (like what we have today), not a complete moratorium on all remotely offensive material.
- Later in life, Wertham warmed to fanzines and became really positive about the community and togetherness that comic fandom can promote. While he never quite lived past the infamy of The Seduction of the Innocent, he's not the total evil he's sometimes painted as and arguably couldn't possibly have anticipated the worst excesses of the anti-comic fervor (which he didn't support).
- It got to the point where a Spider-Man strip based around Harry Osborn overdosing had to be published without CCA approval, even though it dealt entirely with the negative effects of drugs, and had been requested by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
- This event is often pointed to as the beginning of the CCA's downfall. A series of drastic standards-changes followed, but it was already apparent that the CCA was unnecessary and soon their approval was not necessary for a comic to hit shelves. They disappeared soon after.
- He's also the namesake of the main villain of Atlanta's Silver Scream Spook Show.
Film
- Right-wing America's reaction to Brokeback Mountain. The standard joke about censorship of Brokeback Mountain is the story of the theatre that decided instead of running Brokeback Mountain to show Deliverance.
- In an attempted subversion of this trope, the production team for the film The Nun's Story (1959) actively sought out the relevant Moral Guardians for assistance, including the nuns whose convent was fictionalized in the source novel.
- Many film critics decried The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a film sympathetic to the Irish Revolution, as anti-British propaganda, often without having even seen it. One such Moral Guardian even went so far as to compare the film to Triumph of the Will. As a result, quite a few English theatres refused to screen it. Although the film portrays the Black-And-Tan soldiers in a very poor light, any historian will tell you that yes, that's pretty accurate, and no, Barley is not propaganda.
- The Chinese government is this on a regular basis. Some of their issues are a bit understandable, if frustrating (a movie shown in a Chinese theater must have the villain - if s/he broke some law - be caught and/or face the consequences in the end, and movies that don't have this portrayal must either provide an alternate ending for the Chinese or not be shown in theaters at all), but others can be pretty much summarized to suit heavily-biased Communist Party ideology.
- What the PTC is to television, the Childcare Action Project
 (usually called by its acronym CAP) is to movies (with the exception of "effective". ZING!). Its founder, Tom Carder, seems to favor a return to the Hays Code.
- Carder has given a perfect score to only two movies: Mary Poppins and Who Gets the House?. The former apparently fails to lose points for showing obvious magic use and a son's disobediance causing a riot at a bank.
- He appears to have chosen a pretentious acronym first and then built a rating system around that: "WISDOM," which divides the sins of movies into the categories "Wanton violence/crime," "Impudence/hate," "Sexual immorality," "Drugs/alcohol," "Offense to God," and "Murder/suicide." He then goes on to be incredibly verbose in justifying his system, with charts, no less. Note than whenever a score by his system goes completely against common sense, he, without exception, calls it "proof of the objectivity" of his system, not proof that his system is absolutely fucked.
- Carder counts any remotely fantastic or imaginary element as blasphemy, which suggests that he doesn't comprehend the concept of fiction. To see how warped his priorities are, look at the rating for the first Harry Potter film. 55. Now look at the one for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. 67. Yes, apparently Harry Potter is more corrupting than The Rocky Horror Picture Show! He also gave middle ground scores to the Narnia movies, claiming they weren’t "Christian movies" because CS Lewis wasn't involved Supposedly, if he’d been involved they’d have been completely different, though the fantasy elements he decried are actually portrayed quite accurately. Even more entertaining is that Mary Poppins didn't lose any points for supernatural elements because the abilities Mary Poppins had were never identified as magic/sorcery/wizardry and because there was sufficient subtext that she was an angel.
- He also likes to add bullshit "offenses" to a film's list of vices. Like Hellboy II, which he decided contained a "Mockery of the Gay Lifestyle." (Two guys getting drunk and singing a cheesy love song.) Spider bites are "violent"; "Bodies erect underwater" is Impudent and using the word "fool" is an offense to God. Star Wars is marked down because Darth Vader and the Empire have a "bad attitude". TMNT gets a bad rap because apparently the skin from the Turtle's crotches could be considered sexually indecent. He took points off X-Men because two of the actors are gay, even though they played straight roles. See the Freudian Excuse page for his take on The Dark Knight. He called Iron Man's "acidic music" impudent. Oh yeah, and he also took a point off The Passion of the Christ because Jesus dies.
- So he condemns making fun of Gay people, and Gay actors at the same time? Kinda hypocritical.
- The page actually lists parody of the "gay" lifestyle. Scare quotes included.
- One wonders if Who Gets the House? would get a perfect score now that George Takei has come out of the closet?
- He also tends to completely ignore certain offenses in order to completely focus on less important ones. For example, he uses the review of Cabin Fever to rant about over-sexed youth without mentioning the skin-eating virus once, although it's the complete focus of the entire film.
- Is Carder's middle name Poe by any chance?
- Fridge Logic moment: why is the head of a site called the Childcare Action Project watching movies that are rated as being only appropriate for adults and being offended when they deal with themes other than rainbows and kittens?
- Slightly less heavy-handed in his movie reviews is Dr. Ted Baehr. He rates films on a scale of +4 for "exemplary" to -4 for "abhorrent", and classifies Shirtless Scenes as "upper male nudity".
- One of the reasons he rates the original Star Wars down is because of "levitation." Now, this is the only film in the series in which The Force isn't used to physically manipulate objects; rather, it seems to mostly aid concentration and detection of objects without being able to see. So what's offensive here? The hovering technology used in landspeeders and training remotes? Flying spacecraft?
- One poster on IMDB named Isreal578 is constantly making posts about movies such as Blade, Knocked Up, Superbad and such in which she/he/whatever complains about them containing drug use, satanic references, sex, coarse language, violence, ETC... and therefore being inappropriate for children. Each one of said posts gets replies in which it is pointed out that said movies are rated R and therefore cannot be seen without parental permission/supervision, but said replies are ignored. Whatsmore, he/she/whatever claims that they and their church group is rallying to force hollywood to stop producing such "smut", and presumably only produce films that they consider acceptable (in other words, a return to the Hays Code). Yes, Isreal, we're really sure that a single church group that probably doesn't consist of more than a few hundred has enough flak to make Hollywood cleanse films of all sex, violence and coarse language; that studios and the general filmgoing populace worldwide wouldn't object to such; and that such would not be regarded as a violation of the first amendment. We're soooooo scared.
