[HN Gopher] The Big [Censored] Theory
___________________________________________________________________
The Big [Censored] Theory
Author : feross
Score : 1342 points
Date : 2022-08-29 17:34 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (pudding.cool)
(TXT) w3m dump (pudding.cool)
| dqpb wrote:
| This is what OpenAI wants to do to AI. Censored, neutered,
| prudish, anti-human. It's not "safety", it's sick authoritarian
| control.
| ericskiff wrote:
| Aside from the fascinating topic, the data visualization and
| legwork gathering the data for this article is outstanding!
| m463 wrote:
| I also noticed that all images/video/css loads from the same
| site.
|
| I think this might just be a high-quality site, but I can't
| help but wonder if this prevents youtube or some other service
| from taking things down via supurious DMCA requests.
| elsherbini wrote:
| I found the repo that powers the article, cool to browse!
|
| https://github.com/the-pudding/censorship
| dqpb wrote:
| > Most scenes are in the sex category, where characters mentioned
| sexual descriptions, body parts, and other relevant languages.
|
| Meanwhile, they're looking forward to a nice population decline.
| Idiots.
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| TV doesn't teach you how to procreate. It teaches you that sex
| is something for beautiful people and lead characters to engage
| in as a hobby. Actually having children would limit you from
| all this no-strings sex you expect to have every week.
| livinglist wrote:
| I'm very glad I was able to move out of this country... China's
| censorship got much much worse after Xi Jinping stepped into
| power. I remember around 2010 when I was in middle school, I was
| still able to watch YouTube and browse Wikipedia, and ppl were
| able make criticism on government and incidents without worrying
| too much about their own safety. Right now China is filled with
| misled and brainwashed ppl that believe in everything said and
| done by the government....
| jurassic wrote:
| As an LGBTQ person, this makes me very sad. Just look at fandom
| twitter and you will see how much even a small amount of
| representation on screen means to people like me. I wish
| everybody could experience that.
| yomkippur wrote:
| Banana699 wrote:
| Why does it matter to you that your sexuality is depicted on
| screen? Sounds like a bizarre thing to worry about.
|
| And US studios already has you covered for centuries worth of
| "representation" heavy film and TV, why is the Chinese allowing
| them important?
| carapace wrote:
| Your question is the answer to itself.
| Banana699 wrote:
| Is this supposed to be a coherent answer?
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Kinda related:
|
| I watched a video essay on YouTube about Chinese horror movies
| and why they are so bad.
|
| The reason was not just regulatory constraints (the ghost turns
| out to be a dream, because you can't have ghosts in movies) but
| also that these changes on quite short notice.
|
| So if you have an idea for a movie and you think it can wriggle
| around the current regulatory restrictions you better hurry up
| and film and edit it as fast as possible.
| yegle wrote:
| Friends: the globe was censored, presumably because no one can be
| sure if Taiwan is marked as part of China:
| https://twitter.com/williamlong/status/1492775822859517957
|
| There's also a funny clip when Ross is trying to explain his ex-
| wife is a Lesbian. This part was censored, so you see Ross is
| about to say something, next his parents act like surprised. It
| actually made the scene funnier.
| jimcavel888 wrote:
| forgingahead wrote:
| Having accidentally seen gratuitous gore on shows like Game of
| Thrones on HBO or The Boys on Amazon, I'm not against a general
| set of standards to avoid the assault on my eyes (or the eyes of
| younger members of society). In my day, you could always get the
| uncut version on DVD if you want to - but the mass market
| versions should certainly adhere to some basic societal
| standards.
| computerfriend wrote:
| Don't watch it if you don't want to. Take responsibility for
| the media you consume.
| wruza wrote:
| _Such unequal treatment is bizarre_
|
| I may lack huge parts of these contexts or misinterpret them, but
| there is something obvious in the pictures alone.
|
| Kissing in a drama may have a very different connotation than in
| a sitcom, or may simply be one of the central scenes. The
| difference in the back exposing scenes is not in the back itself,
| but in the man in the background looking to the forward part of
| this back. I'm not pro censorship and mostly not pro
| conservatism, but this complete blindness to the difference _in
| context_ and inability to hypothesize it feels, well, bizarre
| itself.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > This added up to over one hour of deleted scenes, or nearly
| three full episodes of purely censored content
|
| I would like to watch the edit of only deleted scenes strung
| together.
| drfuchs wrote:
| In the charming 1988 Best Foreign Film "Cinema Paradiso," set
| in a small pre-war Italian town, the projectionist has to
| preview every imported American film for the local priest, who
| sits and rings a bell at each scene containing a kiss so they
| can be spliced out before the paying audience arrives. Spoiler:
| In the heartwarming ending, the young boy who had befriended
| him comes back to town after the death of the projectionist, to
| find a gift has been left for him: A reel of film, which he
| projects for himself, and finds it's all the years of removed
| Hollywood kisses, spliced together one right after the other.
| Gatsky wrote:
| Great film, the projectionist is just a wonderful character.
|
| I still think a lot about that story he tells with the
| princess and the soldier.
| Nursie wrote:
| I remember some years ago reading a reply, from a film critic
| to a newspaper reader, about a letter he had received from
| her. He had reviewed Cinema Paradiso in glowing terms, and
| was then surprised to receive a letter that was incandescent
| with rage.
|
| The cinemagoer was disgusted by what she had seen, and didn't
| understand how such an epic display of toilet humour,
| slapstick violence and general crude behaviour had attracted
| any sort of positive response, let alone the recommendations
| he had given.
|
| The critic pointed out that it sounded like she had probably
| been to see "Guest House Paradiso", a very different movie...
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| There is a very mesmerizing art piece by Mungo Thomson called
| American Desert [0]. Where he has taken the road runner cartoon
| and only left the landscape bits. It is beautiful.
|
| [0] - https://mungothomson.com/work/american-desert/
| gumby wrote:
| Looking at the examples on this well-done site that would
| actually be pretty boring. The cuts appear to be about stuff
| that's pretty innocuous to us.
| twic wrote:
| Perhaps you will appreciate this abridged version of classic
| hip-hop record Straight Outta Compton:
| https://soundcloud.com/rickyvthevip/nwa-straight-outta-compt...
| munk-a wrote:
| Unfortunately it's still the Big Bang Theory.
| powerhour wrote:
| You didn't include the laugh track and yet I still heard it.
| jedberg wrote:
| The producers swear up and down to this day that they did
| not use a laugh track. That that was legit audience
| reaction.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Is that really true? Or did they simply mean it's a group
| of real people recorded laughing, having been prompted to
| laugh?
|
| Which is still lame but very easy to believe
| jedberg wrote:
| Well, I have no idea. But I attended a taping of a sitcom
| once, and the way it worked is they had mics hanging
| above all the parts of the audience. Before they show
| they had a warm up comic, which both put us in the
| laughing mood and gave them a chance to record our
| particular audience laughing really hard.
|
| Then when the show was recorded, we actually did laugh
| pretty hard. You know how you laugh louder when you're at
| a comedy show or at a movie theater than when you're home
| alone watching the same thing? Because of peer pressure?
| It was like that. You laugh harder in the audience.
|
| And then they would "enhance" the laughing by taking the
| recording of us from earlier and playing it over the
| spots where we laughed live, especially if they end up
| using a second or third take, since were didn't laugh as
| hard.
|
| Also I remember in our episode there was a joke where as
| the live audience we could see the payoff right away, but
| on the TV the camera did a slow pull back to reveal the
| joke. They added in our recorded laughter for that. I
| remember because I laughed at home but not in the studio.
|
| So it's sort of a combination. But except in those rare
| cases they don't really add in laughter where there was
| none. They just enhance the live audience.
| Widtalay wrote:
| mmaunder wrote:
| Censorship is obviously a bad idea to those of us in developed
| countries, and disastrous to those of us who have experienced it
| first hand. But when many consider the opposite, which is the
| requirement that you fight to defend your enemy's right to
| freedom of expression, they find censorship to be preferable.
| [deleted]
| novolunt wrote:
| gavinray wrote:
| Is the author around?
|
| The visualization below _" So the question has to be asked: what
| kind of content has been removed, and why?_"
|
| Is one of the coolest things I've ever seen.
|
| Could you share how this was made?
| c0unt wrote:
| the website (pudding.cool) has tons of other articles showing
| off the visualization and its great
| elsherbini wrote:
| (I'm not the author). Here is the repo that powers the article:
| https://github.com/the-pudding/censorship , which forks a
| svelte-kit starter template most new pudding.cool articles
| start with.
|
| The bit that actually makes the divs for each scene that was
| cut is here: https://github1s.com/the-
| pudding/censorship/blob/HEAD/src/co... , and the data is here:
| https://github1s.com/the-pudding/censorship/blob/HEAD/src/da...
| balentio wrote:
| dilfish wrote:
| If we treat what rural Chinese people are doing nowadays as
| standard operation, the westerners are just barbarians. Don't
| waste time on these non sense, lets decide which one is
| "STANDARD"
| balentio wrote:
| Perhaps I wasn't clear, so let me be quite transparent: China
| has terrible human rights issues. One of those issues is
| eating babies which they SAY is just in rural areas, but if
| you happen to let loose a bio weapon on the world, I tend to
| be a little skeptical of your main story lines.
| eyear wrote:
| Where is the diversity we advocate? Must the whole world accept
| one value? We accept homosexuality so we won't accept other
| people like Muslims not accepting it? So WE are definitely right
| and people who are different from us are absolutely wrong?
| kiratp wrote:
| The good ol' Paradox of Tolerance:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
| lettergram wrote:
| Careful, some people here might not identify as "We". I hear if
| you use the wrong pronoun here they'll cancel your whole
| career...
| ipython wrote:
| Isn't "canceling" exactly what the ccp did here though?
| slater wrote:
| haha, good one!
| ipython wrote:
| So it's ok to censor a homosexual joke? Because we need to
| accept Muslims? Personally I'm ok with jokes about Muslims and
| homosexuals and Christians and atheists and pimple faced
| basement dwellers and yuppies driving bmws and...
| jadbox wrote:
| The diversity march advocates for the freedom to express
| oppressed minorities. I think it's philosophically a vulgar
| view of liberal diversity is that diversity is also defined as
| the ability to also tolerate groups that systematically
| suppresses its people of diversity (a view that Alexander Dugin
| espouses).
| Spivak wrote:
| The paradox of tolerance isn't really a paradox, it's a proof
| by contradiction that the naive notion of tolerance is not
| sound.
|
| Homosexuality is a natural observable phenomenon in the human
| species across time and cultures. It is an aspect of people as
| fundamental as height or skin tone. Not accepting them for any
| reason is intolerance and does not have to be tolerated. It is
| also intolerance to not accept Muslims, but you do not have to
| tolerate any intolerance that manifests from their beliefs.
|
| People are not tolerant or intolerant, specific views held by
| and actions done by people are.
|
| You don't need values to reason about tolerance.
| jlawson wrote:
| You're misunderstanding the paradox of tolerance, at least as
| Karl Popper originally formulated it.
|
| The only form of intolerance Popper recognized was bigotry
| around beliefs. The concepts (and words) homophobia, racism,
| transphobia, and islamophobia were not even invented when he
| wrote about the paradox of intolerance.
|
| When he described the intolerant, he specifically meant
| people who would use violence to stop others from expressing
| different beliefs - nothing else. He did NOT mean
| "intolerance" of any particular skin tone, or sexual
| behavior, identity group, etc.
|
| This is important because intolerance of sexual behavior
| doesn't structurally break the system of discussion and
| truth-finding that we use. You could jail every blue-eyed
| person, just was we jail people who commit certain crimes,
| but as long as everyone can _speak_ then our system for
| collective truth-seeking still works. The ONLY meaning for
| the word "intolerance" that breaks that is intolerance of
| free speech, and that's the only kind of intolerance that
| Popper said needs to be suppressed with force. And he was
| right.
|
| I see this misunderstanding constantly online - honestly it's
| hideous to see people twisting Popper's pro-free-speech
| message into an excuse to crush those they misunderstand or
| disagree with. Literally inverting his meaning.
| gopiandcode wrote:
| > I see this misunderstanding constantly online - honestly
| it's hideous to see people twisting Popper's pro-free-
| speech message into an excuse to crush those they
| misunderstand or disagree with. Literally inverting his
| meaning.
|
| Yeah, it really is sad to see people so eager to embrace
| authoritarian sensibilities like this. The paradox of
| tolerence has seemingly become a buzzword without meaning,
| perverted beyond its original intent; a simple facade that
| enables people to feel self-justified about their own
| intolerance while still allowing them to claim progressive
| ideals.
| Spivak wrote:
| I'm not inverting is meaning, I just have a broader
| definition of what things constitute violent acts of
| suppression of beliefs. I see _this_ misunderstanding
| constantly online, that hate speech, *phobia, and *ism is
| an expression of belief rather than an act of violence that
| suppresses the speech of the group being targeted.
|
| Here, let's talk about the person who literally replied to
| your post. Quoting it since I'm sure they will, rightfully,
| get banned.
|
| > Btw, tolerance, like democracy is just a bulls$##t
| concept. Would you like to be tolerant of the neo-trans man
| going to the same toilet as your teenage daughters???
| [wawjgreen] [1]
|
| This is hate speech. This is not an expression of belief or
| rational argument. It's not even an argument at all, it's
| just an emotional appeal to transphobia with the goal of
| changing your perception of trans women to that of man who
| is out to sexually assault teen girls, and a direct call to
| not tolerate them (i.e suppress their speech). Couldn't
| have asked for a better example to just fall into the
| thread.
|
| In contrast, someone expressing a belief or making an
| actual argument like, "I know that not allowing trans men
| and women to use the bathroom that matches their gender
| will cause them dysphoria, but as a matter of public policy
| here is why I think bathroom bills are necessary..." is not
| transphobia and is speech that should be tolerated.
|
| [1] And also take a moment to appreciate an IRL instance of
| accidental-ally. Obviously we don't want trans men in the
| women's restroom.
| wawjgreen wrote:
| why are you all so hell-bent on glorifying Popper (pooper).
| He was just a moron with an agenda.
|
| Btw, tolerance, like democracy is just a bulls$##t concept.
| Would you like to be tolerant of the neo-trans man going to
| the same toilet as your teenage daughters???
| educaysean wrote:
| I guess there is no right and no wrong in that worldview. How
| very convenient.
|
| A dictatorship that disregards the will of the people it
| governs has only committed wrong in the eyes of these sensitive
| modern westerners, right? CCP tells the world its subjugates
| are happy and fulfilled so who are we to judge?
| npteljes wrote:
| >we won't accept other[s] not accepting it
|
| I think that's right. Paraphrasing Popper: "In order to
| maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right
| to be intolerant of intolerance". It's not about being right or
| wrong, it's about how people should treat each other, even if
| they dislike how the other one acts.
| jarek83 wrote:
| As far as censoring is concerning, can I just diverge to how
| crazy cool is the page - I mean the UX, the thoroughness of the
| subject and execution of it. I'm in awe.
| OOPMan wrote:
| Imagine trying to promote reproductive rates while censoring
| sexual activity...
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| A fascinating look at how The Big Bang Theory is censored around
| the world.
| personjerry wrote:
| > These acts of censorship not only limit the impact of foreign-
| based productions, they also help the Chinese government maintain
| control.
|
| But why does the Chinese government need that kind of control?
| erichocean wrote:
| From the article: the Chinese government believes the primary
| purpose of culture is to raise healthy children, not to
| entertain or amuse adults.
|
| The Chinese also believe it is the government's responsibility
| to maintain their culture over time, which is why the
| government exerts cultural control.
| cercatrova wrote:
| The solution to this is, of course, piracy. I'm glad people like
| those on /r/DataHoarder preserve media in their complete forms so
| I don't have to watch them censored.
|
| A recent example is Community which has an episode of a character
| dressing as a dark elf, and the joke is that another character
| assumes it's blackface, even though it's not. Well, networks and
| streaming services now removed it and unless you have the
| original discs, you simply can't watch that episode.
|
| Unless, of course, you pirate it, which is how I watched it.
| anonporridge wrote:
| And of course Netflix has started covertly editing older
| episodes of their series.
|
| There may come a day where the Berenstain Bears Mandela effect
| is the result of a legitimate conspiracy to change all the
| publicly available media.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Anyone in China? Do they still have those dvd carts on the
| streets? Or did they lose out to streaming?
|
| What about torrents and such? Have they been blocked by the
| firewall or is pirated movies still readily available online?
| est wrote:
| No DVD carts, but NAS is somewhat popular. Xunlei or BaiduPan
| is insanely popular.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Advanced Dungeons and Dragons is currently available on Prime
| Video. I don't know that they edited it there.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| I watched the whole series through a month ago and I didn't
| know this episode existed until someone told me it was on
| prime. It is unedited!
| pchristensen wrote:
| Brutalitops!
| cdelsolar wrote:
| That episode is one of the very best of the show too. I had to
| pirate it.
| phantom_of_cato wrote:
| The BBC does something similar to its reruns of old shows. [1]
|
| [1]: The Telegraph: BBC makes 'woke cuts' to archives, including
| Dad's Army https://archive.is/Y5nJw
| [deleted]
| omegaworks wrote:
| Kinda weird that author categorized the incest joke "Howard: I
| lost my virginity to my cousin Jeanie" under LGBTQ censorship.
| When she mentioned the justification: "China has encouraged
| straight couples to marry and raise two to three children." it
| makes some sense, but incestuous relationships are not considered
| by themselves "LGBTQIA2S+"
| drewtato wrote:
| The implication is that Chinese policy considers both incest
| and LGBTQ as abnormal relationships.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| "+", apparently.
| omegaworks wrote:
| The plus signifies support and acceptance of those who live
| with HIV.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I looked at 5 sources and could not verify this statement.
|
| Do you have any that state this?
| omegaworks wrote:
| >Some see the plus at the end of LGBTQIA+ to signify
| support and acceptance of those who live with HIV.
|
| https://www.bustle.com/p/what-does-the-plus-in-lgbtqia-
| mean-...
|
| Though I'll admit the contentiousness of this
| designation, I don't think the intent of "+" was to
| include incest.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| Thanks for qualifying.
|
| After reading that article that in various places calls
| out...
|
| - "The plus is widely taken as a symbol to represent
| self-identifying members of the community who are not
| included in the LGBTQIA acronym"
|
| - "The plus in LGBTQIA+ not only represents other sexual
| labels and identifiers, but also the experiences of those
| within the community."
|
| besides the quote you already mentioned which includes
| the weasely "Some say", I personally don't really see as
| a strong of a consensus as your first comment suggests,
| but appreciate the perspective.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| I thought the + signified that it's a streaming platform.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think the + just signifies that the movement is willing
| to include groups that aren't explicitly mentioned because
|
| 1) the acronym can only get so long because it becomes
| alphabet soup.
|
| 2) the default posture is to ally with groups that haven't
| been included yet.
| lmkg wrote:
| While the term "LGBTQ+" is highlighted in blue, every instance
| of it also includes a parenthetical about "or other atypical
| heterosexual relationships." The labelling is awkward but this
| seems to me to be there specifically to avoid applying the
| LGBTQ+ label to incest jokes.
|
| The author was raised in another culture and I'm trying to give
| them the benefit of the doubt here. There are plenty of
| cultures (even in the US!) that would lump together queerness
| and incest and forms of sexual transgression. The fact that the
| author included the parenthetical means that they are aware of
| the distinction. But the perspective of the Chinese censors is
| probably to consider non-normative sex as a single category.
|
| Perhaps the author intended to highlight the negative effects
| of censorship by emphasizing the largest and most significant
| effect of that censorship?
| omegaworks wrote:
| The labeling is awkward, that's what I intended to highlight.
| "Non-normative relationships" or "non-procreative
| relationships" would have been a great alternative.
|
| >There are plenty of cultures (even in the US!) that would
| lump together queerness and incest and forms of sexual
| transgression.
|
| And it's a not so great thing to do when the goal is safety
| and acceptance of the queer community.
|
| >The author was raised in another culture and I'm trying to
| give them the benefit of the doubt here.
|
| I'm not ascribing any kind of malice or ill intent, just
| trying to highlight a (to some cultures, important!)
| distinction that was not made.
| dmurray wrote:
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Nice to know that incest is now deserving of a civil rights
| movement.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| What does the "I" stand for then?
| strbean wrote:
| They mention "LGBTQ+ (and atypical heterosexual relationships)"
| omegaworks wrote:
| Ah. I missed that on the first read. The visualizations lump
| them all together.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Animats wrote:
| What's more striking is what comes out of China's domestic
| entertainment industry. There are far too many historical costume
| dramas. Those aren't as heavily censored as modern ones. More
| modern content looks like it was censored in accordance with the
| US Television Code of the 1950s. ("The code prohibited the use of
| profanity, the negative portrayal of family life, irreverence for
| God and religion, illicit sex, drunkenness and biochemical
| addiction, presentation of cruelty, detailed techniques of crime,
| the use of horror for its own sake, and the negative portrayal of
| law enforcement officials, among others.")[1] That's close to
| China's list. China also censors political subjects, to the point
| that nobody dares get near them in film or TV.
|
| The quality is improving, though. A decade ago, there was "Sky
| Fighters", which is China's version of "Top Gun". That was
| produced by a film unit of the People's Liberation Army, and it's
| as heavy-handed as you might expect.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Practices_for_Televisi...
| neither_color wrote:
| What's interesting is in the US that kind of censorship is
| attributed to the most mainstream religion but China is
| officially atheist and does the same. Whenever people tell me
| that it's only one religion standing in the way of equal rights
| for disadvantaged groups I remind them that there's an atheist
| superpower that's even less permissive except for on
| reproductive issues(although, in their case they do regulate it
| heavily, only in the other direction with limits on the amount
| of children you can have and forced terminations in the past).
| kelnos wrote:
| Any people in power will find justifications for asserting
| control over others.
|
| Personally I would prefer someone coming out and being
| (mostly) honest about why they're trying to control others,
| not the religious "we're saving your soul!" nonsense.
| no_where wrote:
| Also that the self imposed censorship in America was a
| response by the studios to their customers. Where was Chinese
| government is furthering its Communist briefs.
| Animats wrote:
| China's government seems to be more concerned about
| containing criticism of the current Chinese government than
| Communist ideology. It's not like the Maoist period. The
| Economist has a good story about that this week.[1] Some
| militant Communists are now in opposition to the Xi
| regime.[2] The current regime is more authoritarian than
| Communist. Which is what usually happens when you get a
| Supreme Leader for Life.
|
| [1] https://www.economist.com/china/2022/08/25/chinas-
| communist-...
|
| [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/world/asia/china-
| maoists-...
| no_where wrote:
| Authoritarianism does not preclude communism. Likewise,
| their model more resembles fascism with all facets of
| life serving the government's ends. Which is the reason
| for my classification of it as Communist as fascism is a
| mere variant of communism. The fact that some disaffected
| communists disagree with Xi is quite common as Communists
| often disagree.
| int_19h wrote:
| I would agree that modern China is basically fascist, but
| fascism is not a "mere variant of communism" in any
| sense. The key tenet of communism is common ownership of
| capital; in the authoritarian and totalitarian varieties,
| this is implemented as ownership by the state that
| represents "dictatorship of the proletariat". The fascist
| economic system is completely different.
| shusaku wrote:
| A lot of people in the west (especially the US) are raised
| with the Sunday school idea that religion is something you
| choose after an objective weighing of ideas. The reality is
| that both China and the US have engrained cultural values
| which lead to these regulations. Those cultural values
| sometimes manifest as religious practice, but there is no
| hard distinction.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| The current discussion around 'harm' from AI generated
| images is the most hilarious example of a cultural more
| trying to find a justification for its existence after it
| is no longer applicable.
|
| Will no one think of the pixels being exploited?
|
| The older I get the more I realize that culture is what
| keeps us back. The Romans didn't invent steam engines not
| because they didn't want them but because they couldn't
| imagine a world where you wouldn't need slaves. The
| Catholic Church didn't survive the printing press.
|
| Currently there is no society which is friendly to digital
| information. The first one which is will overtake everyone
| else in the same way that industrialization let the west
| overtake everyone else.
| seszett wrote:
| > _The Catholic Church didn 't survive the printing
| press._
|
| It's a little bit off-topic, but you have to live in a
| very different world to believe that, as the Catholic
| Church is by far the largest Christian church still
| today.
|
| The only religion that is larger than it, not by an
| extremely large margin, is Islam (not sure if you split
| Islam in its different branches).
|
| The reality is that after a short initial resistance, the
| Catholic Church quickly turned around and embraced
| printing. I would argue that the Catholic Church is
| probably one of the most agile among the main organised
| religions and adapts rather well to changes. It pains me
| to say that, but it's clearly not going to die anytime
| soon.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| You have to be completely ignorant of the history of the
| Catholic Church to think that today's version has
| anything on the Church of 1500AD.
|
| https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2015/07/papal-
| overl...
|
| One of the more colorful moments, when the Pope owned
| England.
|
| What we have left is the losers of a rear guard action
| which has been going on for 400 years.
| delecti wrote:
| There's definitely a tendency to oversimplify authoritarians
| by criticizing them for other aspects. American right-wing
| authoritarians are bad because they're authoritarian, but get
| criticized for the Evangelical tone through which they
| enforce it. Likewise with Chinese authoritarians getting
| criticized for being communist while they do
| authoritarianism, rather than for the authoritarianism
| itself.
| kelnos wrote:
| That's a fantastic point that I think many people miss. And
| others are well aware of it, but try to deflect attention
| from the authoritarian bits by focusing on the other bits.
| somenameforme wrote:
| There's a very specific reason for this that can be
| illustrated quite easily:
|
| The current Wiki page on authoritarianism:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism
|
| The same page, but from 2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/in
| dex.php?title=Authoritarianism&...
|
| The Wiki 'definition' of authoritarianism has shifted quite
| radically in recent years. There's a line in the older
| page, completely scrubbed at some point, that's quite
| relevant: "Democracies rarely exhibit much authoritarian
| behavior except in transition to or from authoritarian
| states. Many (if not most) citizens of authoritarian states
| do not perceive their state as authoritarian until late in
| its development."
|
| Recent history (that extends beyond just the past 2 years)
| has emphasized that the vast majority of people are
| perfectly fine, if not enthusiastic, about authoritarianism
| when they share the values of said authority. This makes it
| near impossible to criticize authoritarianism, in and of
| itself, because it trends towards immediate hypocrisy. So
| instead people criticize a system of values they disagree
| with, while using authoritarianism as a convenient slur to
| make the critique sound more noble and meaningful than a
| simple value disagreement would.
|
| The same thing has happened to the Wiki page. The older
| page emphasizes quite clearly that the West has long since
| entered into the world of authoritarianism, but we don't
| want to imagine this could ever happen. So instead we've
| redefined the word in an effort to focus largely on the
| differences between the United States and "the bad guys."
| int_19h wrote:
| Historical costume dramas are also censored pretty heavily,
| sometimes in weird ways. For example, you cannot have zombies,
| because reanimating dead corpses is disrespectful.
|
| There are also cases where a show gets "canceled" because of
| something the actor said or did - and unlike the West, when
| this happens, the removal is sudden and total:
|
| https://dramapanda.com/2021/08/word-of-honor-back-online-aft...
| kebman wrote:
| On that topic, I can highly recommend the documentary "Chuck
| Norris vs. Communism"^[1] about censorship in Romania under
| Ceausescu.
|
| [1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2442080/
| rmah wrote:
| Way back in the day (think before 2000), I worked for a major
| cable TV company that showed films around the world. Every film
| had different cuts for different regions to comply with various
| censorship rules, licensing restrictions, dubbing, etc. Including
| the US. Yes, there were things that were cut from the US release
| that might have been in the UK release. It was nightmare to
| schedule everything properly everywhere. From what I can vaguely
| recall, a lot of errors were made, but as long as a decent effort
| was made by the company to censor according to their rules, most
| nations were ok with it.
| kryptozinc wrote:
| ITT: Bunch of white dudes deciding on my behalf if Raj's
| character should offend my Indian sensibilities or not.
| ascar wrote:
| Side note: the article mentions canned laughter in TBBT rather
| early. TBBT actually doesn't use canned laughter but uses
| laughter from the live audience for its laugh track.
|
| I pity that I didn't have the chance to visit the studios and be
| part of that laugh track :(
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I think they must actually use bottled laughter, bottles of
| nitrous oxide positioned strategically around their studio
| audience.
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| It's normally a mix of both. All such shows will heavily
| edit/enhance the audience laugh track during post production.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Also scenes are occasionally filmed outside the studio where
| there is no live audience.
| ascar wrote:
| Afaik they prefilm these and show them on a screen to the
| audience at the right moment of the episode and then
| capture that reaction.
| xdennis wrote:
| > TBBT actually doesn't use canned laughter
|
| I don't believe that one bit. Just because they have an
| audience, doesn't mean they don't edit the laugh track. And
| just because the laugh happened in real time, it doesn't mean
| it's authentic.
|
| Even for live TV shows, they prod the audience into laughing.
| This is made clear when they laugh at awkward times, when
| nothing funny is being said.
| ascar wrote:
| If you've ever experienced a group of tv/movie enthusiasts
| watching something you would believe that laughs happening at
| awkward times are not just possible, but I would rather see
| them as a supporting argument for real laughter than a
| rebuttal.
|
| One of my favorite moments was watching Kick Ass in a sneak
| preview. No one knew which movie would be shown and Kick Ass
| starts with a shock moment of a guy shooting a little girl
| with a revolver. One guy in the back started laughing so hard
| and it was so inappropriate that the whole theater burst into
| laughter.
|
| Doing a bit of post production on the real laughter doesn't
| make it canned laughter.
| nindalf wrote:
| Most shows that use canned laughter (Friends, Seinfeld etc.)
| were filmed in front of an audience. It's not worth the hassle
| to set up audio recoding for the audience, especially because
| people aren't reliable. They might not laugh at the right
| moment, one or two audience members might have a weird laugh,
| they might be too soft or loud.
|
| The audience reaction is useful feedback for the actors, but
| the laughter is canned.
| ascar wrote:
| Well, TBBT is especially known for recording and using the
| audience laughter. That's why I explicitly mentioned it and
| it creates some interesting moments the producers didn't even
| intend to be funny. You can find multiple sources for that
| like point 10 here [1]. There are some YouTube videos giving
| deeper insight into the process but I don't have them at
| hand.
|
| [1] https://www.cbr.com/big-bang-theory-annoyed-anger-fans/
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Seinfeld didn't use canned laughter except to mask editing
| cuts as is the norm for shows with an audience.
| ryanobjc wrote:
| I've done a studio tour of TBBT set, and they have mics set
| up for audience recording.
|
| I'm not sure what your "worth the hassle" is about, they
| rented the same sound stage for YEARS to record the show.
| They're hardly tearing it down and setting it up daily!
| pessimizer wrote:
| No modern sitcom filmed in front of a live studio audience
| uses canned laughter. They may sweeten laughter with
| overdubs, but they're not throwing away the real thing for
| the fake stuff.
|
| Live audience laughter completely changes the timing for
| 3-camera sitcoms, because the actors have to wait for it to
| finish. Setting up audio recording for the audience is
| trivial.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I can see how this might backfire. You notice a censored jump and
| start to feel the itch of curiosity as to what it concealed. I
| had to watch several of the censored scenes whereas I would have
| never just randomly watched clips of the show.
|
| Also, love the presentation on this page.
| joshstrange wrote:
| That was my first thought as well. Those skips would drive me
| crazy and would send me searching for the "raw" episodes.
| Wanting to know what was said would only be a part of the
| issue, the other would be how jarring it is and how you never
| know if it was a censored clip or if the media "skipped".
| jrumbut wrote:
| It's apparent because you're used to the rhythm of English
| speech and the forms of American sitcoms.
|
| I'm not sure if I would notice a Chinese show was censored.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| A lot of the examples cut off laughter, surely you'd notice
| that regardless of language?
| AnonCoward42 wrote:
| It's also unnecessary to cut them so badly. It's really
| disturbing.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| aka "The Streisand Effect".
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Ssssh! You're not allowed to talk about that... :-D
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| You probably haven't heard about The Streisand Effect because
| They want to keep it quiet.
| dirtyid wrote:
| 90s kids in the west grew up on censored looney Tunes and
| "localized" anime like sailor moon, I remember some barely
| viral discussions of comparisons with OG version and sentiment
| was basically meh.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Disney is now censoring their old cartoons. They have a ghost
| hunter episode where they remove all the firearms. It's
| annoying to watch the new version
| andruby wrote:
| We (the HN crowd, often living in less-censored societies)
| would be very curious.
|
| I'd like to know how curious this would make non-HN people, and
| those living in more censored places.
|
| My assumption is that they take it for granted and just
| continue to watch the show. It might be hard for them to even
| find the uncensored clips.
| Kye wrote:
| I still encounter people who don't know "Teenage Mutant Hero
| Turtles" was a heavily censored version of the real show.
| They realize how weird the edits are in retrospect, but it
| didn't register much/at all for them at the time.
| pimlottc wrote:
| > "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles"
|
| Are you referring to the UK version of the 1987 animated
| "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" TV series? I never realized
| it was considered controversial! [0]
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtl
| es_(...
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| TIL of Hero Turtles! That literally blows my mind.
|
| On this, Dragon Ball is _heavily edited_ too
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Heavens above, Myrtle! That turtle is a ninja! With
| nunchaku! Someone think of the children!
