Hi, everyone, I’m Sarah and I was born and raised in France. Despite that, I’ve always liked the United States and that’s why I watch movies and series in their “original version”. And that’s how I’ve noticed that you use censorship a lot. And that was especially shocking for me because, well, I’m French. I’m from the country which had hesitated between a PG rating and a PG-13 for 50 Shades of Grey. And it’s true that French program might seem very risqué for you. Except if you’re watching programs designed for little kids, everybody swears and it’s not uncommon to see butt or boobs. And despite that, I don’t think I swear more than American kids who grew up with censored programs. But the real reason I wanted to talk about this was that I always thought that bleeping or pixelating things draw attention to them and also because it’s useless! Really, except for the little kids you are still pure and innocent, who ever heard a sentence with a bleep in it and thought “Wow I sure do wonder what this character was saying? Was it duck? It probably was a duck.” Or have you ever saw a pixelated hand and thought “I bet this character is giving everyone a thumb up under this!” No! But by putting this long bleep in the dialogue or this big blur or screen, you just assured that everyone understood that it wasn’t a nice or polite thing. Also, when you see a dramatic scene where the character has all the right reasons to swear and their speech is constantly interrupted by loud “BLEEP!” it weakens the whole scene and makes it look ridiculous.
Oh, and while I’m at it, why do you censor songs?! You do know that lyrics in a song are chosen carefully either because to fit the meaning, or the rhythm. And censoring swear words not only makes the lyric sounds really off-beat and odd but also makes me sound really crude when I sing it anyway!
So please America, stop censoring your programs and your songs, not only it is useless but it can also damage the quality of the content.
And you? What do you think about censorship?