- This label could easily be extended to any reviewer who complains about similar material shown in (theoretically) actual children's movies.
- in South Australia Family First MP Dennis Hood recently had a law passed, where all R rated films in South Australia (eg: Pulp Fiction, Apocalypse Now, etc) have to either a) be placed in the 'adult section' of all video stores (among the porn titles) or b) have an entirely blank cover displaying only the films name in small font and a note saying that the film may cause offence, furthermore all studios are banned from advertising any R rated films (such as the ones mentioned) on any medium.
- Any Aussies curious as to who's responsible for all the film bans we have here? The Australian Family Association. Other than its requisite gay-bashing, it tried to get the OFLC to ban 9 Songs, Anatomy Of Hell, Irreversible, Mysterious Skin and Shortbus. It was actually successful with Baise Moi and Ken Park.
Food
- MeMe Roth of the National Action Against Obesity. She claimed that Jordin Sparks was a bad idea for American Idol because she was overweight. She claims that eating cupcakes is the same as putting a gun into your mouth. She demands that the school her kids go to give permission slips in order for the kids to eat anything in the lunch menu.
- Meme even compares enjoying eating food to rape.
"The defence has been made in the case of sex criminals that there is pleasure on the part of the victim. The same is true with what we're doing with food. We may abuse our bodies with food, but it's incredibly pleasurable. From a food marketer's point of view, when your quote unquote victim is so willing and enjoying of the process, who's fighting back?"
- It is plainly obvious that Jordin Sparks is not overweight from a MEDICAL standpoint.
- Could this become a... 'Meme-tic' mutation?
- PETA tried to get people to stop eating fish by renaming "fish" to "sea kittens."
- But...
- Stephen Colbert responded by saying that now, he could openly admit to eating kittens, which are now called "land fish".
- And then there's certain cultures where eating cats is acceptable and completely normal.
- And that's a good thing?!?
- Unless you prefer a catsplosion, yes.
- it started in times of famine. Between eating a candle, a cat or dying, I choose the cat.
Internet
- Stephen Conroy, the current Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (ie. head government internet guy) has made plans, approved by the Federal Government which he is a part of, to force mandatory censorship on the Internet at the ISP level for all Internet users in Australia, in which the government gets to decide what is appropriate and what isn't. Even worse, what is and isn't blocked will be kept secret (as a guide, it's very similar what China and Iran have in place). This despite the fact that every test conducted thus far has shown blanket filters to be complete pants when it comes to actually achieving anything, and almost unanimous, vitriolic opposition to the idea on all fronts.
- The Government has recently (December, 2009) announced that are going ahead with the plan, and will attempt to push the legislation through sometime in 2010. It still needs to be successfully passed in Parliament House, and if opposed unanimously by the Liberal/National Coalition and the Australian Green Party, there will be insufficient votes - unlike the United States, for a member of a party to vote counter to their party's wishes ("crossing the floor") is a rare and highly politically dangerous thing for a senator to do. The current state of the Liberal/National Coalition however, currently in shambles and under new untested leadership, lead some to believe they will be in no shape to put up an effective argument and may infact support the proposal, to curry favour with those individuals who believe the rhetoric that it's all to "protect the keeedz".
- and very recently Conroy approached Google asking them to voluntarily implement the filtering similar similar to the one they use in China, Google told him to get stuffed.
- A unique subversion of this trope involves the Child Online Protection Act, a law passed in 1998 meant to stop kids from seeing porn. Almost the moment it was passed, the Supreme Court issued an order preventing the government from enforcing it due to arguments that it violated free speech due to its vague and broadly-determined definition of what "harmful sexual content by contemporary community standards" meant. Various attempts to remove the ban on its enforcement have been similarly struck down.
- In an example of a fandom developing these from within, the Furry Fandom contains groups such as the now-disbanded Burned Furs and Improved Anthropomorphics, anthropomorphic enthusiasts who believe the community has been corrupted with many of its members' obsession with risqué media, and promote a "cleansing" of the fandom to a more pure, unadulterated state. Unlike many of the above, they aren't usually taken seriously, and their attempts at changing the fandom generally don't have much impact.
- The whole 'cleansing' thing was pretty much invented by hypersensitive fetish-happy furries. The sentiment of the burned furs and similar was just 'we don't like being associated with these people, maybe we make non-furries realise that not all of the fandom is sexualised'. Within about a month of that there were thirteen different anti groups screaming about persecution and betrayal, and another seven 'peace' groups trying to end the flamewar by the power of rainbows and positive thinking. A choice piece of Internet drama to be sure.
- The in-fighting within the Furry Fandom continues to this day, actually. Nowadays it's between furries who don't want some of the more outlandish (and, in the case of zoophiles, potentially illegal) fetishes associated with the fandom, and those who enjoy those fetishes.
- "Warriors for Innocence", a volunteer-based anti-pedophilia group who made news by encouraging Livejournal to temporarily ban over 500 accounts and communities, ranging from age-playing and incest fetish groups to child molestation victim communities to groups discussing fanfiction or Lolita to otherwise completely innocuous accounts who just happened to have the kind of buzzwords they were looking for in the profile.
- A complete summary of the event, termed "Strikethrough '07" (for the way that banned journals have a strike through their names) can be found here.
- Moral Guardians are one of FSTDT.com's favourite targets.
- [Semi-]parodied by Intuitor: The minds of our children and their ability to master vectors are (shudder) at stake.
- CommonSenseMedia.org are usually pretty good about not going overboard and giving people information to decide for themselves, but it was incredibly funny when they listed all the throat-slashing, rape, burning death, and a steamy kiss in Sweeney Todd. Also, they spent more time talking about the religious themes hinted at on the Evanescence album Fallen (apparently it might offend militant atheists or something) then the fact that most Evanescence songs are rather creepy - and that "Tourniquet" is about suicide and "Haunted" is about being stalked and raped! That's right, kids, it's perfectly okay for you to listen to songs about death, suicide, and rape, but we'll make sure you don't hear any awful religious talk!
- Commsensemedia also apparently defines a sex scene as passionate kissing, judging by this review of The Wind That Shakes the Barley. All Damien and Sinead did was kiss and then the picture blacked out, and while the implication was there, nothing was onscreen.
