Remember Janet Jackson's spectacularly choreographed wardrobe malfunction during the Super Bowl? Remember the ensuing fallout (no pun intended...)? Remember the precedent-setting fine the FCC levied on CBS/MTV/Viacom et al as a result of this decency-threatening indecency?
Several ABC stations are refusing to air 'Saving Private Ryan' this Memorial Day, for fear the word 'fuck' uttered/yelled in the context of battle or footage of severed limbs will invite similar fines, as a direct result of the new 'decency standards' imposed by the FCC. In years past, ABC has aired this movie on this day not only unedited, but free of commercials. What changed? Janet's right hooter.
Anyone ever been to Europe? You can scarcely walk past a newsstand without seeing at least 19 exposed breasts. As we say here in America, won't someone PLEEEEEZZZEEE think of the children?!?!?
Now, I am a football fan of sorts. 49ers football has surely provided my friends and me with some good times, and frequently some damn nail-biting and historic times over the years. I am fan enough to loathe the Raiders. And the Broncos. And any team that TO winds up on, so fuck the Eagles this year. The Chargers are actually doing well right now, though I may have just jinxed it all by writing that. Sorry, guys...
But we all the know the Super Bowl has little if anything to do with football, much less with sportsmanship/good taste/talent/production value. Certainly in recent years it has become merely another televised platform for rampant chest-thumping jingoism, briefly interrupted by a running play executed by one of two teams few people wanted to see there anyway. The sheer number of times we were treated to a replay of Janet's boob being flung out to the world just proves exactly how "offensive" it really was. Tabloid TV defined in spades, all across your remote.
'Saving Private Ryan' is not only among the best war movies ever made, it is one of the best movies ever made. It was made specifically to pay tribute to those who participated in D-Day. It's not easy to watch at times. But it is an important movie, and has been widely hailed among D-Day vets as the most accurate cinematic depiction of what it was like to be there (plus, Tom Hanks can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned). To refuse to air it for fear of being fined because of one banal pop star's exposed breast is a mighty Dubya slap in the face to The Greatest Generation.
And it makes no goddamn sense. Isn't it The Red States that scream and yell until blue-faced about decency and morality and values, and then in the same breath stick "Support Our Troops" bumper stickers on their Ford Exploitators? One especially stupid conservative radio talk show host said something today to the effect that he didn't want the same network that brings him Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune also to bring him a movie showing a guy getting his head blown off. Fine, guy. Just remember that even as I write this drivel, some nice guy from America's heartland is getting his head blown off in that sunny cradle-of-humanity Iraq, that dew-drenched paradise Falujah, and I'll bet you'll be gearing up to tell me what a hero he is tomorrow. Tell it all to the surviving D-Day guys. Sorry; didn't mean to interrupt your nightly dose of Wheel.
Those affiliates that refuse to air the movie are apparently showing reruns of The Andy Griffith Show instead, when Ron Howard was about 8 years old. That speaks too much for comment at the moment. Suffice it to say that whistling the theme sure does make you forget about your strife, a fact obviously not lost on Viacom...
Posted by eric at November 11, 2004 09:47 PM