open/close all folders
Live-Action TV
"Mary Whitehouse has taken umbrage, no surprise there."
— Monty Python's Flying Circus, "Election Night Special"
Music
It's on the front page of the papers
This is their hour of need
Where's a policeman when you need one
To blame the colour TV?
This is their hour of need
Where's a policeman when you need one
To blame the colour TV?
—Pet Shop Boys, "Suburbia"
Stand-Up Comedy
"'Yooouuu can not say filth flarn filth flarn filth in front of people.' And I said, 'I never said no filth flarn filth.' He said, 'You know what I'm talking about. I can't use the type of language that you use, but you know what I mean when I say filth flarn flarn flarn filth.' And I said, "I never said no filth flarn filth, and I don't know what you're talking about, and I'm offended that you called. Fuck you.' And that's when Bill got pissed. 'That's what I'm talking about! Yoooouuuu cannot say... fuck!'"
—Eddie Murphy on Bill Cosby, Raw
"The FCC, an appointed body, not elected, answerable only to the President, decided all on its own that radio and TV were the only two parts of American media not protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. I'd like to repeat that because it sounds vaguely important. The FCC, an appointed body, not elected, answerable only to the President, decided all on its own that radio and TV were the only two parts of American media not protected by the free speech Amendment of the Constitution."
"The majority of people are very reasonable I’ve found. But you know what, they don’t write letters when something offends them on TV, because reasonable people know IT’S JUST FUCKIN’ TELEVISION! Not only that, reasonable people have a life. They’re not sittin’ in some trailer with some fuckin’ crayon in their hand, some chicken scrawl goin’, 'I saw a guy talk about Jesus on the tube! I ain’t gon' tune in no more!' And also, reasonable people know ultimately they’re just fuckin’ jokes. Are you so afraid of a guy tellin’ jokes?"
—Bill Hicks, Relentless
"White man makes guns? No problem. Black rapper says 'guns"?'? Congressional hearing. 'OHH MY GOD, that nigger said gun. And he rhymed it with FUN!'"
—Chris Rock, Never Scared
Web Animation
"Yes, Australia continues its valiant efforts to rescue its beer-swilling, thong-wearing, spouse-beating population from moral degeneracy, and I, in turn, continue to fight the power with daring guerrilla tactics—like Steam codes. (Just call me "Play Guevara")...and you know damn well it wasn't for its innovative gameplay or its heart-warming love story about a combat boot trying in vain to reunite with a concrete pavement."
Webcomics
"Hello, I'm Miss Sensorshep, Head of Censorship! You see, the working theory is that most people are stupid, and therefore incapable of figuring out what's being covered up and bleeped, and therefore cannot be harmed by their evils!"
— Miss Sensorshep, El Goonish Shive filler comic
Web Original
Oh, the NFL, where flashing a harmless lady nipple is an unforgivable sin, but abusing dogs and women isn't.
When living Crank Yankers puppet Nicki Minaj released the video for her song 'Only' last Friday, a video that looks sort of like Springtime for Hitler crossed with Homestar Runner, she probably didn’t anticipate that it would cause any where near as many pearls to be clutched than her George of the Jungle late-night phone sex ad video for 'Anaconda' did. After all, 'Only' doesn’t feature a single butt! Okay fine, there was one ass (Chris Brown).
—DListed, "Nicki Minaj Is Sorry For That Nazi-ish Music Video"
, "Nicki Minaj Is Sorry For That Nazi-ish Music Video"The group was instigated after Tipper observed her daughter listening to “Darling Nikki” by Prince (lyrics about masturbation), and, in an inference process worthy of David Noebel, decided that rock & roll caused teen suicide, murder, Satanism, drug and alcohol use, and worse. Evidential base? Yeah, right.
—Encyclopedia of American Loons on the Parents Music Resource Center
on the Parents Music Resource Center"The top rope hurricanrana looks like a devastating finishing maneuver, but it doesn't hurt at all—if you know the trick to it" just demean the formidable athletic talents of wrestlers, not to mention the intelligence of the fans. And how many kids are going to be trying these potentially dangerous moves now that they "know the trick to it?" Not until the very end of the show did NBC put a disclaimer telling you not to try the moves at home.