Literature
- Thomas Bowdler published versions of Shakespeare and Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire edited to be more appropriate for Victorian-era women and children, inspring the word bowdlerise/bowdlerize.
- Bowdler did that for the sake of appeasing other Moral Guardians, and actually urged people to seek out the original copies. It's rather like in-house censoring for the sake of allowing something to be published/broadcast.
- An unfinished project of Lewis Carroll was to further edit Bowdler's Shakespeare to produce an edition suitable for young girls.
- Ray Bradbury's dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 blamed these people for the slow chipping away at free speech that led to all books being banned. Naturally, the book has found itself challenged as often as Harry Potter, never mind the irony in banning a book about book banning. In summer 2007 Bradbury announced that Fahrenheit 451 is actually about television, not censorship; this has been largely ignored by both sides.
- Bradbury previously mentioned on multiple occasions that the book is about censorship. In 1979, Bradbury wrote a new coda for the book containing multiple comments on censorship and its relation to the novel. Another message was the dumbing-down of great literature on the assumption that readers are morons, a pattern just as bad as censorship. Just assume the book is about all that stuff at once.
- His claim is basically Bradbury trying not to look like the hypocrite he revealed himself to be after the release of the movie Fahrenheit 9/11. He tried to block the release of the movie supposedly because the title was "plagiarized" from his novel, which would have been more plausible had Bradbury not screeched about his hate for Michael Moore's politics at every turn. For the record, titles can't be copyrighted and Bradbury knows this, or at least he didn't have any problem "plagiarizing" another writer himself for the title of one of his most famous stories, Something Wicked This Way Comes.
- Among other things, the Guardians' complaints have included people (the villains) burning The Bible, and the use of "damn" and "hell". One of the companies that made books for schools removed every usage of "damn" and "hell" from the book, and Bradbury was pissed when he found out. The Guardians have gotten so bad they are censoring books about the evils of censorship!
- It's simple. They just fail to get that censors are supposed to be villains.
- The short story "The Toys of Peace" by Saki deals with this trope, and is based on an actual 1914 London newspaper story. In short, the Moral Guardians of the story are worried that giving young boys army figures and other war-themed toys would encourage them to be violent so instead they propose "peace toys" which are basically miniature civilians in front of the civil buildings (i.e. the YMCA) holding the tools of industry, instead of miniature soldiers with guns. Needless to say, when the narrator presents these toys to his nephews, the boys simply adapt the buildings for their existing military figures and play war games anyway.
- ...Should that have created a mental image of a small child playing with toy Village People?
- Beautifully summarized in the first episode of Barney Miller. Barney's son comes in with a toy gun yelling "Bang", just as Barney is locking up his own gun in a cupboard. Barney gives him a short lecture about firearms being dangerous, gives him a toy truck to play with instead, and the kid holds it up and goes "Bang". Later he does the same thing with a slice of pizza.
- A similar example appears in The Catcher In The Rye. The Jerkass With A Heart Of Gold main character finds the word "fuck" scrawled where young children can see it, and takes it upon himself to protect an innocent public by blotting it out. Censors reacted identically.
- Which is hilariously ironic, seeing as the main character sees himself as one of these.
- Cutting Edge Ministries, home of the most massively convoluted Harry Potter Moral Guardianship ever. This is the site that drew some sort of evil monstrous connection between Harry's green eyes, green icing on a birthday cake, green ink on an invitation, Professor McGonagall's green cloak, and the unsourced assertion that green "is Satan's favorite color".
- Of the killing of the unicorn in the first book, Cutting Edge says that "since the Unicorn is a symbol of the coming Antichrist, this scene means he receives a fatal wound; doesn't this sound terribly like the prophesied fatal wound of Antichrist in Revelation 13:3, where the entire world goes after the Beast in amazement after he is resurrected from his fatal wound?"
- Wait, isn't the unicorn traditionally a symbol for Jesus, not the Anti Christ? You would at least expect these people to be literate in their own religious symbolism.
- Any truly vigilant citizen knows that Christian texts are backmasked Satanist texts.
- Well, in the book of Daniel, Daniel has a vision which involves a goat with one horn, which is held by many to be the antichrist.
- Explain to me how a unicorn, which is a horned horse is a goat
- Actually, the Unicorn seems to be a symbol of Mary. From a quote on this page: "The Unicorn Christian Symbol represents of purity and of feminine chastity. The unicorn is therefore often used as a symbol of the Virgin Mary." However, according to the same article, the unicorn may have been a buffalo, ox, antelope, or even a type of cattle called "Urus" or "Aurochs." None of those are a type of goat, however. The original meaning of Revelations 13 is more likely along the lines of "Some leader may come along and seduce everyone into following his evil, Satan-inspired plans, but if you follow God's principles, you won't get sucked into that bullshit." Read it yourself and make sense of it, it's a very short chapter and not that hard to decipher with a little thought if you use metaphorical interpretation.
- Guys, the unicorn obviously means Harry is a replicant.
- The line "There is no good or evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it" is called "standard Witchcraft, and standard Illuminist doctrine"; we're told that "since a child's inherent nature is evil, he will find such philosophy more appealing than the Gospel of Jesus Christ". Ignored is the fact that the character putting this "philosophy" forward is the villain.
- This is a very, very common error, not limited simply to Cutting Edge; of course, one other individual making this mistake was affiliated in some way with Jack Chick, so...
- Not to mention that Christian (or at least Catholic) theology states that children are innocent, not evil. It's very clearly stated right in The Bible, by Jesus himself nonetheless.
- When students are paired off to practice levitation, "Harry's partner was Seamus Finnigan (which was a relief, because Neville had been trying to catch his eye)" — to Cutting Edge, an eleven-year-old boy's not wanting to be paired off for a laboratory-style class with the school klutz is a suggestion of homosexuality.
- So, if he'd wanted to be paired with the also male klutz, they would have been fine with it?
- "Harry was eleven (11) when he was admitted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The number eleven is considered sacred to the occultist, as it is the first primary number." Er, no, the first primary number is ONE.
- Followed by 2, 3, 5, and 7. We need a "You Fail Math Forever" page. Possibly a "You Fail Arithmetic Forever" page.
- Does Writers Cannot Do Math count?
- Not to mention the fact that not only are these prime not "primary", numbers; but 1 is not a prime number. The definition of a prime number is that it has only two factors, 1 and itself. 1 has only 1 factor; making the first prime number, in fact, 2.
