Swearing on TV. Does anyone give a *!!@?

[faceless]

Swearing on TV. Does anyone give a *!!@?
The BBC has banned bad language before 10pm ... the act of a responsible broadcaster or an attack on artistic freedom? Edd McCracken reports
sundayherald.com

WHEN THE Iraq war drama Occupation premiered on BBC1 two weeks ago it was hailed as a landmark series. This was the first time the nation's main broadcaster was tackling head on the UK's involvement in one of the most controversial and hated wars in British history. As a statement of intent it screened at 9pm, the evening's prime slot. This was important TV. This was not to be missed.

And as befits any drama with soldiers front and centre, several strong expletives escaped through their chapped and dried lips as they dealt with maimed comrades and civilians in the middle of a firefight. But in future, these very words could relegate such important dramas into less important slots beyond 10pm, to BBC2, or off into the hinterlands of one of the Beeb's digital channels.

A report published last week recommended that shows that include a random "f***" and even the occasional "c***" - the ultimate telly taboo - should become an endangered species on BBC1 before 10pm. The announcement of a new watershed has led some screenwriters to express concerns that dramas, documentaries and comedies such as Occupation could be marginalised, leaving behind bland, homogenised, unchallenging fare. And all because of a few choice Anglo-Saxon phrases.

The report was a reaction to the furore surrounding Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand leaving sexually explicit messages on the answer phone of Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs. Despite that particular incident happening on radio, the report took a root-and-branch look at the entire corporation.

The 79-page paper, based on interviews with 2700 viewers, recommended a tightening of the use of strong language on BBC1 from 9pm to 10pm to ensure families can watch together. The recommendations are likely to be the basis of new guidelines to be submitted to the BBC Trust, the corporation's governing body.

"It is a complete over-reaction and a bit heavy handed," said Adrian Meade, the Edinburgh-based director and screenwriter whose previous credits include several episodes of the prime-time BBC drama Waking The Dead. He said if swearing is prohibited, certain situations, such as "squaddies in the desert", will cease to be believable. "If you feel the need to curb and curtail language, that will have an effect on the themes and subjects that will be explored. Are they all going to be shoved back? Is that the next stage? The fact is that TV is becoming less and less relevant for the younger generations. This will make it even less relevant if the believability of these characters disappears."

Screenwriters such as Zinnie Harris say that swearing is a vital part of their armoury. "How you use language is so crucial to who you are," she said. "The language you choose, the rhythm, and swearing is very much part of that." She highlights David Mamet's play and subsequent movie adaptation, Glengarry Glen Ross, as a case in point.

The script, about property salesmen competing against each other to save their jobs, is one of the most celebrated in recent decades. And is littered with expletives. "But that is the world of these characters, that is how they communicate. And I was thinking, how could you do this world without swearing? And I don't think you could."

Speaking of her own experience - writing episodes of the BBC's spy series Spooks, and adapting her play Fall for BBC Radio 3, which premieres tonight - Harris said that beyond removing some swear words in Fall, she had not experienced a problem with the language. "But if they are changing the rules, who knows in future?" she said. "Historically the best kind of dramas are on at 9pm, it is prime time for those slots that attract the best writers and the best storytelling. What would be a shame is if writers were hampered in their choice of stories and characters they could tell. I think most good writers will find a way around that. But if it becomes a blanding of stories, that would be a shame."

Swearing on TV began with an academic "f***". In 1965 the critic Kenneth Tynan was the first person to use this expletive during a televised debate on theatre. He said: "I doubt if there are any rational people to whom the word f***' would be particularly diabolical, revolting or totally forbidden." He was proved wrong. There were motions of censure in the House of Commons. Campaigner Mary Whitehouse called for him to have his "bottom spanked". Billy Connolly celebrated the affair in his song Four Letter Word.

But society's attitude towards swearing did seem to relax. "C***" was heard for the first time in 1970, uttered by Felix Dennis during an edition of The Frost Programme. In more recent years show titles riffed on the use of swearing, such as Gordon Ramsay's F-Word. But language still has the power to shock. Bill Grundy, the TV interviewer was suspended for two weeks after goading the Sex Pistols to call him a "dirty f***ing rotter" live on air in 1976.

When Jerry Springer: The Opera aired on BBC2 in 2005 the expletive-strewn show attracted 55,000 complaints. And despite being heard on such award-winning shows as The Thick of It, and The Wire, every use of the c-word still has to be vetted and signed off by the director of BBC Vision.