—DDT on The Secrets of Wrestling
on The Secrets of Wrestling"Texas Preacher Declares 'Vampire Knight’ Manga, Dried Roses To Be Satanic Works, Is Literally Villain From 'Footloose'"
I am a father, and like many fathers I live in mortal fear of my children attacking me. There's already an unspoken tension between us. I’m getting older and weaker, they're getting bigger and stronger. I don’t need lunatics like Dr. Seuss exacerbating that tension with lines such as ' We like to hop. We like to hop on top of Pop.'"
— The Screamsheet in response to a Toronto petition to ban Hop on Pop from public libraries
to a Toronto petition to ban Hop on Pop from public librariesFor the most part, her complaints were transparently idiotic — her objection to the cliffhanger in "The Deadly Assassin" was that children would believe that the Doctor’s head was being held underwater for an entire week, a suggestion that ascribes an almost comical level of televisual illiteracy onto children. But she was always good for a few exuberant and tabloid-friendly quotes like her famously description of Doctor Who as "teatime brutality for tots," and had enough supporters to be influential in spite of her obvious deficiencies of reason.
—Dr. El Sandifer on Mary Whitehouse
on Mary WhitehouseYou’ve got to love how much controversy surrounded this book at the time, with the Doctor (Shudder! Gasp!) taking magic mushrooms to contact the Blue. I was 13 at the time this book was released and I have to say, after reading it, I was a regular user and always high as a kite trying to contact mind controlling aliens. Christ! Give children some bloody respect!
—Joe Ford on Doctor Who New Adventures, The Left-Handed Hummingbird
on Doctor Who New Adventures, The Left-Handed HummingbirdOh yes, much like the Chick Tracts warned us, D&D was my enticing entry point to a world of decadent sin and NEEEEEEEERDery... Which might make it more ironic that the first group to get me into the tumbling die was a group of Evangelical kids. Sure, they may have tweaked the rules so that magic was actually just psionics (because apparently an omniscient ruler of the Universe with a hate-on for anything even hinting of the dark vile forces of magick is also apparently easily fooled by a simple search and replace… no no see, my fictional character is setting things on fire with their brain, not random fictional magical powers, so we’re all good).
Oh, and there’s a split-second shot of Bond kicking a military cop in the crotch. Note that he wears a helmet on a bike, lest any children imitate him, but he still kicks a cop in the crotch.
The Motion Picture Association of America is less than pleased about a new poster for directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s new Sin City film adaptation, A Dame to Kill For. The poster depicts the title character, Ava Lord, played by actress Eva Green, wearing a sheer gown that doesn't really cover all that much. Specifically, the MPAA complained about the 'curve of under breast and dark nipple/areola circle visible through sheer gown.' Reading a Frank Miller comic would probably make the MPAA's collective head explode.
We start out with a parental discretion warning. I've whined about this before. The last time they did this was when Lionel put a gun to his head and contemplated suicide because he was going to die in pain. Because, you know, that's not something someone might do or something a kid might have to one day confront on their own. Something that parents might WANT to have brought before their kids, given the high rate of suicide in teenagers. Y'know.
Web Video
"Boy, am I glad they cut that last shot out of the theatrical version. I hate it when my slasher movies contain slashings in them. Just as I hate comedies that don't cut out the funny parts."
Cecil: Earlier in the film, Tristan has a miscarriage. As they wheel her into the hospital, we see her pants are bloody in the crotch area. The studio wanted him to remove that for being too graphic. Here is the same group of producers who forced him to add in gratuitous scenes of violence that only detracted from the film, and yet they have one scene that is genuinely disturbing, and they wanted it removed.
Buzz Lightyear: Hypocrites. Hypocrites everywhere.
Buzz Lightyear: Hypocrites. Hypocrites everywhere.
—Good Bad Flicks on Joe Berlinger, director of Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
on Joe Berlinger, director of Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 Western Animation
They will clean up all your talking in a manner such as this:
They will make you take a "tinkle" when you wanna take a piss,
And they'll make you call fellatio a "trouser-friendly kiss"!
It's the plain situation
There's no negotiation
With the fellas at the freakin' FCC!
