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Author
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Topic: FCC review of TV Indecency rules
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Martin McCaffery
Film God
Posts: 2481
From: Montgomery, AL
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 04-02-2013 05:21 PM
Oh yeah, it was insanely big. From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XXXVIII_halftime_show_controversy
quote:
Super Bowl XXXVIII, which was broadcast live on February 1, 2004 from Houston, Texas on the CBS television network in the United States, was noted for a controversial halftime show in which Janet Jackson's breast, adorned with a nipple shield, was exposed by Justin Timberlake for about half a second, in what was later referred to as a "wardrobe malfunction".[1] The incident, sometimes referred to as Nipplegate,[2][3] was widely discussed. Along with the rest of the halftime show, it led to an immediate crackdown and widespread debate on perceived indecency in broadcasting.[1] The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined CBS a record $550,000,[4] but that fine was appealed and ultimately voided by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2011 ruling.[5]
The incident was ridiculed both abroad and within the United States, with some American commentators seeing the incident as a sign of decreasing morality in the national culture,[6][7][8][9] and the increased regulation of broadcasting raised concerns regarding censorship and free speech in the United States.[10] The FCC increased the fine per indecency violation from $27,500 to $325,000 shortly after the event.[11] The show was produced by MTV and was supposedly themed around the network's Rock the Vote campaign, though the theme was quickly dispensed within the first minute of the show without any mentions after that point.[12] Following the wardrobe incident, the NFL announced that MTV, which also produced the halftime show for Super Bowl XXXV, would never be involved in another halftime show.[13]
Inasmuch as the Commission has a few unfilled vacancies which are unlikely to be filled, I don't see what they expect to accomplish, unless they are killing time.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 04-03-2013 01:25 PM
quote: Stephen Furley
I've not seen the film of that incident, but I've heard about it, and it sounds like a very non-big thing. Did it really cause problems at the time?
Not only did it do so, but with a lasting legacy: 'wardrobe malfunction' has entered the US English dictionary and stayed there ever since. It'll be interesting to see the reaction of a teenager looking up the etymology of that phrase in 50 years' time.
Having now spent quite a bit of time in the United States, and now being engaged to an American, this is one of the things that really intrigues me about America from an outsider's perspective. There seem to me to be two parallel social norms: one in which even mild expletives are totally unacceptable (in a formal meeting I once muttered 'Oh, bugger!' after accidentally spilling some coffee on a table, and was later taken aside by the chair and told that this sort of language was not appreciated), and the other as symbolised by Quentin Tarantino and Eddie Murphy - but nothing in between. To discuss the reasons why, I think we'd need to go off limits for this board (politics and religion), and so I'm not going to go there.
Same thing with booze - ask for a beer at even an informal business lunch, and you'll get looks like you really need to think about detox. But when drinking does happen ... a couple of weeks ago I had a Margarita while waiting for a plane at a sports bar at Seattle airport. The bartender did not faff about with measuring jiggers or anything like that - he just poured about 10 British units of tequilla straight into the glass, with the result that I was fast asleep all the way to Ontario, and was only woken up by the jolt of the landing!
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Chris Slycord
Film God
Posts: 2986
From: 퍼항시, 경상푹도, South Korea
Registered: Mar 2007
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posted 04-03-2013 03:09 PM
^^^ You're conflating things here.
1) Conflating the choice of using a vulgar word to be 100% due to an inability to choose any other words instead. This is complete nonsense. There are plenty of people who are perfectly able to use proper English and do all the time, but when they are in certain situations (say, being around friends who don't tend to work someplace where they need to speak it "properly") they speak in slang, including vulgar words. It doesn't mean they are unable to speak otherwise.
2) Conflating using a vulgar word with actually using the language improperly. Sure, there are situations where a vulgar word would be improper, but that doesn't mean that the person isn't using the language properly; it just means that etiquette dictates using a different one. For instance, it's correct/proper for one to say "I have pain upon micturition/urination" but it isn't necessarily improper to say "It hurts when I piss." Vulgar words are just words that people have associated as bad, because they were words associated with the commoners and incidentally the words that are deemed bad are so mostly because when the Normans defeated the Anglo-Saxon people, they considered the Germanic dialects harsh-sounding; not because the words themselves that developed had any actual bad association.