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _nunchaku_
|
| Huh, you weren't kidding. Banned and censored in the UK,
| banned in Canada, Germany, and several US states...
| because of Bruce Lee? Bizarre.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunchaku#Legality
| munificent wrote:
| This sounds so hilariously quaint to someone in the US
| like me. But, I guess that's because I'm used to being
| surrounded by people armed to the gills with assault
| rifles and shit. Maybe if you're in a mostly gun-free
| country, nunchaku actually seem kind of scary and
| threatening.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Especially ironic given nunchaku as a practical weapon is
| really not that great, especially in the hands of an
| amateur. A common kitchen knife or an iron rod (or even a
| good sturdy stick) would probably be more dangerous. It
| may be a great tool for a martial artist to develop
| valuable dexterity and speed skills, but as a practical
| weapon... It's common though for politicians to ban
| things out of sheer ignorance and following cultural
| stereotypes borrowed from fictional movies.
| int_19h wrote:
| This is what the UK police confiscates in their "weapons
| sweeps" these days:
|
| https://twitter.com/MPSRegentsPark/status/974645778558980
| 096
| dwighttk wrote:
| So is Napoleon Dyanamite censored too? I think he
| mentions nunchucks
| EpicEng wrote:
| The word isn't banned.
| [deleted]
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > often living in less-censored societies
|
| I think people a lot of us started to get out of the common
| path because of the limitations (which censorship is at the
| basic level) we hit. My hypothesis would be that simply
| "curious" people get pushed into the "hacker" bucket by
| getting refused something that seems reachable with some
| creativity.
|
| The dumb example is people will get creative and jumping
| through hoops to get foreign porn. Growing non-authorized
| plants is another example, where people have to learn so much
| by themselves to make it happen. Even getting pirated non-
| censored versons comes to require more and more technical
| proficiency I think, and looking at industry's reaction it
| seems there's a decent number of people sailing the seven
| seas.
| lettergram wrote:
| Sabinus wrote:
| I have a question for someone very interested in freedom of
| speech and censorship.
|
| We know that geopolitical adversaries weaponize narratives
| to cause destabilization of the body politic of other
| nations. We know that the internet and social media have
| exploded in popularity in the last 20 years, giving
| 'foreign actors' unprecedented access to citizens.
|
| What should a government of a 'free' nation do to counter
| that destabilization or those weaponized narratives?
| coffeeblack wrote:
| I can tell you what they shouldn't do: abandon the core
| principles of their own society.
| Banana699 wrote:
| Well, I'm very interested in Free Speech and the
| immorality of censorship, so I will take this.
|
| First, I will point out that almost no government, ever
| and everywhere, isn't full to the core with corruption
| and lying, like a decaying and rotten fruit left for
| weeks in a garbage dump.
|
| Some Westerners are deluded with the strange thought that
| it somehow makes a difference that those who are
| bamboozling them do it through convoluted interlocking
| systems of protocols and processes, commonly called
| Democracy, and not through brute force or other such
| barbarous means.
|
| From a dispassionate analysis of raw results, however,
| considering just the outside blackbox behaviour of a
| country without reference to its internal algorithms and
| data structures, almost every single thing China or
| Russia can do to a citizen, USA and Canada and UK And
| Germany can (and does), just maybe not as frequently and
| not as publicly (yet).
|
| This rather large caveat\objection aside, I will take the
| question at face value : what can a (supposedly
| benevolent) government do in the face of outside
| propaganda? A lot.
|
| First, propaganda is easy, especially when you're a
| government. If a foreign country is paying X to
| propagandize your citizens, you can afford to pay 10X,
| discounted by all the natural advantages you have when
| you're propagandizing your own citizens (same language
| and culture, official capacity to make and enforce laws,
| privileged position when dealing with media outlets,
| etc..., you literally rule). Indeed, for the same reason
| that religions always need a devil and revolutions always
| need enemies, the foreign propaganda might be a _boon_ to
| you, a thing to rally against in your own propaganda,
| food for your propaganda artists.
|
| Second, talk is cheap, and the vast majority of people
| would rather rage than do anything in real life. So, let
| propaganda fester, like a harmless fever. This an
| unfortunate effect of large human populations, known at
| the smaller scales as the bystander effect. In essence,
| everybody just says "not my problem" and just keeps
| shouting (if they do even that), hoping for someone else
| to actually do something, but everybody is thinking like
| that so nothing really gets done. This is bad for the
| people, but it's good for governments, it means most Free
| Speech is harmless. (which is bad news for any serious
| Free Speech advocate, because the goal isn't Free Speech
| in and of itself, but Free Expression, which starts with
| Free Speech but must end with Free Action. But again,
| this is all normative land, in actual material fact, most
| Free Speech is pure thunder without lightning or rain,
| and nobody loses anything by allowing it unless what
| they're hiding is truly egregious.)
|
| Finally, returning to the first caveat again, maybe just
| fuck you, the government? Maybe the foreign government is
| actually correct and the citizens should revolt and
| create unrest and become ungovernable till their demands
| are met?
|
| In summary, don't worry about the poor little
| governments, they can manage very well, with all the
| monopoly on violence and money printing and whatnot.
| int_19h wrote:
| For starters, how about governing the country in a way
| that doesn't create numerous low-hanging opportunities
| for propaganda against it. You know: don't invade other
| countries, don't torture people or hand them over to
| allies who do it on your behalf, don't ally with
| countries who do all of the above, don't conduct mass
| surveillance on your own citizens etc.
|
| To be clear, I'm not saying that the enemy agitprop is
| all true. However, the most effective kind of agitprop is
| the one that uses facts as the foundation for the rest of
| the structure. So how about we start there?
| ls15 wrote:
| > What should a government of a 'free' nation do to
| counter that destabilization or those weaponized
| narratives?
|
| Start to teach logical fallacies in primary schools.
| Encourage critical thinking. This comes at the cost that
| the government's own bs does not work so well anymore,
| because people now know how to spot a logical fallacy.
| IX-103 wrote:
| Banana699 wrote:
| First off, opening a comment with "Hello Troll" has to be
| the most childish and reddit-like way of opening an HN
| comment I have ever seen. If you think GP is a troll, you
| can simply not reply, indeed you are practically
| obligated by the guidelines not to. Once you reply, you
| are obligated to at least pretend you take the claims
| that you reply to seriously.
|
| Secondly, why are you responding to "Those topics are
| censored" claim with "Here are all the correct answers to
| those topics that my media tells me to believe"? GP
| didn't say whether they think there is a correct answer
| to a topic and what, if any, may that answer be, GP has
| simply observed that those topics are heavily and nakedly
| suppressed in legacy media and social media, often with
| hilarious results (e.g. Instagram banning Cochrane, a
| medical database of the highest quality, simply for
| mentioning Ivermectin).
|
| Contradicting GP here would consist of bringing up
| evidence that those topics were, on the contrary to GP's
| claim, discussed fairly and found wanting. Talking about
| correct answers are irrelevant, we're talking about
| whether _all_ questions and answers are allowed for
| discussion. Because Americans are often shocked that
| China hates things they consider elementary and bans
| them, GP is simply saying their own society frequently
| and obviously engages in this as well, often with
| cheering from those self same people.
|
| Third, some of your points about masks are self-
| contradicting. If the CDC lied about masks once, why
| wouldn't they lie twice or third or tenth? You would be a
| fool if you trust a liar after the 1st time, and medical
| institutions have proven to be thoroughly partisan and
| rotten and corrupt during the entire crisis, anybody
| taking a covid-related claim from a medical institution
| at face value is a prime target for bridge selling.
|
| Another point is that masks come in types, and only very
| few types protect adequately against the latest covid
| variants, and the vast majority of people don't buy those
| types (N95 or KN95) or don't wear them correctly. So
| masks, as worn in practice, are indeed very close to
| useless, as evidenced from the fact that they're not
| predictive of viral spread (i.e the fact that a country's
| population wears masks has no better than random chance
| correlation with whether it has lower infections, i.e
| masks are statistically useless).
|
| This why your correct answers are wrong, at least in
| part, some of the time. This is why you need to be
| constantly questioning them, and not rushing to defend
| the censorship loving institutions and corporations who
| have no particular interest in you or your well being,
| and all the interest in Power and Money and Status.
|
| Fourth, why the hell are you bringing up _more_ evidence
| for censorship as evidence _against_ GP? You 're
| supporting them, not contradicting them. GP never claimed
| the censorship is done by only 1 party, only that is
| done. You're arguing for GP's claim while thinking you're
| arguing against.
| lettergram wrote:
| Again my point was most people don't. It wasn't a troll;
| it was a comment about censorship. How certain topics are
| also censored on HN and elsewhere. That people whom we
| otherwise would expect curiosity are instead pro-
| suppressing discussion ie censoring.
|
| The fact you responded with "hello troll" is a perfect
| example.
|
| 1. The "election fortification" comment is in regards to
| https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
| it's a tongue in cheek title from a group which helped
| "ensure the outcome of the election" as they put it.
|
| 2. Hunter Biden's laptop was confirmed legitimate. It was
| easily confirmable by multiple people who knew the
| Biden's. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/who-is-tony-
| bobulinski-hunt... The senate report further confirmed it
| https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/HSGAC_Finance_
| Rep...
|
| I can keep going, but my general point was that if you
| didn't read the reports in detail (not via a pundit).
| Particularly, if you didn't / couldn't review the source
| material. Then the censorship worked. There's a great
| segment on CNN about wikileaks
| https://streamable.com/6g5v where you can't read Hillary
| emails, you have to hear it from CNN. "Remember it's
| illegal for anyone besides journalists to read her
| emails" a lie, but a form of censorship.
|
| It doesn't matter who is right or wrong, it's wether the
| discussion is suppressed. That's the censorship.
| koprulusector wrote:
| The thing is, people and corporations saying they don't
| really want to hear or spread bull shit isn't censorship.
| It's basic social contract/etiquette and a right. I have
| the right to hit "block user" - does this mean I'm
| censoring someone? If not, where is the distinction
| drawn? If yes, well, that's a hell of a slippery slope...
| Banana699 wrote:
| Corporations are not people outside of idiotic law speak.
| They should have no rights to freedom of association once
| they reach a certain (law-defined) size.
|
| Banana699 has the right to block you or otherwise tell
| you to fuck off from their private property, the 10
| million viewers Banana699^TM Inc Ltd does not. Media
| corporations picking and choosing the type of the story
| to serve is a very plausible reason for the intense
| polarization and Rage-As-A-Service ecosystem we are in.
| ipython wrote:
| So you're saying that if I start a website dedicated to
| unicorn ponies that has user interaction, I should be
| forced to accept your comment on neonazi ideology?
| Perhaps the local Christian owned cake shop should be
| forced to make a cake for a homosexual couple? Where does
| that end?
| Banana699 wrote:
| If your website is a corporation hitting all the legal
| prerequisites for fairness requirements (size, market
| share,...), then yes, you must accept my neo Nazi
| comment. You are allowed to make rules that ban views on
| other grounds than its content, such as being spammy or
| off topic to the conversation, but you would have to have
| objective and neutral criteria for those bans, and you
| should be obligated to justify yourself to your users
| with non-automated means, and the banned users should be
| able to sue you at little or no cost if they perceive
| unfairness.
|
| The local Christian cake shop are not a corporation and,
| by the very definition of 'local', almost certainly
| doesn't meet the legal prerequisites for fairness
| regulations, so they should not be forced to bake a cake
| against their will.
| brigandish wrote:
| I think the downvotes you're attracting give some
| indication for the HN crowd.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| I didn't downvote him, but I could see how even a staunch
| COVID denialist would think his comment is taking the
| thread off the rails
| lettergram wrote:
| I'm pointing out how censorship really works. It's just
| as active here as anywhere else, just different topics
| [deleted]
| lettergram wrote:
| elefanten wrote:
| Well taking only this thread as a datapoint... your list
| of censored news stories wasn't convincing. In what sense
| were any of those "censored"? I read all those cases
| being made on the internet. Are you naming editorial
| choice of what to publish "censorship"? I'm just
| confused.
|
| Anecdotally from my own perspective, I see big waves of
| voting on HN that go in various political directions.
| Seems consistent with self-selection by topic combined
| with randomness.
|
| None of it inspires confidence in your assessment of
| being "censored" on HN, or diagnosing the audience as
| less curious.
| lettergram wrote:
| 1. Are you serious? Why is Alex Jones censored? Why is
| Trump censored? Why did people get indefinitely banned
| for discussing many of those topics on social media?
|
| Just a few days ago Zuckerberg was discussing banning /
| suppressing discussion of the Hunter Biden laptop -
| https://nypost.com/2022/08/25/mark-zuckerberg-criticizes-
| twi...
|
| Idk what to say about that. It's not editorial decisions
| when DMs are being censored or social media posts.
| Particularly when the FBI / government is suggesting it.
|
| 2. This is a perfect example of my point. Most people
| don't even realize they are surrounded by censorship. Or
| they outright agree with it. Look up the list of topics
| bannable on YouTube. On Twitter you can't even call
| someone by the name their parents gave them if they
| disagree. In schools near where I live you can get
| suspended for using proper pronouns, if someone
| disagrees.
|
| Censorship in the US is different, but very apparent.
| 4512124672456 wrote:
| > Just a few days ago Zuckerberg was discussing banning /
| suppressing discussion of the Hunter Biden laptop -
| https://nypost.com/2022/08/25/mark-zuckerberg-criticizes-
| twi...
|
| The main problem is that you compare the freedom of
| social media platforms to regulate the content they host,
| to outright government-controlled censorship of all
| media. If it was actually the government censoring the
| topic, you would not have been able to link to a nypost
| article talking about it, and Trump wouldn't be able to
| post on his own social media platform.
|
| > Look up the list of topics bannable on YouTube. On
| Twitter you can't even call someone by the name their
| parents gave them if they disagree. In schools near where
| I live you can get suspended for using proper pronouns,
| if someone disagrees.
|
| Why are those topics bannable? Could it be that there is
| some kind of "code of conduct" that makes sure people are
| respectful to each other? Those people disagreeing are
| still free to host their own service, if they desperately
| want to deadname someone.
| lettergram wrote:
| My point was censorship, not who's doing it.
|
| There's a faction / ideology (across all party lines) in
| the west that is doing the same thing as China. For the
| same reasons "to be respectful to one another".
|
| That's kinda the point I'm trying to make.
| ipython wrote:
| Hey, great news! You can start your own site without
| censorship. The marketplace will determine whether your
| site succeeds or fails. Alex Jones makes a great living
| peddling his claptrap despite his claims otherwise- go
| forth and make your own fortune!
| koprulusector wrote:
| Seriously, what are you talking about? Last I checked
| Alex Jones has his own show and Trump has his own social
| network which has been (might still be) #1 in Apple's App
| Store. I am confused on how this is censorship?
|
| That said, if a private company like Twitter thinks Alex
| Jones is a liability because he spreads conspiracy
| theories of shape shifting lizard people from alternate
| dimensions sabotaging the Trump Presidency via the deep
| state because he's prepping the military and cia to take
| out the satanic cultists that worship and appease said
| lizard shapeshifting creatures via the blood of post-
| coital children, well...
| inkblotuniverse wrote:
| There's an argument that huge social media sites that
| have wide-scale usage are like utilities. The water
| company isn't allowed to shut off your taps because you
| said something they don't like.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That's a very valid argument, but it's a bit of a tangent
| from censorship.
|
| Let me make an analogy to Alex Jones and Trump: if the
| water company cuts someone off, but they continue to run
| a huge fountain in front of their mansion, then you can't
| reasonably claim they're being deprived of drinking
| water.
| jonnybgood wrote:
| You're conflating business and government. Businesses
| have the right to do what they want with their property
| within the law.
|
| Otherwise, I don't know what you're suggesting to be
| done. Do you want to expand the powers of the government
| to moderate these companies and their property?
| lettergram wrote:
| If government comes to you and says "this should be taken
| down due to X reason" then it is government censoring.
| China does the same thing. I linked elsewhere in this
| thread examples of the government asking Facebook or
| Twitter to censor directly.
|
| There's an implied threat. The Supreme Court has already
| ruled on this previously. I expect in the next couple
| years as court cases about the censorship work through
| the courts, the same thing will happen again.
|
| If the government was silent and the censorship occurred
| then MAYBE it's legal. That of course depends on if it's
| a common carrier or public space. Both arguably are true
| for social media, but again it takes time for the courts
| to figure it out. I would concede that point, but again
| government asked for the censorship here.
| jonnybgood wrote:
| They were asked because the government has no legal
| grounds to force them. In this situation, Facebook and
| Twitter are not legally obligated to take action. If they
| took action, it is because they chose to. In China,
| companies are legally obligated to take action whether
| they want to or not. It's not the same thing.
| trasz wrote:
| [citation needed]
| ipython wrote:
| Ok, I'll take a stab at feeding the troll tonight. The
| difference is that Facebook and Twitter and just turn
| around and tell the us gov to fuck off. In china, that's
| not really an option.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Not a single one of those stories was suppressed by the
| government in the U.S., which is what the article details
| happening in China. In fact many government officials
| supported and promoted those stories.
|
| Disagreement among private parties, or getting less
| private promotion than you wanted to get, is not
| "censorship". It's free speech in action.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| The Hunter Biden laptop story wasn't suppressed by the US
| government? Zuckerberg was on Rogan recently explaining
| that the FBI told him the story was Russian
| disinformation and Facebook took that to mean they should
| suppress the story and they did. Presumably something
| similar happened to Twitter and possibly other platforms.
| If memory serves former intelligence officials do go to
| mainstream media and say the story was fake. In what
| sense is this not government suppression?
| ipython wrote:
| Good lord. If the government was so committed to
| "suppressing" those stories as you claim, they were
| awfully bad at it, as anyone who ever wanted to learn
| about them certainly won't shut up about it. And I don't
| see black helicopters anywhere picking you up to some
| secret prison.
|
| Unlike the ccp example here, where I would say they do
| have a great handle on what can and cannot be discussed
| on any public platform and dissenters are most definitely
| threatened with if not actually subjected to physical
| force.
| brigandish wrote:
| > If the government was so committed to "suppressing"
|
| There's no need for quotes around _suppressing_ as it was
| suppressed, objectively.
|
| > they were awfully bad at it
|
| It was done to sway an election, which went the way was
| desired, and without any legal blowback. That is not
| being "awfully bad at it".
|
| > as anyone who ever wanted to learn about them certainly
| won't shut up about it.
|
| But _at the time_ and _when it was most important_ people
| were shut up regardless of whether they wanted to be.
| ipython wrote:
| I was there _at the time_ and I was very aware of the
| story. At no point was it difficult to learn more.
| References to the story were posted everywhere. Anyone
| who wanted to be aware of it was aware and could easily
| read it.
|
| Again, if you are somehow equating this hunter biden
| story with the censorship of, say, tiannamen square by
| the ccp, I encourage you to visit china and research the
| subject. Compare the efforts you mentioned were used to
| suppress the hunter biden story with what is outlined
| here, for example:
| https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/03/a-look-at-the-many-
| ways-ch... and you will see how awfully bad the us gov is
| at censorship.
|
| If the government was so concerned about trump as you
| say, then why did the same fbi re open an investigation
| into Hillary Clinton's email server just weeks before the
| 2016 election?
|
| Actually, tell you what, if you believe that the efforts
| to censor the hunter biden laptop story and tiannamen
| square are equivalent, I will make a bet. I will pay to
| print up two shirts: one with "hunter biden is a
| criminal" and a QR code to the New York post article. The
| other will say "remember June 5, 1989" with a QR code to
| the Wikipedia article titled "tank man".
|
| Wear both shirts in public outside the US capitol and
| take selfies. Then wear both shirts out in Beijing. Hell
| just try to get through customs wearing the June 5 shirt
| and let me know how that goes. I'll pay for the shirts.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| In the sense that the government did not suppress it. The
| NY Post ran the story with zero legal consequences and
| people in the U.S. have published and spoken continuously
| about it from then until now.
| brigandish wrote:
| Should we applaud the government for finding lackeys to
| help them avoid the letter of the law but not the spirit?
| lettergram wrote:
| These are just a handful off the top of my head...
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ
|
| https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/15580608445499023
| 38
|
| https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-
| content/uploads/FACEBO...
|
| https://nypost.com/2021/07/16/government-dictating-what-
| soci...
|
| I can keep going, but most of those people who are
| impacted you don't hear from due to censorship.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Always funny when people link to publicly available
| content in order to demonstrate that it is being
| censored.
| Banana699 wrote:
| Not as funny as when people link to publicly available
| content in order to demonstrate China is banning it.
| lettergram wrote:
| Censorship doesn't mean you cannot reach data; it's a
| suppression of speech (which Zuckerberg, Dorsey, and
| Youtube admitted to censoring publicly).
| https://www.britannica.com/topic/censorship
|
| > censorship, the changing or the suppression or
| prohibition of speech or writing that is deemed
| subversive of the common good. It occurs in all
| manifestations of authority to some degree, but in modern
| times it has been of special importance in its relation
| to government and the rule of law.
| brigandish wrote:
| > Not a single one of those stories was suppressed by the
| government in the U.S.
|
| How long were the FBI in possession of Hunter Biden's
| laptop, why is Mark Zuckerberg trying to blame them for
| the censorship of the NY Post's story, and do you
| consider the FBI to be part of the government?
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Zuck is trying to blame the FBI to draw attention away
| from the fact that it was his company that decided to
| limit the sharing of that story.
|
| The government tells publishers all the time not to print
| things. The decision is up to the publishers. That's free
| speech.
|
| What do you think the government said when the Washington
| Post called them up and said "we have a bunch of top-
| secret stuff that one of your contractors stole from the
| NSA"? The Post published the Snowden stories anyway. This
| sort of thing happens a lot.
|
| Many people posted and talked about the Hunter laptop
| story. None of those people went to jail for it.
| 4512124672456 wrote:
| People (or NPCs/bots, like you call them) downvote you
| because not only is it a bad take and does have
| questionable grammar, it's also full of misinformation.
|
| Let's take your first point for example. If I go on Fox
| News right now and search for articles about the 2020
| election being stolen, I get plenty of articles and
| opinions talking about it. How exactly was it censored, and
| how is it comparable to censorship in China?
|
| Besides, censorship is not inherently bad, and most stable
| democracies with a functioning legal system will have some
| form of censorship, to protect minors, for example.
| Banana699 wrote:
| >censorship is not inherently bad
|
| Then why do you get mad when China or the Middle East
| bans material they find objectionable? They simply have a
| different definition of what counts as objectionable,
| that's all, and it's well within their rights to enforce
| their different cultural values within their borders,
| just like you argue that a "democracy" has this right.
|
| Also, when I go to Netflix and search for "LGBT", I see
| tons of material. So that must obviously mean censoring
| of LGBT is a pathetic lie, it's right there in one (very
| big, much bigger than Fox) media outlet so it's obviously
| not censored.
| 4512124672456 wrote:
| > Then why do you get mad when China or the Middle East
| bans material they find objectionable?
|
| There is a difference between banning content that is
| objectively harmful (e.g. child porn) and banning content
| to control and suppress minorities. Just because they can
| doesn't mean it's good.
|
| > So that must obviously mean censoring of LGBT is a
| pathetic lie
|
| I never argued this.
| Banana699 wrote:
| There is no such thing as "objectively harmful", all harm
| or good is decided through values, and those values
| differ. The exact same way you deal with paedophilia, is
| the way some countries deal with the LGBT.
|
| It doesn't have to be governments only as well, the
| Middle East _is_ majority Muslim after all, and muslims
| do get _incredibly_ offended at LGBT stuff (a lot of
| Arabic insults are just variations on "gay"). So,
| according to you, those private citizens and corporations
| should be allowed to ban the LGBT, it's not censorship if
| the government isn't doing it right?
|
| >I never argued this.
|
| No, but you did argue for something indistinguishably
| similar, which is that because a news story is found on
| Fox then this news story is not actually censored. So, by
| that same unassailable logic, LGBT stuff is on Netflix
| and therefore LGBT stuff is not actually being censored.
| All objections you have against my satire argument is
| applicable to your real argument.
| lettergram wrote:
| "misinformation" is a term used to discredit and dismiss.
| It's often used by the government in an attempt to censor
| people on social media
|
| heres an example where the White House admits it:
| https://nypost.com/2021/07/15/white-house-flagging-posts-
| for...
|
| That is censorship, because social media then bans
| (censors) those users and the discussion. Which was my
| exact point.
|
| What do they do in China: "hey this snippet here looks
| like misinformation" then the company removes that
| snippet. They extend it to insults about the Chinese
| race, but don't we do the same with gender pronouns?
|
| How is it different materially?
|
| My point was censorship is done universally, just in
| different ways and for different topics. It's always the
| same reason though, to avoid some idea the people in
| power don't want propagated. Could be a joke, could be
| "misinformation", could be that there's only one good
| race (no one dare make fun of), or you can have any
| gender. It's all just power / politics.
|
| The censored rarely take the time to learn what is being
| censored because they don't think to know. You have to
| keep the idea from entering the mind of the opposition.
| That's why you censor in the first place. You have to
| defame those who question the authority and call them
| "fascists" so no one listens to them. Self-censoring who
| you listen to and not telling others "hey this person has
| an interesting take!" It's all the same game, a game to
| control the population.
|
| > Besides, censorship is not inherently bad, and most
| stable democracies with a functioning legal system will
| have some form of censorship, to protect minors, for
| example.
|
| I would argue we don't see stable "democracies", we see
| oligarchies. Why is it ruling families in the UK still
| effectively rule? Politicians are always from a certain
| class. Similar in France, when's the last commoner who
| speaks like the rural folk who's held the prime minister
| seat? We all see how Trump was treated for speaking
| plainly... then again, he was a "threat to democracy"
|
| The oligarchs control what you can think, through
| managing what information you can read / see. "Democracy"
| in the US is a code word, for the status quo.
| ipython wrote:
| Fantastic word salad you have there, managing to avoid
| the entire question posed to you. Shows that you have no
| cogent argument, just a bunch of grievances. I'm sorry to
| hear of your problems.
| psyc wrote:
| I don't think you know what word salad is. If you do, way
| to use sly accusations of mental illness to discredit,
| supporting their point that you can't win an argument
| without cheating.
| lettergram wrote:
| Maybe this format would help
|
| Q: How exactly was it censored, and how is it comparable
| to censorship in China?
|
| A: https://nypost.com/2021/07/15/white-house-flagging-
| posts-for... That is censorship, because social media
| then bans (censors) those users and the discussion. Which
| was my exact point. What do they do in China: "hey this
| snippet here looks like misinformation" then the company
| removes that snippet. They extend it to insults about the
| Chinese race, but don't we do the same with gender
| pronouns? How is it different materially?
| ipython wrote:
| Maybe I should remind you of the actual words in the gp
| comment.
|
| > Let's take your first point for example. _If I go on
| Fox News right now and search for articles about the 2020
| election being stolen, I get plenty of articles and
| opinions talking about it._ How exactly was it censored,
| and how is it comparable to censorship in China?
|
| You have conveniently pivoted to a straw man argument
| about Covid-19 which was not mentioned.
|
| And there are plenty of people on Facebook talking all
| sorts of crap about vaccines. If it was so stringently
| "censored" as you claim, it would be hard for us to argue
| about - as I would have never heard the anti vaxxers
| arguments. But good lord, they never shut up- so I'm
| exceptionally aware of their opinions.
| epups wrote:
| You are right that he conflated two types of censorship
| in the West. The first is as you say, eliminate it from
| mainstream media and let lunatics ramble about it on
| social media (vaccines, lab theory, etc.). This has an
| impact on the legitimacy of what's being said, and your
| exposure to these ideas. The second type of censorship is
| the outright ban of certain topics, such as the Hunter
| Biden laptop.
| ipython wrote:
| Really? The mainstream media didn't cover the hunter
| biden laptop?
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunt
| er-...
| epups wrote:
| This piece is from 2022. I'm talking about the time when
| Twitter and Facebook banned publication of the original
| NY Post publication, which would have affected elections.
| We now know the FBI demanded this of Facebook.
| ipython wrote:
| So you're saying your average voter never managed to land
| somewhere on breitbart and see the 82 point headlines
| about the hunter biden laptop?
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20201014171957/http://breitba
| rt....
|
| Look, I'm just on my phone so I'm not going to dig up
| archive links showing the post article all over the web
| at the time, but really - what do you want? The emergency
| broadcast system activated to push the story to
| everyone's phone like an amber alert?
|
| I was there - and honestly the news about "suppressing"
| the ny post story just encouraged me to go read it _more_
| , ala the Streisand effect. Which is exactly what I did
| out of morbid curiosity. I encountered no issues finding
| the story, had no issues with authorities as a result of
| searching for it and reading it and took no precautions
| to protect my identity while doing so.
| epups wrote:
| I'm not even sure what your point is here. I'm telling
| you that the FBI ordered two major social media platforms
| to suppress sharing of a truthful news story for
| political reasons. It's also a fact that most media
| outlets did the same. This is state censorship, and the
| fact that you could go to Breitbart or whatever fringe
| news site, or that you personally did so, doesn't change
| absolutely anything about that.
| psyc wrote:
| Silly wabbit. You're on the liberal web now. Get ya ass
| to the conservative web where we can talk strategy
| instead of yelling at the deaf and dumb.
| lettergram wrote:
| 1. The primary discussion was around "how was censorship
| related to China" and the poster gave a random example
| from my arbitrary list. I responded with an arbitrary
| example, but still giving an example how censorship is
| comparable to China.
|
| 2. My position has never been the government has to be
| doing the censorship. People censor, some in media, some
| in social media, some on HN, some in government, etc.
|
| 3. Censorship doesn't mean you cannot reach data; it's a
| suppression of speech (which Zuckerberg, Dorsey, and
| Youtube admitted to censoring publicly).
| https://www.britannica.com/topic/censorship
|
| > censorship, the changing or the suppression or
| prohibition of speech or writing that is deemed
| subversive of the common good. It occurs in all
| manifestations of authority to some degree, but in modern
| times it has been of special importance in its relation
| to government and the rule of law.
|
| 4. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/did-social-
| media-actua...
|
| > Ahead of the election, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
| promised to clamp down on election misinformation,
| including unsubstantiated charges of fraud and premature
| declarations of victory by candidates. And they mostly
| did just that -- though not without a few hiccups.
|
| They have been open about censoring since before the
| election. Now, if we want to get into government, the FBI
| interfered by (1) strongly suggesting social media to
| "limit" (censor) information; and ironically (2) accused
| of not investigating or sharing relevant information
| about the candidates (https://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/s
| ervices/files/7CD44E16-BF...)
|
| 5. I know many people banned from social media. They
| can't post on any accounts. I also followed many people I
| didn't know personally banned. If you ask questions /
| discuss certain topics you will be removed; typically for
| sharing particular pieces of content.
| Agentlien wrote:
| Growing up in Sweden, I mainly watched Swedish (original or
| dubbed) shows as a kid.
|
| Once we got satellite and I started watching American
| channels I had my first encounter with censorship. Bleeps and
| blurs and random spots where audio cuts out. It was very
| jarring. I couldn't understand it at all and still can't. It
| really stands out, breaks the flow, makes everything feel
| cheap and ugly. In real life people swear and sometimes there
| is nudity. That never bothered me. But the jarring edits
| "protecting" me from these? Those certainly do.
| Kye wrote:
| TV edits ruin everything. There's a scene in Independence
| Day where Will Smith's character is running from an alien
| fighter, and he says "oh no you did not shoot that green
| shit at me." TV edits make it "green stuff," and it does
| _not_ work.
| Agentlien wrote:
| I feel the same way about some radio/music video edits of
| songs. The one which really bothers me is Cee Lo green's
| "Fuck You". At some point Spotify randomly played the
| clean version of it, called "Forget You" and it just
| doesn't work. It turns a snappy and fun highlight into an
| awkward moment.
|
| Excessive profanity generally makes things sound less
| eloquent, but limited use can be really good for
| emphasis.
| gpt5 wrote:
| This relates to PG rating and the way national TV works. In
| order to secure prime time spots, the show must hit a
| certain "family friendly" rating that matches the audience
| of the TV network. They chose the beeps as a way to cater
| for both adults and kids together. FWIW, these are far less
| common today.
| Agentlien wrote:
| I'm quite familiar with PG ratings. Not just because it's
| mentioned everywhere, but also because we had some
| passionate discussions about which to go for during the
| making of one of the Need for Speed games. Honestly, I
| feel they warp a lot of not just how media is presented
| but even how it is produced, sometimes in ways which make
| things feel very weird and inauthentic.
|
| However, when I first started seeing this stuff as a kid
| I had no idea why and it really struck me as odd.
|
| I think the funniest thing I've heard about censorship
| was Magnus Uggla, a Swedish artist, complaining that
| because he had a UK firm produce one of his music videos
| it was a real struggle getting them not to blur a scene
| where they're drinking shots.
| imyangmo wrote:
| in my observation (and it might not be correct), most of ppl
| around me doesn't even care which part has been censored,
| watching those sitcoms are just a way to kill time after all.
| however, you could find those censored clips on some video
| platforms where censorship is not so strict since there is no
| clear guidelines about what should not be exist.
| koonsolo wrote:
| The cuts are mainly obvious because of the sound glitch. I
| think when they would have a better crossover of the audio, it
| would be way harder to notice.
| kelnos wrote:
| There were also one or two clips where they cut off someone
| midsentence where they didn't really have to; just waiting
| for them to finish their sentence to start the cut would have
| been fine. Very low-effort job all around. But I suspect that
| if you grow up with this sort of thing, you just assume that
| it's normal, possibly just how foreign shows are made. You
| might not think anything is wrong until someone points it
| out, and shows you the uncensored version. But how many
| people in China would have access to an uncensored version?
| mftb wrote:
| It absolutely backfires. No one is as successful at selling US
| culture as the US, except all those countries that censor
| exported/imported US culture.
| concordDance wrote:
| This seems untrue. Do more than a fraction of a percent of
| Chinese people watch the uncensored versions of things?
| codyathez wrote:
| mftb wrote:
| I have no idea, but I also doubt that's the most effective
| metric for determining people buying/being sold, US
| culture. I think you'd have to sample a wide range of
| metrics to gauge how well US culture has been sold around
| the world. You'd also have to come up with a good
| definition of culture. I'm using a very generous one here,
| including pop-culture, tech-culture and lots of what many
| people might consider trash. But yea, notwithstanding all
| of that, I still support the notion that US culture has
| been sold effectively throughout the world by the US and
| those who have tried to censor it.
| iratewizard wrote:
| Agreed. It's easy to handwave it off. Americans churn out
| propaganda and inject it into every form of media it can.
| Similar to preservatives, some media is more nitrate than
| meat. China cuts it out because it says it's unhealthy to
| consume. China can do that overtly in it's culture war
| because it has never guaranteed not to.
| astrange wrote:
| Isn't China's movie editing more like adding a slideshow
| at the end that says "and then every character was
| arrested by the police, reeducated, and is now in a
| heterosexual nuclear family with 2.5 children"?
|
| https://twitter.com/ZeyiYang/status/1561565205942919170
| tuatoru wrote:
| Not on a regular basis, perhaps.
|
| The glitches serve to remind them daily that their
| government is manipulating them.
|
| The dilemma that China's leaders have is that they need an
| educated workforce, capable of logical and critical
| thinking, but they can't stop that workforce thinking
| critically outside work.
| adrianN wrote:
| I don't think that logical and critical thinking protects
| against being fine with living in an authoritarian state,
| or even being in favor of authoritarianism.
| sangnoir wrote:
| I'm itching to give a counterexample, but that'll ignite
| a flame war. I'll cowardly insinuate it instead: you know
| the country I'm talking about.
| kelnos wrote:
| I mean, seriously. I'm American, and the US primary
| school system is clearly designed half as day care, and
| half as a factory for teaching US citizens how to think
| like US citizens are "supposed" to think.
|
| We also forget that, in the mid and late 1900s (or, like
| many of us, just weren't born yet), many (though not all)
| of the same kinds of censorship were present in American
| TV, and to some extent movies as well.
|
| I do find the Chinese version to be more insidious (and
| more dangerous, given current surveillance and content-
| blocking technology), and much of it probably is, but I
| do think some of it is just unconscious nationalism and
| "othering" on my part, as much as I try to stamp out that
| kind of thinking in myself.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _The glitches serve to remind them daily that their
| government is manipulating them._
|
| I suspect that the vast majority of Chinese viewers
| barely notice, or just assume that there was some sort of
| problem with the source material when it was imported
| into their country. Most probably don't make the
| connection that portions have been censored, because this
| is just what they've grown up with, and seems normal.