- Not to mention the fact that all English children start Secondary School at that age.
- And why is "the first prime number" considered sacred by occultists anyway? And so what if it is, if occultist beliefs are (apparently) supposed to be meaningless nonsense?
- To sum this argument up: It's Ridiculous. It's not even funny.
- They also conclude that SIRIUS IS SATAN! because "Sirius" was... another name for Anubis, who is apparently also Set, who can be loosely connected to Satan. (And, y'know, the Dog Star. 'cause he can turn into a dog. They skim over that.) Cutting Edge sees no reason to acknowledge that this means that when Order of the Phoenix was released, Rowling definitively killed off Satan.
- "9. Harry confronts Evil Valdemort directly, slays the hideous green snake who is the monster of the Chamber of Secrets, and then uses powerful Black Magic to vanquish Lord Valdemort." Did Not Do The Research in Chamber of Secrets?
- Stabbing things with other things: Black magic, ladies and gentlemen!
- There are other errors, as early as the Sorcerer's Stone review (Hagrid appearing out of nowhere on the Dursley's boat, and citing things that happen in Co S), but one of the strangest comments has to be "Remember Adolf Hitler, the most famous Black Magick wizard in modern history?".
- As a born-again Christian myself, I am appalled at the amount of Biblical doctrine this author (authors?) gets wrong in his pursuit of condemning Harry Potter. (And Catholicism and fantasy in general.) What is that Jesus said about the blind leading the blind? Also, did anyone else notice that the author clearly thinks you will go straight to Hell if you read Harry Potter yet he claims to have done extensive research on the occult? Um ...
- Anthony Comstock, U.S. Postal Inspector at the turn of the last century was a moral guardian that went so far in the pursuit of his twisted moral code that he becomes High Octane Nightmare Fuel. This is a man who bragged that he caused 15 people to commit suicide.
- America: The Book was banned from Wal-Mart for containing cut-out paper dolls of naked Supreme Court Justices. The reader was encouraged to cut out their robes and restore their dignity. Jon Stewart's first book, Naked Pictures Of Famous People, was also criticised for having naked Abe Lincoln on the front, and some later editions of the book have text-only covers.
Live Action TV
- Sam the Eagle filled this role on The Muppet Show. At one time he delivered a speech about the immorality of animals who, under their fur, feathers, scales, etc., were walking around completely naked. His reaction as he realized he himself was a member of this sordid group was priceless.
- Even better was when he made a speech against the idea of protecting endangered animals... until he realized that bald eagles were on the list.
- The Parents Television Council is an unabashedly conservative group that masquerades as a nonpartisan organization, and has gone after a large number of targets since its founding in 1995. PTC's ideal programming would be that of the 1950s, '60s and maybe the '70s - minus All In The Family and Charlies Angels. The group is almost singlehandedly responsible for the recent tightening of "decency" regulations for broadcast TV in the wake of the Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction" at the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show, better known as "Nipplegate". They've been known to take special aim at anyone who shows what they consider insufficient respect to conservative Protestant Christianity, and are currently intensifying efforts to bring cable TV under the same kind of regulation as broadcast. They have a strong lobby in Washington, and have been known to use astroturfing methods in their campaigns to censor and suppress content of which they disapprove.
- The PTC has affected at least one of their targets in a way they probably didn't intend; their targeting of WWE SmackDown! inspired WWE to create a stable called "Right To Censor" (universally referred to as RTC), a group of Moral Guardians who set out to combat sex and violence in WWE programming... literally, by beating the hell out of anybody who they deemed too offensive for TV. Even the other heels hated them.
- However, if you'll notice, many of RTC's targets were the same ones that the PTC were complaining about, and much of the controversial content is still gone, long after Right to Censor faded away. While they were a potshot at PTC, they also did much of what the PTC wanted.
- Which was the point: wrestling wanted a way to make it look like they were mocking self-appointed Moral Guardians while doing exactly what the Moral Guardians wanted so they wouldn't lose money.
- Naturally, The Onion used this chance to pour some acid on their wounds, as well as the science of "psychology" excuses as a whole: "U.S. Children Still Traumatized One Year After Seeing Partially Exposed Breast On TV". To think — some of them weren't even one year old... oh, the horror!
- The PTC also lauded Seventh Heaven as one of the "Best Family TV Shows" ever and "appropriate for children of all ages" because the show didn't have violence, bad language, or sex on screen. They apparently didn't care that the characters still talked about sex constantly and the parents (particularly Annie) were borderline abusive—or in the case of Annie banishing her minor-aged children to the garage apartment without access to food, clean clothes, or running water, actually abusive.
- mediawatch-uk (capitalization correct) is, roughly speaking, the British equivalent to the Parents Television Council. Formerly the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, it was founded in 1965 by Mary Whitehouse, the British answer to fellow Moral Guardian Phyllis Schlafly, and claims a membership of 40,000 (it counts dead members and anyone who sends letters to them). It espouses an aggressively conservative view of proper TV content and has advocated making the possession of pornography a crime punishable by jail time. Mary Whitehouse, now deceased (dying, somewhat ironically, on the birthday of Doctor Who, one of her favourite targets), was 'honoured' by comedians Newman and Baddiel, who ironically named their 1990s sketch/stand-up series The Mary Whitehouse Experience.
- She was also parodied with Mrs. Desiree Carthorse in The Goodies, where she hired them to produce a "gender education" film. Despite it being censored to the point of ridiculousness (everyone and everything in the film was covered in white sheets), she still objected morally. At the end of the episode, she got her way, and all television was banned to stamp out "S-E (cross motions with finger)". The Goodies pointed out that, since there was no TV, everyone would be having sex anyway, so the episode ends with her running down the street, shouting into windows, "Stop it! Stop it!"
- The reason for the last was that Mrs W. had written to The Goodies complimenting them on their wholesome show, which annoyed them so much that they set out to offend her as often as possible from that point onwards.
- According to the Monty Pythons Flying Circus crew, Mary Whitehouse's brain was located within her knee.
- 1970s Doctor Who producer Phillip Hinchcliffe was asked in an interview about Mrs Whitehouse's constant complaints about violence during his tenure. He replied that, while they never took advantage of it, everyone knew that if Mrs Whitehouse was complaining, ratings were about to go up.
