Censor Our Mouths, Not Our Entertainment

It is an act that is controlling our everyday lives, yet we have no way of changing it. On our televisions, radios, the internet, and even in video games, traces of it can be found that not only ruin our entertainment, but change the way we think and act in our daily lives. This act is none other than censorship, which can be defined as, when original material is condensed, edited, or banned by someone else in order to prevent offending others. (Taylor) Though the government, along with many followers believes that it is necessary in order to protect our youth, many others believe that it is ruining our entertainment, violating our freedoms, and in all reality, solving absolutely nothing. The question remains, what can be done to right this wrong, if anything can be done at all? I look to prove that the act of censoring everyday crude humor and violence solves nothing in today's already corrupt society.

It can be easily understood why censoring has been on the rise in America for the past few decades. Yes, it bands today's youth of the world from viewing horrifying violent acts, strong sexual content, and vulgar profanity. With reasons like this, I am in agreement that we do need a way of keeping such acts away from younger children. Think about this though, as a child, is there really any way of protecting them from the reality of the world? Though parents try not to swear in front of their children, it happens, so when we think about it, our youth is exposed to such words as early in their lives as they learn to comprehend these words. When they are this young, they do not even watch adult television. Instead, they are watching Sesame Street and Barney. When we look at this fact, should we be censoring television, or should we be censoring our adult mouths? I believe that it is the parents and older figures in a child's life that introduces them to their first vulgar word; for example, when dad comes home from a hard day at work and sits down at the dinner table and says that "my boss can go to hell," or "damn, am I tired." At that age, violence is not a problem besides the occasional pinching of a classmate or calling him or her a "boogerhead."

In censorship, researchers refer to the three B's, which are "Bleeping," "Blurring," and "Barring." "Bleeping" is used to block out a vulgar word from being heard. I am only going to say this once in this paper; honestly, who does know what the word is that is being "bleeped" out when they are watching their favorite television program? Supporting my thesis, this solves nothing. "Blurring" is another thing that we have all seen on television and it occurs when there is indecent exposure such as a sexual act or a crude gesture being made. Once again, I think that we all know what lies behind the blur, whether it is a naked body or that one bad finger being raised in the air. A different type of censoring is that of "barring," which is when officials decide to cut a whole scene or image out of a production. Many feel that this violates our rights as Americans the most. ("Filtering") These simple censoring mechanisms only lead to questions from our young ones when they view them on television. For example, a child sits down to watch some television with his or her parents before going to bed. Evening television is aimed more at adults, yet it is still censored more times than not. The child hears an awkward "bleep" and pieces it together that it was not suppose to be a "bleep." The child then asks his or her parents, "Mommy, what was that "bleep" for? Are the parents really going to tell their child what it means? The parents must then lie to their children. Is this really what we want to tell our children, a lie? In a recent study, results show that censoring is not even the best method for protecting our children. They show that most people believe that parental supervision is the best method of offering protection. It also shows that the best way of dealing with protecting the youth is by limiting their access to media. (Marquart)

The problem is not from watching a simple television program because adults and even teenagers will continue to use profanity on an everyday basis. However, if people are still worried about their children being influenced by television, then it is a good thing that we have moved into a new movement in America. The parental control movement has entered the United States, allowing most entertainment to be blocked to younger people based on the program's rating. In today's society, most households include premium cable or a satellite service of some sort for their television. These are included with a special section where parents can block programs from their children based on their rating. There are six types of ratings that can be set on any given television. These include, "TV-Y," which can be viewed by all children, "TV-Y7," which is viewable by only children age seven and above, "TV-G," which is suitable for all ages with little or no parental guidance, "TV-PG," which it is suggested that parental guidance be given, "TV-14," which is intended for anyone over the age of fourteen, and finally "TV-MA," which is intended for a mature audience and anyone over the age of seventeen. ("The TV Parental Guidelines") With the simple click of a button on the remote, children are blocked from any unsuitable content and censoring can be eliminated.
Along with the premium providers of our television programs, many households also include premium movie networks. If anyone has ever viewed these channels, it can easily be seen and heard that sex, profanity, and violence are what keeps these networks going.

People love their violence and profanity, and if they can not get it on regular cable channels, then they will spend the extra buck to get these networks. Easily put, censoring is solving nothing in today's society. I have one important issue on my mind that to me makes no sense in the world of censoring that is upon us. The issue is that, people do not even have to order those premium networks anymore because those basic cable channels begin to show the uncut versions of adult movies in the late hours. An example of this would be the channel Comedy Central. Starting at the midnight hour, shows and movies are uncensored, allowing profanity, sexual content, and violence being seen to all of America. Honestly, on the weekends teenagers and children do not go to bed early enough to miss these shows. Shows that parents would dread their children seeing are being seen in their household every weekend. I am looking for an answer here, what is the point of censoring television during the daytime, if it is still going to be aired to millions of Americans in the night?