|
| I think you both under- and over-estimate Chinese people
| in this regard. Certainly they are well-educated, but
| they've been raised culturally very differently than you
| or I. It's not impossible to be smart and know how to
| think, but also close off your mind to certain classes of
| criticism because you've been raised to value unity and
| harmony above other concerns.
| nathias wrote:
| it seems that US censorship seems to be apparent to all except
| some people in US. This bizzare notion that private companies
| somehow can't be doing censorship is terrible for free societies.
| npc54321 wrote:
| Youtube does not allow footage of the recent/outgoing protests
| against banks in China.
| avrionov wrote:
| This is not true!
|
| Here is one example:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLdobKqTPB0
| neop1x wrote:
| Another example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBBnQmRcRI4
|
| The author is says that chinese bots are downvoting it. It may
| or may not be true.
| debacle wrote:
| Interesting that censoring only 3% of what I would regard as a
| very trendy show can eliminate depictions of sexuality, sex,
| religion, and unwanted political commentary.
|
| You can effectively change reality by adjusting a tiny fraction
| of it. This is why the Overton Window is so important.
| chabons wrote:
| That percentage will depend heavily on the show. The Big Bang
| Theory is fairly innocuous. Imagine trying to censor dramas
| like Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, or House of Cards to remove
| all of the depictions of sex, drugs, or political commentary.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| I remember watching a standup comedy show by either Eddie
| Murphy or Richard Pryor a long time ago that was heavily
| censored. There were so many bleeps in the program that you
| could barely follow it. It was similar to the recent heavily-
| redacted FBI affidavit that was released and where every
| other sentence seems to be blacked out.
| joshstrange wrote:
| You do realize those are in no way whatsoever related and
| are due to 2 completely different sets of circumstances?
|
| One is a private company (either first or third-party)
| offering a censored version of a piece of media and the
| other is the government redacting things from a document
| that would normally not be released at all (at this stage)
| and the redactions were specifically done to prevent
| witnesses tampering or similar tactics by the accused.
|
| To call those "similar" is just absurd.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| When I used the term 'similar' it had nothing to do with
| the reasoning or methodology behind the censoring. Only
| that the finished product in both cases was sufficiently
| censored that less than half the original content
| remained. It is not just a few select pieces that are cut
| out, it is creating a whole new product that is almost
| unrecognizable when compared to the original.
| joshstrange wrote:
| My apologies then. I read it differently and jumped to
| the wrong conclusion about the point you were making.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| Apology accepted. Sometime I too jump to conclusions when
| I shouldn't, so I understand.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| It's really interesting that such a bland, un-subversive show
| whose only mentions of sensitive topics are in bad throwaway
| jokes is so heavily censored. I guess a more interesting show
| would just not get aired at all.
| permo-w wrote:
| someone should try and get Brass Eye released in China
| swayvil wrote:
| It's a deeper level of censorship. Not only will you refrain
| from thinking about these things in a tolerant light, you will
| refrain from thinking about these things at all.
|
| It chops pieces off reality when you do that.
|
| Censorship is amazing. So popular (downvotes anyone?), so
| casually employed, yet so incredibly destructive.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Indeed. It seems to have had the effect of removing pieces of
| reality.
|
| I had a conversation once with a Chinese national, about an
| article about LGBTQ+ people in China.
|
| "There's no Gay people in China"
|
| (me, points at a picture of 2 young Chinese men in the
| article)
|
| "They're from Hong Kong. There's no Gay people in China."
|
| OK then!
|
| (This was quite a while back, I suspect the same conversation
| today would play out differently, since the popular opinion
| is that HK is in fact part of China)
| okasaki wrote:
| What a bizarre and ridiculous view to form based on one
| conversation.
|
| I'm sure you can find plenty of people in the west who
| believe stupid things. Does that mean that western
| countries are "removing pieces of reality"?
| RajT88 wrote:
| > I'm sure you can find plenty of people in the west who
| believe stupid things. Does that mean that western
| countries are "removing pieces of reality"?
|
| Yes. The past 20 years or so the media ecosystems have
| been trying to do exactly that, at least in the US where
| I live. Remove the bits they don't like, and invent out
| of whole cloth replacement bits.
| aetherane wrote:
| I have heard the same statement several times too. I
| think the point was in relation to the context of
| censorship of LGBTQ content.
| astrange wrote:
| I've heard this from Chinese lesbians too. They aren't
| out in China, but other people are completely incapable
| of noticing they're gay, and other women won't admit
| they're gay to them even if eg they have just had sex.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Hence 1984's CrimeThink
| jollybean wrote:
| Actually, I think there's a more benign reason and that is
| references to those kinds of things are just a bit below bar
| for normally civil programming.
|
| If you've ever watched the banal things that people go
| through to get something past daytime censors, or, get a PG
| rating for films etc. it's similar.
|
| This is not 'Xi's authoritarian' system so much as 'different
| cultural standards of the moment'.
|
| Respect that in some parts of the world they don't talk or
| joke about STD's in that context.
|
| I wouldn't want to be subject to it, but this is not the kind
| of censorship that's a problem.
|
| Note that in the West, we 'self censor' tons of jokes or
| things that might be a bit off.
|
| Finally - I'm 100% certain there are examples of this kind of
| censorship which are problematic, for example, the mention of
| 'Taiwan' etc..
| peteradio wrote:
| But this is streaming not broadcast daytime television.
| Censoring crude jokes/porn/violence that might be happened
| upon by a toddler flipping the remote makes quite a lot of
| sense.
| swayvil wrote:
| I wonder how China protects its censors from wrong ideas
| (seeing as how they must necessarily come into contact with
| it). Extra indoctrination? Some kind of surveillance
| layercake?
|
| I read a scifi where digital personality-recordings became
| popular for various office/industrial applications. Sorta
| like an AI, but human. They were used for censorship. The
| remedy for ideological contamination? Full reboot every
| morning.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| You choose people based on their loyalty to the party and
| fanatical devotion. It's a pretty straightforward way of
| doing it, heck somewhere else in this thread someone was
| already getting offended at the joke about the chicken.
|
| Some people just have no sense of humour and a fanatical
| devotion to a cause, they are useful if not very wise.
| This is one of those situations where they are useful.
| jollybean wrote:
| Chinese people know about 'STDs' - they just don't put
| them in programming.
|
| I'm sure they all know about Taiwan as well.
|
| So mostly it's just keeping programming in terms of what
| they define as 'civil' - and - with the added element of
| pulling 'political censorship'.
|
| It's about large audiences and averages not about the
| knowledge of a specific thing.
| Sin2x wrote:
| This idea can be easily reversed:
|
| It's a deeper level of indoctrination. When these things are
| covertly inserted in an innocuous sounding show, not only
| will you start thinking about them, you will subconsiously
| think of them in a tolerant light.
|
| China has its own culture and mores, why should it allow that
| kind of soft projection of Western power.
| wozer wrote:
| For some things that might be true.
|
| But when the indoctrination collides with reality in a
| harmful way, it's a different matter. Objectively, it is
| true that gay people exists and that there is no good
| reason to restrict their rights.
| nightpool wrote:
| Sure, but like other people in this thread are saying,
| it's _not_ objectively true that the Chinese restaurant
| down the street is selling you dog meet and pretending
| that it 's chicken, or that Chinese academics in the US
| are siphoning grant money and funneling it to Pyongyang.
| "Pervasive cultural norms colliding with reality" is a
| two-way street.
| cutemonster wrote:
| > China has its own culture and mores
|
| Correction: Xi and the CCP have their own culture and mores
|
| The people, though, want to see The Big Bang Theory
| uncensored.
|
| The people are _different from Xi_. They don 't want the
| same things as he (except for the ones Xi has successfully
| brainwashed, or those who have a highly tribal brain).
|
| > why should it allow that kind of soft projection
|
| That sounds paranoid, I hope you don't mind. Reasoning in
| that way, almost all movies in the world wold be a "soft
| projection" and Nation State attack. But sometimes it's
| just jokes or reality and a good movie ... or would have
| been.
| nightpool wrote:
| > Reasoning in that way, almost all movies in the world
| wold be a "soft projection" and Nation State attack
|
| I mean, I don't think it requires any sort of active
| attack, or paranoia about a malicious attack, to
| recognize that soft power is real and it can influence
| people's behavior even when nobody intended it. The Big
| Bang Theory, as a reflection of American culture, can
| work to perpetuate that culture and serve America's
| interests _even without anybody in America or anybody
| working on the Big Bang Theory intending for that to
| happen_.
|
| Now, in the case of the Big Bang Theory, whether that is
| good or bad is somewhat up to whether you think American-
| culture-as-espoused-by-the-Big-Bang-Theory is good or
| not, but honestly as an American who generally thinks
| American culture is good about some stuff but not
| everything, the Big Bang Theory is pretty far down on the
| list of cultural exports I would consider good or
| important. There's a lot of stuff in the Big Bang Theory
| that I feel ashamed to be associated with, including some
| of the stuff mentioned in this article as cut, like the
| racist jokes about Chinese people.
| okasaki wrote:
| Good thing we have HN user cutemonster to tell us what
| the Chinese people want.
| davemp wrote:
| Please don't post insubstantial comments like this on HN:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| cowtools wrote:
| If the chinese people had the option between the censored
| and uncensored version, which one do you think they would
| prefer?
|
| On an individual level it is obvious that almost no one
| advocates for self-censorship. Most people are only
| enthusiastic about censorship when they are the censor
| and not the censored.
|
| The communist dictatorship is a parasitic form of
| governance, but most cannot escape because they're stuck
| at a local maxima.
| notahacker wrote:
| I strongly suspect many if not most Chinese people would
| choose to see the censored version, especially if the
| stated reason for the censorship was "we have removed
| some things which may be insulting to Chinese people".
|
| Most people don't like being censored themselves, but
| don't confuse that for a moment with believing that most
| people want everything uncensored. For all public
| discourse in America constantly talks about free speech
| absolutism and the horrors of censorship, US TV has
| "decency" regulations and there's absolutely no mass
| movement to ensure that TV companies are not penalised
| for 'wardrobe malfunctions' and expletives are broadcast
| without bleeps. Why would people from a much more
| conservative culture where public discourse attaches no
| value to free speech but stresses paternalism and
| patriotism instead be so keen on hearing alleged rudeness
| about their country?
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| I imagine that if the choice was to watch a movie with
| the family, free of annoying propaganda, that you'd be
| right. But if the choice was to never be able to see the
| "propaganda" you're being protected against, that fewer
| people would take the deal.
|
| These discussions conflate voluntary censorship like age-
| gating with willingness to actually let someone lie to
| you, even in cases where you know the truth directly, and
| accepting it - ostensibly for the good of the group.
| ndespres wrote:
| Some of these jokes which are censored for criticism of China
| are so tasteless that they ought to be censored in the American
| version as well, or better still, never written at all. A joke
| about whether the "chicken" at the local Chinese takeout
| restaurant is actually chicken? In the 21st century? That is
| supposed to be amusing?
| kogus wrote:
| I think it's important to distinguish between government
| censorship and corporate self-censorship. Almost nothing
| should be censored by the government. Almost anything can be
| censored by private parties (however cowardly such censorship
| may often be).
| ginger2016 wrote:
| Government censorship can look at lot like corporate
| censorship, remember Zuckerberg said Facebook limited the
| reach of the news story because FBI informed them
| something. I am sure this is probably not the first time
| American government "requested" a corporation to censor
| something without the public knowing.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I suspect some of it is just censoring for the sake of
| censoring.
|
| It is a common problem, if your job is to inspect something and
| you find nothing wrong, how do you show that you did your job?
|
| Here is an anecdote: in the game "Battle Chess", the graphists
| were quite happy with how their work turned out, but they knew
| it will be reviewed, and the reviewers will have to say
| something. So they added a small duck going around the queen
| piece, in a way that was easy to remove. As planned, reviewers
| said "everything is fine, but remove the duck", which they did,
| leaving the original design intact.
| [deleted]
| bee_rider wrote:
| Actually, I wonder if that would be a "good" way of making a
| comedy that can be shown everywhere. Just film like 40 minutes
| per episode for a 30 minute slot, but only include throwaway
| jokes to they can be removed as needed.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Comedy doesn't translate well, even among people of similar
| demographics. What makes one person fall out of their chair
| with laughter will make another roll their eyes. You can
| water jokes down and make them generic, but rarely will you
| elicit more than a chuckle from people once you've completely
| diluted a joke. What was the last "dad joke" you heard that
| made you laugh uncontrollably?
|
| I think it's pointless to try an appease everyone. People
| should make comedy for their audiences and those who don't
| find it funny are free to ignore it. Just like, I think
| people should write sci-fi or thrillers for their audiences,
| rather than for everyone.
| stirfish wrote:
| I read somewhere that if you're writing humor for kids, you
| have to strip out a lot of the context: they might not know
| what an Eiffel Tower is, but they will understand Big Thing.
| Maybe comedy that can be shown everywhere is comedy a child
| can understand?
| m463 wrote:
| I can't help but wonder what the first-pass of censors did to
| the big bang theory (I'm pretty sure internal review and the
| rating service that gave it tv-14 cut stuff out too)
| sltkr wrote:
| Personally I'm mostly offended how stale and unoriginal a lot
| of these jokes are, but I can definitely see why the censors
| took offense at some of them.
|
| For example, the joke about the Chinese restaurant ("I'd be
| more concerned about what they're passing off as chicken")
| plays off of the stereotype that Chinese people eat dogs and
| cats, and the "passing off" remark implies that the Chinese
| restaurant owners are deceptive and would immorally and
| illegally serve their guests a different kind of meat than
| advertised. I can definitely see how that joke would be
| considered offensive.
|
| The author labels that joke as "harmless" but you don't have to
| be a Chinese censor to interpret it as reinforcing harmful
| stereotypes. I dare you to show that scene at a liberal college
| and notice how few laughs you get.
|
| Similarly, the racist remarks about Chinese people made by
| Sheldon's mom are somewhat offensive if taken at face value. I
| guess the joke is supposed to be at her expense instead ("old
| people are racists" is an American comedy cliche, if a somewhat
| tired one) but it's conceivable that either the censors didn't
| get that, or they feared that their audience didn't get that,
| so they decided to cut it out entirely.
|
| "They wouldn't get that" is probably also the right explanation
| for censoring the joke about Jews eating at Chinese restaurants
| during Christmas, which is a very American tradition. That
| doesn't imply the joke needs to go, but I can see how that
| would, at best, leave Chinese viewers scratching their heads.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| For the most part, jokes are only offensive if they strike a
| nerve.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-walmart-china/wal-mart-
| re...
|
| > Wal-Mart will reimburse customers who bought the tainted
| "Five Spice" donkey meat and is helping local food and
| industry agencies in eastern Shandong province investigate
| its Chinese supplier... The Shandong Food and Drug
| Administration earlier said the product contained fox meat.
| ryanobjc wrote:
| dogleash wrote:
| >Personally I'm mostly offended how stale and unoriginal a
| lot of these jokes are
|
| It's CBS. The channel for old people on a medium for old
| people.
|
| >I dare you to show that scene at a liberal college and
| notice how few laughs you get.
|
| Yes, and? Everyone thinks they like 'irreverent' comedy until
| it violates the wrong proprieties. "On the way out of
| fashion" is a flavor of subversive comedy, often targeted at
| different audiences than "on the way into fashion" flavor of
| subversive comedy.
|
| The people old enough to watch CBS are from a generation
| where they and their friends can exchange jokes at the
| expense of eachother's lineal stereotypes without it being
| inherently toxic. I just let them have their laughs, it seems
| pretty harmless.
| the_optimist wrote:
| Agree, these are 'jokes' are pathetically trite, bland fare.
| However ironically, liberal college grads are mostly the ones
| writing the shows. Hard to wrap one's head around.
| Gigachad wrote:
| No one is claiming that The Big Bang Theory is the peak of
| high class humor but I wouldn't say its offensive. The
| first example might seem offensive if you don't have any
| social skills but the joke is not about the eyes of Asian
| people, the joke is that old people, particularly in rural
| areas often make off hand racist comments and the awkward
| moments that result. The viewer is meant to relate to
| things they have heard their parents say rather than
| relating with the person reading the line.
| jjcon wrote:
| > can definitely see why the censors took offense at some of
| them
|
| Take offense maybe... censor absolutely not
| stirfish wrote:
| > I dare you to show that scene at a liberal college and
| notice how few laughs you get.
|
| Yeah, the show isn't that funny.
|
| >For example, the joke about the Chinese restaurant ("I'd be
| more concerned about what they're passing off as chicken")
| plays off of the stereotype that Chinese people eat dogs and
| cats, and the "passing off" remark implies that the Chinese
| restaurant owners are deceptive and would immorally and
| illegally serve their guests a different kind of meat than
| advertised. I can definitely see how that joke would be
| considered offensive.
|
| I hadn't considered the cat/dog meat angle, thank you for the
| perspective. In that case, I'd probably cut it too. I was
| thinking more of chicken nuggets, where a dozen birds are
| liquified and poured into a mold.
|
| Like if you ordered the pork and was served a hotdog, the
| "passing off as" bit would still work, you know?
| archi42 wrote:
| Just today I saw part of a BBT rerun on German TV: The guys
| camp out in some lodge, together with the lodge's owner. That
| owner is also a brilliant(?) scientist, living alone in the
| lodge. I think he is from Germany, but that might differ
| depending on the localisation. He and his wife send each
| other cards once per year, for their respective birthday.
| Well, turns out most years, because this year he forgot it
| (Sheldon later realizes that in fact Amy is more important to
| him than science). Anyway, he asks them if they know the
| difference in taste between (wild) rabbit and squirrel, and
| since the guys say they don't, "well, then we'll have bunny
| today" and leaves the lodge with his rifle. The guys then
| leave while he is hunting, with Sheldon commenting "I know
| the difference, I'm from Texas".
|
| So, as a German, should I be offended because of the
| squirrel/rabbit thing? Should Texans be offended? What about
| the career over partner theme, is that insensible to Germans
| divorcing due to career-induced burnouts?
|
| No, it's just a joke. I don't believe anyone would think we
| ate squirrel, and I don't believe Texans do. (However, rabbit
| is in fact eaten around here. It's also a meat in France (who
| are famous for their cuisine) and... China. Says the
| Internet. But around here rabbit is more a delicacy, often
| for Easter or other special occasions; personally I think I
| haven't eaten rabbit meat in nearly a decade. Also, the
| rabbits-for-eating are large animals, not bunnys. Those are
| adored and loved as pets).
| astrange wrote:
| The rabbits bred for meat also make good pets:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdAi5Y8DDoNyX-4qcEcd-5w
|
| On the other hand, there's apparently a problem where pet
| stores are selling similar giant guinea pig breeds as pets,
| but they're too wild and don't have the temper to enjoy it.
|
| https://www.cavyhouse.org/%22Cuy%22.html
| jedberg wrote:
| > I dare you to show that scene at a liberal college and
| notice how few laughs you get.
|
| Did you see the recent video where the white guy dressed up
| in a poncho, big hat, and fake mustache and carried around
| maracas? He asked a bunch of white kids on a college campus
| if they thought his outfit was offensive to Mexicans, and
| they all said yes.
|
| Then he went to the Mexican part of town and asked actual
| Mexicans, and they all said it was funny or that they liked
| that he was trying to honor their culture. Not one of them
| was offended.
|
| So perhaps it would be good to ask a Chinese person if this
| joke offends them.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Who posted that video, and was it unedited? If we're going
| on a single piece of anecdata, I think it's fair to
| question if the creator had any biases or was trustworthy.
|
| And not all racism / bias is equal. Maybe you are right
| that Chinese and Chinese-American people would not be
| offended by this, but it seems completely reasonable that
| they would be, and the onus on you would be to get data
| that they wouldn't. It really doesn't matter what liberal
| college students think at all, unless they happen to also
| be of Chinese or of Chinese descent (or they are southeast
| Asian, and tired of lazy racism that doesn't bother to
| distinguish such things).
|
| edit: it was in fact PragerU
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PragerU) which is intended
| for entertainment. It should not be considered reliable or
| unedited.
| the_af wrote:
| > _edit: it was in fact PragerU
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PragerU) which is intended
| for entertainment. It should not be considered reliable
| or unedited._
|
| Isn't PragerU a far right site know for promoting bizarre
| things? I'd would definitely call it "unreliable".
| jedberg wrote:
| > and the onus on you would be to get data that they
| wouldn't.
|
| FWIW I have a few data points -- this is something my
| Chinese wife has literally said inside a Chinese
| restaurant, and some of her other family members have
| said similar things about not trusting that the food
| being served is what they said it was.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| And I did not know if you were Chinese or otherwise of
| east or south-east Asian descent, either. A group is not
| obligated to be a monolith in what they feel is offensive
| or not. And sometimes can be empowering to steal a slur /
| stereotype, but it feels a lot differently if the same
| word or joke is made in other circumstances.
|
| I don't know the right answer, but I definitely think it
| would be understandable if someone didn't appreciate that
| joke. And worst of all, it's just in service of the
| cheapest, blandest kind of humor. The writers should be
| ashamed of such lazy work, regardless of bigger issues.
| "Would it work without a laugh track" clearly fails badly
| here, as it does pretty frequently in TBBT.
| dirtyid wrote:
| > not trusting that the food being served is what they
| said it was
|
| Chinese folks being weary of restaurants with swapping
| ingredients for lower tier is not comparable to assuming
| chicken being swapped for cat, which is a tired joke.
| Usually reserved for pricer seafood, hence pick your
| victim tanks. Many restaurants do similar type of
| substitute shenangians, like I'm pretty sure the hipster
| burger joing is not serving genuine kobe beef patty for
| $15, but they're also not serving ground chihuahua
| either. Like even in PRC you're worried about things like
| gutter oil at a hole in a wall joint versus slightly
| cheaper grade of sea cucumber at a fancy restaurant. Even
| during the pork crisis, no one was particularly concerned
| that restaurants were feeding them cat/dogs instead.
|
| E: relate back to your parent comment, there's somethigns
| like cultural appropriation that most (especially older
| gen) Chinese don't care about, i.e. they thumbs up for
| white girls wearing qipao.
| astrange wrote:
| Swapping ingredients is pretty common in all kinds of
| restaurants; a lot of whitefish are actually tilapia no
| matter what they say, and a lot of farm-to-table
| ingredients are entirely fictional.
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/20/fis
| h-s...
|
| https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2016/food/farm-to-
| fab...
| vorpalhex wrote:
| The important part of virtual signaling is that it has
| nothing to do with it's stated aims. Virtue signaling such
| as calling out the college cafeteria for serving sushi as
| "cultural appropriation"[0] is not because the people doing
| the signaling care about the art of sushi or the Japanese
| culture - it's narcissistic posturing by the person doing
| the signaling. Another term for this is "white savior
| complex".
|
| In many ways the virtue signaling is doing the thing they
| are accusing others of - using a culture (that isn't
| theirs) as a weapon for social status.
|
| [0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-36804155
| permo-w wrote:
| I'd agree that that is the case a lot of the time,
| especially in the online popularity contests, but a big
| percentage - I'd say probably a majority - of the time it
| is simply sheep behaviour that has become ingrained
|
| I felt this pull at university, when I spent a brief time
| flirting with the art society. everyone there had these
| kinds of values, and it would have made fitting in
| significantly easier if I had vocally agreed with them.
| this would have been especially tempting if I was (more)
| lonely and desperate for company, as many people are
|
| as it was I mostly just kept quiet or carefully found
| points of agreement. I suspect if I was the type of
| person to give in to this zeitgeist, and not particularly
| question my beliefs, it could easily have developed into
| something real without any need for narcissistic
| tendencies
| philistine wrote:
| Yeah, when you're part of a culture that suffers from
| cultural appropriation, you understand it. Although my
| culture suffers a very benign culinary example (poutine),
| it allows me to understand the power play, and how I
| wouldn't want others decrying the appropriation my people
| are living.
| dtn wrote:
| Good grief, I wish people would stop pointing to a
| particular subset of an ethnic group to try to "prove" that
| people are "wrong" to get offended.
|
| 1. Videos are easily selectively edited
|
| 2. Within an immigrant ethnic group, different subgroups
| will have different feelings due to their experiences. For
| example, 1st generation immigrants tend to be less
| cognizant of this sort of stuff.
|
| Here's a bit of a rant for you- as an Asian person, I find
| these Asian jokes pretty fucking unfunny. It absolutely
| shits me when people will ask an Asian person from Asia
| what they think about some hot-topic issue within the
| Western sphere- yeah no shit they'll find it trivial.
| They're so geographically and politically disconnected from
| the issue it makes no sense to ask them.
|
| They experience none of the effects, understand very little
| of the context and have very little stake in the matter,
| the only reason people would ask them for their opinion on
| these issues is so they can point to a foreign face and
| tell people like me "why can't you be as well behaved as
| them".
| brailsafe wrote:
| I agree with your sentiment, but isn't it a bit ironic
| that you made a point of emphasizing heterogeneity among
| ethnic subgroups, but then sort of took that away from
| what was more specifically mocking Chinese and North
| Korean stereotypes, rather than broadly Asian? If you
| were Filipino and got mad about a joke that poked at
| Chinese materialism culture, wouldn't that be a bit of a
| reach? Surely within Asian cultures, different
| stereotypes abound in regional humor, especially is it's
| taboo to joke about regional cultural differences
| dtn wrote:
| > isn't it a bit ironic that you made a point of
| emphasizing heterogeneity among ethnic subgroups, but
| then sort of took that away from what was more
| specifically mocking Chinese and North Korean
| stereotypes, rather than broadly Asian?
|
| Yeah a bit. I chose not to mention specific ethnicities
| and omit detail to keep my comment short. Regional humor
| has it's place, but in more nuanced contexts. A Chuck
| Lorre production isn't the first place I'd look to find
| anything thoughtful and nuanced, to be frank.
|
| Main reason I used the broad brush for "Asian" is because
| in western society, 1+n generation Asian diaspora are
| less likely to segregate themselves by lines of national
| grievances back in Asia proper. In addition to that,
| nationality is rarely the deciding factor on whether an
| individual is subjected to racial jokes (from outside
| personal circles), it's their appearance. I've been
| jokingly accused of being a Chinese spy, despite not
| being ethnically Chinese.
| nindalf wrote:
| It's extraordinary that people are taken in by such videos.
| Those videos are selectively edited to make the creators
| point.
|
| Tell me, when Jimmy Kimmels producers go out on Hollywood
| Boulevard and find that not even one person can point to a
| country other than America on map
| (https://youtu.be/kRh1zXFKC_o) - do you think that's real
| too? Or is that selectively edited for laughs?
| afiori wrote:
| Everytime you hear someone tell their story you get an
| editorialized view (at the very least by having chosen to
| listen to them rather than someone else).
|
| Those videos are clearly optimized toward the desired
| impression, but I don't think that they used actors to
| make their points.
|
| On the other hand you have problems like
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-
| superweap... where you can construct a castle of lies and
| deception by only speaking selective truths...
|
| To summarize my point: stories are ways to tell one of
| the many facets of the human experience, when told
| honestly they can be helpful to our understanding of both
| the common and the uncommon, when told dishonestly they
| can warp our perception of reality.
| jedberg wrote:
| I know the video was edited, it's by PragerU. That's not
| the point though, it was just a story to point out that
| not all things about other cultures are offensive.
|
| And it's funny you ask about Kimmel, because I actually
| know the person who did those bits (she was the offscreen
| voice for the first few years and is actually the
| interviewer in this video). She said that while it was
| edited, they didn't have to edit it much, because about
| 80% of the people really were that dumb.
| afiori wrote:
| > 80% of the people really were that dumb.
|
| Dropping in just to point out that ignorant, dumb, and
| uninterested are different concepts.
| Bakary wrote:
| There is a bias in that we see such videos, find them
| shareable, notice their existence but really there's
| absolutely no reason to use either the Kimmel or PragerU
| vid as anything other than light entertainment.
|
| That doesn't mean the underlying argument they propose
| can't be defended, just that the videos have no
| explanatory power whatsoever.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| No, but I constantly hear right wingers referencing it. It
| must be very popular in the echo chamber.
| jedberg wrote:
| Yes, it does support a right wing point of view, but that
| doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong. It's just one video,
| but there are many other videos and essays about the same
| topic.
| wizofaus wrote:
| What "right wing point of view" exactly? That racism
| isn't a real problem? Are there mainstream right-wing
| organisations that actually promote that view?
| jedberg wrote:
| The right wing uses videos like that to show that,
| "liberals are the only ones offended by cultural
| appropriation". The topic is far too complex to be
| encapsulated in a TikTok video, but the video is just an
| example of how it's possible that representing another
| culture _could_ still be appreciated, and that not every
| instance of representing another culture is
| appropriation.
| dogleash wrote:
| No. The point of view that between being maximally
| uptight about race is different than acknowledging and
| working against racism.
| Banana699 wrote:
| This is called Common Sense. To the extent that it's
| right-wing-coded in (and, I believe, only in) USA is only
| a reflection of how wacko their pseudo-left has gone.
| wizofaus wrote:
| That's my point of view and I don't consider myself the
| least bit right wing!
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| This guy simply edits videos to provoke a reaction and
| get clicks. It is just business, and not an accurate
| depiction of reality at all.
|
| It isn't even a creative or original idea. Remember Jimmy
| Kimmel's "The Man Show" where he got women on the street
| to sign an "End suffrage now!" petition because
| "suffrage" sounds like "suffering"?
|
| It is an easy trick to embarrass people by shoving a
| camera in their face and putting them on the spot. But it
| doesn't actually tell you anything. It isn't a data
| point.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| I saw that clip - there may be a valid point somewhere in
| there at being too easily offended but it's a stupid stunt
| from a non-honest broker. At the outset, the video's
| author's intent is to make liberal college students look
| dumb or like snowflakes, so that's what that video sets out
| to do but; there's no telling how many people they to talk
| to get cut on either side of the argument.
| pvg wrote:
| As a measure of whether a stereotype is actually bad or has
| negative effects, this sort of thing is a lot staler than a
| BBT joke, though.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| > The author labels that joke as "harmless" but you don't
| have to be a Chinese censor to interpret it as reinforcing
| harmful stereotypes.
|
| Is it actually "harmful" though? People are still going to
| Chinese restaurants as far as I know. The "harmful" adjective
| is being thrown around a lot, but it's never been very clear
| to me there is _actual_ harm. People will cite things such as
| "violence against Asian-Americans has been on the increase!",
| but that seems entirely disconnected from some jokes in some
| sitcom.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > For example, the joke about the Chinese restaurant ("I'd be
| more concerned about what they're passing off as chicken")
|
| That same joke is made about a lot of food chains, especially
| fast food, like McDonald's. Replace chicken with beef and you
| have half of all the jokes ever made about Taco Bell (with
| the other half being poo jokes).
| pessimizer wrote:
| Those are companies, not nationalities.
| throwaways85989 wrote:
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > plays off of the stereotype that Chinese people eat dogs
| and cats
|
| So... you support _government_ censorship of jokes that
| somebody, somewhere might be offended by?
| wizofaus wrote:
| Wouldn't that happen even in the US? A movie full of vile
| racist and sexist jokes bordering on abuse is not going to
| get a [G] rating, meaning the government is censoring it
| for some viewers.
|
| Edit: it seems it's actually relatively easy to find jokes
| that are genuinely offensive and degrading in PG rated
| films. Why that's considered less potentially harmful to
| kids than showing sex between consenting adults I honestly
| don't know.
| tacon wrote:
| You are confusing movie ratings, by the movie industry,
| with government censorship. Movie ratings are just labels
| anyway, and not censorship.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| MPAA ratings are decidedly not government censorship.
| [deleted]
| dogleash wrote:
| MPAA ratings are not government censorship, they're
| cartel censorship.
|
| The reason corporations follow the cartel's rules are
| financial agreements and the fear of PR backlash for not
| letting parents outsource parenting.
| wizofaus wrote:
| So there's literally no government involvement in what
| content can be shown in broadcast material in the US?
| Even for FTA TV? In Australia the ratings system is
| administered by the commonwealth government, so I
| incorrectly assumed the same was true in the US.
| anjbe wrote:
| Obscenity is one of the (very few) exceptions to the
| First Amendment. What exactly makes something "obscene"
| is somewhat unclear (see the Miller test), but in
| practice explicit pornography, for example, is not
| legally considered obscene, in part because the
| definition is somewhat dependent on community standards
| and porn is very, very popular.
|
| The FCC can and does regulate over-the-air broadcasts to
| a stricter standard, thanks to its exclusive authority
| over the inherently limited wireless spectrum. It
| restricts not just obscenity, but indecency (explicit
| sex) and profanity (bad language). However, this power
| does not extend to (e.g.) cable TV, which is not
| broadcast over the publicly owned airwaves.
|
| The US really does generally have stronger free speech
| protection than the rest of the developed world. There is
| no equivalent in the US to a work being "refused
| classification" as seen in Commonwealth countries. The
| First Amendment would prohibit it. Some retailers won't
| sell unrated or X-rated films or AO-rated games, but
| others can, because the ratings systems are formed by
| industry groups and are not compulsory.
|
| When the Christchurch shooting happened, the New Zealand
| government banned both the shooter's manifesto and the
| livestreamed video, making them illegal to possess or
| distribute. I doubt such a thing could happen in the US.
| (I remember my surprise that NZ actually has a government
| office named "Chief Censor.")
| dogleash wrote:
| We have law that restricts indecent/obscene content, and
| it applies exclusively to FTA TV and radio. But it's
| completely unrelated to the ratings system for tv and
| movies.
|
| Most channels not restricted by those rules (subscription
| cable & satellite) set in-house standards on content for
| commercial reasons. And of the broadcasters that are
| covered by the regulation, they are the old stodgy
| networks and never choose to get near the boundaries.
| wizofaus wrote:
| The interesting thing is that end result seems to be a
| proliferation of extreme views in the US vs other similar
| countries, which is arguably the opposite of what you
| might reasonably expect from the opportunity to allow
| freer discussion of ideas.
| anjbe wrote:
| Is that the case, though? The US has problems of
| religious and political extremism, but is Muslim violence
| worse in magnitude than in France with its restrictions
| on religious expression, or anti-semitism than in the
| European countries that ban Holocaust denial?
| wizofaus wrote:
| Good question. At best it would seem that such censorship
| doesn't seem to have all that significant impact on
| beliefs and behaviours.
| int_19h wrote:
| FWIW, neo-Nazi marches in Europe have way more people
| attending them than anything that American fash have
| tried to cobble up to date (including the particularly
| infamous one in Charlottesville). Radical nationalist
| parties seem rather popular in Europe lately as well, to
| the point where they already run some countries (Hungary,
| Poland).