- A new 'adult' magazine Whitehouse with editor and model Mary Whitehouse was launched when the NVLA started looking at print media.
- Spoofed on A Bit Of Fry And Laurie, with a sketch where it turned out that "Perhaps the Mary Whitehouses of this world aren't as monumentally stupid as they appear at first, second, and twenty-third glance." A Running Gag on the show was that Stephen Fry would punch Hugh Laurie in the face, and there was a concern that people might emulate Stephen's behaviour... by punching Hugh. So instead, Stephen gave Hugh a pile of money, in the hope that all the impressionable people out there would imitate him.
- National Coalition of Television Violence, an ally of Pat Pulling. Its founder and a research director Dr. Thomas Radecki, home-brewed theologist of Fundamentalist Christian strain bent on "investigating" Satanism and what he called "research". The latter included reviewing book reviewers and condemning those who "may not have been as sensitive to violence as they should have been", as well as reviewing "book covers of popular paperback books randomly selected from the shelves" in a bookstore to see how many of them he can call "violent". Yes, he freely admitted he used to judge a book by its cover. He warned about kids not knowing the difference between fantasy and reality and quoted a novel (Mazes and Monsters by Rona Jaffe) as a real document.
- The Catholic League claims to be "the nation's largest Catholic civil rights organization." In reality, it consists of a single person named William Donahue whose job is to get deeply offended at everything even slightly critical of Catholicism, then go on every talk show in America to tell everyone how offended he was. Of course, it doesn't help that the media, in true Cowboy Bebop At His Computer fashion, never bothers to let people know that the Catholic League has no official connection to the church. South Park subjected him to a hilariously cruel Take That in the "Fantastic Easter Special" episode.
- In a possible subversion of this trope, Bill Donahue admits to enjoying the South Park episode in question and has a still from it of him wearing the pope's miter in his office.
- The Ig Nobel Prize ceremonies have a V-Chip Monitor on stage, who steps in to censor potentially offensive lectures or demonstrations.
Magazines
- On multiple occasions, the British magazine Take A Break campaigns on social issues, but it's obvious that they did not do the research on these issues. Also, their agony aunt Katie tends to be guilty of this on multiple occasions, causing moral panic sometimes.
Music
- The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) were the infamous self-appointed moral crusaders against any kind of fun in music in the 1980s, formed by Tipper Gore and other wives of influential people when she was scandalized by lyrics to the Prince song "Darling Nikki". (A full account of the history behind the PMRC is given on Jello Biafra's spoken word recording High Priest of Harmful Matter.) Their aim was soon set at the LA glam scene and metal in general, but although they lost influence, many others eventually took up the moral crusade against metal music, with equally stupid arguments ranging from a (false) accusation of backward lyrics in Judas Priest songs to blaming the recent Virginia Tech killings on the fact that the killer wrote a play which had the same name as a Guns N' Roses song. Many metal bands have written songs about the PMRC and censorship — Megadeth in particular have written several.
- Even more infamous was the day the PMRC called Dee Snider, front man for Twisted Sister, to testify, expecting him to make himself look foolish and further promote their cause. Snider showed up still in makeup from the previous night's show, hair teased and huge, dressed in ripped and torn clothing, possibly even hungover, with his notes in a crumpled wad. However, appearances are deceiving; Dee Snider is a very literate and eloquent man, with a strong sense of the poetic. He proceeded to verbally abuse the entire PMRC, up to and including implications that Tipper Gore was a closet sadomasochist, visibly angering Al Gore to the point of near incoherence. This was possibly the most epic defeat ever handed to the PMRC (not to mention a complete and total Crowning Moment of Awesome for Snider).
- One fondly recalled on 2005 rockumentary Metal: A Headbanger's Journey.
- The committee calling radio-friendly folk singer John Denver up to testify, fully expecting him to endorse their every idea. This, friends, is what's known as backfiring. Not only was Denver flatly opposed to the censoring or rating of music, he was, if anything, just as eloquent as Snider, and earned his own Crowning Momentof Awesome.
- For which he was dropped by RCA, which had previously announced their intention to "re-assess the contracts" of any of their artists who objected to the idea of warning stickers on record albums.
- Frank Zappa also testified. When he suggested the perfectly sensible solution of printing lyrics on the back cover as a sort of "preview" of the album's content, the PMRC, caught up in their righteous indignation, essentially covered their ears and said "LALALALALALA I CAN'T HEEEEEEAR YOU." Perhaps they were more interested in dishing out punishment to the offending artists than developing a workable long-term solution.
- For his trouble, Zappa has the great distinction of having an Explicit Content rating...on a completely instrumental album.
- Neil Young reportedly said he wrote "Fuckin' Up" so that he could get a sticker. He didn't get one.
- Roger Waters, lyricist of Pink Floyd, savagely attacked Mary Whitehouse in a verse of "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" -
Hey you, Whitehouse, Ha ha charade you are!
You house proud town mouse,
Ha ha charade you are
You're trying to keep our feelings off the street
You're nearly a real treat,
All tight lips and cold feet,
And do you feel abused?
Somewhat ironically, because of this song Tipper Gore accused Pink Floyd of being "anti-American" thinking that "Whitehouse" referred to "The White House".
- The RIAA. This group of radical anti-music piracy activists are infamous for hunting down anyone, including children, who downloaded even one song off the internet and demanding that they (or their families) pay a ludicrously high fine. At one point, they tried to force the grieving family of a recently deceased man to pay a several thousand dollar fine for the man's downloads.
- Amanda Palmer's song Guitar Hero parodies the idea of a school shooting being inspired by a video game... particularly, well, Guitar Hero. The song shows how easily any game can be compared to real life violence (with the help of some Incredibly Lame Pun lines such as "It's a hit!" and "There's people screaming, just like they should / but you don't even know if you're good..."). Extra poignant because Amanda actually lost some of her friends during a school shooting - she just refuses to blame it on any part of pop culture.
