4 ms·
The policing of language always seemed like much of an American (and in general Anglosphere) phenomenon. Bleeping swears, censor boxes, the "n-word", I think th
by kmm 10y ago
The policing of language always seemed like much of an American (and in general Anglosphere) phenomenon. Bleeping swears, censor boxes, the "n-word", I think that's unheard of in most of continental Europe. That's not to say it's complete chaos, you're not supposed to swear or hurl slurs on national television, but if a guest on a talk show wants to say he's had a great fucking day, you won't hear the 1000 Hz bleep instead.
- scrollaway 10y agoI was watching the DVD commentary of The IT Crowd recently (which is really fantastic). Graham Linehan in an episode talked about this at length in an episode where Douglas says "Fuck off". He talked about the decision behind making him swear in what's a family show, where to draw the limits, how to make it have the most impact etc. It was great. He also mentioned that "then again, probably nobody cares". It is a UK TV show. In the US, it would've had to be bleeped and everybody would have gasped if it hadn't. I saw a news article a few weeks ago during the Women's March about how Madonna said fuck "not once, but twice!" on CNN. I'm familiar with US TV censorship rules and it still took me a solid minute until I connected the dots and realized what was "so shocking". It's pretty f*ing ridiculous.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ZoFreX 10y agoCounter-point: someone said "shagged out" once in a British TV show and it was a _huge deal_. And there's a pretty strong limit on how many f-bombs and other swear words you can drop in a show that goes out before a certain time in the evening (known as "the watershed"). I'm very amused reading comments here saying that censoring and being afraid of swears is American thing and not a thing you see in Europe. It's certainly something you see a LOT in the UK.
- blibble 10y agoafter the watershed more or less anything is game
- threatofrain 10y agoWhat's also strange is that people focus so much on bad words, but not on bad speech, so Americans learn to attack each other with classy speech.