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Age ratings are quite a different thing than making it
| unavailable to the entire public. I don't think you can
| just lob all censorship in the same basket like that:
| there's quite a bit of nuance here that makes all the
| difference.
| wizofaus wrote:
| I don't see any point trying to justify or argue for
| extreme Chinese-style censorship. But there are still
| useful debates to be had about censorship in Western
| liberal societies.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| But they're not the same things at all; I don't think
| age-ratings are "censorship".
| wizofaus wrote:
| In Australia they are:
| https://www.classification.gov.au/classification-
| ratings/wha...
| joshuahedlund wrote:
| The original poster only said they could "see why" the
| censors took offense, not that they supported it.
| camdenlock wrote:
| > I dare you to show that scene at a liberal college and
| notice how few laughs you get.
|
| This is why, in a sane society, liberal arts students are not
| consulted for their wisdom.
| wrycoder wrote:
| I don't find BBT funny. The censored sex-related stuff is in
| there for its shock effect, anyway.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > such a bland, un-subversive show ... is so heavily censored
|
| American censorship is honestly no better, it's just that the
| show was written with the specifics of American censorship in
| mind.
| function_seven wrote:
| Bullshit.
|
| Sorry, this "we're the same" retort is exhausting. The United
| States government does not employ censors to remove portions
| of shows before allowing them to air (or stream, whatever).
| The closest thing I can think of is DoD not giving access to
| a movie unless it paints Navy pilots in a certain light.
| Okay, fine. Not nearly the same as what this site is showing
| us.
|
| Yes, we have cultural taboos, like any culture. Studios have
| more trouble presenting some viewpoints over others.
| Chappelle gets protested, that one episode of Community was
| memory-holed on Hulu (but not on Amazon!). We ban pornography
| on public airwaves (but not on streaming or cable or
| satellite, or Blueray).
|
| If you compare and contrast the pervasiveness of censorship
| between China and the United States, the difference is huge.
|
| When it comes to artistic freedom, the US is _way better_
| than China. Maybe you can say we can improve even more, sure.
| But that 's a long way off from our censorship being
| "honestly no better".
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > The United States government does not employ censors to
| remove portions of shows
|
| What? Yes it does - the FCC has been doing this for a half-
| century at least.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Which shows and which portions specifically have been
| removed/censored/banned by the FCC?
| function_seven wrote:
| I noted that in my comment:
|
| > _We ban pornography on public airwaves (but not on
| streaming or cable or satellite, or Blueray)._
|
| And the FCC has a very narrow scope. I also happen to
| disagree with their prudishness (Janet Jackson, 2003). It
| does not back the argument that we're "honestly no
| better".
| some-human wrote:
| Say the word "Bullshit" and then show a erect penis on
| Wheel of Fortune and see how that 'we don't censor things'
| goes for you.
| function_seven wrote:
| I guarantee you that the footage would be a viral
| sensation online. King World productions would decline to
| air it, okay. But if it leaked, it would be viewed by
| millions.
|
| Are you saying that a production company not airing
| craziness is the same as being arrested for calling your
| leader a cartoon bear? Is that the equivalency I'm
| supposed to be drawing? (https://www.rfa.org/english/news
| /china/tweets-01232020164342...)
| some-human wrote:
| Not only would they "decline to air it" they are
| prohibited from airing it.
|
| > Broadcasting obscene content is prohibited by law at
| all times of the day. Indecent and profane content are
| prohibited on broadcast TV and radio between 6 a.m. and
| 10 p.m., when there is a reasonable risk that children
| may be in the audience.
|
| > Obscene content does not have protection by the First
| Amendment. For content to be ruled obscene, it must meet
| a three-pronged test established by the Supreme Court: It
| must appeal to an average person's prurient interest;
| depict or describe sexual conduct in a "patently
| offensive" way; and, taken as a whole, lack serious
| literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
|
| via [https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-
| indecent-and-pr....]
|
| Christ in the Original Star Trek run CBS had a censor
| employed on set for an episode where a character wore a
| risky outfit to make sure no nipples popped out. That
| isn't different to this Chinese company making sure their
| shows meet the restrictions of the Chinese authority.
|
| Your weird puritan country will air a show where a
| character shoots someone with a gun in the street, in
| your copaganda shows, but god forbid one of them gets a
| tit out whilst they do it.
| function_seven wrote:
| My argument is against the statement that the US is
| "honestly no better"
|
| You're raising a point about RF broadcast of obscene
| content. That's a tiny slice of available media. What
| China is censoring is being done as completely as they
| can muster. What the FCC censors is narrowed down to
| airwave broadcasts.
|
| Surely you can see that there's a difference here, right?
|
| Tank Man is prohibited completely. Not just over a
| certain delivery method, during certain times of day.
| some-human wrote:
| Yes, I see that. My retort was to "The United States
| government does not employ censors to remove portions of
| shows before allowing them to air (or stream, whatever)."
| which it effectively does.
|
| The scale isn't black and white with China being terrible
| and USA being great here, it's a sliding scale of
| shitness, with one being a 4/10 and the other 9/10, but
| the 4/10 pretends to be a 0/10 and proports "free speech
| for all. Home of the Free world. The government can't
| tell you what you can say and do." and the other doesn't
| pretend it is.
| function_seven wrote:
| Then you're arguing with someone else. I've never claimed
| the US is "0/10" or any such silliness. I made sure to
| acknowledge what censorship does exist here. I referenced
| FCC authority in that first comment.
|
| "Honestly no better"
|
| That's what set me off, because it so obviously not true.
| It's better in the US. Not perfect. But definitely
| better.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| "Whataboutism" is so reliable in discussions of China that
| it may as well be the only card in the Wumao's deck. It's
| also a pretty defeatist attitude, were they to actually
| believe it, since it amounts to "Everyone is awful and
| there's no point in trying to be better".
| briantakita wrote:
| Not Bullshit. If the Government & Corporations care so much
| about others censoring, they should lead by example.
| Lectures by hypocrites will otherwise be ignored...even if
| the censorship that you may like is categorized as being
| justified by you. If you don't like China's censorship
| policies, then appeal to China's sensibilities as their
| censorship is categorized as justified by them. Otherwise,
| the Chinese government will simply point out that lectures
| from hypocrites have no bearing.
| sadgrip wrote:
| What censorship are you referring to? Streaming services
| as far as I know can show anything that isn't illegal. Is
| that not the case?
| briantakita3 wrote:
| ryanobjc wrote:
| Absolutely wrong, the founders knew it, you should know
| it, everyone knows it.
|
| There's a big difference between using the rule of law to
| shape what can and cannot be said or sold or published.
| Compared to different private publishers/agents/etc
| deciding what they wish to do. The marketplace solves the
| latter problem - and it has!
|
| People are getting caught up in the "chicken" joke, but
| if you read the read of the article you'll see that crime
| dramas had to be re-shot so the "side of justice" wins in
| the end.
|
| What kind of anodyne cultural bullshit is that? Only the
| good guys win - BY STATE LAW.
|
| So absolutely not, the US and China are not even remotely
| the same. To suggest so is so ridiculous offensive it
| opens one up to accusations that they are a Chinese sock
| puppet... and it's a totally reasonable opinion to hold!
| briantakita wrote:
| You can call me whatever you want. I'm saying practice
| what you preach otherwise you're going to be written off
| as a hypocrite & your criticisms will not have
| credibility. Consider that political censorship has been
| increasing & becoming a criminal & economic matter in the
| West. Julian Assange is an example of a journalist who is
| held in detention without being charged for political
| reasons.
|
| Do you honestly think that America & the West have
| integrity with the Constitution & the spirit of the
| Founders? If you do, boy do I have a bridge in Brooklyn
| to sell you.
| function_seven wrote:
| Let me make this simpler.
|
| The 100 most popular movies produced in China are
| completely fine to stream in the US. Not a single scene
| or phrase is removed by our government before allowing us
| to watch them. Same with music, TV, books, and art.
|
| The reverse is not even close. Can you give me a Western
| example that is analogous to Tank Man, or to Winnie the
| Pooh?
| briantakita wrote:
| I don't think Julian Assange among other whistleblowers
| who are punished for speaking out about the Western
| hegemony's actions care too much about the Big Bang
| Theory's episodes in China...same with most of who are
| censored by YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc for political
| reasons. Practice what you preach or what you preach has
| no credibility.
|
| The global south & many westerners are tired of the
| lectures coming from the NeoLiberal Democracies & it's
| easy for them to identify a long list of hypocrisy.
| function_seven wrote:
| I agree with you that Julian has been targeted for
| political reasons. I can type this on a US site with
| absolutely no fear of repercussions. I practice what I
| preach. I also think our treatment of Guantanamo Bay
| prisoners is unconscionable. I openly criticize my own
| government all the time. And not a single post or comment
| has ever been removed by that same government.
|
| By the way, here's the (uncensored) leaks from Julian:
| https://wikileaks.org/afg/
|
| Edward Snowden really exposed the NSA almost 10 years
| ago. Yet I can still access the PowerPoints and other
| materials he leaked. They're on _Wikipedia_! That 's
| like, the opposite of censored.
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM)
|
| Can you make a statement about Tank Man, or Xi's
| resemblance to Winnie the Pooh, or Peng Shuai and her
| accusations? Do it on WeChat. Let me know how that goes.
| briantakita3 wrote:
| pphysch wrote:
| Western/American cultural messaging is very deeply baked into
| the popular media. What is necessarily aligned with, and un-
| subversive to, Western values may not be so for other sets of
| values.
|
| In short, "bland", "un-subversive", "sensitive" are culturally
| relative terms.
| briantakita wrote:
| China has a policy against feminizing men...so it's possible
| that the government sees the show as being a bad influence. The
| Chinese government probably also wants Chinese, not western,
| women to be seen as sexy.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Reverse-engineering from the missing data to an underlying
| philosophy is a very clever use of the data.
|
| I wonder if there are any seasonal discontinuities? Those could
| indicate anything from a cultural shift in the censors to actual
| individual censors retiring and getting replaced, since so much
| of censorship is very subjective.
| [deleted]
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| I wondered tho: was it really necessary in this case, since the
| underlying philosophy was already public knowledge?
| mikotodomo wrote:
| > Sex is the most frequently censored topic in this TV-14 show,
| meaning that it is appropriate for audiences aged 14 and older,
| with 139 scenes and 43.1 minutes removed.
|
| That's pretty messed up ngl.
| janandonly wrote:
| The following stuff is censored in China: TV
| series or movies should be edited if they have the following
| content: (1) distorting Chinese and other countries' culture and
| society; (2) defaming Chinese military forces, policemen, and
| judiciary; (3) showcasing obscenity content, either visual or
| verbal; (4) showcasing "excessive" images of murder, violence,
| horror, interrogation, drug-taking, and even gambling; (5)
| advertise negative and decadent values or deliberately exaggerate
| the negative part of society; (6) advocate religious extremism;
| (7) advocate environmental destruction and animal torture; (8)
| excessively showcase alcohol addiction, smoking, or other bad
| habits; (9) demonstrate other illegal content.
|
| I have to ask: How would simply _not_ putting this kind of
| negative stuff in _our_ media not benefit us?
|
| Why does a TV show have to show a lot of gore?
|
| Why can we only laugh about sexual explicit jokes?
|
| My only issue is with (9) because what is legal today can be
| illegal tomorrow. Simply no longer being allowed to mention
| something that was/is/going to be illegal is a bit far fetching I
| guess..
| davedx wrote:
| Nice try Xi.
| martin_a wrote:
| > (1) distorting Chinese and other countries' culture and
| society;
|
| Then no sarcasm is allowed which is an important measure to
| critize a state and its behaviour.
|
| > (2) defaming Chinese military forces, policemen, and
| judiciary;
|
| Same as for (1), making these groups "untouchable" and
| "uncritizeable" (if that's a word)
|
| > (3) showcasing obscenity content, either visual or verbal;
|
| Who defines "obscene"? The Ministry of Truth? The president?
| The government? Your mother?
|
| > (4) showcasing "excessive" images of murder, violence,
| horror, interrogation, drug-taking, and even gambling;
|
| Is there any movie where such display is not used as a negative
| example in the end or to explore the boundaries of human
| downfall? Tony Montana is not really the hero in the end, same
| goes for Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill or Fight Club.
|
| > (5) advertise negative and decadent values or deliberately
| exaggerate the negative part of society;
|
| Yeah, please don't put your finger where it hurts, we don't
| like that so much, someone could have a bad opinion of a broken
| state.
|
| > (6) advocate religious extremism;
|
| "Being Christian" is enough to be considered extremist in
| China, I think. Or let's ask the Uigurs how well these rules
| work for them.
|
| > (7) advocate environmental destruction and animal torture;
|
| Especially China is very good at the practical side of this,
| really no need to make movies about that. Besides that: Are
| there any movies where animals are tortured?
|
| > (8) excessively showcase alcohol addiction, smoking, or other
| bad habits;
|
| Same as with (4).
|
| > (9) demonstrate other illegal content.
|
| Bingo. Wildcard.
|
| > How would simply not putting this kind of negative stuff in
| our media not benefit us?
|
| You can't simply close your eyes and hope everything will get
| better by itself.
| slowmotiony wrote:
| You could just simply choose to avoid those things for yourself
| and live that perfect harmonious happy life you envision, but
| maybe you could just leave me and other people alone and let us
| watch whatever we want to watch?
| lwansbrough wrote:
| Interesting to see what passes for a joke on The Big Bang Theory.
| I knew the show was bad but wow. Perhaps just as surprising is
| the author's suggestion that a xenophobic remark about a Chinese
| restaurant is "harmless". I'm not even particularly sensitive
| when it comes to race relations, but that's just such a negative
| stereotype it's hard to ignore.
|
| I despise Chinese censorship, but I would support the Chinese
| government blocking The Big Bang Theory purely on the grounds
| that it stinks.
| noitpmeder wrote:
| "I would support the <...> government blocking <...> purely on
| the grounds that [I believe] it stinks".
|
| This is an unimaginably slippery slope. I think MOST american
| media these days stinks, but would not support any form of the
| above sentiment.
| [deleted]
| concordDance wrote:
| > xenophobic
|
| It's interesting how politically charged words mutate over
| time.
| lwansbrough wrote:
| Xenophobia is about prejudice. The joke in question relies on
| underlying prejudice towards the image of Chinese restaurants
| in America in order for the joke to land.
|
| If you don't understand the stereotype of Chinese restaurants
| the joke wouldn't be funny to you.
|
| Is it bad or legitimately harmful to perpetuate those types
| of stereotypes? Probably not. But I don't think the quality
| of the joke makes up for it in this case.
| elldoubleyew wrote:
| The joke about the chicken is interesting to me.
|
| I see to your point, the joke leans to imply that Chinese
| people will lie about the ingredients served in their
| restaurants to save some money.
|
| This stereotype, however, is predominant amongst Chinese people
| in China. This joke would fit right in on any Chinese TV show,
| questioning the legitimacy of the meat at a cheap restaurant is
| a joke older than the country. This may be why the author calls
| it "harmless".
|
| It would be the equivalent of a Chinese sitcom where a
| character might suggest that visit a Texas Barbecue you might
| get shot by some revolver-wielding cowboy. I don't think many
| Americans would take offense.
|
| But as the author mentions, strict self censorship amongst
| broadcasters has effectively cut all scenes that mention
| "China" or "Chinese" just to be safe.
| lwansbrough wrote:
| > It would be the equivalent of a Chinese sitcom where a
| character might suggest that visit a Texas Barbecue you might
| get shot by some revolver-wielding cowboy. I don't think many
| Americans would take offense.
|
| That's fair enough, maybe I'm over analyzing. But you
| probably wouldn't find that joke on TV in America either.
| noitpmeder wrote:
| As an aside, I wouldn't be surprised at all to find a joke
| like that on an American TV show.
|
| To the point: it definitely would not be removed from
| Foreign-made media before shown on American services.
| Especially as a result of some government-driven mandate.
| ryanobjc wrote:
| So here's the thing, is that joke making fun of a Chinese
| restaurant, or is it making fun of racist americans who make
| comments like that?
|
| The reality is most Americans have someone like that in their
| family. Read the rest of the scene: Leonard is distinctly
| uncomfortable, tries to politely correct the wordage, the
| comment is lost and the originator moves on.
|
| In any case, are you saying that... words that offend you
| should be removed from media? You know, like... some kind of...
| woke person who is really sensitive to racism?
| the_optimist wrote:
| The joke is the latter. The woke college grads who write the
| shows think it's funny to have/lampoon racist characters.
| However, it is a staple of the fare that these characters
| must exist in the shows to add foils and character depth.
| ryanobjc wrote:
| Well the shows were written before wokeness was invented,
| so we're gonna need a new theory.
| the_optimist wrote:
| Sorry, no. You don't get to be a college professor
| teaching woke theory without spending decades polishing
| and teaching it. As someone who have been well-exposed to
| US higher education for decades, I can speak from
| experience. The theories that embody wokeness have been
| taught for at least the last 30 years.
| noitpmeder wrote:
| I disagree with your main point -- subjects do not need
| to be well established before being presented in a
| college curriculum.
|
| Case in point, there is a class at UCLA titled "Law of
| Elon Musk". I assume we both agree this class hasn't been
| polished for decades. And I imagine it's decidedly
| different than any prior class in related topics.
| domador wrote:
| This could imply that according to Sturgeon's law, you'd
| support censoring 90% of everything out there.
|
| (I don't know if your last, pro-censorship line was a joke, but
| if so, it was a lame one. But I'm against censoring or deleting
| it, though.)
| vorpalhex wrote:
| No work of fiction only has heroes and reasonable people.
| chclau wrote:
| For me is one of the loveliest series I have seen
| Kye wrote:
| Pop Culture Detective did a video on the show:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3-hOigoxHs
| tablespoon wrote:
| It's not exactly the same thing, but I've noticed similar kinds
| of edits in a couple of US children's books I've been able to
| compare. Some are easily explainable as political correctness or
| changing social mores, some might be explainable by the influence
| of helicopter parenting and increasing uptightness (e.g.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/opinion/halloween-kids-mo...),
| but others I can't make heads or tales of.
| [deleted]
| EGreg wrote:
| I wonder what you all think of this, in light of that:
|
| https://qbix.com/blog/2019/03/08/how-qbix-platform-can-chang...
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| rfwhyte wrote:
| What's really terrifying / depressing / disgusting though, is
| that an even more insidious kind of Chinese "pre-censorship" is
| now increasingly worming it's way into western media not even
| explicitly intended for the Chinese market.
|
| As China becomes the either #1 or #2 global market for films, tv
| shows and video games, global media companies are lobotomizing
| their products to ensure they'll pass the CCP's censors / goons,
| and as a result, marginalized voices are ultimately going to be
| pushed further even further to the margins. Big globomediacorps
| won't take the risk that including whatever "Sensitive" subject
| matter the CCP has decided it's against that week will bar their
| product from the Chinese market, and as a result the Chinese
| censors don't even have to do anything as the film / tv / game
| companies are doing their job for them in advance.
|
| I mean, just look at Legendary Entertainment. There hasn't been a
| single LGBT+ character in any of their films since Wanda group
| bought them in 2016, and I've got a bridge to sell you if you
| think that's anything less than intentional.
| deepdriver wrote:
| This type of censorship isn't unique to China. Numerous scenes
| and whole episodes of The Office were silently removed from
| streaming services. The episodes were renumbered so you wouldn't
| notice:
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/comedy-central-caves-cancel-culture...
|
| This article goes so far as to praise the censorship:
|
| https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/the-office-edited-censor...
|
| As usual, piracy (or the legal purchase and ripping of old DVDs)
| is now the only way to access this material, which was deemed
| suitable for public consumption as recently as a few years ago.
| jjcon wrote:
| > Numerous scenes and whole episodes of The Office were
| silently removed from streaming services
|
| Some private companies vs entire undemocratically elected
| governments conversation aside...
|
| What entire episode has been removed? I'm an office trivia buff
| and I'm not aware of this
| deepdriver wrote:
| "Diversity Day" has been removed in its entirety per first
| link.
|
| The distinction between private and government censorship is
| increasingly irrelevant to consumers, as in heavily
| consolidated markets the end effect is the same.
| jjcon wrote:
| Hmm still definitely in plenty of places though - chiefly
| NBCs streaming service
|
| https://www.peacocktv.com/watch-online/tv/the-
| office/4902514...
| awinder wrote:
| It was removed during some Comedy Central marathon lmao,
| it's still a part of the series, no episode was renumbered,
| and it's on Peacock which might as well be the canonical
| streaming source
| deepdriver wrote:
| I saw it mentioned elsewhere as removed from Netflix,
| glad it's up on the NBC streaming service.
| jogjayr wrote:
| _The Office_ isn 't on Netflix US anymore. But I can
| still see that episode here in Canada.
| koonsolo wrote:
| The censored "Temple of Doom" scared the shit out of me.
| (WARNING: Spoilers!)
|
| When I was young my cousin had a VHS of "Temple of Doom" recorded
| from the BBC. We didn't know this was the censored version. So
| there was this scene where the priest puts his fingers on top of
| the chest of the victim, and then next scene they lowered the
| victim into the pit.
|
| We watched that movie a few times.
|
| Needless to say, it scared the shit out of me when I saw that
| movie again another time, but all of a sudden his had went
| straight into the chest! :o
| yangmeansyoung wrote:
| Wow this is a paper level analysis, but given your fluency in
| English I'd assume you already migrated to one of the common
| wealth countries.so the CCP would not see it.but kudos
| Julesman wrote:
| How cringe-worthy is that tired racist joke about the Chinese
| eating dogs? It's like that one drunk great-uncle at Thanksgiving
| who just absolutely loves that joke and you know, every single
| year, you gotta hear it. And he can't tell you once single
| practical reason why he hates China. Really, he just likes the
| racism. That's it.
| npteljes wrote:
| I think people are primed to that joke; I personally hear that
| "What they pass off as chicken" alludes to "mystery meat" - a
| derogatory term for meat that doesn's have a clear origin.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat
| mc32 wrote:
| While Chinese authorities have cracked down on dog-meat eating
| (especially around hosted international events), it's still
| consumed in some specific areas of the country.
|
| However, I don't see much diff between that and joking how
| incestuous Southerners might be or how they might eat
| squirrels.
| fpoling wrote:
| At the end the article claimed that censorship prevented creation
| of good movies. In Soviet Union a few good movies were made
| despite draconian censorship.
|
| Then after abolishment of all censorship there were less good
| films from former USSR. It almost looked like directors tried to
| put all previously banned sex, violence and cursing on screen but
| in the process forgot how to film good stories.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| when censorship was removed so were the barriers to leave ...
| thus the good people fled
| avodonosov wrote:
| In the future censors could not only cut parts, but also insert
| something - fragments promoting desiraole values, etc. If the
| show producers offer them as options to order for particular
| audiences; or maybe with the help of generative machine learning
| tech.
| wawjgreen wrote:
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Kudos for the design
| Dig1t wrote:
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "The political left is supposed to be very sex-positive"
|
| That is not my impression at all. See all the attempts to
| formalize consent in a way that does not really square with
| human sexuality. Consent _apps_? Wtf.
|
| Not to mention all the attempts to criminalize buying of sex,
| which is basically an ultraconservative position multiplied by
| -1.
| altruios wrote:
| It's not all the left, as much as it is the auth-left, lib-
| left are the free love hippies... they still exist... auth
| from every direction though drowns out the peace/freedom
| loving group from having a strong voice.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| > Not to mention all the attempts to criminalize buying of
| sex, which is basically an ultraconservative position
| multiplied by -1.
|
| What country/party has this position?
|
| As a naive European, that sounds like you might be talking
| about the left in the USA that is still far to the right of
| the European idea of "left".
|
| (Posting from Switzerland, where not only is sex work legal,
| it's regulated and taxed)
| zajio1am wrote:
| > What country/party has this position?
|
| Northern Europe. In Iceland even porn is illegal.
| panzagl wrote:
| It's part of the Puritan heritage that still affects US
| progressivism.
| koshergweilo wrote:
| > The obsession with sex seems like an example of horseshoe
| theory to me. The political left is supposed to be very sex-
| positive, but...
|
| I think China in general is a good example of why the 1D, and
| even 2D political spectrum is a bullshit abstraction.
|
| > authoritarian communist regimes were/are so far left that
| they kind of wrapped around and became conservative
|
| Placing autocratic "communist" states on the same axis as
| modern feminist professors makes about as much sense as placing
| someone like Peter Theil on the same axis as Hitler, in both
| cases one would have literally killed the other.
|
| One doesn't go from tolerating gay people to persecuting gay
| people the more "left" they are.
|
| > Stalin was very prudish about sex, so maybe they just don't
| fit into the same political spectrum
|
| Or maybe tolerance of gay people and "leftness" are actually
| completely separate variables that we only lump together
| because we're trying to project our modern ideologies onto
| historical figures
| bee_rider wrote:
| I wouldn't take China as necessarily embodying left wing
| economics (there's obviously a lot of capitalism going on over
| there and their society doesn't seem all that equal).
|
| There isn't any obvious correlation between left wing economics
| and social progressiveness other than the coincidental alliance
| that has occurred in the US. Authoritarian communist regimes
| were, obviously, authoritarian.
|
| And finally, "sex positivity" and dumb sitcom sexual jokes
| aren't really the same thing. They often have "man stupidly
| objectifies woman," "having same-gender parents is inherently
| funny," "man is an idiot because boobs," or if you go back to
| like the 80's, "man has poor understanding of consent" as a
| punchline. These aren't progressive ideas.
|
| So in conclusion, no at every level.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I'm not sure what aspects of the current Chinese
| government/communist party would be called "left". For
| instance, they don't seem especially interested in prioritizing
| any kind of equality of distribution of resources or power (I'm
| not sure if they even pretend they are, at least in a way that
| even any 'true believers' believe? I'd be curious for a read
| from someone in China though); or with providing any real level
| of 'social safety net'. I think they do both of these things
| actually less than the USA does, at present. I think any theory
| that tries to mostly put things into a dimension of "left" and
| "right" which calls the current Chinese regime or party "left"
| is probably not a great theory.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > what aspects of the current Chinese government/communist
| party would be called "left"
|
| That would be the end-state of what inevitably happens when
| you adopt leftist policies.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| That's an opinion and a boring argument, but I don't think
| it has much to do with "horseshoe theory". I think that
| read (that adopting "leftist policies" (like... social
| security? immigration liberalization? not sure what we're
| talking about) invariably(!) leads to a result that is not
| legible as 'left' at all but for its history) is probably
| incompatible with "horseshoe theory".
| nomilk wrote:
| > To find out, I compared 100 episodes of the original version of
| The Big Bang Theory with the edited Youku version to understand
| what was cut out and decipher the logic behind the decision.
|
| Is there any website that keeps track of censored parts of shows
| more generally?
|
| The BBC has been censoring parts of shows it deems 'insensitive'.
| It would be interesting to know what the banned parts contain and
| to see how it changes over time.
| sdf4j wrote:
| > weird jumps, pauses, and disconnected canned laughter
|
| Sounds like the usual show
| kypro wrote:
| This happens in the West too. For example one of my favourite
| shows, "Peep Show" has a scene removed because one of the main
| characters wears black face to break social taboos. Obviously,
| it's done in a mocking way, but even mocking someone for black
| face has been deemed inappropriate by modern Western standards.
| The show isn't even that old either.
|
| I'm almost certain there would be things seen as normal or
| inoffensive in China that would be seen as offensive and censored
| here. For example, a show that expressed criticism of
| homosexuality probably wouldn't be tolerated in the West. I'm
| guessing there could also be scenes that we would consider
| examples of animal cruelty given our differing views on animal
| welfare.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Peep Show was not edited due to laws, it was a private
| streaming service that made that decision. At the same time a
| rival streaming service was showing the unedited version.
|
| I think there is an important conversation to be had about
| censorship by large corporations but equating them to
| widespread, governmental censorship is not helpful.
| apostacy wrote:
| It makes almost no difference at all, all that matters is the
| outcome. People with power are exerting pressure to deny
| people access to information.
|
| Honestly I'd rather have the weak and ineffective Indian
| government "ban" something, than have the full force of
| corporate America collude to punish me for trying to serve
| "problematic" content.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| I'd rather have a weak governmental ban than "the full
| force of corporate America" censoring as well. Luckily
| that's not what the choice being presented is.
|
| The choice presented was a singular company making a widely
| publicized and denounced editorial decision, that a
| competitor did the opposite of with no consequences vs a
| systematic and effective censorship across all streaming
| services mandated by the government with criminal
| consequences.
|
| Arguing those things are equivalent is a bad faith
| argument, full stop.
| handsclean wrote:
| On the contrary, censorship is effective even if it only
| makes something less common. No censorship is absolute:
| Chinese people absolutely know homosexuality exists, what its
| censorship accomplishes is keeping it the province of the
| "weirdos". Towards the same end, the USG regularly uses
| financial incentives to make one side of an issue 100x more
| prevalent than the other. It's actually a more insidious form
| of censorship, because there's less legal oversight, most
| people don't know that it's happening, and it's hard to call
| out any particular instance of it.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| In the OPs example 1 provider censored and another didn't.
| It made global news. It wasn't subtle. Therefore it wasn't
| insidious and was clearly not equivalent to systematic
| governmental intervention.
|
| Again, I'd be happy to discuss how western governments use
| soft power and financial incentives to accomplish their
| censorship goals. It's an important topic. But I'm not
| going to do it from the basis that it's equivalent to
| governmental action at the barrel of the gun.
|
| I also won't accept a boxing match where you can kick and
| eye gouge and I've got a hand tied up. If you think either
| of those things is equivalent, great, it's your right in
| the west. It's not in the regimes you are tacitly defending
| and I won't explicitly condone it by engaging.
| handsclean wrote:
| I'm not trying to argue in bad faith. I think it's my
| idea that's offensive to you, but I'm open to criticism
| if you think there's something else.
|
| > But I'm not going to do it from the basis that it's
| equivalent to governmental action at the barrel of the
| gun.
|
| Genuinely, why do you believe it isn't? I understand that
| the threat of violence carries its own separate offense,
| but in terms of ability to suppress ideas, it is
| equivalent. At an individual level it's a choice, but at
| a systems level it's enforced as surely as at the barrel
| of a gun, by modulating influence according to
| conformance.
|
| I'm not defending China, and more broadly I don't think
| criticism of the USG is tacit support for China. Whatever
| happened to principles leading the good guys, instead of
| the other way around? And true, in China I wouldn't have
| the freedom to express these ideas - maybe if they were
| smarter, they'd find a way to let me feel that freedom
| while still firmly controlling whether those ideas can
| spread and shape society.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| I genuinely don't believe it's the same thing because we
| have proof that it isn't.
|
| In one example we have a government enforcing a
| systematic ban that prevented any access to content, in
| the other we have a singular streaming service making an
| editorial decision that was expressly rejected by their
| competitors and widely denounced. No access to content
| was lost.
| tarakat wrote:
| Yes but at least that episode of Peep Show was clearly marked
| and advertised as censored, right? They didn't try to pass it
| off as unaltered, right?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > This happens in the West too.
|
| Not like this. The censorship occurring in China is state-
| mandated and absolute, which is completely different from a
| network or content provider voluntarily choosing to remove
| objectionable content.
|
| > I'm almost certain there would be things seen as normal or
| inoffensive in China that would be seen as offensive and
| censored here.
|
| Again, you're conflating different things. What's being
| described in the article isn't a network simply choosing to
| remove content that might be objectionable. It's the state
| telling the distributors that they cannot show certain things
| _period_ because the state does not like them.
|
| In the United States a content distributor can distribute such
| content if they choose to, as long as it's not on a regulated
| platform (e.g. public television has specific regulations about
| what can't be shown). In China, the content cannot be
| distributed _at all_ without first being edited and approved by
| state censors. It 's a completely different situation.
|
| From the article:
|
| > According to the state-owned media outlet Xinhua, streaming
| platforms received a private notification from regulators to
| remind them of one key rule:
|
| > "imported American and British TV shows must be 'reviewed and
| approved by officials before streaming to the public.'"
| [deleted]
| hoseja wrote:
| TIL egg freezing is banned in China.
| izend wrote:
| We are heading to a world where every major country will be
| deploying a Great Firewall like censorship, especially as the
| cost of implementing and maintaining such a system drops.
| spookierookie wrote:
| It must be fun living in China.
| renewiltord wrote:
| The video platform part is neat. The censor/uncensored stuff so
| you can see. Wish I could have more controls but I like the
| visualization.
| [deleted]
| krmboya wrote:
| While I'm generally anti-censorship, I also believe cultural
| insensitivity should not go unchecked. What may be acceptable in
| one culture may not be acceptable in other cultures.
|
| Diversity in the global sense is cultural diversity, a step up
| from what is usually assumed to be diversity in American
| discource.
| rpigab wrote:
| Yes, like Winnie the Pooh, he's cute to us, but extremely
| offensive to Xi Jinping, just a cultural thing.
|
| (It's Hubris and need for absolute control over a big
| population, mostly)
| sudhirj wrote:
| We have this kind of censorship in India as well, even the in
| weirdly innocous places. In James Bond movies, and I think Gone
| Girl as well, scenes were by zooming into character's faces or
| just straight cuts.
|
| This is probably the only reason I maintain a US iTunes accounts
| (used to have to buy gift cards from sketchy sites online to keep
| this going, but I recently discovered that my Indian Amex card
| works fine with a US address).
|
| Also trivia for those who are wondering how cuts are made, at
| least for cinema content: all video and audio assets are usually
| sent to theatres in full, but there's an XML file called the CPL
| (composition playlist) that specifies which file is played from
| which to which frame / timestamp in what sequence. Pure cuts or
| audio censorship can be handled by just adding an entry to skip
| the relevant frames or timestamp, or by specifying a censor beep
| as the audio track for a particular time range.
|
| https://cinepedia.com/packaging/composition/
| ginger2016 wrote:
| Given the racist protrayal of Indian American Raj Kuthrapalli,
| I am of the opinion Indians are magnanimous in allowing this
| show to be aired there.
| unmole wrote:
| > Given the racist protrayal of Indian American Raj
| Kuthrapalli
|
| The racism is entirely in your imagination.
| orionion wrote:
| Please: Rajesh Ramayan Koothrappali not "Raj Kuthrapalli" ;)
| int_19h wrote:
| Supposing that this is true, why should that translate to an
| outright ban? People who find it offensive don't have to
| watch it.
| clouddrover wrote:
| What in particular is racist about it?
| ginger2016 wrote:
| If you have watched the show and failed see why it is
| racist, then we need to give some anti-racist education.
|
| It is affirming the stereotype Indian males lack confidence
| with women. Raj can't speak with women without the use of
| alcohol, the show constantly mocks his accent, worshipping
| of cows etc.
| jacekm wrote:
| Is it also affirming a stereotype that Indians are
| incredibly rich? Because that's how Raj is portrayed and
| the show mocks his wealth on more than one occasion.
| Jcowell wrote:
| Similar to a comment above , is it affirming that all
| Indians in the show are rich or that the character is of
| Indian background and is rich.
|
| Having watch the show, the show never mocks his wealth
| but his dependence on his parents wealth (and even has an
| arc where he strives to be independent for it).