Newspaper Comics
Newspapers
- The Sun, a British tabloid newspaper, is well known for this. In 2008 it led a successful campaign to force social networking site Facebook to remove an application which allowed users to virtually "shank" (knife) friends. It also led a moral crusade in 1992 against the horror movie Child's Play 3 which, it was argued, was responsible for the murder of 2-year-old James Bulger because the family of one of the (10-year-old) killers had rented the movie shortly beforehand. Police could find no evidence of this and said so in a press statement, but the newspaper led a nationwide campaign for anyone with a copy of the film to destroy it and for shopkeepers to remove it from shelves. Child's Play 3 was later suggested as a possible inspiration for another murder, which allowed The Sun to say "See? We were right." More recently, in 2009 it was the first newspaper to report on the story of a 13-year-old boy alleged to have fathered a baby with his 15-year-old girlfriend, provoking outrage from other Moral Guardians all across the land.
- Hang on, The Sun acts as a Moral Guardian? This coming from the same paper that is notorious for having a different topless girl every weekday on page 3? Seems ironic.
- Hypocritical Humor, baby.
- Actually, this makes sense. They're pro-sex, anti-violence. (Not saying they're sane, but at least they have a healthier attitude about what should be banned.)
- Not really. The Sun tend to just print whatever's most likely to make people buy their newspaper, and Moral Outrage stories tend to do the trick. They quite often contradict themselves, suddenly change their point of view or flat-out lie in an attempt to garner readers. If a Sun journalist thought that people wanted to read about how terrible gaming is for society, then that's what they'd write about. So Yeah, probably best not to take them too seriously.
- The Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday fulfill this role in the UK. In particular, MoS columnist Peter Hitchins is an extremely opinionated conservative Christian who is quick to label anyone who disagrees with his views as evil or an idiot.
- This was reflected in a column stating that the BBC was "anti-British" because it doesn't meet his high standards. Of course, this chap can sometimes give the impression that he believes the simple existence of television is a sign that Britain is in a state of moral decay.
Politicians
- The Dutch Minister of Justice, Ernst Hirsch Ballin, repeatedly gets into trouble when he reads the latest doom and gloom about some form of media. He immediately calls for banning of parts of said media, only to forget about it in a few months' time.
- He's just Ballin'.
- Hooray for Dutch laid-back Protestant liberalism.
- More like: Hooray for no-effort tv-time and poll boost.
Radio
- Parody example: Mr. Tweedly, the friendly radio censor who insists Stan Freberg Bowdlerise "Old Man River" into "Elderly Man River" for the sake of "the tiny tots", which predated the political correctness trope by decades.
Tabletop RPG
- Patricia Pulling, mother of Irving "Bink" Pulling (who committed suicide on June 8, 1982), alleged that her son's suicide was caused by roleplaying games, a common accusation of the time (Irving Pulling was noted to be having troubles fitting in at school, and wrote "Life is a Joke" on a blackboard at school shortly before his suicide). Pulling tried to sue the principal of the high school her son attended, then got a private investigator certificate (48-hour course) and formed B.A.D.D. (Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons), testified as a self-proclaimed expert in "occult" and D&D, and riding a wave of "cult crimes" scare, produced handouts for police that contained erroneous or outright false statements (such as claiming that 8% of Richmond, Virginia citizens were Satanists; she came to this conclusion by estimating 4% of teens and 4% of adults, and adding the result (for those playing along at home, that's mathematically still 4%). And a list of fantasy role-playing games, some of which weren't fantasy, or role-playing games, or at all). She has an objection to Tunnels and Trolls that it used rolls of three six-sided dice, so here must be something Satanic. Somehow she was allowed to get away with everything up to unauthorized and re-edited reprinting of newspapers articles and even was hired to give testimony in a court of law. Pulling died of cancer in 1997, and the anti-RPG backlash more or less died with her.
- To make it more ridiculous, there are studies (including some done by B.A.D.D. itself) that show that D&D players are actually less likely to commit suicide. This makes sense; to play D&D at all, you need to have at least two friends.
- Similar to the Jack Thompson example below, even Ann Coulter thinks the reasoning behind the D&D condemnation is nutty.
- There are also studies that show that D&D players have perfectly average suicide rates for their socio-economic background.
- Jack Chick, of course, had a rather famous tirade about how Dungeons And Dragons leads to suicide and satanism.
Theatre
- Arsinoé, in Molière's Le Misanthrope, is a prudish old woman who seeks to limit Célimène's pleasures, largely because she is jealous of her with Alceste. Molière's Tartuffe is also morally censorious, at one point draping a handkerchief over Dorine's overly exposed bosom (though he is, of course, a complete hypocrite, and tries to seduce Oronte's wife behind his back). Molière suffered a great deal from Real Life Moral Guardians.
- The unseen Mrs. Grundy, in Thomas Morton's play Speed the Plough, in which Dame Ashfield continually worries, "What will Mrs. Grundy say?" of each development, has passed into everyday speech as the embodiment of prudery and censorship.
Toys
- The Lion and Lamb Project is the counterpart for children's toys. The main problem with their crusade against immoral toys is the massive amount of Did Not Do The Research involved in their tirades; the group constantly claims that various toys were marketed at children simply because of the "Ages 3 and Up" approval rating on all toys (which is the result of a safety test, not a demographic statement). They went straight into Cowboy Bebop At His Computer territory by claiming that a Transformers toyline was clearly designed to tie in to The Matrix despite the fact that the two franchises have no corporate connection and only shared the unimportant background premise of a background Big Bad draining energy from living beings. Their lists of "recommended" toys make it clear that they think that toys are never, ever made for anybody older than 4 or so despite the blatant pandering to collectors' markets in many toylines. Their website has not been updated in years, possibly due to the increasing irrelevance of physical toys.
Western Animation
- A small deal was made by one group over Avatar The Last Airbender, seeing as it was intended for children. The ironic part is that the violence and drug use, while both exaggerated by the report, are still downplayed because of the horrible eastern spiritual philosophy that might tempt people away from Christianity. Snicker.
- Given quite a Take That in Phineas And Ferb. In one episode taking place in a Bad Future, it is revealed that Moral Guardians essentially destroyed society by going to Knight Templar extremes and eliminating all traces of fun and creativity.
- Parodied by House of Mouse, which featured the Censor Monkeys...who, at one point, received a safe to the head.
- The safe was dropped after the monkeys decided that disguising the violence with novelty sounds was an acceptable compromise. When the safe hit, it sounded like a squeaky toy being squished. One of them even opens the safe and sticks his arm out to show everyone they're ok.
- South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut If You Know What I Mean.