And in all reality, there's no such thing as "correct/proper English." There is no completely set standard for things; they vary greatly between countries/regions. And this isn't something specific to English; it's true of every language (except perhaps those that are only used in a small, homogeneous group/region.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 04-03-2013 04:31 PM
I think it's pretty funny how groups like the MPAA and FCC try to manage morality in movie distribution and broadcasting respectively. They're only doing so in a very cosmetic way.
If these organizations think protecting children and the delicate senses of adults who are easily offended begins and ends with bleeping out a few key curse words and hiding female nudity (exposed breast nipples being the main thing) or at least making ratings based on that then they must think we're all pretty stupid.
Curse words, in and of themselves, aren't bad. What can make them bad are the intentions behind them. If the nude female form is dirty then I guess we need to close a lot of art museums and even paint over the murals in quite a few cathedrals.
It's quite easy for "adult content" to slip through the superficial rules set by the FCC and MPAA. Take the song Stinkfist by Tool for instance. It's one of that band's most popular tunes and it gets quite a bit of airplay on rock format radio stations. The song has no curse words in it. The vocals are kind of hard to understand. But when you examine the lyrics it's pretty easy to interpret it as coming from a character who is sexually desensitized to the point he has to force his lover to submit to some pretty kinky, extreme activity to be satisfied. MTV played the music video for Stinkfist a lot when Tool's album Ænima debuted. None of the lyrics were censored since there were no dirty words to edit. They only changed the music video title from Stinkfist to "Track No. 1".
Does anybody even care about the amount of violence present in most forms of entertainment? Even though our murder rate has been declining over the last three decades the United States still has by far the most homicides per capita out of any developed nation. IMHO, the way our culture indulges in violence seems to be a much bigger problem than the use of vulgar language or some woman's exposed, swaying mammaries in a R-rated movie or pay cable show. I think it's pretty disturbing how so many Americans seem to take little to no offense at all with violence, even explicit violence. But they'll get their panties in a twist over some nudity or a dropped F-bomb.
The Internet and all the kinds of content available on it has gone a long way to making the FCC and MPAA seem very irrelevant.
quote: Claude S. Ayakawa
If the current restrictions are lifted, the brouhaha over the Janet Jackson's incident at a Super Bowl game a few years ago when one of her breast was briefly unintentionally exposed will be no big thing.
If FCC is indeed reviewing existing broadcast regulations I don't expect them to lift any restrictions on what can be aired in "free" over the air TV and radio broadcasts. If anything, I only figure they're reviewing regulations in terms of how they help or hinder the handful of giant global media companies who own most of the movie industry, music industry and TV/Radio broadcast industry. If I was an independent broadcaster I might be concerned about regulatory fine print in any new bill that would increase the unfair advantage the giant global media companies already have.
quote: Stephen Furley
I've not seen the film of that incident, but I've heard about it, and it sounds like a very non-big thing.
Regarding the Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction" during Super Bowl XXXVIII, there is a joke I like that goes: those responsible for the wardrobe malfunction pretended to apologize to those who pretended to be offended.
I remember watching the broadcast live. The boob flash was almost a subliminal thing. The camera angle that aired was a distant shot, not any close-up or medium close angle. It was difficult to see what Jackson had over her nipple, much less the nipple itself. Back in the mid 1980's Whitesnake's music video for Here I Go Again showed one of Tawny Kitaen's breasts fully exposed inside her dress as writhed out the window of David Coverdale's Jaguar. More than a month passed after the video's debut before anybody edited the shot. Even still, no one raised a big national stink about it. That nipple was a lot more highly visible than Janet Jackson's.
Overall, the wardrobe malfunction was a great opportunity for those who take pleasure in moral hand-wringing to do so.
quote: Scott Norwood
The funny thing is that I have heard those three songs played on the radio in their original, uncensored versions.
I, too, have heard Jet Airliner by Steve Miller, Money by Pink Floyd and Life in the Fast Lane by the Eagles, as well as other tunes like The Devil Went Down to Georgia by the Charlie Daniel's Band and Man In A Box by Alice in Chains, played uncut on the radio. I guess it just depends on the radio station, its programming format and the time of day in which the song is played.
Overall, the bleeps, inserted silence or alternate clean versions have little relevance anymore. Cee Lo Green had a pretty big hit with his F**k You tune, but recorded a clean (Forget You) version of it. I guarantee the dirty version sold a lot more copies.
