If there's anything I love about this country, it's the convenience.
Case in point: I decided to trot down to Blockbuster Video a few days ago to rent John Waters' new film, "A Dirty Shame," recently released on DVD. In my excitement, I didn't notice that below the title on the case was a banner reading "The Neuter Version," a reference to the movie's anti-sex mob led by Mink Stole.
When I watched the movie, I found that naughty words had been dubbed out and footage had been edited. In this case, parental discretion isn't advised -- it simply isn't necessary. In the spirit of all-American convenience, Blockbuster now decides what its customers can and can't watch.
Blockbuster's in-house censorship policies go back to the time when it was first becoming a fixture in American cities. In 1990, the Motion Picture Association of America introduced a new movie rating to create a middle ground between R-rated movies and pornography -- NC-17. Following the introduction of the new movie rating, the Tupelo, Miss.-based American Family Association, a group from the religious right that is currently attempting to bully Ford Motor Co. into ending its policy of providing benefits to gay and lesbian workers, successfully pressured Blockbuster into not carrying NC-17 movies.
As a result, Blockbuster now carries "neutered" versions of NC-17-rated movies, such as "A Dirty Shame."
Don't get me wrong. I don't think there is any reason a child should be watching a movie such as that. On the other hand, I also don't see any reason why Blockbuster should be deciding what its paying customers should watch.
To be fair, there is a competing video store just up the street from Blockbuster, and both are within walking distance of my house. But what if this were a town in which Blockbuster was the only video outlet? Then what would I do?
I think that parents are the ones who should be deciding what their children see on television or hear on the radio, not Blockbuster or the FCC. There are occasional slip-ups, such as Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" and radio deejays dropping f-bombs, but such incidents are rare.
The issue isn't whether indecency and obscenity are free speech, but the issue is whose responsibility it is to decide what we get to see and hear. Were I a parent, I would never let my children watch "A Dirty Shame" or listen to Howard Stern, but I don't appreciate having parental and personal discretion replaced with corporate and governmental discretion.
I also think that what the FCC and Blockbuster usually choose to censor demonstrates a distinctive feature of American culture: Our nervousness about sex.
Somehow, graphic depictions of autopsies on "CSI" that make even me lose my appetite are permissible on network television, while the accidental exposure of Janet Jackson's boob, which isn't even a sex organ, is grounds for a $550,000 fine.
Everything from our automatic classification of anything containing nudity as porn to abstinence-only education philosophies demonstrates the tendency in our culture to view sexuality as a "dirty shame" needing to be regulated and controlled. In its place, we have wholesome, family-friendly violence; while Blockbuster only stocks the edited version of "A Dirty Shame," you can still find "Natural Born Killers" with the violence, blood and Patti Smith's use of the n-word left intact.
To quote John Waters: "Sexuality in America will always make people uptight because we love violence and hate sex."
Write to Alaric at
ajdearment@bsu.edu
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