They will make you take a "tinkle" when you wanna take a piss,
And they'll make you call fellatio a "trouser-friendly kiss"!
It's the plain situation
There's no negotiation
With the fellas at the freakin' FCC!
"In preparing for this debate, I did a little research, and I discovered something astonishing: There was violence in the past, long before cartoons were invented."
—Roger Meyer Sr., The Simpsons ("Itchy & Scratchy and Marge")
"I'd swear but Standards won't let me!"
—Eddy, Ed, Edd n Eddy ("Ed Overboard")
Real Life
To hold a pen is to be at war.
— Voltaire
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Harry's world says that drinking dead animal blood gives power, a satanic human sacrifice and Harry's powerful blood brings new life, demon possession is not spiritually dangerous, and that passing through fire, contacting the dead, and conversing with ghosts, others in the spirit world, and more, is normal and acceptable.
—Harry Potter: Witchcraft Repackaged
Through this material, today's youth can be stimulated to sexual activities for which he has no legitimate outlet. He is even enticed to enter the world of Homosexuals, Lesbians, Sadists, Masochists, and other sex deviants. The psychiatric terms for these unnatural sex acts are unknown to most decent adults in our country. But through these solicitous materials, these abnormalities are corrupting the minds and the hearts of our children. Perversion for profit!
— George Putnam, arguing for censorship in Perversion for Profit (1965)
He still gives marks to novels not for style nor insight nor wisdom nor art, but for 'morality.' Are these nice people? Is this a nice author? Adultery, premarital intercourse, aberration, are wicked things nice people don’t do and if an author does not firmly put them down and opt for marriage and fidelity the offending work must go. Prescott’s favorite pejorative adjective is 'dull.' Lolita, he declared with more than usual horror, was 'dull, dull, dull!' Now Lolita was many things, but it was never dull. It was also literature, a category peculiarly mystifying to Prescott."
—Gore Vidal on New York Times critic Orville Prescott
New York Times critic Orville PrescottAny reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
— Kurt Vonnegut (attributed)
When we elected Ronald Reagan and the conservatives decided that they would decide not just what their children would read but what all children would read, it went crazy. My feeling in the beginning was wait, this is America: we don't have censorship, we have, you know, freedom to read, freedom to write, freedom of the press, we don't do this, we don't ban books. But then they did.
—Judy Blume, author
"There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?"
"People had stopped donating blood because they were so afraid of AIDS. So I wanted to do a story that involved blood donorship and the whole story was structured that we would need blood donors from the Enterprise to show that the crewmembers were not afraid of donating blood. I even wanted us to put a card at the end of the episode saying you can donate blood, contact your local Red Cross...I go off to a Star Trek cruise and come back to find there has been a clusterfuck. Rick Berman writes that we can’t do this episode and how we are on at 4PM in some markets and mommies are going to write letters."
—David Gerrold, script editor for Star Trek: The Next Generation
, script editor for Star Trek: The Next GenerationHere in the US, we are so schizoid and deeply opposed to government censorship that we insist on having unaccountable private parties to do it instead.
— Bill Cole
Guess what, for all the fans who complain that the US Toku shows have no balls... well, it’s not that we don’t want to; there are standards and practices that we have to abide by for network television. So it’s just not legal to show these things in a kid show in the US and that’s not negotiable. Trust me, we tried and we did manage to push some stuff through, you’ll see, but guns held at kids' heads and people dying? No can do.
—Steven Wang, Executive Producer of Kamen Rider Dragon Knight
"I grew up watching cowboy movies, loved doing that ["pew pew" gesture] with my fingers, 'Bang, bang, you're dead!' I didn't end up a killer."
"Tell you what: Kiss my ass! How do you like that?"
—Frank Zappa, replying to being called an "idiot" because of his opposition to censorship, Crossfire debate (1986)
In response to their protests, I will provide a show where I balance my songs with a wholesome Bible reading. This way, fans will not only hear my so-called, 'violent' point of view, but we can also examine the virtues of wonderful "Christian" stories of disease, murder, adultery, suicide, and child sacrifice.
Of what use is freedom of speech to those who fear to offend?