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| So what? It's a comedy tv series.
|
| I'm a slav and from the balkans, we're either portrayed
| as tracksuit wearing thugs, drunks or in some relation to
| the balkan wars. So what?
|
| We even have our own comedy tv series playing with the
| stereotypes (eg. Kursadzije), where all the stereotypes
| are used all the time (serbs and croats have historic
| "issues", montenegrins are lazy, bosnians are stupid and
| slovenians are femboys)... people like this, they laugh
| at this, and watch it, in all of the mentioned countries
| and wider.
|
| Somehow it's always "someone else" that gets offended...
| same for 2balkan2you subreddit, where a (probably
| american) admin doesn't get the difference between
| romanians and roma/gypsy people.
|
| Even with games... stuff like gta 4 just makes people
| trying to guess what Niko tried to say, because his
| serbian/serbocroatian accent/pronounciation is horrible
| in the game.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Indeed, it always seems that it's not the prejudiced
| party being offended but rather others on their belief.
| It is similar to the comments about, for example, wearing
| a kimono and it being deemed cultural appropriation by
| everyone except Japanese people who gladly welcome
| sharing their culture. Can they show me even a few
| Indians who were offended by Raj?
| mnsc wrote:
| Another stereotype that exists is that all balkans are
| raging racists and will start war with anyone close by
| because they deem them subhuman. This is just a
| stereotype, so "so what?" right? And when you are waving
| off "laughing at stupid bosnians" as "so what?" this
| doesn't contradict that stereotype but rather reinforces
| it. So do you think it's fair that I assume you are
| indeed racist and treat you as such? You won't get angry
| or upset?
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| If you do it in a comedy way, sure, why not?
|
| If we can joke about cops (reno 911), bar owners (it's
| always sunny in philadelphia), rural americans (king of
| the hill and many, many other), canadians (south park),
| italians (euro trip), gingers (south park), nerds (pretty
| much every college movie), french girls (malcolm in the
| middle), middle managers (basically, every office-based
| movie), bodybuilders (brooklyn 99), "aspiring actresses"
| (working as baristas), student cooks (usually by gordon
| ramsey), .... why not us? Oh and let's not forget
| blondes.
|
| Do you assume all italians wear stockings and molest
| other guys on trains if you've seen Eurotrip (movie)?
| Nope. Do you assume all french girls don't shave? Nope.
| So if the whole of the balkans, including bosnia has many
| many jokes with "Mujo and Haso" (they represent a
| "stupid" couple of guys, where the pun is in their
| stupidity, why do you (I assume you're not from the
| balkans) get to be offended for other people? There's
| even a movie just with jokes about them... made by
| bosnians of course -
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5085118/
|
| We also have regional jokes, where in slovenia, people
| assume that people from gorenjska region are stingy (in
| serbia, it's people from pirot).
|
| A joke is a joke, you don't have to get offended for
| other people.
|
| edit: also, we don't start wars because we thing the
| others are subhuman, we just stereotipically hate
| eachother (as groups, not as individuals), due to
| historic reasons, mostly war-related.
|
| ps: What you americans would call racism could only be
| mentioned maybe against gypsies here (eve though they're
| techncally the same race). And even that is mostly by
| assuming, that if someone stole your gutters around the
| house (or basically anything metal), that it was the
| gypsies. Usually it's even true.
| mnsc wrote:
| The thing about stereotypes is that they are not just
| harmless props only to be used in comedy. They are common
| simplifications that we all use to some extent whether we
| like it or not. But some stereotypes are more harmful
| than others because they are used in very non-funny
| contexts to justify violence and oppression. And when you
| use those stereotypes in a funny-ha-ha way, you get some
| cheap laughs but at the same time you reproduce the
| stereotype and make it stronger. So a harmless "all jews
| are greedy and therefore it's funny that the jewish main
| character loses track of a conversation and starts to
| chase a dollar bill blowing down the street" gag [canned
| laughter] is the fertile ground where you plant plain
| antisemitic "jews are to greedy we need them out of our
| society" seeds.
|
| But what do I know I'm just a PC SJW you know how we are,
| constantly bitching about "no more violence", incredibly
| naive because of course there will always be pogroms,
| "it's just human nature". [canned laughter]
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| So, are we not allowed to joke anymore?
|
| Or if you're going the SJW way, are we only alowed to
| joke about american white men?
| mbg721 wrote:
| There are jokes that aren't at anyone's expense, but
| they're mostly puns, and not every pun is safe.
| mnsc wrote:
| Not every pun is safe but every pun should be created in
| a SAFE environment to enable alignment, collaboration,
| and delivery across large numbers of agile teams!
| mbg721 wrote:
| SAFE: Supportive, Able-promoting, Freeing, and
| Exclusive's-opposite...
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| So, you wan't to 'cancel' 80% of the comedy, because
| you're afraid other people will get offended? ...possibly
| those, who paid a ticket to laugh at the "offensive"
| stuff?
| mnsc wrote:
| Yes, yes that is what I said. No fun! Having fun and
| enjoying oneself is the road to outright fascism. You
| laugh, you kill babies. It's as simple as that.
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _If you have watched the show and failed see why it is
| racist, then we need to give some anti-racist education._
|
| Weak.
|
| > _It is affirming the stereotype Indian males_
|
| Is your claim that there are no Indian males who lack
| confidence with women? Or that there are no nerdy, geeky
| men who lack confidence with women?
|
| What's an example of the show mocking his accent? You do
| understand that's his normal speaking voice, I hope.
| Kunal Nayyar (the actor) grew up in India.
| ginger2016 wrote:
| Where Kunal Nayar grew is insignificant. Most of the
| soldiers who fought for British India were Indians
| themselves but that doesn't mean the occupation of India
| was right. In the case of Indian soldiers it was in their
| personal monetary interest to fight for the British. You
| are trying to make a similar argument, the role advances
| Kunal Nayar's career and I am sure he is in it because it
| helps him, doesn't mean the show gets a pass.
|
| I am not sure whether you are Indian or not, but if you
| fail to see why many Indians consider this portrayal
| problematic then we really need more anti-racism training
| in this country.
|
| Yes, I am sure there are Indian men who lack confidence
| with women, but given India is 1.5 billion strong, I am
| sure men who are confident outnumber Raj Kuthrapalli
| types.
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _Where Kunal Nayar grew is insignificant._
|
| Not when it comes to his accent. It's wholly unsurprising
| that someone who grew up in India speaks English with an
| Indian accent. That isn't "mocking" his accent. That's
| just what his accent is.
|
| > _I am not sure whether you are Indian or not, but if
| you fail to see_
|
| Weak. If you can't demonstrate where this supposed racism
| is in the show then I'd suggest you need to start
| considering the very real possibility that it's not
| there.
|
| > _Yes, I am sure there are Indian men who lack
| confidence with women_
|
| Well, there's some small progress.
|
| The only ignorance and bigotry that's been exposed here
| would appear to be your own. Work on that.
| astrange wrote:
| Having a TV actor speak in their natural accent might be
| mocking them, if it's normal to have them fake a
| different one.
|
| eg David Tennant uses his Scottish accent for jokes in a
| show where he normally sounds English
| ricktdotorg wrote:
| > David Tennant uses his Scottish accent for jokes in a
| show where he normally sounds English
|
| may i ask that you clarify this point?
|
| tennant made a personal choice NOT to use his
| native/normal scottish accent for Dr. Who. he discusses
| this with Jodie Whittaker (also someone with quite a
| strong native accent) in an episode of his podcast, he
| TL;dr said it didn't feel quite right for him to use his
| native accent for the role [1].
|
| whenever tennant does TV "as himself" (for example the
| voiceovers he has done for various shows or charity
| events like comic relief etc) he uses his own/native
| accent, is he doing this for laughs/jokes? surely he is
| doing them with a scottish accent because that is
| actually his literal normal voice?
|
| [1] https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/jodie-
| whittaker/id1450...
| astrange wrote:
| I was thinking of this scene:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOW1Wjb_oEI
|
| Though I have to admit the reason I think of him when it
| comes to doing accents is his American accent that's
| supposed to be NorCal but sounds like it's everywhere
| else at the same time.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gp9K-rMdxg
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _Having a TV actor speak in their natural accent might
| be mocking them_
|
| It isn't. You might as well say that because Matt Smith's
| sonic screwdriver was bigger than David Tennant's that's
| mocking David (but it, too, isn't):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rcxm-EStpd4
| smsm42 wrote:
| You really have no idea what the point of comedy is, do
| you? Just in case, it's not to provide you with
| statistically accurate portrayal of the population of
| India (or any other place, for that matter). It's
| creating ridiculously exaggerated portrayals of common
| problems and depicting them in comedically outlandish
| way. It's not a documentary about the virility or Indian
| males, most of whom I am confident are utter studs. It's
| _supposed to be_ grossly a-typical, that 's the whole
| point. That's like complaining clowns are offensive
| because nobody in real life has a red nose like that.
| That's the whole point of the thing!
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Tell me you're white and live in the whitest
| neighbourhood possible without telling me you're white
| and live in the whitest neighbourhood possible.
| II2II wrote:
| > If you have watched the show and failed see why it is
| racist, then we need to give some anti-racist education.
|
| I will both agree and disagree. The show frequently
| oversteps what can be thought of as parody, so calling it
| racist is a fair assessment.
|
| On the other hand, we also have to be careful. Think of
| the video clip in the article, the one with Sheldon's
| mom. The article makes it sound like it was censored
| since it was disrespectful to the Chinese people. While I
| can understand how that interpretation can be made, it is
| far more likely a commentary on racists tendrils that
| infest parts of America. Of course, Chinese viewers may
| not realize that so their interpretation would likely be
| different.
|
| As for affirming the stereotype of Indian males lacking
| confidence with women, I didn't know that such a
| stereotype existed. If it does, I can see how it could
| (perhaps should) be labelled as racist. The "joke" runs
| too deeply throughout the show and it rarely appeared to
| be handled critically.
|
| I believe the ultimate bar for judgment should be: does
| the joke reinforce stereotypes or does the joke force the
| viewer to reexamine their beliefs. Humour shouldn't be
| used as a carte blanche justification for racism. On the
| other hand, a lack of a sense of humour shouldn't be used
| as an excuse to label everything as racism.
| brigandish wrote:
| Someone should educate you in basic manners. You made a
| claim, you were asked a simple and obvious question to
| get you to back up the claim. There is absolutely _no
| need_ for the response you gave.
|
| As to your examples, they need work.
|
| > It is affirming the stereotype Indian males lack
| confidence with women.
|
| That's a _behaviour_ that is not linked to _race_.
|
| > Raj can't speak with women without the use of alcohol
|
| That's an exaggeration of a character flaw, standard fare
| for a sitcom.
|
| > the show constantly mocks his accent
|
| The actor provides the accent, what does he think about
| it?
|
| > worshipping of cows
|
| Americans are - in theory at least - allowed to mock
| religion. That is not racist, that's rational.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _It is affirming the stereotype Indian males lack
| confidence with women._
|
| I wasn't even aware that was a stereotype, after knowing
| (very closely, with some!) and interacting with hundreds
| of Indian males in my life.
|
| Lacking confidence with women is a pretty standard
| "nerd"/"geek" stereotype, though, which, given the title
| and subject matter the show deals with, is what I would
| assume they were going for. Were you ever upset that
| Leonard was often awkward with women? Sure, he didn't
| have the "unable to talk to women without alcohol" bit,
| but Leonard wasn't exactly a ladies' man. So it's ok to
| portray a white man as being awkward around women, but if
| it's an Indian man, it's racist?
|
| Re: accent mocking: accents are fun and the confusion
| that they can cause can be funny!
|
| I do recall references to cow worship, which was a bit
| insipid and not that funny, but... c'mon, racist? Gimme a
| break.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Since when are cultural stereotypes "racist"? Since when
| is "Indian" a "race"?
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Utter fucking bullshit.
| naasking wrote:
| > It is affirming the stereotype Indian males lack
| confidence with women
|
| Only people overly and unnecessarily obsessed with race
| could say such a thing. Rest assured, the rest of us just
| see a person. It's almost like you can't even imagine
| that there could actually exist a man who has problems
| speaking to women and just happens to be Indian.
|
| Edit: and in case it escaped your attention, _all_ the
| main characters lack confidence with women, this just
| manifests differently in each character. Raj 's
| background is relevant only in your mind.
|
| > Raj can't speak with women without the use of alcohol
|
| Sounds consistent with the previous character trait, but
| this doesn't sound consistent with the stereotype you're
| so concerned about. It's almost like Raj is not just a
| stereotype character.
|
| > the show constantly mocks his accent,
|
| It's almost as if accents cause humourous
| misunderstandings in real-life that people can relate to.
| Weird. Not sure why that's "mocking" exactly, but I've
| surmised that you're pretty sensitive about this stuff so
| I'll chalk it up to that.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _lack confidence with women_
|
| Aren't all the male characters in the show this way?
|
| Is the show doing _" Character who is Indian male lacks
| confidence with women"_ ?
|
| Or is it doing _" Character lacks confidence with women
| because he's an Indian male"_?
|
| There's a world of difference.
| ginger2016 wrote:
| Asian men historically have been desexualized. The show
| is relying on that stereotype.
|
| https://youtu.be/2k82hIqd1Os
| kelnos wrote:
| Raj is an Indian male who is desexualized.
|
| Sheldon is a white male who is desexualized.
|
| Leonard is a white male who is desexualized.
|
| Harold is a white male who is oversexualized in creepy
| ways.
|
| And I'm not even sure "desexualized" is the right word.
| With both Raj and Leonard, at least, I remember there
| were many plot points about their difficulty with women.
| "Desexualized" to me would mean that they weren't even
| seen as people who are interested in sex or relationships
| -- that is, their status as having sexuality at all was
| minimized and never touched upon -- which was clearly not
| the case for either of them.
|
| In any case, "relying on a stereotype" does not make
| something racist. When I watched the show (admittedly not
| for long; I probably got tired of it after a season or
| two), yes, there were certainly jokes that only worked
| because Raj was Indian, or Harold was Jewish, or Sheldon
| was neuro-atypical, but for the most part it was the
| stereotype "nerdy people are awkward in all sorts of
| social situations, especially when nerdy heterosexual men
| interact with women". Being Indian, or Jewish, or
| probably-autistic were secondary characteristics that
| gave them more color as people.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Sheldon's not neuro-atypical, he's what neurotypical
| writers thing neuro-atypical (not sure that's even a
| word, but it's good) are like.
|
| Sheldon could be more accurately diagnosed as "a total
| pain in the arse".
| exodust wrote:
| In the episode mentioned in article (Series 3, Ep 21),
| Raj gets the girl in the end. Leonard and Howard miss
| out.
|
| Raj embraces the role-playing sex game with scientist
| woman. The scene fades out implying they have a night of
| sex and wine.
|
| Where exactly is your "desexualisation"?
| delecti wrote:
| I think the butt of the joke regarding their ineptitude
| with women is their being nerds, not their individual
| demographics (Indians, Jews, or Autistics).
| mcv wrote:
| That is my primary problem with the show. It's often more
| making fun of nerds than making nerd jokes (though they
| have those too, fortunately). It's pretty low-brow humour
| for a show about smart people.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Ah, the classic "you're racist and if you disagree, then
| you're double racist!" gambit. I think ESR coined the
| term "kafkatrapping".
|
| > It is affirming the stereotype Indian males lack
| confidence with women
|
| The whole show is about males lacking confidence with
| women. Did you even watch the thing? The only male there
| that has any screen time and doesn't have problems
| approaching women is Zack, I think. And he's a walking
| stereotype too and dumb as a ton of bricks.
|
| > worshipping of cows etc
|
| If you think Raj saying "I swear to cow" is supposed to
| be a portrayal of a real Indian person, as opposed to
| obviously completely ridiculous comedic gag, lampshading
| its own ridiculousness - maybe you shouldn't be watching
| comedy, it's not good for you. Stick to anti-harassment
| videos from HR, there's no comedy there.
| abnry wrote:
| Never knew it was a stereotype that Indian males lack
| confidence with women. It's funny to me when someone's
| denunciation of a stereotype ends up teaching me about
| the "stereotype". It has happened to me before.
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| People here are a lot more thick skinned than you lot.
|
| We found Raj hilarious, and I don't know of anyone finding
| his portrayal "racist."
| koheripbal wrote:
| It's a bit like Jewish, Irish, Japanese, Korean, or Italian
| stereotypes in movies/tv - few real members of those groups
| get offended because we're not currently disadvantaged.
| mr_toad wrote:
| The whole show is a giant stereotype.
| kelnos wrote:
| I was never a big fan of the show, but emphasizing
| stereotypes is a very common, often very effective form
| of comedy. If that's not your cup of tea, that's fine --
| I tired of it quickly and stopped watching -- but that
| doesn't mean it's inherently wrong.
| ginger2016 wrote:
| I don't consider stereotypes funny. America has a really
| bad history when it comes to shows propagating racial
| stereotypes. People finding a stereotype funny is not a
| good reason to air it on national television.
|
| Jim Crow was a stereotype which plenty of people found
| funny 80 years ago, we don't find it funny anymore(it was
| never funny), as we see it for the truth. It was an
| untrue racist portrayal that harmed Black Americans.
| Granted the portrayal of Raj isn't nearly as harmful and
| it is not comparable to horrors of Jim Crow. Jim Crow was
| a billion times more harmful to a lot of Black Americans.
|
| Portrayal of Raj probably has little to no impact on
| Indian Americans. However as a society we have to learn
| from the past, and it is time to abandon stereotypical
| portrayals of people.
|
| Big Bang Theory is an old sitcom people found funny
| during its time, just like people abandoned the
| stereotypes of the past, people will dumb Big Bang
| Theory.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| So you think that Apu from The Simpsons is a harmful
| stereotype?
|
| What about Groundskeeper Willie?
|
| What about Lisa?
|
| What about Homer?
| x-complexity wrote:
| > I don't consider stereotypes funny. America has a
| really bad history when it comes to shows propagating
| racial stereotypes. People finding a stereotype funny is
| not a good reason to air it on national television.
|
| As stated by OP, this is a subjective opinion: The
| enforcement of a particular viewpoint on the issue of
| portraying someone from [insert country/background here]
| is not an easy problem to solve.
|
| Stereotyping will inevitably occur as a result of
| generalization & snapshots of an intended (X :=
| culture/background/country/activity/etc): They're the
| result of picking the most commonly-seen & widely-
| known/believed aspects of X _at that point in time_ &
| adding their stylizations to it, in an effort to conserve
| mental energy when it comes to recalling aspects of X.
| While bad stereotypes will definitely exist, to dismiss
| it as an outright "bad" is an overly broad stroke of
| opinion: They will exist because at that point in time,
| the stereotypes _were_ relatively accurate _to them_ when
| it came to portraying X.
|
| > Jim Crow was a stereotype which plenty of people found
| funny 80 years ago, we don't find it funny anymore(it was
| never funny), as we see it for the truth.
|
| ...There's a paradox in the "it was never funny"
| statement: If it was never funny to them, it wouldn't
| have been that popular in the first place - Either it was
| funny enough then to still be remembered & now be
| considered a (racist depiction)/(heavily-negative-
| stereotypical mimicry) in the Western world, or that it
| wasn't funny & consequently forgotten about right then
| and there. Various other states can exist in between the
| 2 aforementioned extremes, but it must've been funny
| enough to them to still be noted down in the written
| word.
| koheripbal wrote:
| > I don't consider stereotypes funny.
|
| I suspect people who say this DO find stereotypes funny -
| just stereotypes of people they consider to be the
| "other" side of the political spectrum from you. So it's
| really just hypocritical virtue signaling.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I didn't care for the Jewish stereotypes in the "Big Bang
| Theory" and I disagree that I'm not disadvantaged.
| bjourne wrote:
| Those groups' Hollywood stereotypes aren't as "mean" as
| other groups' stereotypes are. A character kicking puppies
| and abusing little girls is Chinese, Russian, German (a
| Nazi) or Arab, he is not Jewish, Irish, or Italian.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Currently disadvantaged?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_
| U...
|
| Indian Americans have a median household income of
| $126,705. By comparison English Americans are at $78,078.
| bnjms wrote:
| Yes and this was the point made. You've exactly
| misunderstood they are including Indian Americans as non-
| disadvantaged.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Yes, re-reading that I did make a mistake.
| Dig1t wrote:
| I mean, it's comedy, it's obviously not hateful.
|
| The whole point was that all the main characters were
| stereotypical nerds and each displayed a different type
| social difficulty. I mean Sheldon was obviously supposed to
| be somewhere on the autistic spectrum, how is that not
| ableist or whatever?
|
| It was also apart of his character arc! If you watch the
| show, Raj eventually overcomes his fear of talking to women
| and ends up dating multiple women (sometimes at the same
| time) later in the show.
|
| There are a ton of jewish stereotypes present in the show as
| well, but they are hilarious, and > 50% of the cast is jewish
| (as well as almost all of the producers AND the director),
| and obviously they were not offended and CHOSE to write and
| direct the show that way. My point being, it's just comedy
| and if you actually watch the whole thing, it has a good
| message.
| ginger2016 wrote:
| Almost 10 years ago MTVIndia said the same thing I said
| about Big Bang Theory.
|
| https://twitter.com/MTVIndia/status/379879685863129088?s=20
| &...
| unmole wrote:
| As far as appeals to authority go, it's hard to do worse
| than MTV India.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| > 50% of the cast is jewish (as well as almost all of the
| producers AND the director)
|
| Careful now, don't want to go spreading stereotypes that
| Jews control Hollywood or anything! /s
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| wrs wrote:
| There is a home version of this called ClearPlay that auto-
| redacts movies and TV. It actually started with DVD players (!)
| but now does streaming.
|
| Ref: https://amazon.clearplay.com/
| lapetitejort wrote:
| I watched many movies through TV Guardian [0] (the old
| composite cable variant). It connected inline to a VHS/DVD
| player and read closed captioned for any swear words. It
| would then mute the sound and show the censored CC. Of course
| it simply looked for words in a database and couldn't mute
| innuendos or blank out non-heteronormative relations.
|
| [0]: https://www.tvguardian.com/
| Natsu wrote:
| There was a company called Clean Flicks that did something
| like what's reported here until they got sued:
|
| https://www.msk.com/newsroom-alerts-2512
| coryfklein wrote:
| My Mormon neighbors tend to use VidAngel, which got in huge
| trouble with an absolutely hilarious payment model.
|
| 1. VidAngel purchases a bunch of Blu-ray discs and stores
| them in a warehouse
|
| 2. Tag all the content of a film and create filters so the
| user can, for example, filter out all sex and violence but
| leave in vulgarity
|
| 3. User "purchases" a Blu-ray for $20 (!!) and VidAngel says,
| "since we now know you're the owner of this copy sitting in
| the warehouse, we'll stream it to you right now instead of
| going to the bother of mailing it out" (This part legally
| qualified as a "performance", which was their big mistake.)
|
| 4. When user is done watching the film, VidAngel
| automatically _buys back_ the Blu-ray - still sitting in
| their warehouse - for $19.
|
| So users could essentially stream any film they want (with
| optional self-selected censorship) for only $1 per viewing.
| Of course they get a flood of users since they're the
| cheapest shop in town, and of course since what they were
| doing was illegal they got taken to court and had to shut
| down 90% of their business.
|
| And then, they wrote an endless tream of publicity saying,
| "Big media doesn't want to give you the right to skip nudity
| and violence in your own home! Think of the children! They
| want to force their values on you!" Yeah, I don't think the
| film-makers _loved_ the censorship platform, but it was the
| _$1 performances_ that really got them riled up.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Leaving aside the matter of Mormons and their weird puritan
| sensibilities, what this company essentially did was
| reinvent movie rental, but because they did it on the
| internet instead of a brick and mortar shop we're all
| expected to think it obvious and self evidence that what
| they did was horrible.
|
| In other contexts on sites like this, _" do [common thing]
| but on a computer"_ patents get mocked and derided because
| "but on a computer" is seen as a farce, not a fundamental
| difference from the [common thing].
|
| Anyway, I guess the mormons could get around this and
| achieve their desired effect by instead selling DVD players
| with a subscription to a service that distributes EDL
| files; instructions to the DVD player about which parts of
| movies should be skipped.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| If you ran a movie rental shop using consumer copies of
| movies you bought from HMV or Target or whoever, you'd've
| been sued if the rights holders found out. Rental copies
| that came with a licence that permits renting cost
| several times what it cost to buy a consumer copy. And of
| course, when you sign a deal to get said rental copies,
| you probably have to agree to a bunch of conditions that
| probably include not doing exactly what they did.
| teekert wrote:
| It all about ROI (Radio On Internet).
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Taken to it's logical extreme though, such a service
| could easily render copyright effectively useless. Break
| the movie into 10 second clips, "rent out" each of those
| clips during the 10 seconds they're being viewed and
| automatically return them after. There, you can now
| "legally" stream 720 concurrent copies of a 2 hour movie
| at once in perpetuity for near zero marginal cost.
|
| The only reason rentals worked was because of the
| physical constraints that limited the distribution of
| each copy. Take that away, what you're left with is just
| thinly veiled copyright abolishment.
| kelnos wrote:
| That's not really a "logical extreme", that's a straw man
| and an obvious ploy to do something you're not supposed
| to be able to do.
|
| I think a reasonable person would see that what you
| describe is an attempt to make an end run around both the
| spirit and letter of the law. But what VidAngel was doing
| was "one copy = one view", which is IMO entirely
| reasonable. There is zero moral difference between
| mailing someone a Bluray disc (with instructions --
| either automated or manual -- of what parts to skip) vs.
| keeping that disc in a warehouse and streaming the
| (censored) contents to exactly one person at a time.
| Thorrez wrote:
| The difference is when mailing it, it gets worn out, so
| after a certain number of plays the renter needs to buy a
| new copy. If it's fine digitally it never gets worn out.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Suppose the company threw out the disc and bought a new
| one after it was rented 50 or so times, would that be a
| meaningful change to the subjective moral fairness of
| their business model?
|
| Also, how do you feel about libraries rebinding their
| books to fix/prevent the books from wearing out?
| Spivak wrote:
| That doesn't matter since you are allowed to copy your
| own digital media for the purpose of dealing with that
| exact situation. A rental shop would legally be allowed
| to make a backup copy of every disc they have in case it
| gets damaged.
| Thorrez wrote:
| Hmm, are they allowed to rent out the backup copy if the
| original breaks? I thought rental was based on first sale
| doctrine and backup copies are based on fair use. I'm not
| sure if you can combine the 2.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| well I don't know either, but what purpose would a video
| rental shop have in making a backup copy in case the
| primary gets damaged if not to rent it out?
| kshacker wrote:
| Well once the disk was worn out, and you had a backup,
| you could re-sell the backup
|
| Of course this may be abuse of the fair use backup copy,
| but when talking digital, we are anyways inventing
| philosophies.
|
| Other way could be the backup could be entitled to "one
| last rental" to recoup last 4 bucks or so. I think that
| would be fair use but others may not.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| Mailing the disk imposes a much longer delay between
| customers, so it massively reduces the amount of times it
| can be rented. There's the moral difference - copyright
| owner won't sell as many copies.
|
| But I wonder what would happen if we had some super-fast
| rocket drone delivery service so it's just a video rental
| shop on steroids?
| lozenge wrote:
| A 10 second clip of a movie that is designed to be
| stitched with 710 other 10 second clips isn't fair use,
| it's just copyright infringement.
|
| "In determining whether the use made of a work in any
| particular case is a fair use the factors to be
| considered shall include:[8]
|
| the purpose and character of the use, including whether
| such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit
| educational purposes; the nature of the copyrighted work;
| the amount and substantiality of the portion used in
| relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the
| effect of the use upon the potential market for or value
| of the copyrighted work. "
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| We're talking about first sale doctrine here, not fair
| use. If I did the exact same thing with a VHS tape,
| cutting out 10 second strips of tape and renting them out
| to people, that'd be totally legal under first sale
| doctrine. Doing that with VHS would be totally
| impractical but legal. Doing it with a digital file would
| be totally practical but illegal, since currently first
| sale doctrine doesn't apply to digital distribution of
| copyrighted materials.
|
| My point is just that if you think it's a good idea to
| extend first sale doctrine to digital files without any
| restrictions you may first want to consider the logical
| consequences of that.
| [deleted]
| hunter2_ wrote:
| > Doing it with a digital file ... digital distribution
| ... extend first sale doctrine to digital files
|
| I fully understand, but there's got to be a better way to
| describe this line in the sand given that DVDs contain
| digital files. "Physical" doesn't work because networks
| have a physical layer. "Stream" is also problematic
| because bitstreams are present on any kind of media. Even
| "network" doesn't quite cut the mustard because a chain
| of video stores could be described as a trade network.
| "Tangible" comes damn close, but suppose the baud rate is
| slow enough and the voltage high enough that I can
| discern the download by touching the wire? What, then, is
| the unambiguous word for what we're talking about here?
|
| If it really boils down to letting time elapse between
| views/customers, shouldn't _that_ be what the law
| demands?
| cuu508 wrote:
| It boils down to how much $$$ the copyright owner makes
| per performance on average.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| the usage being described is 1 physical copy = 1
| streaming, thus if you cut it to 10 second clips only 1
| particular 10 second clip could be streaming to any one
| customer at any time to match this model. Thus you still
| end up with 1 physical copy = 1 streaming. It is illegal
| but shouldn't be, because of first sale doctrine being a
| match for this use case. I can only show you the first 10
| seconds of the film if nobody else is watching it.
|
| I see that what you're saying is that User X could watch
| the first 10 seconds and then the second 10 seconds while
| you start you're first 10 seconds but that would be sort
| of a ridiculous use case for the following reasons:
|
| 1. your system would include a bunch of extra work for
| your solution to make this work, easier and cheaper to
| buy 10,000 copies of the movie and stream as needed.
|
| 2. people pause movies thus your solution becomes even
| more expensive because it would need to calculate out who
| has paused their ten seconds at the 5 second mark etc.
| etc.
|
| Thus it seems likely that any solution being built on the
| model of we have physical copy we stream you copy will be
| built with showing complete movie and not any clever
| cutting up of movie to make the number of physical copies
| we have stretch further. The way the law works each
| different use case - cutting up movie, showing complete
| movie - would probably be challenged and there is no
| reason to suppose that they would all be allowed to pass,
| in fact since the showing complete movie was not allowed
| to pass in the real world it seems unlikely that the
| weird edge case cutting up movie would be allowed to pass
| even if law was changed to allow showing complete movie
| was changed.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| So put a minimum rental time on things. Banning online
| rental is a bad solution.
| MikeTheGreat wrote:
| No-one's saying that online rental should be banned.
|
| Instead, the solution that the USA's current legal system
| is going with is "You _can_ run an online rental service,
| as long as you have the copyright owner's permission
| (e.g., you have a contract with them in which you give
| them money and they give you their permission)"
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That's a ban on the normal mechanism via which rentals
| work. Sorry for shortening it. It's a bad solution.
|
| It should require no cooperation to build an online
| version of DVD rental.
| dahart wrote:
| For better or worse, the US legal system and media
| publishers disagree, and they've established the rules
| that do require cooperation with the copyrights holders
| to build online streaming services. But as I'm sure you
| know, it's at best problematic to call online streaming a
| "DVD rental". It doesn't fall under first sale doctrine
| if you stream a transcoded _copy_ of the DVD you bought.
| This is why the laws around digital distribution and
| copyright aren't exactly the same as the laws around
| physical distribution and copyright.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I would say the law around first sale doctrine has not
| caught up yet more than it actively disagrees.
|
| > It doesn't fall under first sale doctrine if you stream
| a transcoded copy of the DVD you bought. This is why the
| laws around digital distribution and copyright aren't
| exactly the same as the laws around physical distribution
| and copyright.
|
| I don't think transcoding should matter, at least if it's
| done on the fly, but also it's entirely doable to throw
| raw DVD bits over the wire. And neither one should count
| as a copy any more than shining light onto a book makes
| "copies".
| dahart wrote:
| I'm not arguing your opinion, I'm just pointing out the
| established precedent and law disagrees with your
| opinion, so it's going to take some work if you want the
| outcome you're describing. Saying it could work in theory
| if people just transcode on the fly and self-limit the
| rental rate isn't particularly convincing, fwiw. The
| shining light analogy is a little hyperbolic, I'm sure
| you know. Transcoding & streaming definitely is making a
| copy, because the bits exist in two places. Not that this
| matters, it's splitting hairs that may not exist. The
| point of copyright law is to give copyrights holder
| control over who gets to distribute and who gets to
| consume, and it may not make any difference whether
| there's technically copying involved according to however
| you define copying.
| tomrod wrote:
| Sure, but that's an effect on tons of laws.
| IX-103 wrote:
| Sorry. Each 10 second clip is a derivative work of the
| whole. So you can't sub-license portions of the work
| without permission.
|
| Just like you can't lend out individual chapters of a
| book....
