Cinematic obscenity in America: A hundred years of over-baring censors | Hacker News Reader

Cinematic obscenity in America: A hundred years of over-baring censors

economist.com

26 pointstintinnabula38 comments

The idea that there is such a thing called "obscenity law" always struck me as profoundly backwards - the idea that someone can be so bothered by a piece of media they chose to willingly consume that they can take away the right of others to do the same.

This is one glaring inconsistency in the way courts have handled exclusions to freedom of speech. Normally, any abridgement requires a strict scrutiny test, and as far as I know, nobody has been able to articulate what, exactly, the legitimate and narrow government interest in regulating "obscenity" is.

AFAICT, it's a vestige of the puritan roots of the country.

I think it's a codification of a quite natural and sometimes reasonable thing.

Imagine I said something completely disgusting in a HN comment. I'd have it flagkilled faster than I could say "freedom of speech". We accept that because a community needs to be curated and maintained. Now extend this sentiment to the society at large, and you have an argument for some kind of obscenity laws.

That those laws may have gone too far is another issue though.

With hacker news you can leave and form your own community where that sentiment can be expressed. One just needs to visit a website belonging to some fringe group to see that. But with society's laws, you can't do that. Those communities, because they are now illegal, will be hunted down and destroyed. Instead of flag killing the opinion, imagine if the one who posted it could be banned from the internet.

Still much better than the situation in Britain. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/charlielyne/make-the-ce...

"The nudity that was once "bold" and "daring" is now commonplace: hardly a rom-com goes by without a sex scene. Sexually explicit films are released without the batting of a censorial eyelid."

And yet, in one of the seasons of US Hell's Kitchen, one of the chefs is in a T-Shirt and her breasts are covered by a blurring mask. I guess it's because you could see her nipples? In a show where Ramsey calls people "fuckface"? US censorship is really really weird.

> T-Shirt and her breasts are covered by a blurring mask

Perhaps there was a logo on the t-shirt? It's pretty common in reality TV shows to blur out logos.

I don't agree with the author's characterization. Little of the sex scenes in Hollywood films are "bold" or "daring" in the slightest. They're timid, lifeless and quite often completely pointless. They're put in there more to appease some informal filmmaking convention rather than to drive the film itself. A few are explicit, most are comical and still suffer from puritan tropes (like the infamous "his-and-hers bed sheets").

Lars von Trier is certainly controversial, too. Antichrist received quite a bit of opposition from ratings and censorship boards. Then, in the USA, even if your film isn't censored, the NC-17 is a de facto death penalty.

Actually, from my personal observation, Hollywood seems to have toned down on sex scenes significantly in the last decade or so. Actually, I can honest-to-god say that Hollywood blockbusters are now higher culture than theatre in my country is...

Simple math - more people will turn out to see a movie rated PG-13 instead of R. So that's what the studios tend to shoot for.

It used to be that they were shooting for superfluous sex scenes, and a similar argument could be made - sex sells. Theatre is apparently behind the loop and it tries to exploit it now.

Yeah, TV and movies are kind of switching place in this regard. Once TV was safe and family friendly while movies could be provocative and daring. Now it is the opposite with TV (HBO/Netflix) pushing the boundaries with sex and violence and bad language. I think the reason is that mainstream movies today are so expensive they need to go after as large an audience as possible (ie PG-13), while TV can cater for a more specific, say adult, audience.

I will never understand the taboo that is nudity in the USA society

Puritans

I don't know. Seems like we have plenty.

Think censorship is over? Express opposition to feminists/muslims/blacks/gays/multiculturism/drugs etc. and watch the fireworks. Neo-puritan morals police are stronger than ever.

What does "fireworks" mean here? Actual literal censorship, or just people loudly complaining and criticising the expressed sentiment? Because that is the opposite of censorship.

Losing your job and access to employment opportunities is a very common and very effective form of censorship.

OK that is not really what I would call censorship. Censorship is restricting public access to some expression - not punishing the originator. Even if it might be just as bad for the freedom of speech, it is not the same thing.

If the effect is to stifle the speech then functionally how is it different?

Quite different actually. (Even if two things are both bad it does not mean they are the same thing!) For example you can censor a dead author, but you cannot threaten him. And you can punish someone for saying something without censoring the utterance.

https://www.aclu.org/what-censorship

There was no censorship on saying a lot of things the puritans didn't like said, but the consequences of saying them could be your life. Nowadays the consequences for saying what you can't say are merely limited to loss of job and any future career in your field and the only media exposure being to solidify how evil you are. See: https://handleshaus.wordpress.com/2013/12/26/bullied-and-bad...

In 20th century America there was also explicit, legal censorship of stuff that would not be a problem today. People were sent to prison for months or years, but this is rarely talked about. See Eugene Debs, Lenny Bruce, William Baird, etc.

A recent example:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-34...

Maybe I'm missing something in this story, but it just seem like a disagreement? Two parties disagreeing about something (like if to mark some particular symbolic day or not) is not censorship.

Overheard three college students at the next table in a restaurant two days ago talking about how free speech is outdated and the Constitution should be changed to limit it so that you can't speak in anyway that was offensive to others.

I was flabbergasted.

These are students who are supposed to be going to school to get exposure to ideas different from their own and learn about the value of freedom of expression especially when it comes to expressing views the majority might not agree with.

I feel like an old man wondering what is wrong with kids today and I'm not that old.

I'm only a half decade out of college and I'm wanting all these whippersnappers off my lawn.

A new form of censorship. Neither the reaction of a private party nor the reaction of a government entity, but a death by a thousand cuts. For example, threats to riot or boycott unless someone is fired. Someone 'internet stalking' you and poisoning all sorts of relationships but not by using any illegal means. Entire groups deciding to make an example out of you by means that, had any one person done all of it would have crossed into illegal actions, but which have been split among a group.

Express support and you'll get the same fireworks, just launched from a different camp.

The point being, ignore the general population. If your opposition is expressed in a civil way and you're talking with reasonable people, there won't be any moral policing.

Not really. I think one side has pretty thoroughly won. Look at the recent Barbie commercial with the boy in it -- that would have unleashed a firestorm a few years ago, but conservative groups remained utterly silent on it and the media is filled with nothing but heaps of praise for it.

Leftists are the true Puritans. Got it.

Well, the original Puritans were the Progressives of their time. Comparison across ages is always error prone.

Prohibition was both Progressive and Puritan. They're not disjoint.

I think this is a symptom of freedom of speech, not its absence. Your complaint echoes that of noted filmmaker DW Griffith ("Birth of a Nation"), for what it's worth: https://archive.org/details/riseandfallfree00grifgoog.

Because free-speech opposition to free speech is somehow anti-free-speech? I always love these kinds of complaints about "censorship": "I don't have freedom of speech because people can complain about what I say!"

"Over-baring censors" - Freudian slip, headline wordplay or typo?

Discuss.

Bad headline wordplay. The Economist loves those, and it's too carefully-edited otherwise for it to be accidental.

Terrible wordplay, if this is actually the case. The play exactly contradicts the thesis.

Which was what got my attention too. The Economist is usually very particular about such choices.

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