Radio broadcasters are kind of screwed right now. Some of this is their own fault (monopolizing markets, killing variety, playing the chart instead of making the chart, ignoring new talent, etc.). Music is far more accessible in different platforms now, and typically in unedited form. Sirius/XM uses unedited content as a sales point in drawing listeners. Streaming services like Slacker and Pandora offer unedited versions of music. I can often find the "dirty" version of music videos on YouTube, Vimeo, etc. It's easy to patch a smart phone or MP3 player into newer car stereos and start playing back your own music collection, complete with all the dirty words intact, without having to bother with radio and it's constant commercials and playlists that seem like an endless rotation of the same 12 songs over and over every hour on the hour.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 04-03-2013 06:30 PM
I'm not sure exactly what "in which Janet Jackson's breast, adorned with a nipple shield, was exposed by Justin Timberlake for about half a second, in what was later referred to as a "wardrobe malfunction" means. If he walked up to her and deliberately pulled her dress away exposing her breast that would probably be classed as an assault, but it would be him, not the broadcaster that would be in trouble. If the dress just slipped down, or was somehow displaced accidentally, say by getting caught on something, then that sort of thing has very occasionally happened on television, and the normal procedure would be to replace the garment in its correct position, and carry on. Assuming, as seems likely, that this was a live transmission then switching to another camera for a few seconds would be likely, but I would expect it to be a very minor event, with everything back to normal within a few seconds.
Why should CBS be fined? Presumably they hadn't planned or scripted the incident. I don't think that 'live' programmes are normally transmitted with a delay, unless it is expected that there could be problems, and not always then. During the '70s there was an early evening show in which the Sex Pistols were interviewed by Bill Grundy. There were many complaints about a stream of four letter words used by the Sex Pistols, which could probably have been predicted, but no delay was used. Another example, also involving swearing was a news item, I think it was about bullying, in which a young girl was being interviewed. The interviewer asked her what somebody else had said and she repeated it, presumably accurately, including the 'C-word'. The film of this is on Youtube somewhere. If they didn't want her to use such words then why did they ask her what had been said, in a situation where swearing would have been likely, and then transmit it live? The interviewer asked the girl what had been said, and she told her.
We may not want normally hidden bits of anatomy to be shown or swearing to be heard on live television where it's not expected, but it will happen from time to time, and the world is not going to end because of it.
The reaction to the briefly exposed breast just seems to be totally out of all proportion to what was a very minor incident.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 04-03-2013 08:08 PM
quote: Stephen Furley
I'm not sure exactly what "in which Janet Jackson's breast, adorned with a nipple shield, was exposed by Justin Timberlake for about half a second, in what was later referred to as a "wardrobe malfunction" means.
snip
The reaction to the briefly exposed breast just seems to be totally out of all proportion to what was a very minor incident
Part of the reason why the incident remains a well-known one to this day was not so much the footage itself (as others have pointed out, blink and you'd have missed it), but the intensity and widespread coverage of the reaction to it by those who objected (as Ben Carson recently found out). Basically, moral outrage makes for great showbiz! If you are among the outraged, you can fume in empathy, but if you fall into the 'storm in a teacup' camp, you can have a giggle at the outraged people's expense.
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Martin McCaffery
Film God
Posts: 2481
From: Montgomery, AL
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 04-03-2013 09:07 PM
Stephen: Yup, they are just plain crazy here. Fines have been handed out for Bono saying "Fookin' Brilliant" on live TV and Cher saying something similar.
There are time restrictions also, which the Supremes upheld in the George Carlin Seven Words you can't say on TV case (which was of course radio).
Sometimes if the words have "news value" it is ok, but no one seems to know.
I remember many years ago David Letterman played a clip from a play CBS had broadcast in prime time where the word Bullshit was said. CBS didn't bleep the play, but everytime Letterman mentioned that the play said bullshit, he got bleeped. This went on for several minutes of him playing the unbleeped word and Letterman saying it and getting bleeped.
Probably the most confusing thing, especially if you are from a country where a government entity is in charge of broadcasting, is the standards are set by each private broadcast entity and enforced by what are referred to as Standards and Practices. They decide what is bleeped, not the FCC. The FCC only can say "You should have bleeped that," it can't tell them what to bleep or when. The FCC does not have a list of words they send around, or a time chart for how long a nipple can be exposed and when. Broadcasters have to use their own best judgement (which I actually just typed with a straight face) ![[Confused]](confused.gif)
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