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| > you can't lend out individual chapters of a book
|
| You can't? If I buy a physical book, I can't rip a page
| out of it and sell that to you? That's certainly the
| first I've heard of any such law.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| You can certainly _rip_ a page out and sell it, by
| doctrine of first sale. Only one person can have the page
| at a time.
|
| What you can't (legally) do is _copy_ a page of your book
| and sell it /give it away (though maybe one could argue
| that a mere page would be a small enough excerpt to fall
| under fair use).
|
| VidAngel (and the hypothetical 10 second streamer) fall
| under the latter, since streaming inherently makes a
| copy. As you pointed out elsewhere in the thread, it
| would be perfectly legal (but completely impractical) to
| cut up a VHS tape into individual scenes and resell those
| pieces of tape, since no copy was made.
| hansvm wrote:
| > since streaming inherently makes a copy
|
| If we're being pedantic about a few stray electrons, you
| also make a copy when you stream it from the disc to your
| CPU, from your CPU back to a monitor, and so on. If
| VidAngel had a minimum "purchase" time of 1yr the case
| probably would have swung the other way. The issue isn't
| the streaming, but rather that the nature of the
| agreement was more akin to making a copy than not (with
| "sales" happening substantially faster than they would
| have in meat space).
| gnopgnip wrote:
| You can't license out a copy of a movie in its entirety
| either. Renting a physical disc is different because you
| aren't making a copy
| jjeaff wrote:
| While some Mormons may have "weird puritan" values,
| simply wanting censorship options for some movies is
| something that many families would like to have, not just
| Mormons. And I don't think it's necessarily puritan to
| want to cut out that one or two scenes of a head
| exploding in an otherwise family friendly flick.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I'm still astounded that _Enchanted_ (the 2007 film)
| prominently features a scene of the chipmunk sidekick
| pooping on screen.
| etothepii wrote:
| Isn't pooping something we all do from birth? Hard to put
| it in the same category as fornication.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Because fornication is something we all _want_ to do from
| puberty, therefore it's a less neutral bodily function.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I actually agree, but I got the sense that the company
| being mormon was meant to bias the reader of that comment
| towards thinking that the company was in the wrong. I
| hoped to drive the conversation past that prejudice by
| conceding and dismissing it rather than pushing back
| against it, because I felt that on this forum pushback
| would likely prompt a religious flamewar rather than a
| discussion about digital rental.
|
| Using EDL files to edit movies for my family is something
| I've actually done before. I think a superfluous sex
| scene is okay in most contexts, but when watching a movie
| with parents/grandparents it's generally too cringe for
| me and everybody else in the room. I used mpv's EDL
| functionality for this: https://github.com/mpv-
| player/mpv/blob/master/DOCS/edl-mpv.r...
| LeonB wrote:
| I like the reasoning given above -- how you tried to
| short circuit the unwanted discussion.
|
| A friend of mine used to make family friendly edits of
| films just for his own kids when they were little.
|
| Sometimes I try to make family friendly versions of
| otherwise vulgar jokes. It's an interesting art form.
| Very niche.
| linkdink wrote:
| Your take on the setup for stereotypical situational
| humor about puritanical sensibilities and big expensive
| families invokes another stereotype about the puritanical
| sense of humor.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| You've lost me. You'll have to tell me what you mean
| instead of beating around the bush.
|
| I believe the only comment I've made about my take on
| humor is that anybody who laughs at TBBT must be under
| the influence of laughing gas. But you think this is
| because I have puritanical beliefs? Are you accusing me
| of that, or have I misread your comment? This earnestly
| is not clear to me.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Mormons have a well-documented refusal to assimilate
| while concurrently using devious and mono-social-mind
| power to cheat the systems they benefit from and complain
| about frequently. If there's one home grown US group that
| embodies "have their cake and eat it too" it's culturally
| ingrained in the definition of being a practicing Mormon.
|
| Now if you object, replace the word Mormon with Skinhead
| regarding mentality of others not in the group, and maybe
| you'll get the picture.
|
| Source: non Mormon with about 10 years living in Zion
| (SLC)
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I'm not a Mormon and I don't deny that I think the
| particulars of their belief system are often weird. But I
| don't think the nature of Mormons actually matters in
| this context, and speaking _generally_ I don 't think
| there is anything wrong with people choosing which media
| they and their families consume. If people want to fast
| forward over parts of a movie they don't like, I think
| that's understandable. And if their decision about which
| parts of a movie to skip is weird to me, so what?
| jjeaff wrote:
| Your just confusing the Mormons with Republicans. Both
| being the majority in Utah. You'll find little difference
| in other republican controlled states.
| mbreese wrote:
| This reminds me of how Aereo worked. They effectively
| built small little antennas that they could put in a data
| center. You'd then rent the antenna and stream data to
| your home instead of using your own antenna. This was
| found (Supreme Court) to be unauthorized as it was a
| "public performance". This DVD streaming service would
| likely have fallen under the same category.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo
| nkurz wrote:
| While Aereo is certainly relevant, the 2011 "Warner Bros.
| Entertainment v. WTV Systems" is even more similar: https
| ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Entertainment_Inc..
| ..
|
| WTV ran service called "Zediva" that streamed video from
| physical DVD players to customers. The District Court of
| Central California (the same court that ruled against
| VidAngel) decided that this violated the performance
| rights of the copyright holders.
| isk517 wrote:
| Even during the video rental days you weren't allowed to
| just go out and purchase a bunch of videos at Walmart and
| start renting them out, you need to have purchased the
| rights to rent out the video.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Why would you say this? It is the opposite of the truth;
| the first-sale doctrine prevents the copyright owner from
| interfering with you while you rent out your cassettes.
|
| You need to purchase rights to _display_ the video _in
| public_. No one can stop you from renting out the _tape_.
| You already possess the right to rent out your own
| property.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| As far as I'm aware, this is not true. The first-sale
| doctrine allowed the rental of VHS and video games bought
| normally at retail stores. The movie and video game
| industry went ballistic over this, a Nintendo executive
| called it "commercial rape". The movie industry took it
| to court and lost, and tried lobbying congress to no
| avail.
|
| IIRC, they then hatched a scheme where the retail
| availability of new movies on VHS would be restricted at
| least for a time, forcing video rental shops to pay more
| for copies of popular new movies.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| You are completely wrong. There's no such thing as "right
| to rent video." You could 100% buy a bunch of videos and
| start renting them out today, and it would be completely
| legal. Netflix does this today for their DVD rental
| business. This is also why libraries are legal.
|
| You can't buy a DVD and charge tickets to see the DVD
| played by you. You can't stream the DVD's contents over
| the Internet. But you can absolutely rent the DVD itself.
| LeonB wrote:
| When publishing an ebook, you set a different price
| (usually a multiple) for libraries.
| kuschku wrote:
| In the current age of gigabit FTTH connections, I wonder
| how the situation would be if the service provider would
| just allow you to rent a dvd drive in a datacenter that's
| connected via regular sata, just tunneled through the
| internet.
|
| That'd avoid all the "breaking the DRM", "modifying the
| data", etc.
|
| As provider you just offer a device that loads dvds from
| a user's in-datacenter storage cabinet into their in-
| datacenter dvd drives, and rent them a dvd drive.
|
| That might be complicated enough to avoid the whole
| "performance" interpretation
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Another comment [0] pointed out that a version of this
| was already tried, and it was found to still be a public
| performance. Not sure how much the details of the
| technologies used would affect the ruling, but probably
| not enough.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32645286
| cxr wrote:
| > Not sure how much the details of the technologies used
| would affect the ruling, but probably not enough
|
| Right. Aereo notwithstanding, one way around this might
| be to set it up like MP3Tunes[1] where you're a
| specialized digital locker service. The "fixed" "tangible
| medium" should originate with the customer, and a
| transfer from the customer-controlled copy to the
| business should be involved (rather than the other way
| around). With a large enough physical presence, you could
| get this down to pizza delivery time frames and/or Redbox
| levels of friction.
|
| 1. contrast with mp3.com
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| That's just Aereo again.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The problem isn't that you can't stream the contents to
| other people. The current legal situation also roughly
| states that a viewer _is_ allowed to stream the contents
| of copies they own, but you can 't _help them_. (See also
| Aereo, where all data was permanently owned by a single
| user, no resale shenanigans whatsoever.) The law shouldn
| 't work like that. Users should be able to outsource
| without causing a violation of copyright law.
| cxr wrote:
| > There's no such thing as "right to rent video."
|
| There is, strictly speaking--it's part of the exclusive
| rights that Title 17 lays out for copyright owners[1].
| It's just that (a) it forces you to be in the business of
| doing the rentals yourself (you don't get to just point
| at someone with an interest doing rentals and dictate
| terms to them, sans contract), and (b) even if you're
| doing your own rentals, if you're _also_ selling copies,
| then there 's nothing stopping someone from doing an end-
| run around your rental business by just buying a copy
| from you and doing things their way with that copy.
|
| (Granted, this doesn't make the person you were replying
| to any more correct about what _they_ meant when they
| said you couldn 't do this.)
|
| 1. "distribute copies [...] by sale or other transfer of
| ownership, _or by rental, lease, or lending_ "
| jjeaff wrote:
| That's exactly what companies like RedBox do/did. They
| would send buyers out to Walmarts and Best buys all over
| the country to buy up copies.
|
| I think they eventually stopped doing it just to appease
| the production companies and avoid their frivolous
| lawsuits.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| I was just going to mention RedBox!
|
| If I remember correctly, they _tried_ to buy from the
| company - Disney IIRC - but they were refused sale.
| Instead, they simply bought retail and rented those.
| pavon wrote:
| Yes, you absolutely could do that legally - it is part of
| the "right of first sale", however you would have to wait
| until the videos were available for sale at Walmart. If a
| video rental store wanted to have access to videos
| _before_ they were available for home purchase (and most
| of them did) then they had to make deals with the rights
| holders and follow the contracts that went along with
| them.
| [deleted]
| vlunkr wrote:
| Vidangel is a pretty absurd company. I read recently that
| they are still around and trying to come up with their next
| strategy.
|
| It does raise an interesting question for me though: is
| Hollywood losing out on profits by not offering censored
| versions of their content? Clearly there's some demand.
| People like to make arguments about artistic integrity, but
| they have no problem censoring content to air on network
| tv.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I would absolutely pay for this service if it allowed me
| mute the audio during door knocks, door bells, dog barks,
| and squeaky toys. Have you ever seen a dog instantly wake
| up from a deep sleep because they've been summoned to
| play? You're basically obligated to pause whatever you're
| watching and play.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Exactly. There are already censored versions of most
| movies made by the production studios themselves. They
| will even have the actors record alternate lines for
| certain parts. These air on network tv as well as on
| airplanes. There are lots of families that would like
| censored movies. I don't understand why they don't want
| to offer it.
| dudeguy3301 wrote:
| so, censoring a film is editing the intended form. this
| seems damaging to creators. also, if a movie has a bunch
| of sex and violence that gets censored out, what remains
| is still the intended context for the sex and violence,
| so why would a concerned person even watch it in the
| first place? absurd! like, for example, pulp
| fiction...how the fuck would a censored version make any
| sense, and who in gods fucking name would watch it!? i
| think selling edited material via censorship and
| providing censorship as a service is criminal. if you
| dont like porn, dont watch edited porn ;(
| vlunkr wrote:
| Like I said, they already do it themselves for TV airing,
| is it criminal then? And sure Pulp Fiction would be a
| mess. That's quite an edge case though.
| dudeguy3301 wrote:
| sorry, i was implying that when another company or group
| of people do their own version of censoring. the creators
| agree with brodcast tv laws and parameters to edit down
| their work because they want it to be available in that
| form. vidangel seemed to be doing whatever they wanted as
| a third party.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| That sounds clever and feels obviously legal and fine. I'm
| shocked that it's not.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| VidAngel had a brilliant business model, it should not be
| illegal. They are essentially acting as a public library
| that's actually convenient.
| inopinatus wrote:
| The law is not a programming language. Believing so is a
| common misconception amongst engineers, but assuming as
| much is likely to lead to disappointment, frustration,
| anger, bickering, conflict, and vexatiously long and mostly
| unenforceable contracts.
|
| In particular, you can't just write up your own legal
| fictions and expect them to be honored. It would seem the
| developers in the story above learned this lesson the hard
| way.
| kelnos wrote:
| I don't think this is really relevant. This isn't about
| logic or about programming, it's about trying to conform
| to the spirit of what the law says, and the intent behind
| it. The idea of copyright is "when you reproduce
| something, the creator should get a cut". Sure, we can
| argue all day what counts as a "copy" when it comes to
| computers, but... c'mon. One Bluray disc is bought, and
| one person gets to watch it. When they're done with it,
| someone else gets to watch it. This is how a library
| works. This is how Netflix's DVD-by-mail service works.
| But just because a computer and a network are involved,
| it's somehow different? No, sorry, I don't buy it.
|
| If the law really does say what VidAngel did is wrong,
| then the law is wrong and should be changed. I think it
| should be obvious to anyone who can read that the big
| media companies have (successfully) fought for decades to
| unfairly protect their bottom line, at the expense of
| everyone else. That's not ok; governments should not
| exist to protect crappy business models. Hell, there'd
| still be _plenty_ of money to be made with much more lax
| copyright law.
| inopinatus wrote:
| This seems to be equating copying with performance.
| They're not the same thing, and for most artists in
| recorded media, it's performance royalties that generate
| their primary income.
|
| If you wanna change that, find some other way to
| compensate artists first. They are the value creator.
| Attacking the bloated middlemen in the delivery chain
| doesn't remove the need for creators to eat. That is
| VidAngel's moral failure, as least going by the scenario
| as described: they weren't returning value to where it
| came from, instead tried to create a legal fiction to
| justify rent-seeking behaviour.
| Spivak wrote:
| Confusing copying and performance doesn't matter to this
| argument because whether or not you consider lending a
| book copying or performance lending a digital book should
| work by the same rules.
| dj_gitmo wrote:
| This reminds me of Aereo. They provided each user with
| their own individual TV antenna, DVR and streaming server.
| Their case went to the Supreme Court but they ultimately
| lost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo
| joezydeco wrote:
| Part of me still thinks Aereo wasn't honest with their
| technology. They showed off massive boards full of
| miniature UHF antennae, but a tuner/encoder is more than
| that. They never showed that part.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| It doesn't matter. The Supreme Court's logic was "sure,
| every individual part of this is completely legal, but if
| you consider it as a black box, it feels like a different
| thing which is illegal, so we're going to treat it like
| it's illegal thing." That conclusion was pretty likely,
| but it's utterly baffling to someone who thinks about the
| law like a programmer.
|
| To put it in the Supreme Court's exact words: "Given
| Aereo's overwhelming likeness to the cable companies
| targeted by the 1976 amendments, this sole technological
| difference between Aereo and traditional cable companies
| does not make a critical difference here."
| anjbe wrote:
| I always liked Antonin Scalia's dissent in that case.
|
| "We came within one vote of declaring the VCR contraband
| 30 years ago in _Sony [v. Universal]_. The dissent in
| that case was driven in part by the plaintiffs'
| prediction that VCR technology would wreak all manner of
| havoc in the television and movie industries. The
| Networks make similarly dire predictions about Aereo. We
| are told that nothing less than 'the very existence of
| broadcast television as we know it' is at stake. Aereo
| and its _amici_ dispute those forecasts and make a few of
| their own.... We are in no position to judge the validity
| of those self-interested claims or to foresee the path of
| future technological development. Hence, the proper
| course is not to bend and twist the Act's terms in an
| effort to produce a just outcome, but to apply the law as
| it stands..."
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Oh totally. Scalia's copy shop analogy was spot on, and
| the majority's rebuttal was just "this is more like a
| video on demand service than a copy shop" was weak as
| heck and just goes back to their main "shut up about how
| it works we know what we're looking at" argument.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I think Scalia is right in this descent, but applying the
| same textualist logic to many other decisions he made
| doesn't make nearly as much sense. In other words, his
| textualism leads to a lot of "there's no rule that says a
| dog can't play basketball" type decisions.
| lliamander wrote:
| Does a specific example come to mind? I've generally been
| a big fan of the opinions he writes, but I'd be
| interested to see what some of his weaker opinions are.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Castle Rock v Gonzales is probably one of the worst.
| After a woman with a protective order against her abusive
| husband was ignored by the police after he abducted their
| children sued the police department, Scalia basically
| ruled that police have no duty to do anything to help
| anyone. Even in a case where you have a court protective
| order that says the police "shall arrest" someone who
| violates the order.
|
| The woman reported her children kidnapped and showed the
| order to the police and they refused to do anything and
| said she should just wait and he would probably come
| back.
|
| The man showed up at the police station a day later with
| her 3 children, dead.
|
| So now we have the precedent that even in the most
| extreme and obvious cases, police have absolutely no duty
| to uphold their oath.
|
| Thanks Scalia.
| int_19h wrote:
| This case was decided 7-2, so clearly it wasn't just
| Scalia. Generally speaking, when decisions are
| supermajority, it's because that's what the law and
| precedent really say. And the precedent that law
| enforcement doesn't have a "duty to protect" long
| predates this case, so it's not really surprising.
|
| In general, it's worth keeping in mind that the point of
| courts is not to decide whether the outcome of the case
| is ethically or socially desirable. They're there to look
| at the laws and precedent and figure out how it applies
| to a given case. If the result is undesirable, it's
| something for the legislature to fix.
| taneq wrote:
| > Hence, the proper course is not to bend and twist the
| Act's terms in an effort to produce a just outcome, but
| to apply the law as it stands...
|
| Ah, the old "we're here to talk about laws, not justice"
| argument.
| Nursie wrote:
| > it's utterly baffling to someone who thinks about the
| law like a programmer.
|
| Programmers seem to think about the law like a program,
| like a set of rules governing system behaviour and so
| long as they are not directly violated, this one neat
| trick judges hate will let them do whatever it is without
| recourse. But that's not true, firstly because the law is
| fuzzy and deals with human behaviour, including taking
| wider views, intent and mitigating circumstances into
| account, and secondly taking decades or centuries of
| established case law into account too.
|
| It's why things like "smart contracts" are not the end
| run around the judicial process that their creators would
| like...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I understand that point of view in general, but in this
| case the only thing making the service a violation in the
| first place was one dumb trick. I would argue that Aereo
| was doing their best to _remove_ technicalities.
|
| The ruling also managed to make the law even more
| inconsistent. If I rent an antenna and install it in a
| datacenter for TV, that's kosher. If I rent an antenna
| and pay someone else to install it in a datacenter for
| TV, that's a copyright violation.
| Nursie wrote:
| I guess that's where intent comes in? It _looks_ like a
| technical workaround with the same end result...
|
| But also I won't deny the copyright owners have done a
| great job in making the law do _exactly_ what they want
| it to, nothing more and nothing less.
| coryfklein wrote:
| It was exactly like Aereo. Their Supreme Court battle set
| the precedent that made the VidAngel battle a no-contest.
| Which makes me wonder how VidAngel ever thought they
| could get away with that business model.
| cxr wrote:
| If you read any of the responses by VidAngel's CEO (?),
| you'll find the answer: hubris.
| callalex wrote:
| >" Which makes me wonder how VidAngel ever thought they
| could get away with that business model."
|
| Doing a thing, but with Jesus branding, can get you very
| far in America beyond all logic. See also: nonprofits
| participating in politics, nonprofits doing public
| performances without proper licensing, nonprofits
| advertising to children in public schools, etc.
| IX-103 wrote:
| What if they rented the customer the server that read and
| encoded the customer's copy of the Blu-ray on the fly and
| streamed it to them using bandwidth that was leased to the
| customer? Would that violate the studio's "performance"
| rights? What if the customer is in the same room as the
| server and loads the disk themselves?
|
| I, as a citizen and a consumer, want to know what rights I
| have when I purchase a product. The free market depends on
| perfect information when making purchasing decisions, and
| this is an area that is vague as all heck. If the rights
| the sellers of these movies claim I have matched the
| minimum guaranteed by law (or were even a super-set) then
| it would be clear. But they continue to claim I would get
| fewer rights than they are legally obligated to provide
| (technically playing it is a copyright violation according
| to their terms, never mind format shifting). They actually
| have it so ambiguous that it even seems anti-capitalistic.
| bacchusracine wrote:
| >I, as a citizen and a consumer, want to know what rights
| I have when I purchase a product.
|
| Step one would probably be actually purchasing something
| instead of licensing it.
| lliamander wrote:
| VidAngel's model was that you _are_ purchasing the disk.
| kelnos wrote:
| It's pretty ridiculous that this isn't legal.
|
| Sure, VidAngel could have built some custom software to
| play back a real Bluray disc, skipping certain scenes based
| on configuration file per title, and then would mail the
| disc to customers, who then have to mail it back, but that
| would be a worse experience for customers, and would be
| more wasteful (unnecessary physical shipping, as well as
| wear-and-tear on the discs). I guess the studios would
| actually see more money from this kind of scheme, since the
| discs would wear out and need to be replaced after a while.
|
| But... the world we live in where this sort of thing isn't
| allowed... is stupid. Calling this a "performance" is just
| a legal gambit to unreasonably restrict what people (or
| companies, even) can do with things they've bought and own.
|
| The $20 "purchase" and $19 "buy-back" is creative, but it
| should also be fine to just charge an all-you-can-watch
| subscription fee, as long as they don't allow concurrent
| viewing at greater than the number of Bluray discs they've
| purchased. "Performance", my ass. Fucking copyright
| cartels.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| A lot of the law we take for granted about copyright is
| really just a complicated compromise that worked out
| alright given the limitations of older technology. It's
| not some moral ideal. What about recording a song off the
| radio for your personal use? Or downloading one off
| Youtube? Or inviting your friends round to watch a movie?
| Or doing that but asking them to bring food, or it's OK
| if they just bring money instead of food and you buy the
| food, or they just bring money and you don't buy food but
| you let them watch the movie in your house, or they can
| bring their own friends too, or you're a full-blown movie
| theatre? There are no clear-cut boundaries of "stupid"
| and "own", just a complicated balance to keep things
| working well, we hope.
| int_19h wrote:
| It was a compromise back when we had 28-year copyright
| terms. It has been chipped away almost entirely from one
| side.
| jokowueu wrote:
| Woah this is fantastic ! Thanks for the tip
| janandonly wrote:
| Thanks for the tip. I did not know this exists...
| mzs wrote:
| I had a VCR with something like this. It would scan the CCs
| for bad words and then mute the audio and filter the caption.
| You could even edit the lists. And it was hilarious! Often
| the caption was slightly delayed relative to the audio so you
| would get a stream of swearing and then the rest of the
| dialog was removed :)
| biggu wrote:
| I live in India and have a Netflix account here. There is no
| censoring
| anshumankmr wrote:
| I think Amazon Prime did censor the first scene from the Boys
| season 3 (I think) but I can't bear to re-watch it and
| compare it.
| 4m1rk wrote:
| I didn't expect India! Iran for sure does that too. The zoom
| part was kind of nostalgic :) they are getting better and
| better (just technically). They were even covering women
| bodies!
|
| Shit load of money and resources for these nonesense
| censorships.
| anthropodie wrote:
| I'm from India and I have seen shows like BBT, HIMYM,
| Friends, etc,. dozen of times on different national
| televisions and then again on streaming platforms. I have not
| seen a single instance of censorship in these shows(except
| for subtitles replacing words like Fuck with ** on national
| television). I'm not saying we don't censor at all but it's
| definitely not as bad as this post or GP is saying.
| drraj32 wrote:
| Thanks for chiming in. I am really surprised to see the
| grand parent comment to be the top one on this thread. I
| guess facts don't come in the way here when people want to
| collect some brownie points by self-flagellating.
| forchune3 wrote:
| dshpala wrote:
| Oh hey, they've added a couple more chars since the last time I
| encountered the term! Now we just need to rearrange the letters
| to make pronounceable, how about QBIG2SALT+?
| [deleted]
| pvg wrote:
| _Please don 't pick the most provocative thing in an article or
| post to complain about in the thread. Find something
| interesting to respond to instead._
|
| _Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies, generic
| tangents, and internet tropes._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| I don't really agree with this, but consider this argument : Is
| it really a bad thing if different countries have different
| understanding of what's allowed/not allowed? If the whole world
| had the same system of governance, that could be dangerous too.
| karaterobot wrote:
| If you believe that there are such things as universal human
| rights, and that they remain rights regardless of whoever says
| they aren't, and you think free speech is one of those rights,
| then yes, it's a bad thing. Not everybody does, and those who
| do cannot always agree on the details. But, some people do.
| S201 wrote:
| Because the people of China didn't choose this: their
| oppressive and authoritarian government did it for them.
| [deleted]
| dirtyid wrote:
| >people of China didn't choose this
|
| Of course they did. PRC is country that skews old and
| conservative. Half the reason behind media crack down are
| cantankerous parents and grand parents telling governments
| they don't want loose western morals spoiling impressionable
| minds. Outside of western reporting, PRC libtards are
| relatively extinct compared to vast amount numbers of papa /
| grandpa wang who don't want to accidentally watch tits n ass
| or have uncomfortable imported culture war talks with their
| live-in kids. The only aggregious censorship that lowkey half
| of the population wants to get rid of is pornography but
| that's an Asian thing (also guess which half). There are many
| of policies easily explained by CCP having to appease the
| people where feasible because their legitimacy depends on it,
| unlike "democratic" systems where competing parties bunts the
| responsiblity to the next guy. Or that fractous multi-
| cultural societies make cultural wars different political
| party has idpol positions staked very difficult to win. In
| China, CCP gets pulse on mass culture and enforces it. Yes
| they can also manufacture identity for political ends but for
| something like imported mass media, much
| simpler/easier/pragmatic to embrace opinion of a billion
| conservative prudes.
| computerfriend wrote:
| Whether or not they would choose it if they could is
| orthogonal to the fact that they did not and could not
| choose.
| dirtyid wrote:
| > did not and could not choose
|
| Implying formal enfranchisement is required to choose
| when being loud in numbers petitioning/screaming at
| officials is enough and frequently more effective when
| said officials gets drown in shit if they fail to
| maintain political serenity. There's a reason Chinese
| trust in government is near record levels compared to
| declining trust in western systems which sure are good at
| choosing but miserable at delivering. Being performative
| is orthogonal to being performant. "They can't choose" is
| such a tired and useless gotcha when plurality of
| "choosers" / voters in prominenant democracies don't
| actually think voting is useful mechanism for choosing,
| until compared to highly performant authoritarian
| systems. Then it is, because reasons.
| darawk wrote:
| This is right. If people vote for censorship in a democracy,
| that's a perfectly fine form of governmental heterogeneity.
| What's happening in China is not that.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I guess it's hard to see this when you are steeped in it,
| but a lot of the censorship in democracies isn't exactly
| democratic.
|
| Two American credit card companies have an insane amount of
| say on the shape of the content on the internet. Beyond
| that, small special interest groups have time and time
| again successfully lobbyied for censorship that is far
| beyond what the majority thinks is reasonable.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| Two wrongs don't make a right and all that jazz.
| welshwelsh wrote:
| I completely disagree.
|
| An individual's rights should have nothing to do with the
| people who happen to surround them and what they happen to
| think.
|
| If different countries allow different things, that would
| mean that what a person is allowed to do would depend on
| where they happen to live, which is usually close to where
| they happened to be born. That doesn't make any sense to
| me- the lottery of birth should have no impact on one's
| rights.
| concordDance wrote:
| A reason to allow different people groups to do different
| things could be uncertainty about what is harmful.
| Letting the various restrictions and allowances play out
| can give a better understanding of the consequences of
| these.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Despite the ideology that it _shouldn't_ matter, the
| lottery of birth is probably the single largest factor on
| someone's life trajectory today - changing that is
| incredibly difficult and would likely require the
| dissolution of many countries
| hackerlight wrote:
| Possibly true, but can we at least agree that a
| democratic majority deciding to censor something is
| significantly better than a dictatorship deciding to
| censor something?
| earth_walker wrote:
| I disagree. The majority is never informed enough to make
| a good decision on something as nuanced as censorship. At
| least a dictatorship could, theoretically, be benevolent
| and act on the advice of experts.
| hackerlight wrote:
| A democracy can act on the advice of experts too via
| representative democracy with representatives (or
| appointees of representatives) that rely on experts.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| well, depends with whom your views align with more
| agileAlligator wrote:
| ideally no one should be allowed to censor anything
| (using state power)
| fallingfrog wrote:
| It's certainly an interesting philosophical problem,
| finding the balance between the individual and the
| society. My take on it is this: decisions should be made
| by the people who those decisions affect. In the case of
| censorship I agree with you completely- my watching a
| slasher flick does not give you nightmares. If I were
| playing devils advocate I might say that it corrodes the
| national character or something like that- but that to me
| is a very weak argument.
| [deleted]
| noisy_boy wrote:
| So if the majority of a country vote in a party on their
| discriminatory position towards minorities, that's all well
| and good? Legal, sure, but is that ok?
| cutemonster wrote:
| I find it slightly amazing how often commenters here (hello
| aero-glide2) fail to see that the _people_ in a country are
| not the same as the _dictators_ controlling the country.
|
| When such misunderstandings are common here at HN, where
| people are a bit brighter that elsewhere (or so I think) --
| then, such misunderstandings must be dangerously common
| outside HN. I wonder what consequences follow from that
| politician wrote:
| Given the scale of the demographic collapse in China --
| the over-reporting of girls by 100M, the situation where
| 20M men have no chance of the possibility of having a
| stable heterosexual relationship due to the lack of
| women, the rapidly aging population (highest in the
| world) that is post child bearing age -- doesn't it begin
| to seem reasonable the steps that the government is
| taking to curtail and shape public opinion?
|
| China has no replacement generation, and they are facing
| internal turmoil within the next decade on a scale that
| has no historical precedent.
| paxys wrote:
| The Communist Party is the reason China is in this mess
| in the first place, and further control and oppression by
| them isn't going to magically fix it.
| politician wrote:
| That's a fair observation. I'm curious though, do you
| have any ideas to improve the situation? What would you
| do if you were responsible for 1.5B people and were
| facing a situation where the labor force participation
| drops by half over the next ten years and continues to
| drop every year since? Will you be able to arrange for
| the population to be able to be fed, clothed, housed, and
| given medical care?
|
| It's not possible to "magically" create several hundred
| million young people, communism or no, to "fix it". So
| what do you do?
| notsapiensatall wrote:
| Well for starters, you don't limit each family to a
| single child.
| politician wrote:
| Too late for that, they already raised the limit to 3,
| but it won't help in time for the demographic collapse.
| koonsolo wrote:
| Well, because it's a totalitarian regime, they actually
| don't have to do anything. The party members just live in
| wealth and let the others live with the problem.
|
| That's the difference with democracy. In a democracy, the
| leaders have to explain themselves to the entire public.
| Also in a democracy, you can criticize governmental
| decisions, which might lead to better solutions, or even
| prevent them.
|
| The solution? Make your country attractive for young
| Indian (and other) immigrants. Or just make the older
| generation "disappear". Communist seem to be especially
| well trained in letting people disappear.
| azekai wrote:
| The CCP isn't 'responsible' for the people under its
| boot. It is their lack of responsibility for the people
| of China that has led to this problem. You act like the
| socio-demographic situation is not the direct outcome of
| the policies pursued by the CPP regime.
|
| "Will you be able to arrange for the population to be
| able to be fed, clothed, housed, and given medical care?"
|
| The government of China does not do any of these things.
| China, despite their lip-service to historical Communist
| revolution, has some the worst social programs in the
| world.
| politician wrote:
| So, is your answer to let them starve? I'm trying to
| understand if you are answering my question or attempting
| to dodge by discussing something else.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| I guess I'd try to find a comfortable place to live in
| exile, start pocketing cash, and figure out how to get
| there before the doomed ship sinks and angry mobs try to
| kill me.
| SanderNL wrote:
| Do you have a source for the 50% drop? It seems
| excessive.
| no_where wrote:
| hikingsimulator wrote:
| The main propagator in the US of the Chinese demographic
| collapse is Peter Zeihan, who may not be the best source
| here. Even if some of his predictions have been right wrt
| Europe, he tends to have and present unsourced
| information for anything Asia/China related.
| politician wrote:
| I've read some of his material, and have tried to find
| some independent sources regarding their demographics,
| agriculture, and imports. Those sources (via naive online
| search, filtered by bias) seem to line up pretty well:
| China's population is rapidly aging and their pyramid has
| inverted, China subsists on grains and pork but they must
| import corn to feed the hogs and struggle with outbreaks
| of ASF. Extreme weather (drought, rain) is ravaging their
| harvest. The war in Ukraine and the Russian sanctions
| have pushed up global fertilizer costs to which China --
| the top producer -- has responded by implementing strict
| quotas on phosphate exports, a strange choice.
|
| "As the top-producing country, China puts out 90 million
| MT annually for 30 percent of global supply." --
| https://investingnews.com/phosphate-outlook-2022/
|
| So, I'll give you that Peter Zeihan might be trying to
| sell his books, but it's not like there's zero
| corroborating sources.
| astrange wrote:
| That's because the people who say this are the only ones
| who believe it. In particular, Chinese people themselves
| don't believe it, and do believe their government is the
| same thing as "them" and represents them, so they still
| take it personally/nationalistically when you criticize
| the government.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The CCP claim they have the support of the Chinese
| people, but they won't allow that claim to be tested by
| the trial of political freedom and fair elections.
| astrange wrote:
| There's elections in China. There isn't freedom, but the
| population of old people with PTSD from the Cultural
| Revolution seems happy to not have it as long as noone
| else has it either. And as long as the government is
| competent and delivers economic growth, which may be
| coming to an end.
| int_19h wrote:
| Chinese people are not a hivemind. Some believe what you
| have described, others do not.
| glouwbug wrote:
| Their comment feels like astro-turfing. I see it on
| reddit pretty often when anything CCP roles around
| dirtsoc wrote:
| If the current generation votes for censorship, should the
| next generations have to live under those rules also?
| sschueller wrote:
| Neither did the majority of Americans watching non-cable
| television. Instead a small religious minority got their say
| what was profanity and what was not.
| schnable wrote:
| I don't think it's accurate to imply that at the time of
| strictest FCC rules only a small minority of Americans
| thought the standards were appropriate.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Because the people of China didn't choose this: their
| oppressive and authoritarian government did it for them.
|
| Though to be fair, the political ideas that say that is a
| problem are pretty Western and (relatively) recent.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| At some point, one has to make a decision on the values the
| have, and which ones they consider universally valuable.
| [deleted]
| shakaijin wrote:
| As long as it is mostly the will of the people that dictates
| the form of government. A dictatorial regime controlling what
| information and ideas the people are allowed to be exposed to
| is a different story.
| ghusto wrote:
| > Is it really a bad thing if different countries have
| different understanding of what's allowed/not allowed?
|
| Categorically yes, if your understanding of what's allowed
| doesn't allow your understanding of what's allowed. Not being
| able to discuss different politics isn't cultural diversity.
| c3534l wrote:
| The issue isn't a different cultural perspective, its
| _censorship_. In this case, the censorship is vast, arbitrary,
| and sweeping. Making it illegal to criticise North Korea is not
| protecting anyone, its oppressive.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Keep in mind that this is government censorship; as opposed to
| private services performing the censorship to meet the desires
| of their users.
|
| I really don't have a problem with services offering edited,
| family-friendly versions of media as long as its disclosed and
| there's a way to see the original.
| kiawe_fire wrote:
| And if a population doesn't like it and/or wants access to
| the original, then the corrective action is less destructive,
| more equally available, and more quickly realized.
|
| I.e. "stop subscribing to the censored service and back any
| company with the means and intent to stream the originals and
| everyone wins" as opposed to "vote and/or overthrow the
| dictatorship or die trying and possibly nobody wins".
| yomkippur wrote:
| I have to wonder, if your government is so threatened by
| what's discussed or shown in entertainment/art content, you
| are the opposite of anti-fragility.
|
| What good can they even accomplish if they get triggered by a
| disney character or a specific flag?
|
| I'm glad that the CCP will disappear in our life time.
| Question is, how petty will the next Han Chinese led
| government be? They've always sucked badly at maintaining
| large bureaucracy.
| standardUser wrote:
| There's tremendous variance in what different societies, and
| segments within societies, find acceptable and unacceptable.
| That's not what this is about. This is about an unaccountable
| government imposing its idea of what is acceptable and
| unacceptable.
| scaredginger wrote:
| joe_the_user wrote:
| It's worth noting that American censorship in, say, 1960, was at
| close to the same level.
|
| See:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_censorship_in_the_United_...
| coryfklein wrote:
| Did the article imply somewhere that China is unique in it's
| censorship?
|
| I personally tire of this pattern:
|
| 1. Article submitted to an international forum about X country
| doing Y bad thing
|
| 2. "Well the USA is just as bad, they also did/doing/will do Y
| bad thing"
|
| Well yes, that is true, but people are voting up the submission
| because they found that X-doing-Y-today was interesting and
| don't care to rehash the history of the US every single time.
| YES the US has plenty of blemishes in its history. Yes it has
| censored, warred, raped, extorted, and imprisoned. Yes the US
| persists in directly doing some of those today, and through
| malice or ineptitude it fails to prevent others.
|
| But the regularity with which this pattern repeats feels so
| much like state sponsored astroturfing I'm just tired of it.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _1. Article submitted to an international forum about X
| country doing Y bad thing 2. "Well the USA is just as bad,
| they also did/doing/will do Y bad thing"_
|
| Jeesh - many reader of hn are in the US and if X interesting
| is happen elsewhere, they are reasonably interested that X is
| happening in the US. Also, many hn readers are India, they
| may describe X happening in India also. And notably,
| censorship in India is noted in a different post that seems
| properly to be getting attention as well.