Des Dillon, the Coatbridge author and chronicler of life in the west of Scotland, said the thinking behind the BBC's latest attempt to curb strong language was "puddle deep" and a direct attack on "my language, my family, my whole way of life". "It is prejudiced against white working-class people," he said. "They are uneducated in the ways of working-class life. In Scotland, we live in a country where 10% of the population is repulsed by the language of the other 90%. And the 10% are in power. And that is why people like me, Jim Kelman and Irvine Welsh get vilified. We're not speaking the language of power. We're speaking the language of people's living rooms.

The BBC see working-class people as just a big block of people and their language as a big block of language. They don't realise that the same amount of brain cells are used in the brio of everyday working-class language as is used in two university lecturers talking about Wittgenstein's philosophy."

While dramatists may be raging against the later watershed, surprisingly several big-name comedy writers are far more sanguine about the potential tightening of the language. BBC Scotland's Still Game and Chewin' The Fat were littered with Scottish semi-swear words, such as bawbag' and boabie'. According to writer and actor Greg Hemphill, these shows would be unaffected by the new rules. If anything, in his experience, not using the f-word and c-word proved to be funnier.

"It has never served me well to be f***ing and c***ing," he said. "When we did Still Game as a stage play, the language was 10 times more saucy than it was on TV. What I noticed was that the audience would be ready to laugh but when you said c***' they would freeze. They couldn't allow themselves to laugh at that. You could feel the laughter retract at certain swear words. So we tapered it back. It still sounded like three sailors but it taught us early on that you'll get more of a laugh calling someone an arsehole than a c***. I think it shows we're a bit prudish when it comes to comedy, not so with drama."

In fact, the man who first introduced the UK to the joys of "feck" would go as far as to say swearing was now boring and ineffectual in comedy. "I miss the effect that it can have," said Arthur Matthews, who liberally sprinkled his scripts for Father Ted with Irish expletives. Like when Alan Partridge played by Steve Coogan told another DJ to f*** off in I'm Alan Partridge. It was really effective. And now it is so commonplace it doesn't have any effect any more. I miss that it could be used constructively and comedically. Now it has no effect beyond making it sound like you are dumbing down."

He paraphrases John Peel, who would joke about censorship on the radio. "He would say that if he played a certain record at the wrong time of day there would be riots on the streets." Naturally when Peel defied the censors, the streets remained quiet. Likewise, Matthews does not think the watershed moving back an hour to safeguard the nation will "have any huge impact on the moral fabric of the country". If you want to be really radical you just wouldn't put any swearing in. That's the most radical thing you could do," he said.

"In fact, I think we need to invent new swear words. I don't know how they would catch on. But it would be brilliant. It would be great to start over again with swear words."

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Why does a newspaper that's supposed to be for adults feel the need to censor these words when the article is about those words? Fucking patronising arseholes.

[pirtybirdy]

I wish they wouldn't bleep stuff out here. At least the UK lets people swear after 10pm.

[faceless]

You need HBO pirty! There's more fucks than you can shake a stick at on there... haha

[faceless]

Too Funny for Words
By PETER FUNT
October 1, 2010
nytimes.com

WHEN my dad, Allen Funt, produced “Candid Microphone” back in the mid-1940s, he used a clever ruse to titillate listeners. A few times per show he’d edit out an innocent word or phrase and replace it with a recording of a sultry woman’s voice saying, “Censored.” Audiences always laughed at the thought that something dirty had been said, even though it hadn’t. When “Candid Camera” came to television, the female voice was replaced by a bleep and a graphic that flashed “Censored!” As my father and I learned over decades of production, ordinary folks don’t really curse much in routine conversation — even when mildly agitated — but audiences love to think otherwise. By the mid-1950s, TV’s standards and practices people decided Dad’s gimmick was an unacceptable deception. There would be no further censoring of clean words.

I thought about all this when CBS started broadcasting a show last week titled “$#*! My Dad Says,” which the network insists with a wink should be pronounced “Bleep My Dad Says.” There is, of course, no mystery whatsoever about what the $-word stands for, because the show is based on a highly popular Twitter feed, using the real word, in which a clever guy named Justin Halpern quotes the humorous, often foul utterances of his father, Sam.

Bleeping is broadcasting’s biggest deal. Even on basic cable, the new generation of “reality” shows like “Jersey Shore” bleep like crazy, as do infotainment series like “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” where scripted curses take on an anti-establishment edge when bleeped in a contrived bit of post-production. This season there is even a cable series about relationships titled “Who the (Bleep) Did I Marry?” — in which “bleep” isn’t subbing for any word in particular. The comedian Drew Carey is developing a series that CBS has decided to call “WTF!” Still winking, the network says this one stands for “Wow That’s Funny!”

Although mainstream broadcasters won a battle against censorship over the summer when a federal appeals court struck down some elements of the Federal Communications Commission’s restrictions on objectionable language, they’ve always been more driven by self-censorship than by the government-mandated kind. Eager to help are advertisers and watchdog groups, each appearing to take a tough stand on language while actually reveling in the double entendre.