Video Games
- In the 1990s, the Brazilian Ministry of Justice forbid sales of the Carmageddon series and the first Grand Theft Auto. But in the 2000s they entered Culture Police level by banning Bully, ("doesn't let children to be educated properly", according to the judge who ordered the ban) Counter-Strike ("violence stimulation") and Ever Quest ("subversion of social order").
- Which, by the way, did nothing at all. Any cybercafe or video games store will have these games.
- Fallout 3 was originally going to have morphine as one of its chems, but a complaint about the portrayal of morphine in the game from Australian Moral Guardians got it changed to Med-X while still coming in rather recognizable syringes. The way it was portrayed? As an extremely potent but dangerously addictive painkiller... which is kind of what morphine is.
- Granted, in the game, its function is to increase your damage resistance, which sounds more like "toughen skin" than "painkiller". It reduces damage dramatically when taken in large doses (akin to morphine allowing you to ignore minor injuries), but the damage comes back to bite you when it wears off.
- The Grand Theft Auto series is a repeated target of Moral Guardians. Several entries have been denied release internationally, including in parts of Japan. This came to a particularly explosive head in San Andreas when hackers discovered a disabled sex minigame (dubbed "Hot Coffee") that led to Jack Thompson (again) patrolling the media with his anti-gaming theories, as well as facetime from numerous lawmakers including Senator Hillary Clinton, who proposed laws to restrict the sales of certain games. Clinton and Thompson even appeared together several times to fight against the game. The controversy eventually died down, but the financial damage to Take-Two over having to pull all copies of the game with the Hot Coffee minigame code and resubmit a cut version for re-rating killed the company's finances for that year.
- Take-Two's finances plummeting that year was because of (or at least compounded by) some sort of illegal stockholder scandal or other such crime by their executives.
- The Hot Coffee incident was spoofed by Jak X: the unlockable Hot Coffee video features Daxter and Tess drinking coffee, before Daxter looks at the screen and asks, "What?"
- There was a hidden hot coffee cutscene in the PS 3 game Lair which literally shows a hot cup of coffee being made.
- Ironically enough, when the very first GTA game came out, the publishers hired publicist Max Clifford to generate an aura of controversy about the game in the local media. As a result, politicians stepped into the foray. Whatever the impact on game censorship and the perception of video gaming, the publicity worked - the title was hugely successful simply because those attempting to ban the game were inadvertently generating publicity for it. This has been a known and recognised phenomenon of violent video games ever since.
- This tactic was also probably used to generate hype for Manhunt 2 when the whole AO rating came about.
- With comparatively less success: the game was banned outright in the UK and Ireland.
- It also didn't help that Manhunt 2 was a terrible game...
- GTA IV was nearly banned in Australia, but it got through after they took out a module that allowed your character to have sex with prostitutes. However, it still contains extreme violence, drug use, full frontal nudity (male and female), and you can still have sex. Just not with prostitutes.
-
Attorney Jack Thompson is a self-appointed crusader against video games, and apparently blames them for every evil affecting American society except possibly global warming and the common cold. Before that he was involved in efforts to censor music, specifically rap. He has a history of rabid overreaction to his pet issue-of-the-moment, vitriol towards more rational persons on any side of that issue, and legal threats to anyone who disagrees with him (his lawsuits have expanded to include the Florida Supreme Court as a target). In recent times, however, he is considered to be relatively harmless, as his rants have cost him his credibility and his license to practice law in at least one state; nowadays, with more important people making threats against video games, Thompson is merely the most visible and possibly the most entertaining.
- Never, ever email Jack if you're a gamer, unless you want some laughs out of his "You're a gamer, therefore you're a dumbass and your points are moot" responses.
- There was controversy over Mass Effect regarding the game's sex scene. The detractors went so far as to claim the game was like "Luke Skywalker meets Debbie Does Dallas", even though they admitted they never actually played the game. To give you an idea on how badly they screwed up, Jack Thompson himself said they were being idiots. He also went up against the makers of Left Behind: Eternal Forces, based on the Left Behind book series.
- In regard to Eternal Forces, that may have been one of the few smart moves of his storied career — EF caused offense on both sides. The non-religious community objected because they saw it as conservative Christian propaganda, and the Religious Right disliked the game because it portrayed the faithful as trigger-happy vigilantes.
- Actually Jack isn't as BAD as many think of him. In addition to defending Mass Effect, he is actually quite reasonable. He appeared on SGC this summer (Screw Attack Gaming Convention), and his arguements made sense, with little bias. He was WARNED that the crowd could be rowdy. The crowd WASN'T rowdy. That's a minor Crowning Moment of Awesome right here.
- Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman studies how video games can train people to kill. He cites tactics used in shooting games, desensitising gamers to killing and portraying it as a reward and enjoyment as evidence.
- Didn't claim a lot of things about his time in the army (and that supported his views) that turned out to be false because he was at best a pencil pusher?
- Left 4 Dead 2 has been banned in Australia for, among other reasons "high-impact violence" and "piles of bodies lay about the environment". Yahtzee is livid.
- Oh snap, they're in trouble now...
- Valve submitted a censored version of the game to the classification board, which was eventually passed with an MA-15 rating. The amount of censoring required is so ridiculous though, that at times it looks like a completely different game. Valve had also resubmitted the original for reconsideration, but it was just given another dose of refused classification. It could be argued that at least they tried, but the gamers won't be any happier.
- L4D2 wasn't banned exactly, it was just rated as meeting a rating of R18+ because of, yes, high impact violence. No-one is arguing that this isn't a fair and appropriate rating, because the game is very violent. The problem is that Australia does not have an R18+ rating for games, meaning that any game which would rate over an MA 15+ is "Refused Classification". This is, incidentally, completely thanks to Australia's own personal
Jack Thompson Mary Whitehouse * Point edited because there's an Australian actor named Jack Thompson who is by all accounts a nice bloke and all-around arrogant Moral Guardian douchebag, Michael Atkinson. As the Attorney-General of South Australia he has the power to veto any attempts to bring Australia in line with the rest of the world and he abuses it at every opportunity.
- British magazine Take A Break has recently picked up where Jack Thompson left off, with an article on how Grand Theft Auto is disrespectful to women because it's possible to kill prostitutes in the game. Of course it features the inevitable "It's bad for our children!" argument and conveniently neglecting to mention its 18 rating. They are currently saying they want it censored, but at the same time praising the Thai government for banning it outright.
