Solid Block of Ise

About a week ago I got addicted to this show called Weeds. It’s a show about a widowed suburban soccer-mom who takes up selling pot in order to maintain her lifestyle. It’s somewhat darkly comical and I got hooked on it. The first and second season were the best, third was kinda sliding and by the fourth I felt that the show focused too much on drama rather than dark comedy. I probably won’t be following the show after the fourth season unless it returns to more dark comedy.

However, that’s not why I’m writing this. Weeds has it’s origin on a premium channel (in the US) which means it’s exempt from the censorship-laws that restrict foul language and content on most other channels. I personally find this a rather amusing law, since I grew up in a country that doesn’t have any laws regarding foul language on television. In Sweden it’s legal to say “fuck!” (or swedish equivalent) on any broadcast channel. Unlike in the US, where a majority of channels have to follow the rules regarding foul language. Which has some amusing effects when these rules include censoring language in movies edited for broadcast.

But, like I said - premium channels shown on cable or satellite are exempt from these laws. I guess, I’m not in on the finer details. These channels include HBO and Showtime and I suppose some others as well. These channels can include content where people talk like real people, where there is nudity and where there’s some more explicit content matter.

Last night I started thinking though. Are the shows produced for, and shown on these channels actually better? Or is it simply that we go “Wow, she just said fuck!” that kind of tricks us into assuming these shows are better?

I’m not so sure. Like I said, I grew up in a country that didn’t ban words simply because someone felt they were profane. But I also live in a somewhat americanized country. I guess that something like 80% of shows on TV here are imported from the US, and thus we subconsciously assimilate the content matter and get a little shocked when someone rips off a long list of profanities in one these other shows.

I can imagine that there’s a lot of freedom when you don’t have to write a script without having to obey these censorship rules. But I think that sometimes and somehow we automatically assume that since these shows are full of bad language, they must be more raw and thus better. I do think also that screenwriters use this freedom for the effect of Shock And Awe rather than as a tool to produce better and more realistic entertainment.

My favorite example for this is Sex And The City. On that show people swear and smoke, and Kim Cattrall takes any opportunity she can to flash her tits or appear naked. Yet the show is amazingly boring. Sure, I’m not the target audience but I doubt the show would lose much appeal if the language was christianized and Kim Cattrall managed to keep most of her clothes on.

I don’t like censorship, and I think it’s a dumb and backwards thing to have censorship-laws regarding fould language. I think that in the fifties some misguided christian spirit felt that we needed these censorships to protect children. Or some other tired cliché that religious people use to justify their actions. But we don’t need it any more, so I feel that making simple words the outlaws and banning their use is counter-productive.

But back to my main thought - are shows automatically better if they’re allowed to use foul language and lurid subject matter?

No, I don’t think so. I like a show that has characters talking like real people, and in some cases it’s necessary. Weeds for example wouldn’t have been quite the same thing if the black gang-bangers didn’t talk the way they do there. It would’ve been a museum-piece. But at the same time I feel that in many cases the creators and screenwriters use this freedom as a simple means of making us think that their show is better simply because people say “fuck” and “shit” with regularity. We think that it’s more raw, more genuine - when in most cases it’s the other way around.

Take the CSI-shows for example. They manage to make entertaining and exciting series within the confines of the censorship laws. Would CSI get better if Grissom went around saying “fuck” with every sentence? Nope.

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