<nettime> The New Censorship

[Curt Hagenlocher <curth@motek.com>]

"There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what
they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks
like that; there never is."     -- Ari Fleischer, on Bill Maher



"One article written for a U.S. Naval War College publication
outlined the lessons that the Pentagon could learn from the
Falklands model. To maintain public support for a war, the article
said, a government should sanitize the visual images of war;
control media access to military theaters; censor information
that could upset readers or viewers; and exclude journalists
who would not write favorable stories."
-- from http://www.public-i.org/story_01_092001.htm



"Is 20th Century Fox out of its fucking mind? In the climax of
the new Michael Douglas thriller "Don't Say a Word" (here comes
a spoiler) a man is thrown into a pit and then buried alive under
dirt and debris when a structure collapses. As I watched that at
a Times Square multiplex last week, it was impossible not to be
sickened, thinking of the more than 6,000 New Yorkers lying dead
under a pile of debris a few miles down Broadway."
-- Charles Taylor, in a salon.com review of "Don't Say a Word"



TV Programmers Avoid All Allusions to Attack
by Joe Flint
The Wall Street Journal, 28/09/01

It was an easy decision for CVS to cut a reference to Osama bin Laden
from an episode of its new CIA drama "The Agency."  But decisions such
as yanking a rather innocuous joke from its comedy "Ellen" highlight
the headaches facing Hollywood as it grapples with programming decisions
after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In the "Ellen" scene that was pulled earlier this week, Ellen, played
by Ellen DeGeneres, tells her mother that her online business has
"collapsed."  Her slightly ditzy mother replies: "Oh, well thank your
lucky stars you weren't there at the time."  While making the connection
between that dialogue and what happened at the World Trade Center may
seem a bit of a stretch, Viacom Inc.'s CBS is taking no chances.

"We don't want to be callous or jarring under these extraordinary
circumstances," says Martin Franks, the CBS executive vice president
who oversees standards and practices.  While acknowledging that the
line in question is fairly innocent, he says, "There is no manual for
this and it will take a while for equilibrium to return."

All the networks have been scrutinizing shows, looking for anything
that could upset viewers by accidentally reminding them of Sept. 11.
General Electric Co.'s NBC backed out of a planned "Law & Order"
miniseries that dealt with biological terrorism, while News Corp.'s
Fox cut footage of a plane exploding from its highly anticipated new
CIA drama "24," which will have its premiere in early November.

Not all the decisions are so obvious.  Fox's sister syndication unit
Twentieth Television, for example, decided to pull from reruns an
episode of its cartoon hit "The Simpsons" in which the family goes
to New York to retrieve Homer's car, which is parked illegally in
front of the World Trade Center  While that episode was deemed
offensive, earlier this week another episode ran in which Homer tells
a character who is considering bailing out of his wedding that such a
move is similar to "going to an air show and leaving before the plane
crash."

"People are genuinely trying to do the right thing," says NBC's
standards and practices chief, Alan Wurtzel, "but sometimes things get
taken too far."

"There is a point where people are overthinking things," says Steve
Levitan, creator of the NBC comedy "Just Shoot Me."  Now working on a
midseason comedy for Fox called "Greg and the Bunny," about a stuffed
animal with his own television show, Mr. Levitan finds himself
analyzing "line by line and joke by joke," looking for anything that
could offend someone.

Although his show probably won't get on the air until January at the
earliest, the network already has asked him to consider cutting a line
in which a character voices his suspicion of government.  Having lost
two friends in the attacks on the World Trade Center, Mr. Levitan is
sensitive to Fox's concerns.  "We just want people to enjoy the show,"
he says.  "If there is something there that will take them out of
that, we will pull the line out."

Sony Corp.'s Columbia TriStar Television unit is weighing whether
reruns of its comedy "Mad About You" should have the beginning reworked
because the World Trade Center is seen in the opening credits.  The
opening to NBC's "Law & Order" dropped New York skyline shots with
World Trade Center views.

Not everyone thinks the entertainment industry should be so focused
on excising history right now.  "I'm not sure if this attempt to
protect Americans from seeing these images in entertainment is such a
good thing to do," says Prof. Robert Thompson, director for the Study
of Popular Television at Syracuse University.  "To go back and retro-
actively make every reference and appearance of the World Trade Center
vanish is to make it worse," he says, predicting such moves will later
be judged as "overreactions."

The Emmy awards, which were moved from Sept. 16 to Oct. 7, are being
played down, and cast members of HBO's "The Sopranos" and NBC's "The
West Wing" aren't attending.  Attire, traditionally black-tie, will
be business suits, with no red carpet, and opening remarks from Walter
Cronkite.  While there is a sentiment in the industry that a flashy
awards show is out of place right now, people traditionally tune in
for the glitz and glamour, and a somber show may not provide the
escape viewers often seek from TV.

"We will be criticized no matter what we do," says Jim Chabin,
president of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

--
Curt Hagenlocher
curth@motek.com

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