- It is slightly unfair to lump Take A Break in with Jack Thompson as the vast majority of their campaigns do address actual social problems, such as knifecrime, gender bias and PND, and they just seem to have gone slightly wide of the mark with this one. Hardly cause to label them Jack Thompson wannabes.
- Except that British magazine Take A Break became something of a joke amongst people in the radio industry (who tend to treat the magazine as a comic) and see them as being an attempt at complaining about videogames you don't play - the same criticism that was levelled at certain other video games back in 2005-2006. The irony being, well, that, people use Grand Theft Auto to do things they would never do in real life. Also, it seems somewhat hypocritical of them, considering how research has discovered only a small amount of the British populace were actually influenced by such games. A clear case of them having not done the research.
- Anyone who's ever read Take A Break will be despairing for the nation's children for entirely different reasons...
- The release of Bully on the PS2 (renamed Canis Canem Edit in the UK, at least in part over this fuss) was accompanied by a "ban this game" campaign led by, of all people, disgraced former Cabinet Minister Keith Vaz. Apparently violence in computer games is more morally reprehensible than politicians taking backhanders. Once more, Jack Thompson was also publicly denouncing the game and actually had a pre-emptive lawsuit filed against him by Take-Two to prevent his legal meddling.
- This mainly occurred during the game's development, as upon release such detractors were left with egg on their face when Bully turned out to be fairly wholesome, due to the fact that the path to victory is playing morally, being a good student and taking down the titular bullies. This was pretty much what caused the Jack Thompson media flareup to finally die down. Bully: Scholarship Edition has since been released in the UK under its original title.
- The original Manhunt received much controversy over how the game practically reveled in the violence the player could commit. This led to the game being banned in several countries. The sequel received the same treatment, including such notable names as Hillary Clinton and Jack Thompson (surprise!) attempting to get the game restricted in the United States. The game still had to be recut because the ESRB gave the first cut an Adults Only rating, thus leading to retailers refusing to carry it and Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all denying the games release on their platforms. Even after the M-rated cut made it shelves, the same moral guardians (including Senator Clinton) sought to have the game re-rated and pulled from store shelves until they eventually got too bored with it to continue stirring up controversy.
- This is particularly amusing since the villain of Manhunt is an unseen presence who commands the player to perform arbitrary actions and watches the results through disembodied cameras, and is presented as relentlessly bloodthirsty and rather twisted. In other words, the game's villain is the player himself.
- The game's sequel, Manhunt 2, was actually banned in Ireland and in the UK; though witout any kind of controversy associated with the sequel, at least not on a level comparable to that of the original.
- A lot of the controversy the original got came from a story which alleged that a player of the game in the UK had murdered a 12-year-old boy with a claw hammer (which is one of the weapons in the game). This resulted in several major chains (among them Game and Smyths) refusing to carry the game - until several months later, when it emerged that the victim owned a copy of the game - the murderer had never even played it.
- Senator Joseph Lieberman has been an outspoken critic of videogames since The Nineties, and has yet to change that position either. He's often tried to pass bills restricting the sales of videogames, which repeatedly flounder and fail due to their unconstitutionality.
- One wonders how much Lieberman's anti-video-game stance, combined with Al Gore heading the Democratic ticket (if you wonder why this is a problem, scroll up to "Music" and look who his wife is), contributed to young people voting for Nader and getting George W Bush elected in 2000. The First Lady and the Vice President both being Moral Guardians? Brrrrr...
- The guardians had another video game field day with Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. More precisely, the Wham Level "No Russian", where you play as a CIA agent going undercover with terrorists massacring an entire airport. Predictably, they took the level out of context and claimed the whole game to be a terrorism simulator on that alone. The twist is, putting the stage within context is a gigantic spoiler... one that would make the guardians' heads implode: The whole massacre was planned by the true Big Bad, US Army General Shepherd, as the beginning of his utterly vile, corrupt and insane Batman Gambit to begin a horrific war between America and Russia so that he can instill total American supremacy upon the world and get his name down in history as a (false) war hero. So Yeah.
- The German Moral Guardians actually took some action and forced the developers to punish the player for shooting the civilians in that level with a Game Over in the German-language version. This also resulted in Steam (and the game won't run without it) forbidding players who bought the German-language version (and the conveniently country-coded CD key with it) to download any other languages for it, which is possible for every other game out there. So there, the day of the German kids who buy 18+ games is saved once again by the ever vigilant Moral Guardians!
- While nowhere near as bad as Stephen Conroy's Orwellian nightmare of a proposal (under "Internet", above), in late 2008, Michael Atkinson (the South Australian Attorney-General) withdrew support for a discussion on giving Australia an R18+ Video Game Rating. Not the rating itself, but a discussion on it. Not only are Australian citizens being disallowed a mature rating for video-games (a change would require unanimous agreement from all Attorney-Generals), but actual proper debating of its pros and cons is being stopped dead by
the government one crotchety old fart.
- This is made even worse by the fact that Michael Atkinson does not believe that the result of this, R-18 rated games being modified to fit a MA-15+ rating (despite these games often really not being right for a 15 year old), is reason enough to introduce an R rating, blissfully ignores the fact that most gamers are in their thirties and when challenged he resorts to the same scare rhetoric that Former US Attorney Jack Thompson is infamous for. He is pretty much what happens when someone like Thompson gets a position with actual authority.
- Recently the government has finally allowed some public debate to go ahead via a submission poll, but Atkinson is saying that because the results will "obviously in favour of an R rating" and the "people who reply to the submissions forms will be gamers", the results of the poll should be considered invalid.
- It gets worse — He isn't even that old. It's entirely possible that Atkinson could be screwing over Australian gamers for the next few decades.
- Nice set of priorities you've got there: When two kinds of Moral Guardians meet.
- An example when some people find games religiously offensive.
- Isn't it somewhat ironic that they consider Dantes Inferno to be religiously offensive, considering that you defeat Satan to prevent him from reattempting the uprising for which he was cast out of heaven, save the soul of your innocent love, and then are allowed to move on to purgatory?. Oh wait, they probably didn't even bother playing the game.
- Even more ironic is actually the slam of Dragon Age over "god" being the final boss. What with it being one of the first crpgs in a long time that actually has a Jesus in its "standard issue catholic church" and that the final boss is a PAGAN god (corrupted god of a romanic empire....)
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