|
| And, of course, American censorship deserves mention because
| the USA has often presented as bastion of free speech. Just
| as much, something like a "feeling of freedom" is a big
| export of the US - in the sense that it's media products give
| people in more traditional societies that sensation. This was
| a big motivation of the original article after all.
|
| Not all American media products are pro-American propaganda.
| Some are even anti-American. But the overlap/gray-area is
| significant and so the qualities of the USA aren't irrelevant
| to say the least.
| the_af wrote:
| > _Did the article imply somewhere that China is unique in it
| 's censorship?_
|
| I don't think it implies that, but to be honest, the general
| implication here on HN is that China is the current Big Bad
| and everything they do is uniquely bad. It's not spelled out,
| exactly, but that's how I read many comments here.
|
| It may be just me, but that' s the vibe I get from HN in
| relation to China.
|
| > _But the regularity with which this pattern repeats feels
| so much like state sponsored astroturfing I 'm just tired of
| it._
|
| I think this is unfair. I also don't think you truly think
| people asking about US behavior here are Chinese agents.
| That's just silly. China hasn't infiltrated HN.
| ascv wrote:
| > That's just silly. China hasn't infiltrated HN.
|
| This kind of assumption is naive (no offense) and reminds
| me of the denialism regarding Russian disinformation. You
| do not need to "infiltrate" the site with "agents". It's
| fairly easy to write a script checking the front page for
| mentions of China and manually checking the thread to
| possibly respond with a comment. Before dismissing concerns
| like this as conspiratorial or silly, you should do some
| research on the topic:
|
| [1] https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/50c.pdf?m=1
| 46479...
|
| [2] https://www.info-res.org/post/revealed-coordinated-
| attempt-t...
|
| [3] https://www.techdirt.com/2021/12/15/how-china-uses-
| western-i...
|
| [4] https://www.state.gov/prc-efforts-to-manipulate-global-
| publi...
|
| [5] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/05/dozens-of-fake-news-
| websites...
|
| [6] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/28/ch
| ina-m...
|
| [7] https://www.lawfareblog.com/understanding-pro-china-
| propagan...
|
| [8] https://mediamanipulation.org/case-
| studies/astroturfing-how-...
|
| > the general implication here on HN is that China is the
| current Big Bad and everything they do is uniquely bad
|
| The CCP is hostile to many Western values (e.g. free
| speech) and they are a primary geopolitical antagonist to
| the U.S. It's not unreasonable for a mostly U.S. user base
| to see the worst in CCP behavior or be biased against the
| CCP.
| the_af wrote:
| People arguing here about US foreign policy or censorship
| are neither bots nor Chinese agents. I'm not naive in
| believing this.
|
| > _The CCP is hostile to many Western values (e.g. free
| speech) and they are a primary geopolitical antagonist to
| the U.S. It 's not unreasonable for a mostly U.S. user
| base to see the worst in CCP behavior or be biased
| against the CCP._
|
| That's neither here nor there. This is what I'm actually
| replying to:
|
| > _Did the article imply somewhere that China is unique
| in it 's censorship?_
|
| And my answer is: maybe not the article itself, but
| everything that gets said here on HN (where the article
| got quoted) has that implication. In fact, _your very
| answer_ has that explicit implication! So you are proving
| my point.
| coryfklein wrote:
| > I also don't think you truly think people asking about US
| behavior here are Chinese agents.
|
| Maybe my thinking is misguided, but this is exactly what I
| think. China has an abundance of labor and a strong
| appetite to perform just such tasks.
|
| > That's just silly. China hasn't infiltrated HN.
|
| It's not like you have to "infiltrate" anything here, it's
| an open forum and China would need to do little more than
| pay 2 people to take rotating shifts and they have
| essentially full coverage to counter any content critical
| of the country.
|
| Since the readership of HN likely holds much more power
| than the average American, I'd think China silly to _not_
| make that investment.
| trasz wrote:
| Do you also believe people shilling for US here are
| government agents?
|
| Of course you don't. You hadn't been indoctrinated _that_
| way.
| pnemonic wrote:
| Is it just as worth noting then that China is more than 60
| years behind the US in terms of social progress?
| stavros wrote:
| Or ahead, who knows?
| jl6 wrote:
| I'd probably agree with you - but only just. 60 years ago was
| pre-Civil Rights Act.
| planb wrote:
| "Behind" implies that they're following and moving in the
| same direction. Unfortunately, I don't think that's the case.
| vkou wrote:
| No, behind implies that they are currently in the opposite
| direction of the _current_ direction of western cultural
| movement. If the direction of our movement changes, they
| will, without lifting a finger, become _ahead_ of us.
|
| Social progress is inherently subjective (because progress
| in one value system is actually a regression in a different
| value system), and the observer always grounds their claim
| of 'behind' or 'ahead' in their culture's viewpoint.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The incarceration rate of the US in 1960 was about
| 225/100K, and in China it's currently around 120/100K, so
| China is doing a little better than we were 60 years ago.
|
| Of course our incarceration rate now has nearly tripled to
| _640_ /100K, so thank God they're not following us.
| Bakary wrote:
| Social progress is somewhat of a loaded term, but for
| instance abortion has been legal for longer and is still more
| widely available in China than in the US. The controversy
| surrounding abortion is in itself different, since instead of
| Christian concerns you have sex-selective abortion and
| population management that determine policy in this era.
|
| Homosexuality actually became less tolerated in the 19th and
| 20th century through Western influence. Now the West has done
| an about face in the span of one or two generations and China
| is comparatively less tolerant.
|
| All this to say that it's difficult to quantify since
|
| - assigning a teleological direction to social mores is
| perilous at best
|
| - comparing entire societies means you overlook specific
| cases that often aren't even evaluated along the same axis
|
| - Societies ebb and flow at unpredictable rates and with
| meandering paths and influence each other in often bizarre
| ways
| pjc50 wrote:
| When I saw the comment about "perfectly aligned with China's
| "main melody" perspective that justice always wins.", I was
| immediately reminded of the Hays code.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hays_Code
|
| (reading that again I discovered
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Film_Corp._v._Industria...
| ; the idea that movies were not counted as free speech for
| several decades in the US may come as a surprise to other HN
| readers)
| jibe wrote:
| It's helpful to look at that case in the context of the time,
| which was pre-New Deal, more federalist, and the Bill of
| Rights applied narrowly to the Congress. It was about a state
| (Ohio) having a censorship board, not federal censorship.
|
| The argument wasn't even made that it was a violation of the
| first amendment (which would have only applied to laws by
| Congress, not states). The argument was more about things
| like whether it was a violation of interstate commerce to
| have to have different versions of a movie for different
| states. They did argue that it violated the Ohio state
| constitutional right to free speech.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Growing up in the 70-80s, American TV/movies seem pretty
| censored today. Adult and under-18 T&A, light sexual content
| were the norm. Of course, the children are safe now and I guess
| it must be an accurate reflection of that age group if inceldom
| is the new norm.
|
| Oprah used to cover sex topics all the time.
| curun1r wrote:
| 1960s? Try the 1990s. The Blockbuster version of Bad Lieutenant
| had almost 30 min removed. Blockbuster was silently editing
| many of their VHS rentals before DVD took over.
|
| Yes, not government censorship, but it's almost worse when a
| private, unaccountable, entity is imposing its own moral
| values, especially when they reach the size that Blockbuster
| did during its heyday.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Blockbuster was given a death sentence by the market. Seems
| like justice done?
| jibe wrote:
| _Blockbuster was silently editing many of their VHS rentals
| before DVD took over._
|
| That's not exactly right. Blockbuster simply had a policy not
| to carry X-rated films that became a no NC-17 rated films
| when the rating changed.
|
| The video distributor of Bad Lieutenant created an R rated
| version of the film. The end result is still a
| wrecked/censored version of the movie, but it wasn't
| Blockbuster doing the silent editing. It is the choice of the
| film maker/studio/distributor to get the extra money from
| Blockbuster.
| [deleted]
| tuneloud0 wrote:
| briantakita wrote:
| Companies & Governments in the US & West censor for political
| reasons. Why is this any different?
| npteljes wrote:
| It's a different instance, and this was the one that tickled
| the author's fancy. Who was, according to her own bio, "a data
| reporter in China, covering topics like business, gender, and
| government policies".
| camdenlock wrote:
| Citation needed. Please show an example of a foreign piece of
| content which has been chopped to bits by the US government
| before being allowed to be distributed here.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Broadcast anime on daytime television. While companies like
| 4Kids that did the actual censoring (like digitally editing
| cells) and replacing lines ( "localization" as they would
| call it), it is the FCC that has power over broadcast
| licensing and provides a disincentive for showing work that
| soccer moms found distasteful, even if otherwise covered
| under the First Amendment.
| trinovantes wrote:
| broadcast != distribution
|
| It's not illegal to import/purchase the unedited original
| versions with guns, deaths, and nudity (excluding lolita).
| With online streaming being the norm now, the government
| has no say in the content consumed.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| In this context of both the GP and the main post itself,
| broadcast is no different from distribution, whether via
| television or the Internet.
|
| > It's not illegal to import/purchase the unedited
| original versions with guns, deaths, and nudity
| (excluding lolita).
|
| One could say the same about China. There's no law
| against importing uncensored movies for private
| consumption and any laws against their sale by local
| denizens, if such laws exist, go unenforced. Even in
| Beijing, you can buy high-quality, uncensored bootlegs of
| practically every American movie and TV show.
| trinovantes wrote:
| I'm referencing your comment about 4kids anime
| censorship. Guns and deaths don't exist in their TV
| broadcasts but you can still buy/import/sell the original
| Japanese versions without government interference. You
| can also watch the original Japanese versions online
| without government interference. Any censorship that does
| occur like 7seas is at the discretion of their editors
| who probably spend too much time on Twitter.
|
| The same _cannot_ be said about China. Official online
| anime broadcasts are still censored if not outright
| banned.
|
| There's no point in discussing bootleg and other illegal
| distribution channels. It's already illegal, why does
| censorship dodging matter for the distributors?
| ginger2016 wrote:
| Oliver Stone's "Ukraine on Fire" won't be shown on network
| television in US.
| noitpmeder wrote:
| As the sibling comment demonstrates, this is not at all a
| result of Government action.
|
| To be honest, I can't think of ANY current-event-protraying
| foreignly-produced media that would be shown on networked
| television in the US.
| awinder wrote:
| Network television is some fine goalpost-moving, but as far
| as general media access goes you can find it on 3 US
| streaming services, and the reason no broadcast network is
| picking it up for redistribution has no basis in government
| censorship.
| _kbh_ wrote:
| Is network television in the US obligated to show Russian
| propaganda?.
| Bakary wrote:
| What sort of TV shows are censored in the West?
| aaaddaaaaa1112 wrote:
| carapace wrote:
| There's an episode of South Park that featured the Prophet
| Mohamed (Super Best Friends) that was uncontroversial when it
| aired, but now you can't get it anywhere. They did a very
| good bit about it in "Cartoon Wars".
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_Wars_Part_I (They
| deserve like a Pulitzer Prize or something for CW, it's
| genius.)
|
| It's not illegal to depict the Prophet, it's religious
| courtesy. (Also, it might interfere with profit (no pun
| intended.))
| ur-whale wrote:
| > What sort of TV shows are censored in the West?
|
| When was the last time you saw a pair of boobs on an US
| sitcom?
| 867-5309 wrote:
| boob ^1 /bu:b/
|
| INFORMAL
|
| noun
|
| 1. BRITISH an embarrassing mistake. "the boob was spotted
| by a security expert at the show"
|
| 2. NORTH AMERICAN a foolish or stupid person. "why was that
| boob given a key investigation?"
|
| plenty of pairs of both on American sitcoms!
| Bakary wrote:
| Game of Thrones? I'm not really a TV guy.
|
| I was specifically intrigued by what the GP saw as
| political censorship, but I see what you mean.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > Game of Thrones
|
| Game of Thrones is a sitcom in your world?
| ouid wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Can't say I like it either but:
|
| " _Please don 't complain about tangential annoyances--things
| like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-
| button breakage. They're too common to be interesting._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| ryanSrich wrote:
| I'm fairly certain this happens in the US as well. I distinctly
| remember The Office censoring a few bits - notably the Belsnickel
| bit from season 9.
| Havoc wrote:
| Great site/article
| avodonosov wrote:
| > Cases in the category of disrespect usually involve a joke at
| the expense of China or its peers North Korea and Russia.
|
| They also care for Russia! That is friendship!
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=%D1%80%D1%83%D1%81%D1%81%D0%...
| falcor84 wrote:
| Wow, this was an interesting Google images journey, thanks.
|
| Also, is it just my own personal bias, or would I be right to
| say that imagery with such close bonding between males (2
| particular example links below) would not have been used in the
| west due to concern of being interpreted as gay?
|
| http://www.daokedao.ru/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/navek...
|
| https://cs14.pikabu.ru/post_img/2022/03/11/4/164697462011834...
| avodonosov wrote:
| I don't know. Such connotations may also depend not only on
| west / east, but also on time. Those placards are from 60-70
| years ago I think.
|
| See also https://www.google.com/search?q=%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B2%D
| 0%B5%D1%...
| falcor84 wrote:
| Interesting, but I would argue that this is actually
| supporting the West/East distinction, as this kind of
| imagery would have fit closely with the USSR's push to
| promote the communist "workers of the world unite" agenda.
|
| Would you be able to find any similar western imagery from
| that time frame?
| avodonosov wrote:
| Similar in what sense? Close bonding between males? I
| don't know about that time frame, but Judas kissing
| Christ is a known theme, painted many times.
| [deleted]
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| More likely the CCP intents to collaborate with Russia for
| various strategic/economic reasons, and media that criticizes
| Russia would make the CCP look bad by association.
| jwmoz wrote:
| Long live Taiwan.
| ipnon wrote:
| Censorship was just as widespread if not worse in Taiwan before
| the military dictatorship fell away. The smash hit "When Will
| You Return?" by the cross-strait superstar Teresa Tang was
| censored: The titular "you" pronounced in Mandarin rhymes with
| the word for "army." "When Will The Army Return?" was never
| going to be a hit with the military dictatorship.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Taiwan#Music%20a...
| teawrecks wrote:
| > When the Netflix-produced Korean show Squid Game went viral and
| won awards worldwide, many Chinese netizens were asking on social
| media -- when can a Chinese TV show be recognized in that way?
|
| Fascinating. I mean, the answer is obvious to everyone else in
| the world, but it'll be interesting to watch them figure it out
| over the next few decades.
|
| Is Squid Games even allowed in China?
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| I mean, yes lack of censorship, but there are plenty of
| countries with little censorship that haven't had the same
| level of success as Korea in TV shows either.
|
| Look at Germany, for example. Big country, economic powerhouse,
| but German TV shows and movies have little broad international
| appeal.
| teawrecks wrote:
| This sounds like the fallacy of the inverse[1]: Increased
| censorship implies less favorable critical reception, but
| less censorship does not imply more favorable critical
| reception.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent
| rurban wrote:
| German movies which want to be recognized overseas usually go
| the Nazi road. That always guarantees an Oscar nomination.
|
| And some weird dry German shows had appeal in similar weird
| neighboring countries (Neitherlands, Russia, China, South
| Africa, ...) such as Derrick. Unrelated to the fact that its
| main actor was in the Waffen SS. This related factoid didn't
| help though.
|
| Similar to the recent run of northern (danish & swedish) TV
| shows and trash literature in Germany. Proper quality foreign
| shows, like southern, indian or east asian shows would stand
| no chance.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Is aversion to discussion of sex a part of traditional Chinese
| culture? Seems odd given I'm not aware of any puritanical
| religions taking hold there.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Not really, but then again traditional Chinese culture isn't
| really that alive in China either. Communism in the Eastern
| bloc imported plenty of Western attitudes, including puritanism
| albeit under a secular/atheist branding. Also Christianity
| itself directly has a fairly significant history in the
| country. The Taiping rebellion was started by a Christian cult
| after all, and the Protestant House Church movement nowadays
| still counts tens of millions of members.
| hackerlight wrote:
| I don't see this as a China cultural thing, but as an
| authoritarian thing primarily.
|
| You see the same thing in Russian society. Stalin
| reinstituted anti-sodomy laws. Look at how LGBT are treated
| under Putin. Authoritarian governments seem to like
| oppressing cultural misfits.
| alldayeveryday wrote:
| Why would a culture require a puritanical religions to have an
| aversion to discussion of sex? And do you consider an aversion
| to discussion of sex to be default lacking or present in a
| population?
| wizofaus wrote:
| Because why else would such an aversion arise? I don't think
| there are any sensible "defaults" for human cultures. But I
| wouldn't expect aversion to talking any sex to arise
| spontaneously among a population that hadn't had it imposed
| by prior generations or from outside. We're naturally curious
| beings and have lots of sex (compared to other species).
| standardUser wrote:
| The default is humans are naked or mostly-naked and have
| sex in the same small dwelling where their children sleep.
| Everything from there has been downhill.
| tjs8rj wrote:
| Is there any culture in the world without significant
| taboos or social rules around sex?
|
| I can totally see why that'd be the default, simply because
| sex is such a charged act in any culture. Purely
| biologically: it's a very vulnerable act and has tons of
| "political/social implications" in a social species. Who
| you have sex with and be that vulnerable with signals your
| "allegiance" in a sense.
|
| Even chimps have taboos and social rules around sex for
| this reason. Who you have sex (or don't have sex) with
| decides who's in charge, who you support, what your clique
| is, and so on. A chimp caught having sex with the wrong
| chimp might be attacked.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Chimps, as far as I'm aware, don't talk about sex. I
| suppose my naive view is that the more society is
| prepared to talk about their behaviours, the less likely
| it is we'll indulge in the worse aspects of such
| behaviour. Hence taboos over discussing particular
| subjects have become ingrained despite being most likely
| counterproductive, at least for society at large, even if
| they serve the interests of some.
| tjs8rj wrote:
| I was primarily responding to your suggestion that strict
| social rules around sex were an intrinsically Christian
| take (or religious in nature).
|
| Beyond that though, Chimps have social hierarchies around
| sex. It's hard to imagine why something you believe to be
| so counterproductive would exist so persistently across
| cultures and times unless it had serious value.
| wizofaus wrote:
| I don't even necessarily believe it's counterproductive,
| it just seems intuitively expected that closing off a
| topic for broader discussion is a way to breed unhealthy
| attitudes and abusive behaviours involving sex. But doing
| so seems to have benefited some people I suppose. Or
| maybe it really is due to an innate desire to maintain an
| aura of mystery around it. I don't think anyone really
| knows.
| nineplay wrote:
| Talking about sex is taboo because having sex is taboo.
| Having sex is taboo because if women have sex with more
| than one man, none of men can be sure whose child she is
| carrying.
|
| Men, in general, really like having their genes carried on.
| Men, in general, really hate wondering if a child is theirs
| or not.
| SanderNL wrote:
| I am no psychologist and as such have no idea what I am
| saying, but we're on a discussion forum so yeah.
| Something tells me sex is taboo because of some very
| fundamental psychological dissonance.
|
| Sex by its nature completely shatters any notion we have
| of being civilized, rational actors made of pure white
| spiritual light. Alas, it shows us as sweaty, ape-like
| animals needing, nay, wanting to exchange fluids to
| produce our offspring. Nothing about it is pure and
| orderly and it is completely at odds with common mental
| strategies handling our issues with mortality. Being made
| of divine spiritual energy is quite at odds with the
| actual reality of it all.
|
| Oh yeah, that and it being a means of production: it
| makes workers. Which is to be controlled at all times.
| But that alone does not explain why this taboo is also
| common in other type of societies.
| wizofaus wrote:
| That women having sex with multiple men is taboo has a
| rationale behind it, sure (even if it's not a very good
| one). But _not_ talking about sex would surely make the
| issue of uncertain fatherhood even worse...
| the_af wrote:
| > _Talking about sex is taboo because having sex is
| taboo._
|
| I don't see one being necessarily linked to the other.
| Murder and violence are "taboos" yet adults talk about
| them all the time. Especially in TV shows.
|
| > _Having sex is taboo because if women have sex with
| more than one man_
|
| I don't see the link. If having sex _with multiple men_
| was taboo, then discussing or having sex _with a single
| man_ would not necessarily be taboo.
|
| Your argument also seems to be about _unprotected_ sex,
| the kind which can lead to kids. So is _protected_ sex
| not taboo, then?
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Universal, cross-cultural taboos haven't generally
| adjusted to the last 60 or so years of innovation in
| birth control. The realities that gave rise to them are
| ever present in an agrarian, low-tech economy.
|
| (not just human) Males need to be sure of paternity.
| Males who don't mind whose children they are raising
| aren't well selected for. This should be apparent to
| anyone who has ever watched a nature documentary. Humans
| are simply not that different.
| the_af wrote:
| I tend to disregard this "common sense" pop culture
| knowledge, because it's one of those things people say
| without evidence, and which often tend to be wrong.
|
| I would love to see someone explain the link between
| taboos about sex and male paternity claims, but so far I
| see not a single (even dubious) reference from subject
| matter experts, so I will continue being skeptical about
| this claim.
|
| "It's obvious!" doesn't convince me.
| wizofaus wrote:
| If I were a man in power and i wanted to protect myself
| from investing effort into raising children that don't
| carry my genes, I'd definitely try to establish a taboo
| around women having sex with multiple partners. And maybe
| it's possible that if you don't also have taboos around
| even talking about sex, then the former taboos wouldn't
| be sustainable. But it seems just as likely that a
| society that talks freely and openly about sex would be
| one in which paternity would be easier to establish,
| because it would be common knowledge which sexual
| partners a woman claiming to carry your child had.
|
| It seems like it should be a topic covered by Diamond's
| "Why is sex fun" but I can't remember an exact section
| devoted to taboos (nothing in the index etc.).
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Totalitarian governments seem to be naturally disposed
| towards controlling people's sexual behaviours, sometimes
| with downright absurd results.
|
| (The early Soviet Union moved from abolishing marriage in
| favour of cohabitation to actively promoting it; the
| official stance on abortion, IIRC, flipped several times;
| and while the equilibrium was extremely prudish--"there is
| no sex in the USSR"--the adult literacy campaign of the
| first decade was not above commissioning and printing a
| literal porn ABC if it got the job done.)
|
| I mean, they are totalitarian governments, they are defined
| by asserting control over the _totality_ of people's lives.
| But the fixation on sex, in particular, seems to go beyond
| that, and yet it's fairly universal among them.
|
| (If you have read Orwell and Zamjatin [which, let's be
| honest, are nearly the same book] but not _Moscow 2042_ , I
| highly recommend picking that up as well--the bizarre
| sexual Zeitgeist of the ripe Soviet state is much more
| vivid there than in the "serious" dystopian works. Though I
| don't really know if it's readable without at least an
| extensive set of footnotes, and given that it's supposed to
| be bitterly funny that might be missing the point.)
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _But the fixation on sex, in particular, seems to go
| beyond that, and yet it's fairly universal among them._
|
| Sex is how workers create workers, a means of production.
| So of course they try to seize control of it.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Meh. Even setting aside non-(nominally-)Communist
| totalitarian regimes, the USSR experience seems to be
| that after the Party collectively becomes God-Emperor,
| any philosophy that was supposed to motivate that status
| is set aside like so much trash (possibly next to shot
| corpses of its authors). Ever noticed how the state in
| _1984_ was supposed to be all ideological, yet had little
| actual ideology aside from the state being supreme and
| eternal? Orwell was not wrong on that one.
|
| Sure, you're _supposed_ to read the foundational
| documents, think the old state was evil, say the
| dictatorship of the proletariat is coming, _etc._ , but
| more often than not you're paying lip service to the
| person who is apathetically droning out a butchered
| retelling of the whole thing. Occasionally they are
| actual starry-eyed devotees of the idea, but just what
| that idea _is_ is somehow less important than uttering
| _The Idea_ in hushed and reverent tones. (I promise I was
| not going for this Arendtian twist, it just came out.)
| More often than not, though, a position of ideological
| enforcer is more indicative of skill in navigating a
| slime pit of backstabbing bureaucrats than anything else.
| (There's a reason why _career man_ is one of the vilest
| late-Soviet curses--now extinct, funnily enough.) Hell,
| the very name of the state is a sad joke--the eponymous
| _sovjets_ (literally, councils [of workers and farmers],
| but supposed to be local governments rather than advisory
| councils) were all but neutered by the end of the first
| decade if not earlier.
|
| So, no. I don't expect that the proclaimed ideology has
| much to do with it.
|
| (None of this is to be taken as a defense of 19th-century
| German political philosophy as a viable economic
| strategy, mind you.)
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The ideology is a pretext for seizing power; those drawn
| to the ideology are those to whom seizing power sounds
| appealing.
|
| Basically, the kind of people who rose to the top of a
| system like the Soviet Union are control freaks, and they
| acted accordingly.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Right, no objection there. Scott Alexander outright dubs
| this observation Marx's Fallacy[1]:
|
| > What I sometimes call Marx's Fallacy is that if we
| burnt down the current system, some group of people who
| optimized for things other than power would naturally
| rise to the top. Wrong. People who most brutally and
| nakedly optimized for power would gain power; that's what
| "optimize" means.
|
| I was only saying that the surface implications of the
| "means of production" rhetoric don't really matter once
| you have Lenin in power, because that rhetoric is not
| what drives his actions. I took your previous comment to
| mean that they did. (That is not to say that the whole
| Russian anti-autocracy movement since 1815 was a power
| grab, even if a pie-in-the-sky gentleman anarchist
| introducing and promoting terrorism in European polite
| society[2] sounds a bit bizarre to modern sensibilities.
| Recall the Russian Empire had a serfdom system
| essentially equivalent to domestic slavery up until
| 1861.)
|
| Still, though, my original puzzlement in this thread is
| that sex, specifically, seems to have even more
| importance to control freak governments than would
| generically be expected given their control freak nature.
| Little importance is given to the citizens' diet, for
| example, or clothing, and even art is hit and miss, but
| sex is somehow always at the forefront (even if nobody
| says the word). Maybe it's human passions in general?.. I
| don't know, I don't see it.
|
| [1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-
| tragedy-...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin
| alldayeveryday wrote:
| > Because why else would such an aversion arise?
|
| > I don't think there are any sensible "defaults" for human
| cultures.
|
| But, you seem to think a lack of aversion to talking about
| sex to be a default? To your question, I've known many
| people whom are not practicing any religion and yet have an
| aversion to sexual discussion, within a population that has
| a lack thereof. There are many such topics that some feel
| are not keeping with decorum to be discussed openly and
| widely - and without religion being involved. Let's say in
| China there is a general aversion to sexual discussion.
| What will be your explanation given lack of puritanical
| religion?
|
| > But I wouldn't expect aversion to talking any sex to
| arise spontaneously among a population
|
| I don't see spontaneity to be relevant here.
| wizofaus wrote:
| > Let's say in China there is a general aversion to
| sexual discussion. What will be your explanation given
| lack of puritanical religion?
|
| I genuinely don't know, that's why I asked. Presumably
| it's served some sort of purpose at some point. Or maybe,
| as another poster suggested, it was an trait borrowed
| from other cultures where puritanical religion did have
| an influence.
| afiori wrote:
| According to fan-made English translations of Chinese
| manhua targeted to teenage boys avoiding sexual
| activities is seen very similar to avoiding use of drugs,
| gambling, and/or alcohol.
|
| My guess is that it is a result of valuing austerity and
| stoicism and resisting temptations, which I suspect are
| quite important in confucianism.
| wizofaus wrote:
| If I did have to put forward a hypothesis it's that men
| in power are insecure about their sexual abilities and
| have been worried about discussion of their exploits
| under the covers undercutting their status! Seems just as
| plausible as alternative suggestions put forth.
| moonchrome wrote:
| >Because why else would such an aversion arise?
|
| Because it promotes social stability ? As much as I dislike
| defending religion - those values produced the most stable
| societies through history
| wizofaus wrote:
| Why would not even talking about sex promote social
| stability? Arguably the most stable societies are those
| that existed for 10s of 1000s of years before the
| agricultural revolution etc. Did they generally have
| taboos around discussion of sex?
| moonchrome wrote:
| >Arguably the most stable societies are those that
| existed for 10s of 1000s of years before the agricultural
| revolution etc.
|
| Societies of n>100s. By tabooing sex you reduce
| promiscuous behaviour - which stabilises society. I don't
| really see how this would be controversial. Modern social
| values have unambiguously shown that they lead to a
| population decline. Huge difference being that technology
| makes us less reliant on population count for stability
| (hopefully).
| wizofaus wrote:
| Is there evidence at all that tabooing discussion of sex
| reduces promiscuity? I'd expect the exact opposite is
| just as likely.
| discreteevent wrote:
| I wouldn't think it surprising if they had at least
| customs around sex (whatever about taboos). Without
| contraception sex can cause a lot of trouble. People,
| even animals, will kill for mating rights.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Exactly - which you'd think would it make it all the more
| important to talk about it!
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| I'm not really sure we have a large enough corpus of
| (known) societies, but even ignoring that, were any pre-
| Middle Ages or non-Western European societies nearly as
| tight-lipped about sex? And just how tight-lipped
| actually was medieval Europe, when even Sleeping Beauty
| was awoken by being fucked? Finally, to which degree is
| stability of the social order desirable? Medieval Europe,
| _sakoku_ Japan and _zastoj_ USSR were all (meta)stable to
| some degree, but they were also hellholes of varying
| depth.
|
| I don't actually think the answers to these questions
| disprove your statement, because I have a painful lack of
| knowledge as to what those answers actually are. But I do
| feel that those answers need to be given before an
| argument such as yours can make sense.
|
| (Granted, a trait that promotes societal stability can
| become common even if stability isn't actually good, so
| the last question is not as important as the others. A
| dystopian equilibrium is still an equilibrium.)