Possibly the most important issue of censorship in our entertainment is that many people believe that it violates our rights and freedoms of being an American citizen. Our very own constitution defends this and states that complaints of censorship may not be a bad argument at all. The First Amendment of the constitution states that "Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise thereof; abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." (Marquart) Government is rewriting their constitution with acts like this everyday. The agreement of what the people of America originally decided upon is being changed. William O. Douglas states, "Thus if the First Amendment means anything in this field, it must allow protests even against the moral code that the standard of the day sets for the community. In other words, entertainment should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor." (Daney) Are people really that corrupt these days that we can not even view or listen to influential content? In my opinion, it is not television, or the radio, or video games, or even the internet that is changing who we are as Americans. The biggest influence on society is that of other people. We are influenced by our friends and our family in our lives. If we were raised in a broken home with abusive parents, then we are obviously more likely to be abusive ourselves. If our parents end up in jail for a crime, let's face it, the children are more likely to follow in their footsteps. Households like these come from nothing so most likely they will be nothing in their lives, and this is a common understanding of sociology. Watching a silly television program will not make us go out and kill someone; however, if a peer were to go out and do it, then to be cool and fit in, one may follow in his footsteps, especially if that was the path that his or her biggest influence, their parents, took in their lives.

There is one final point that I believe needs to be given more consideration when looking at censorship. I come from a family that loves to travel, not only within the United States but to other countries as well. One thing that I have found to be peculiar is that The United States is the only country that I have traveled to that uses the act of censorship over its public. The list of countries that I have traveled to are all around the world, including Mexico, Canada, France, Australia, New Zealand, Amsterdam, and Germany. In zero percent of these nations were images blurred or vulgar words bleeped out. In my honest opinion, I feel that the majority of these nations were in better condition than what the United States is in right now. Let's just use our neighbor to the north for example, Canada. Canada is a very clean nation where the people are well-mannered and very friendly. They manage to stay out of business that is not theirs to worry about in other nations, and most of their population grows up to be heavily successful in raising a family and in their occupation. The rate of crime in their nation is much lower than that of America's and homelessness is also considerably lower than ours. My question is what are they doing right, that we are doing wrong? The point shows that entertainment does not influence human behavior as much as we believe it does here in the states. If our allies do not use it, then why do we feel that we must use it? Are our citizens more corrupt then those of other nations? Something seems to be corrupt with our government if they believe that we are worse off than those who have come from Communism. We are the land of the free and possibly the world's greatest superpower of today's society. All that I am saying is that if other nations put trust in their citizen's behavior, then we American citizens should be trusted as well; after all, that is why we chose to set up camp and live in this beautiful country that we call home.
As of recently, many Americans have been enraged by the use of censorship on important events that have occurred in the United States. Each and every day, the local news shows clips from the current war that every one knows is going on in the Middle East. Strangely enough, the most important thing going on in our society can only be viewed in a short two minute clip of what happened during those days events. Many feel that these images are not even giving us a true idea of what is going on in the war because the news is leaving out part of the truth and only speaking the negatives about the other country. In another instance, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans last September, people across the country became furious that the news was not showing a true picture of what was going on in that area. Larry Siems, an official of the PEN American Center states, "It's impossible for me to imagine how you report a story whose subject is death without allowing the public to see images of the subject of the story." (Zabarenko) Instances like these have made millions of Americans irritated because they feel that is a form of negative censorship. The government does not want its citizens to see the truth and only feel negativity towards others as if America was doing nothing wrong. Will the debate over censorship ever be solved is beyond my knowledge. I have shared my thoughts about the situation, and to me it just seems like we the people of The United States are not trusted nor are we being told the truth about our nation. The government along with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have ruined our favorite television shows, our favorite songs on the radio, and they have even taken away our First Amendment rights. Like I said earlier, we the people may never win the battle with the government because first I believe that we must prove to them that we are not corrupted by entertainment. Remember, it is a proven law of sociology that people are corrupted only by other people, whether it be family or close friends, and not by a simple television show. The act of censoring everyday reality through television and other entertainment really does not solve anything in today's already corrupt society. Let us not censor entertainment, but only the mouths and actions of those who influence our corruptness.