When awards shows “censor” things
September 17, 2007 | Media, World Events
Two items of note from the Emmys, both of which are no surprise.
In the first, Kathy Griffin’s acceptance speech cut whacked from the broadcast because she said some things that Christians would find offensive. The CNN story is here. In the same show, Sally Field started to say something about the war, then supposedly got cut off for saying something about the war.
There’s no real discord about Ms. Griffin’s comments. When you have the potential to offend 180 million consumers in the US, you censor the speech. Besides, she got more publicity from the censorship anyway. She’s right where she wants to be as far as controversey goes. She wins. The network wins.
There’s nothing concrete on Ms. Field’s speech (i.e., no good news report to send you to on this one), but, you can catch the Digg story here. However, apparently, she was talking about mothers (the maternal kind; not the 12-letter word kind). Her sentence started with, “If mothers ruled the world, there would be no –” and Fox, apparently, cut the speech off from there. The Digg report says the sentence ended like this: “… goddamned wars in the first place.” I have no issue with Fox using the 7-second delay. If she said “goddamned,” it’s an FCC no-no and that’s that. You make whatever you want of the politics.
The problem, as my friend Ray Wong raised earlier today, is that these awards shows stink. As Ray points out, there’s nothing to these shows. Just a lot of pablum. My take is this: there are a lot of pretty people who mind there P’s and Q’s more than ever. They do this because networks buy SO MUCH advertising that erratic behavior would upset the advertisers. So, the hook comes faster people like Ms. Griffin and Ms. Field. Gone are the days of George C. Scott refusing his Oscar. Gone are the days of t-shirts with slogans at the Grammys (because you can get zoomed in upon). Unless it’s a real surprise, it gets quashed well before it could get aired.
Someone might argue that the ratings are what matter here. They do, always. However, companies buy spots based on the show’s producers being able to suppress the loose cannons. They buy ads so that those ads can be sandwiched between segments of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie handing out awards, smiling and doing, well, nothing at all save radiating beauty. I mean, did you really care that Sopranos won best drama? Like that wasn’t going to happen?
And there’s always the issue of Ryan Seacrest belonging in a wood chipper. But that’s another post for another time.