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > _I don 't think there are any sensible "defaults" for
| human cultures_
|
| There are loads of sensible "defaults" for human cultures.
| Aversion and disgust at the practices of unfamiliar out-
| groups is one - keeps us from getting their diseases.
| Practices assuring paternity are another - males that are
| indifferent to who's children they raise aren't very well
| selected for. Risk aversion in, and preference for
| protection of, child-bearing females by the group is a
| third - harm to these females disproportionately affects
| the ability of the group to reproduce and pass its genes.
| There are many, many others, and we have many of them in
| common with our animal relatives.
| wizofaus wrote:
| I'd agree with those (I just don't necessarily think of
| them as "defaults", which implies there's no real
| disadvantage to adopting alternative shared cultural
| understandings). And I'd suggest that an aversion to
| _talking_ about sex is surely the opposite of a practice
| assuring paternity?
| alldayeveryday wrote:
| Why would something being a default imply that there is
| no real disadvantage to adopting the alternative
| position? Taking other examples, if the default is for
| women to have sex with only a single man, why is it
| implied that there are no disadvantages to women having
| sex with many men? At least in the way I think of
| defaults, the value of the default vs the alternative is
| an entirely different variable.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Well, it's complicated, but I'd agree with a below poster
| that it seems like the "implementation" of these
| practices tends towards limiting opportunities for
| females to mate outside of their designated partners.
| This includes:
|
| 1. Physically isolating females from males.
|
| 2. Conditioning females so they won't _seek_ these
| opportunities.
|
| In combination, these factors seem to taboo any
| discussion of sex at all in mixed male/female company. It
| seems our standards for what is "family friendly" grows
| out of these taboos. You'll notice that in exclusively
| male company discussing sex is generally much less taboo.
|
| With the obviously problematic morality aside, this does
| seem like the most effective approach to assuring
| paternity, particularly in small, low-tech, tribal
| groups.
|
| Edit: There's also the need to limit sexual violence,
| which also seems to be a factor in tabooing discussion of
| sex in mixed company.
| yorwba wrote:
| If it's not the default state, it must have arisen
| spontaneously among the founders of puritanical religions.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Not necessarily, it likely happened incrementally. And it
| can still be rare for it to arise, it's just that once it
| did, something happened to make it stick.
| yorwba wrote:
| I don't think "spontaneously" and "incrementally" are
| mutually exclusive, but anyways, you can apply your "it
| happened incrementally and then something happened to
| make it stick" theory to China as well.
| tuatoru wrote:
| Non-heterosexual images (and masturbation) are anathema to
| China's leadership because China is facing a population
| decline, due to very low fertility.[1] [2]
|
| Internally produced TV in China has been censored for
| portraying "effeminate men".[3] The CCP has also, er,
| "encouraged", women to spend less time on social media and
| shopping. Internally the CCP says members must have three
| children.[4]
|
| 1. Here is military age population:
| https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/15-49...
|
| 2. Here is fertility rate. The green line is "replacement",
| i.e. enough for a stable population:
| https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/...
|
| 3. https://www.npr.org/2021/09/02/1033687586/china-ban-
| effemina...
|
| 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-child_policy
| fluoridation wrote:
| I love the implicit assumption that everyone is only a
| sufficiently convincing argument away from going gay.
| muglug wrote:
| They want gay people to stay in the closet and have unhappy
| marriages that produce lots of kids.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| There are also bisexual people who might end up with a
| same sex partner when free choose, but go with a
| heterosexual relationship due to societal pressure.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Not even a convincing argument, just seeing gay people go
| about their lives normally.
| the_doctah wrote:
| Do you think the rate of people identifying as gay has
| increased or decreased along with the general public's
| acceptance of it?
| spamizbad wrote:
| It's increased, but I suspect it's going to end up like
| left-handedness:
| https://slowrevealgraphs.com/2021/11/08/rate-of-left-
| handedn...
|
| Where social acceptance brings people "out of the closet"
| and the percentage stabilizes.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Do you mean publicly or privately? Publicly, sure it has
| increased. Most people won't admit to something that
| they'll be shamed for. Privately, how could we know? Has
| there always been more or less the same amount of gay sex
| going on behind closed doors regardless of the situation
| in the public sphere? My default assumption would have to
| be yes, unless I saw compelling evidence to the contrary.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| I read a statistic once that said the high water mark of
| homosexual relationships in the United States was during
| the Second World War (because all the men were overseas
| together and all the women were back home together). But
| you don't see that portrayed in media.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| I think it's pretty safe to say that people will act less
| on something if they feel it's bad (due to being educated
| like it is), even behind closed doors. Especially since
| this makes it harder to find a partner.
| wizofaus wrote:
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Non-heterosexual images (and masturbation) are anathema to
| China's leadership because China is facing a population
| decline, due to very low fertility.[1] [2]...
|
| > 1. Here is military age population: https://population.un.o
| rg/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/15-49...
|
| I've read that's one factor that makes the 2020s particularly
| dangerous: it's peak Chinese demographics _and_ a period of
| Western military weakness (b /c there's a pent up need for
| long term investment/replenishment, because the War on Terror
| shifted budgets towards short-term operations). There's a
| now-or-never factor if China wants to take Taiwan by force.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| > The CCP has also, er, "encouraged", women to spend less
| time on social media and shopping. Internally the CCP says
| members must have three children.[4]
|
| Good luck with that in a society where pursuit of prosperity
| is a central tenet and consumerism is rampant.
| truncate wrote:
| Wasn't sex talk tabooed in most cultures across the world,
| until X decades ago? Doesn't seem surprising to me, because
| even if the people are not necessarily religious now, certain
| beliefs and values would hold just because they were there
| decades ago, and it takes a while to fade away.
| dan_mctree wrote:
| It's likely that religions adopted sex aversion from common
| culture rather than the other way around. The Bible for example
| is much less puritan than what we associate with Christian
| culture (see song of songs). In contrast, things the Bible
| condemns that aren't so culturally logical have barely entered
| the cultural consciousness. For example its frequent
| condemnation of consumption of blood
| mathlover2 wrote:
| bmacho wrote:
| I wonder why the USA puts +18 on nipples instead of just
| cutting them out, and publish the rest as family friendly.
|
| The world probably had much better visual media then.
| [deleted]
| sashenka wrote:
| still_grokking wrote:
| What's the moral here?
|
| There is also a lot of censoring in the "western" world.
|
| It's also mostly justified by the exact same "reasons" like the
| ones mentioned in that blog post. Especial the "but the children"
| "argument" is used the whole time. And if that gets boring than
| it's "terrorism". Than again "the children".
|
| Also there are a lot of things one can't publicity say for
| _political_ reasons.
|
| In Germany for example most people know: If you want to watch
| some more "controversial" movies, or play uncensored games you
| need to get them on the gray or black market. The German versions
| are very often heavily censored, or there is just no German
| version at all because the content is outright verboten.
|
| Also communication online gets censored. It's impossible by now
| to say some (still) completely "legal" but "not politically
| correct" things online especially around mainstream media.
|
| The censorship in the EU gets also stronger every year. Now they
| banned "dangerous" foreign media... Actually without any
| grounding in established law. But who needs laws? It will take as
| always many many years until some judge will have the last saying
| and declare the things the government did as illegal. But than
| the game will just start again, also as always: Making illegal
| "laws" takes weeks. Getting rid of them takes decades. Then they
| change the wording, and you need to sue through all instance form
| the beginning. Ad nauseam.
| tgv wrote:
| You're really not making a strong argument by invoking the
| German example. The things that they forbid are mainly
| glorification of a most shameful regime. Holocaust denial comes
| to mind. Good riddance, I say.
| still_grokking wrote:
| Given the down votes I guess I've got misunderstood.
|
| I didn't made any argument up to now. I've asked for the
| moral of that blog post in the light of the fact that there
| is also quite some censorship elsewhere in the world.
|
| Sure, Chinese censorship is bad (and the examples given are
| partly laughable in my opinion). _But_ censorship is bad in
| general. This applies _the same_ to for example the
| censorship we have in the EU. (And no, it 's not "only some
| Nazi things").
|
| Also it's a notable fact that the _" justifications"_ given
| for our censorship are the exact same as the reasons given
| in, say, China (or likely elsewhere).
|
| The concrete censored content may differ, but behind that is
| the exact same line of reasoning: That there is
| "inappropriate" content the people need to be shielded from.
|
| That motivation is the part that is questionable at least.
| (Now I've made an argument).
|
| Actually this reveals a lot in which way governments think
| about the population, no matter the country.
|
| Still there seems to be a lot of black and white thinking in
| the line of "But we are the good ones, we have reasons, but
| just look what the bad ones do". I refuse to take part in
| this narrative. The world isn't as simple as that.
| int_19h wrote:
| I still remember when they censored the Hitler scene in
| Castle Wolfenstein. You know, the one where he is presented
| as a raving syphilitic madman - literally the opposite of
| glorification. For those that haven't seen it, here's the
| comparison:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTQ1eBiRRRo
| danjoredd wrote:
| I think its less holocaust and more pornography these days.
| That and violent video games are heavily censored for
| nonpolitical reasons like gore, nudity, etc. I am glad they
| censor the holocaust glorification, but I wish they would
| leave in the other stuff.
| danjoredd wrote:
| It is more extreme in China than in America. In addition to
| sex, lgbt, and other things of a similar nature, movies with
| magic are especially rejected. Ever notice how movies seem to
| be getting more bland and milk/toast each year? its because
| there is a lot of money in China, and China only accepts a few
| foreign movies each year. Disney, Warner Bros, etc. all want a
| slice of that pie so they comply with Chinese censors as much
| as they can to get in. Germany is almost as bad, I agree, but
| companies aren't stooping to Germany. They stoop to China for
| the money, and it affects the whole of the west as a result.
| mendelk wrote:
| > milk/toast
|
| FYI the word I believe you're looking for is "milquetoast" :)
| computerfriend wrote:
| Milk/toast somehow also captures the essence of it.
| danjoredd wrote:
| After I was corrected, I looked up the origin of the
| word. It first appeared as the name of a character in a
| comic strip, "Caspar Milqutoast" who the author described
| as "speaks quietly and gets hit with a big stick." He
| named it after the food which is the most meek of meals.
|
| The Wikipedia says this: "The character's name is derived
| from a bland and fairly inoffensive food, milk toast,
| which, light and easy to digest, is an appropriate food
| for someone with a weak or "nervous" stomach"
|
| I never knew that this comic was a thing, but now I want
| to read it
| still_grokking wrote:
| > Germany is almost as bad, I agree, [...]
|
| I hope we didn't reach Chines levels by now, and that there
| is still hope.
|
| But yes, we're working hard on that and "like" to reach their
| level soonish. Our variant of the Ministry of Truth gets
| shaped out a little more with every year. Since the so called
| "Netzwerkdurchsuchungsgesetz"1 we've got really close I
| guess. But there's already more coming: "Chatkontrolle"2...
|
| > [...] but companies aren't stooping to Germany.
|
| Well, we're the country that had had shooter games with green
| blood for years, because reasons (and companies obeyed). Also
| there are of course special versions of movies, extra for the
| German market, that are "reworked" here and there to pass the
| censors. Freedom of speech and freedom of art have strict
| limits, you know... Something something, because Nazis. (The
| above mentioned laws _get actually_ partly justified
| "because Nazis"; but judge for yourself).
|
| ___
|
| 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Enforcement_Act
|
| >> The Network Enforcement Act (Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz,
| NetzDG; German: Gesetz zur Verbesserung der
| Rechtsdurchsetzung in sozialen Netzwerken), also known
| colloquially as the Facebook Act (Facebook-Gesetz), is a
| German law that was passed in the Bundestag that officially
| aims to combating fake news, hate speech and misinformation
| online.
|
| >> The Act obligates social media platforms with over 2
| million users to remove "clearly illegal" content within 24
| hours and all illegal content within 7 days of it being
| posted, or face a maximum fine of 50 million Euros. The
| deleted content must be stored for at least 10 weeks
| afterwards, and platforms must submit transparency reports on
| dealing with illegal content every six months. It was passed
| by the Bundestag in June 2017 and took full effect in January
| 2018.
|
| >> The law has been criticised both locally and
| internationally by politicians, human rights groups,
| journalists and academics for incentivising social media
| platforms to pre-emptively censor valid and lawful
| expression, and making them the arbiter of what constitutes
| free expression and curtailing freedom of speech in Germany.
|
| Of course it's only against "fake news, hate speech and
| misinformation online". Exactly like the laws in China...
|
| Just for fun: Compare with the German Wikipedia page. Maybe
| you notice something. ;-)
|
| ___
|
| 2 https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-
| co...
|
| >> The EU wants to oblige providers to search all private
| chats, messages, and emails automatically for suspicious
| content - generally and indiscriminately. The stated aim: To
| prosecute child pornography. The result: Mass surveillance by
| means of fully automated real-time messaging and chat control
| and the end of secrecy of digital correspondence.
|
| >> Other consequences of the proposal are ineffective network
| blocking, screening of person cloud storage including private
| photos, mandatory age verification leading to the end of
| anonymous communication, censorship in Appstores and the
| paternalism and exclusion of minors in the digital world.
| danjoredd wrote:
| Yes, games were censored, but they stayed the same for the
| rest of the world. Its a simple value change to make the
| blood green, so it was easy to pull off. For companies
| vying to get into China, they have to change the whole
| product for nearly everyone to get accepted, or have
| massive amounts of that product censored, and made to be a
| lesser product as a result. For those companies, why would
| you risk not only being rejected but having your movie
| gutted when you can just rewrite the whole thing to work
| with what the Chinese want? Thankfully videogames are not
| nearly as concerned with getting china dollars as movie
| studios so we aren't getting that kind of widespread global
| censorship yet. But really, its only a matter of time
| unless something cracks.
| still_grokking wrote:
| I get your point (and there is something to it).
|
| But still there are "international" versions of content
| and some "special versions" for some countries--and not
| an ultimately "pre-censored" version that would "please
| everybody" (or better said, all boards of censors at once
| regardless country).
|
| For US audience you need for example to censor nipples.
| In Germany we make jokes about that. But here a swastika
| is a very big problem, US people would not mind OTOH.
| Making a Mohamed joke will get you banned elsewhere; and
| so forth.
|
| So I don't really see an acute danger of "pre-censoring".
|
| The actual scandal is that the content industry just
| obeys all that madness. Of course, because they're only
| interested in the money. The actual messages are
| completely irrelevant and get changed fundamentally at a
| whim without remorse. That's the part that makes me
| think.
| gernb wrote:
| I don't know if it's still true but a friend of mine married a
| German woman and we were a little surprised she had never seen
| "The Sound of Music" and she said, of course, it's banned.
| archi42 wrote:
| I couldn't find info on a ban. It was heavily/absurdly
| redacted due to the Nazi topics (1966 was two decades after
| the war), but some of those changes were promptly reverted.
| Can't say if that was due to the censor bureau, or if the
| censorship was a decision in the company.
|
| Anyway, since it's VHS release you can buy the uncut version
| legally, and sellers are allowed to advert for it. It is
| rated as suitable from the age of 6 (FSK 6) since 2005. It
| simply wasn't that successful in Germany to begin with.
|
| Sources (all German):
| https://www.schnittberichte.com/special.php?ID=176&Seite=6 ht
| tps://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meine_Lieder_%E2%80%93_meine_T...
| still_grokking wrote:
| Never heard of this movie but it says clearly on the German
| Wikipedia page:
|
| > In Deutschland wurde der Film zunachst in einer stark
| gekurzten Fassung gezeigt, in der samtliche Bezuge auf den
| Nationalsozialismus fehlten und der Film mit der Hochzeit
| Marias endet und nicht - wie in der Originalfassung - mit
| der Flucht der Trapp-Familie aus Osterreich.
|
| [eng]:
|
| > In Germany, the film was initially shown in a heavily
| edited version, in which all references to National
| Socialism were removed and the film ends with Maria's
| wedding, and not--as in the original version--with the
| Trapp family's escape from Austria.
|
| LOL, sounds even more scary than the Chinese version of
| Fight Club!
| archi42 wrote:
| Next sentence: Schliesslich erwirkte das amerikanische
| Produktionsstudio jedoch, dass dieser dritte Akt des
| Films auch in der deutschen Fassung gezeigt wird.
|
| Translation: Eventually, however, the American production
| studio managed to ensure that this third act of the film
| was also shown in the German version.
|
| Wikipedia isn't clear on the process or the timeline (and
| there is no source given), but I read it like this was
| "fixed" during the initial cinematic run.
|
| Plus, whatever the cutting was, it's available uncut
| since at least the home video release, and I presume it
| was shown in cinemas uncut after at most a month. And the
| current rating is FSK-6 (suitable for children over 6).
| So it's not banned, and never was. The closest it gets is
| the 1966 initial cinema cut (which I agree to call a ban,
| but as stated, from the data given I don't believe lasted
| for long).
| still_grokking wrote:
| > but I read it like this was "fixed" during the initial
| cinematic run.
|
| > and I presume it was shown in cinemas uncut after at
| most a month.
|
| You're not form Germany, right?
|
| Changing the mind of a public authority is in any case a
| very long process as a German authority (and especially
| the board of censors!) will _never admit it did something
| wrong_. Usually you need to go through all instances.
| Things like that can take decades.
|
| I'm to lazy to research this case here as it's not really
| important but I'm quite sure it took at least a few years
| before they reverted any censoring decisions.
|
| "Schliesslich erwirkte" point in that direction actually.
| "Schliesslich" would be better translated as "lastly" or
| "finally"--which means "after a long fight" most of the
| time.
|
| Also the German Wikipedia is sneaky. You need to weight
| every word! It says "the last part was also shown in
| Germany". That does not mean they restored the Nazi
| references. I'm quite sure they didn't (at least fully)
| as most Nazi stuff is banned. They're more liberal with
| that in "art settings" just the last 20 years or so.
| Before that even small references have been heavily
| censored.
|
| It took for example decades to unban Wolfenstein 3D in
| Germany. You know, that game where you kill Nazis. But
| because the Nazis in that game use Nazi symbols it was
| verboten for a very very long time. (They didn't accept
| that video game are art, so there were no exceptions like
| for example movies; that's something that changed just
| lately).
| archi42 wrote:
| I'm from hier ;-) and I'm painfully aware how long some
| institutions take. However Hollywood was/is an important
| outlet of the allies, and the movie depicted bad stuff
| done by the Nazis (I think? never saw it). So I believe
| it's reasonable that they have exerted some influence
| (stuff like that certainly happened in the french sector,
| I was told).
|
| It was released uncut on VHS (1978 in the US, so
| 1979/1980 in Germany; VHS for home use came about 1976).
| So if it was "eventually/finally shown uncut" that
| probably refers to running in the cinema; this leaves
| only the option that (a) during the initial run they
| moved from the cut to the uncut version or (b) there was
| a rerun at some point [maybe for the VHS release].
|
| Anyway, I find it difficult to research this and also
| don't care enough; the movie is just too obscure in
| Germany, and certainly not my favorite genre.
|
| P.S.: Yes, I know about Wolfenstein; but that's a
| different medium in a different age.
| steve76 wrote:
| bjarneh wrote:
| Similar to the feeling I got when re-watching Dark Knight Rises,
| and Drive on a plane (Lufthansa?). Something was missing -- the
| violence. I guess airlines have to assume that any age can watch
| films on those screens and cut films accordingly. Strange to
| think that a country wants to treat the entire population like
| Lufthansa treats kids.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I find that it's always interesting to THEN consider, okay --
| while there's no centralized board or anything -- what does e.g.
| American censorship go after?
| JBits wrote:
| Gay characters in cartoons is the first thing that comes to my
| mind. Such as censorship of gay couples in Sailor Moon in the
| 90s (including altering one to be a pair of cousins). More
| recently, the creator of the disney cartoon Gravity Falls had
| resistance from executives over their inclusion when making the
| show.
|
| Another is censorship of LGBT books in certain states.
| thebradbain wrote:
| The US _does_ have examples of government censorship in media,
| some more extreme than others. The fact you don't even think of
| it as censorship just shows how prevalent it is. It's not on
| the same level as the CCP, but it does exist!
|
| For example, during the AIDs epidemic, Reagan used his social
| and political power to effectively ban the mention of that word
| on primetime television (remember, not only was he the
| president of the United States, he was also once the president
| of the Screen Actors Guild). Not even Will And Grace, a 1998
| sitcom about a gay couple, was allowed to mention AIDs or HIV
| at all in its 11 season run!
|
| He's also the reason movies in the 80s got away with so much
| more than they did even in the 90s, when cultural values
| themselves hadn't changed that much comparatively. the MPAA
| board was completely sized up, what was allowed to be said on
| TV was changed, and seemingly arbitrary rules put in place
| ("Fuck" can be said only once in a PG-13 movie or once-an-
| episode in certain network shows ONLY if it's non-sexual). This
| is why you have classic kids movies like Who Framed Roger
| Rabbit (1988, PG) that if they were re-released today would be
| either R or possibly not even allowed to be shown a wide
| release in theaters.
|
| And you know, now we have the whole "banned books" things in
| (my home state of) Texas, Florida, etc, which almost
| exclusively censors books with deal with LGBTQ and race issues
| from even being available in a library to be checked out by a
| curious student on their own time (including, in a Dallas
| suburb and throughout Virginia, Anne Frank's Diary).
| jibe wrote:
| This sounds a little crazy. AIDS was definitely discussed in
| TV in the 80s. First of all on the news all the time, but in
| prime time dramas and sitcom as well. CNN documents several
| examples.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/01/entertainment/80s-hollywood-a.
| ..
|
| St Elsewhere might have been the first in 1983. Golden Girls,
| Trapper John MD. There was plenty of hesitancy to deal with a
| difficult subject, and the gay element compounded the
| difficulty (openly gay characters were not common). But to
| suggest it was at the direction of the Federal Govt is
| totally absurd. Reagan was as disliked and mocked almost as
| much as Trump was.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Three TV episodes in the 80's is not a lot of samples in
| 10s of thousands of prime time TV.
| jibe wrote:
| It isn't none, it isn't an exhaustive list, and it should
| be enough to dispel the claim that there was some sort of
| white house directive to "ban the mention of that word on
| primetime television". If you have some evidence to
| support your claim please share it.
| thebradbain wrote:
| I never said white house directive, but I said he used
| his social and political power to effectively ban it
| from, well, really being talked about in the spotlight.
| There's truly plenty of articles on the subject, or you
| can ask anyone in Los Angeles who worked in the industry
| about the concerted effort of Hollywood executives to
| avoid that word at the behest of Reagan's administration.
|
| Also, your examples are not particularly illustrative.
| Reagan did not even publicly mention AIDs until 1985
| (though reporters had been asking him about it since
| 1982), when it first started to become worrisome to
| straight people (and still created no presidential task
| force or dedicated funding until 1987). Golden Girls
| mentioned it after that. So did Trapper John, MD. St.
| Elsewhere was notable precisely because it was one of the
| only primetime shows that did when it was exclusively
| thought of as a "gay disease".
|
| To truly understand how insidious Reagan's administration
| was, when doctors were ringing the alarm bells in press
| conferences years prior (and the next, and the next, and
| the next...) Reagan's response was to ask any reporter if
| they were gay to a crowd of laughter and move on. In
| fact, Nancy Reagan even arguably personally condemned
| movie star Rock Hudson, who was a personal friend of
| theirs, to an earlier death by explicitly refusing his
| appeal to have him admitted into a retroviral trial in
| France because they did want to be associated with the
| gay community in any way.
|
| https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9828348/ronald-reagan-hiv-
| aids
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/03/nancy-
| reagan...
|
| It's really not too big of a jump to make the connection
| between a man who basically started the "moral majority"
| movement and created virtually all modern film and tv
| regulation to this day (aside from the MPAA, he also
| repealed the FCC Fairness Doctrine, which basically is
| what gave rise to the giant split in media today, and
| really all major legislation around what can/cannot be
| shown on TV/in theaters that still persists to this day),
| would actively use his power to discourage AIDs from
| being talked about in media, just as he did Communism,
| anything non-nuclear family, and really anything that
| fell outside his bubble of conservative values.
|
| This was the man who effectively started the war on
| Hollywood. He came from Hollywood. He knew the studio
| execs, the donors, the investors (they funded him!), it
| wouldn't take much for them to listen to him.
| jibe wrote:
| "There's truly plenty of articles on the subject"
|
| But you can't cite a single one? That's pretty
| suspicious.
|
| "It's really not too big of a jump"
|
| So in a very long winded way, you are saying you made it
| up and have no evidence? wow...
| thebradbain wrote:
| No, I'm actually saying there's so many articles on the
| subject from so many different perspectives that support
| my point that I do not even know where to start. The
| effects of Reagan's policy decisions are still studied
| today through the lenses of media, health, and political
| science.
|
| It's like in 20 years if someone were to say that because
| neither Trump or Biden explicitly passed a singular law
| requiring you to work from home that they had no effect
| on the rise of remote work during Covid. That's what
| "It's really not too big of a jump" is meant to
| illustrate- that one thing directly leads to another.
| Obviously presidential policy isn't just purely laws. But
| here's a collection of links from a wide variety of
| sources (including his own foundation) that support my
| point. There's hundreds, if not thousands, more.
|
| If I'm wrong, please provide _me_ some concrete proof
| that Reagan had nothing to do with US's societal
| paralysis and suppression of the AIDs epidemic, because I
| think that's the point that more obviously needs
| defending.
|
| https://www.wpr.org/how-reagan-helped-usher-new-
| conservatism... https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2020/the-
| other-time-a-us-presid...
| https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230616196_9
| https://www.reaganfoundation.org/education/curriculum-
| and-re...
| https://www.press.umich.edu/331707/the_president_electric
| https://daily.jstor.org/ronald-reagan-the-first-reality-
| tv-s... https://www.vox.com/ad/18175876/ronald-nancy-
| reagan-white-ho...
| https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/beloved-media/
| https://www.press.umich.edu/331707/the_president_electric
| http://www.wiu.edu/cas/history/wihr/pdfs/Banwart-
| MoralMajori...
| https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/8/29/20826545/hoberman-
| make... https://lithub.com/ronald-reagan-presided-
| over-89343-deaths-...
|
| In fact, even the article you yourself linked (aptly
| titled Hollywood's struggle to deal with AIDS in the
| '80s) supports my point:
|
| "So perhaps it isn't surprising, then, that it wasn't
| until the mid to late '80s that a few flutterings of
| references to the AIDS crisis began to pop up. And even
| then, many of the artists who first used their art to
| broach the delicate topic were obscure pop bands or
| directors of fringe movies."
| cdot2 wrote:
| Anything you can think of you will be able to find that
| content. We simply don't have the kind of censorship that China
| has. Comparing the two is ridiculous.
| bagels wrote:
| Profanity and nudity are the categories here, at least for
| broadcast tv.
| concordDance wrote:
| > Anything you can think of you will be able to find that
| content.
|
| That's untrue. A trivial example is porn involving 17 year
| olds.
| timeon wrote:
| I bet you could gave other examples instead of escalating
| with pedophilia.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Your second sentence is absolutely correct, the others are
| not.
|
| Easy example: compare the Marvel "Civil War" comics to the
| movies. The former was critical of the military in a way that
| could not happen in any big blockbuster movie.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| What? Plenty of movies are super critical of the military
| and the 3 letter agencies in tons of ways, heck there is a
| whole genre out there about Government military agent
| realizes he's doing bad things and goes rogue to correct
| those misdeeds.
|
| Then you've got things like Full Metal Jacket, which I
| don't think is getting anyone to sign up for the forces.
|
| Like Top Gun did well recently, but is one of the only
| movies I can think of in the past couple of years that
| actually portrayed the US military in a mostly positive
| light rather than the usual gamut which runs from
| ineffective bumbling ossfied and useless to straight up
| evil.
|
| I'm just saying you can make whatever you want in the US
| and portray pretty much any idea or theme, that doesn't
| mean people will like it, but you can make it. In China
| there is no similar comparison they'll take your studio at
| best or imprison you at worst.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I don't think so. I think it's in tons of ways _except_
| those that would really call into question the whole
| thing. Which is to say -- I think that to the extent that
| "the Military" controls its image, it's _smart enough_ to
| include just enough problematic stuff.
|
| So the ones that seem "anti-Military" are really "anti-
| traitors-in-the-Military," and/or the healthy kind of
| self-criticism.
| CrispinS wrote:
| I agree with your last sentence, but on the subject of
| positive portrayals of US armed forces, the studios
| actually have an incentive to play nice. The DoD will let
| film productions use real equipment and personal, but
| only after vetting the script and making changes as they
| see fit.
|
| For example, the Transformers movies:
| https://www.wired.com/2008/12/pentagon-holl-1/
|
| The general concept:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-
| entertainment_compl...
| rhcom2 wrote:
| Avatar is one of the biggest grossing movies of all time
| with a plot critical of the military and imperialism.
| banannaise wrote:
| Right. Censorship is accomplished _economically_. The
| government doesn 't ban content; it simply is the only
| legal owner of military hardware in the country, and will
| allow near-unlimited use of that hardware for content that
| promotes the military; that hardware is entirely
| unavailable for content critical of the military.
|
| Is this better than explicit censorship? That's more of an
| open question.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Apocalypse Now, a film intended to be anti-war, used
| Philippine military equipment to stand in for American
| hardware.
|
| Honestly, with the ubiquity of CGI in film, whether the
| military choses to participate in a film is hardly a
| barrier to making a movie.
| agentdrtran wrote:
| I think it's pretty inarguably better? The alternative is
| never being allowed to be critical of the military at
| all. You don't need an f-35 or a tank for a documentary
| on American war crimes.
| cdot2 wrote:
| You have to really stretch the meaning of censorship for
| that to count
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > that hardware is entirely unavailable for content
| critical of the military.
|
| It's not _directly_ available. As in, you can 't film on
| a US naval vessel or on a US military base without their
| support. Stock footage or footage from public spaces are
| allowed. You may also be able to get the support of
| another country or make use of mothballed or otherwise
| decommissioned systems if you have the right connections
| and money.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimson_Tide_(film)
|
| Used footage of the real USS Alabama, used a
| decommissioned (and sold-off) submarine, and a French
| aircraft carrier.
| S201 wrote:
| > The former was critical of the military in a way that
| could not happen in any big blockbuster movie.
|
| It most certainly "could" be made as there is nothing
| preventing a studio from doing so if they wanted to. It may
| not be commercially viable and thus it would not get green-
| lit by a studio but that's a world away from the government
| explicitly forbidding it.
| agentdrtran wrote:
| the kind of censorship that happens when you're building a
| multibillion dollar tent pole franchise for the entire
| planet is different.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| The argument would be that you can find critical views of
| the military - just not in a blockbuster movie.
|
| The question is why the people making the content in the US
| and China don't want to certain content. Is it because
| they're worried it won't be popular or because they're
| worried that it will be popular.
|
| I can't prove anything (how would you?) but I tend to think
| in the U.S. it's the former and in the China the later.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > The argument would be that you can find critical views
| of the military - just not in a blockbuster movie.
|
| You can, in fact, have critical views of the military in
| blockbuster movies in the US. But not if you want to use
| US military bases and aircraft and ships as sets for
| those movies, or to get support of the US military in
| making the movie. Depending on the particular movie, this
| could be a make-or-break deal for them (Top Gun, for
| instance, would be pretty shitty with stock footage of US
| aircraft carriers and aircraft instead of actual footage
| staged for the movie).
| egypturnash wrote:
| I have heard that if you criticize the US military in
| your film then they won't let you borrow tanks and other
| resources for it. If your film glorifies the US military
| then they will happily give you tons of resources for
| your movie, up to and including piles of money.
|
| This is not outright government censorship - you can
| still make a picture that says "the US military sucks" -
| but it certainly has an effect on big-budget films that
| want every dollar they can get.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| You're missing the point. American censorship doesn't have to
| be comparable for the question of what can be learned about
| our cultural bias from what we censor or self-censor to be
| interesting. What do we eliminate or simply refuse to produce
| because we can't bear to have our children see the world that
| way?
| stickfigure wrote:
| Find another thread in which to discuss it or start a new
| thread. Here it is is whataboutism and sounds like you're
| trying to justify the original censorship.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Listen to you telling me where I can and cannot discuss
| things, and explaining to me what my comments mean!
| jollybean wrote:
| No, it's not ridiculous at all.
|
| US programming is highly censored.
|
| 30 Rock had to pull episodes because of a gag where a
| 'completely insensitive dupish character' wore black makeup,
| to sing as a black person. It wasn't a problem in 2010 but
| all of a sudden it is in 2020. NBC will not be releasing the
| original.
|
| A ton of jokes and gags are self censored for a variety of
| reasons. Eddie Murphy's early specials would absolutely not
| be aired today for example and I suggest they may face some
| shelving at some point.
|
| Cultural standards differ.
|
| Now - obviously, there are political elements of censorship,
| and being in possession of 'banned materials' may be
| punishable etc. - and that form of censorship is 'not
| comparable'. But the cultural standards issue is.
| richardjam73 wrote:
| There is a kids show made in my country called Bluey. It is
| distributed by Disney in the USA. They censored parts and even
| entire episodes of the show. Cutting things like fart and poop
| jokes, talk of vasectomies and discussions of childbirth.
| atemerev wrote:
| A valid question, I think. There _is_ censorship in America,
| mostly related to sex and nudity (for some reason, Americans
| are way more sensitive to this compared to Europeans). Or, say,
| smoking.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| America is much more sensitive about sex and nudity than a lot
| of other cultures.
|
| In _I, Robot_ , a scene that showed in the European version did
| not show in the US version. It was a full body nudity shower
| scene and the point was to show you how extensive his robotic
| parts were. They had to find some other means to explain that
| to the audience in the US and it wasn't even a sexual scene.
| Just full nudity (of Will Smith, to be clear).
|
| "Tentacle beasts" in, I think, Japan can do all kinds of sexual
| stuff that would be outrageous in the US and not shown here. I
| am not super familiar, so can't really elaborate.
|
| We also have a long history of using "coded messages" to talk
| about racial stuff in the US. When Elvis first aired, he
| sounded so much like a Black musician compared to what was the
| norm for music at the time that they would talk about what high
| school he was from as code for "This is a White guy" because
| segregation was a thing, so naming his high school was
| signaling his race.
|
| We have a history of censoring LGBTQ topics. I saw something
| once where they showed a deleted scene from an old black and
| white film about Roman history and the scene was a coded
| message about whether someone was gay or bisexual or something.
| They used some euphemism or other and it was considered too
| much and got cut.
|
| Violence. I have become a fan of things that are careful in how
| they show violence, showing just enough to know something bad
| happened while sidestepping unnecessary gore. I think that's
| generally a good thing, but it is a form of censorship
| nonetheless.
| jibe wrote:
| _In I, Robot, a scene that showed in the European version did
| not show in the US version. It was a full body nudity shower
| scene and the point was to show you how extensive his robotic
| parts were. They had to find some other means to explain that
| to the audience in the US and it wasn 't even a sexual scene.
| Just full nudity_
|
| Are you sure this is true, and not an apocryphal story? I've
| seen the German and US version of the movie, and they are
| identical. There is a nude shower scene in both, and Will
| Smith uses has hand to cover his groin.
|
| I've seen two interviews, one where he said his penis was so
| big they had to tape it down, and a second where it was so
| big, they had to CGI it out because it was distracting. They
| both seem like they may have been self serving jokes that got
| evolved into the "full frontal I Robot euro cut."
|
| It is also possible that a Euro theatrical version with full
| frontal existed, but the DVD/BluRay releases used the US cut.
| js8 wrote:
| > America is much more sensitive about sex and nudity than a
| lot of other cultures
|
| Nudity.. maybe. Sex? Most American shows I have seen just
| CANNOT STOP talking about sex. Sure, they won't display it,
| but it's all about it. Even TBBT.
|
| (FWIW, comparing to Czech culture and TV series.)
| astrange wrote:
| Movies have gotten surprisingly sexless (MCU has even less
| sex than you'd expect from a superhero movie) so some kinds
| of TV shows have been pumping it up to compensate.
|
| Of course, they're not really TV shows anymore when they're
| unregulated streaming programs.
| jibe wrote:
| Top Gun vs Maverick is a good example. Top Gun has a
| long, steamy, but non-explicit sex scene. Maverick has an
| extremely short, clothed, mostly implied sex scene.
| bubblethink wrote:
| >MCU has even less sex than you'd expect from a superhero
| movie
|
| That's just self censorship for the global market. Why
| leave it to the censors when you can make a better
| product that works within the constraints.
| paxys wrote:
| People forget that before cable TV government-mandated
| censorship was commonplace in the USA for all kinds of media.
| And after that we just shifted the burden on to ratings
| agencies.
| goto11 wrote:
| The American way is voluntary self-censorship for commercial
| purposes. This makes it much harder to say what exactly is
| allowed and not, because it is easy to see what scenes have
| been cut from a show but it is impossible to say what scenes
| was never written or produced.
|
| Even blatant censorship like the Hayes Code or the Comics Code
| was never enforced by the government and therefore never in
| conflict with the 5th amendment. It was a voluntary
| "certification" manged by the industry itself, which just meant
| movies/comics not adhering to the code would not get a
| mainstream audience. So the code was implemented from the
| writing stage.
| autoexec wrote:
| > The American way is voluntary self-censorship for
| commercial purposes.
|
| The US government hasn't been able to resist censorship
| entirely. Comedians have been arrested for "obscenity". The
| FCC will happily go after certain violations in TV and radio.
| The US government has also censored news broadcasts and
| journalists.
|
| Bush in particular was very aggressive in censoring the news
| coverage of his war. Most notably, the flag-draped coffins of
| dead American soldiers were banned from TV news. During the
| Regan administration the Justice Department also briefly
| banned the Canadian film "If You Love This Planet" for being
| "foreign political propaganda".
| jibe wrote:
| _The US government hasn 't been able to resist censorship
| entirely. Comedians have been arrested for "obscenity"._
|
| There is a federal law on the books against obscenity, but
| it has never been used to arrest a comedian. Comedians like
| Lenny Bruce, and Musicians like Jim Morrison have run into
| trouble with city governments. Bruce was ironically
| arrested in both San Francisco and New York. Morrison was
| more expectedly arrested in New Haven.
|
| _the Justice Department also briefly banned the Canadian
| film "If You Love This Planet" for being "foreign political
| propaganda"_
|
| The film was never banned, classifying it as foreign
| political propaganda meant that before it was shown the
| audience had to be informed: "This material is prepared,
| edited, issued or circulated by the National Film Board of
| Canada, which is registered with the Department of Justice,
| Washington, D.C., under the Foreign Agents Registration
| Act."
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > what does e.g. American censorship go after?
|
| That's the "beauty" of arbitrary censorship: they'll start to
| self-censor for fear of being butchered like this. I'm sure
| there's a _lot_ of stuff that they don 't put into popular
| American media for fear that the censor board _might_ object.
| swayvil wrote:
| I think we mostly use emergent social media effects for that
| now. Puppeteered by popular pundits, superhero movies and the
| usual marketing.
|
| Unpopular opinions can lead to censorship, firing, lawsuits and
| death-threats. It works pretty good.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| In the US, you can get in a lot of trouble for publishing
| military secrets. (IE, you bet a movie that casually mentions a
| military secret would get into a lot of hot water right away.)
|
| Otherwise, the rest of censorship comes from social pressure;
| or someone with hurt feelings trying to twist the courts to
| enforce their will.
| astrange wrote:
| Publishing military secrets is legal (eg https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/United_States_v._Progressive,_....). Journalists
| don't have a duty to keep classified information secret, only
| the people who've agreed to keep it secret do.
| trasz wrote:
| Obviously false, see Assange.
| astrange wrote:
| Assange hasn't been convicted of anything yet. Seeing as
| he was part of a conspiracy to steal the classified
| information, probably will be though.
|
| The bit of the Espionage Act that conflicts with my
| previous post is unconstitutional.
| trasz wrote:
| It doesn't matter if he hasn't been formally convicted;
| he spent last decade de facto imprisoned, proving that US
| does in fact punish journalists that are a bit too nosy
| about US military.
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-08-30 23:02 UTC)