For example, my father and I didn’t run across many dirty words when recording everyday conversation, but we did find that people use the terms “God” and “Jesus” frequently — often in a gentle context, like “Oh, my God” — and this, it turned out, worried broadcasting executives even more than swearing. If someone said “Jesus” in a “Candid Camera” scene, CBS made us bleep it, leaving viewers to assume that a truly foul word had been spoken. And that seemed fine with CBS, because what mainstream TV likes best is the perception of naughtiness.

TV’s often-hypocritical approach to censorship was given its grandest showcase back in 1972, when the comedian George Carlin first took note of “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” The bit was recreated on stage at the Kennedy Center a few years ago in a posthumous tribute to Carlin, but all the words were bleeped — not only for the PBS audience but for the theatergoers as well.

Many who saw the show believed the bleeped version played funnier. After all, when Bill Maher and his guests unleash a stream of nasty words on HBO, it’s little more than barroom banter. But when Jon Stewart says the same words, knowing they’ll be bleeped, it revs up the crowd while also seeming to challenge the censors.

In its July ruling, the appeals court concluded, “By prohibiting all ‘patently offensive’ references to sex ... without giving adequate guidance as to what ‘patently offensive’ means, the F.C.C. effectively chills speech, because broadcasters have no way of knowing what the F.C.C. will find offensive.” That’s quite reasonable — and totally beside the point. Most producers understand that when it comes to language, the sizzle has far more appeal than the steak. Broadcasters keep jousting with the F.C.C. begging not to be thrown in the briar patch of censorship, because that’s really where they most want to be.

Jimmy Kimmel has come up with a segment for his late-night ABC program called “This Week in Unnecessary Censorship.” He bleeps ordinary words in clips to make them seem obscene. How bleepin’ dare he! Censorship, it seems, remains one of the most entertaining things on television.

Peter Funt writes about social issues on his Web site, Candid Camera.

[faceless]

Auntie bans 'humiliating' humour
13 October 2010
By Stephen McGinty
scotsman.com

IF television comedians are the court jesters of today, the BBC Trust has taken a sharp pin to the pig's bladder they rattle on a stick. Under new guidelines, comedians and BBC staff will be prohibited from entertaining audiences with "unduly humiliating or derogatory remarks". The reforms, published following a review commissioned by the BBC Trust, come after the furore provoked by the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand scandal, when the pair left tasteless messages on the answering machine of Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs during Brand's Radio 2 show.

While many found the lewd exchange comical, the BBC Trust decided it was a "deplorable intrusion". Since then a spotlight has been shone on comedians' material at the BBC with the Scots comedian, Frankie Boyle chastised by the BBC Trust for making derogatory comments about the facial features of Rebecca Adlington, the Olympic Gold medal winning swimmer.

The changes are aimed at protecting people from "unduly intimidatory, humiliating, intrusive, aggressive or derogatory remarks for the purposes of entertainment". The guidelines state: "This does not mean preventing comedy or jokes about people in the public eye, but simply that such comments and their tone are proportionate to their target." The dead, and historical figures, remain fair game. However, there was concern last night that such a broad definition could smother comedy at the BBC.

Tommy Shepherd, owner of The Stand comic club said: "Does this mean you can't take the piss out of someone anymore? How are you going to define what is 'humiliating', it may hurt one person and be water off a duck's back to another. The job of comedy is to satirise people, to poke fun at the people in power and with guidelines like this you would never have Spitting Image, David Steele would have won a complaint after the first episode. They just seem so broad." Meanwhile, a broadcasting insider said: "This is typical BBC. They rely on the word 'unduly'. It's typical wooly guidelines which leave a lot of wriggle room. I think this could have a serious and derogatory effect on programme-making."

While the agent for Frankie Boyle said he was unavailable for comment, the comedian has in the past expressed his views on the BBC Trust and the danger it poses to comedy. Boyle said the Adlington comment was one of the mildest things he had said on the show, Mock The Week and that few people cared about the BBC Trust's verdict. He said: "Can you imagine anyone reading that and actually giving a fuck? It's disheartening. Who are these people? What authority do they have to judge comedy? It now feels like we're back in the 1970s in terms of compliance. The number one priority in TV comedy today is 'don't frighten the horses', and it's probably number two and three as well. If you look at the scheduling nowadays, it's all just celebrities meeting meerkats."

Yesterday, the chairman of the BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons said: "We recognise the need for the BBC to be original, surprising and sometimes edgy. At the same time, it must be fair, accurate, impartial and avoid giving broad offence." Guideline updates also state that audiences should not be misled through programme editing or commentary or through unfair competitions where winners are not genuine.