Late on a recent Monday evening pay-TV viewers enjoyed a spectacular display of M-Net-style puritanism. It took place during an hour-long show in the HBO comedy series. This was a monologue by the American satirist, Bill Maher. As always, Maher was superb, showing that true, abrasive satire can still flourish in a world steadily being eroded of humour and joy by the politically correct. Maher’s work is uncompromising, savagely funny.
Using the show’s transmission as its stage, M-Net presented its own contorted satire: censorship as it is practised by the doughnut-heads who run the M-Net presentation departments (the ones who can’t even get their sound levels consistent). In the first half-hour of the Bill Maher show nothing “offensive” was blotted out. Maher isn’t particularly fond of taboo words — he uses them sparingly — and the very occasional “fuck” and “pussy” were left intact. In the second half-hour, however, M-Net’s platoon of Mevrou Grundys suddenly went on red alert. All the — by M-Net’s definition — forbidden words were blanked out, including the M-Net favourite “God”.
What bizarre M-Net policy dictates that only half a show gets censored? I think I know the answer. Some years ago I had a sketch in one of my stage revues, where a morally inflamed censor was applying what he termed the officially approved “Profanity Frequency Schedule”, eagerly applying his blue pencil to any “undesirable” word exceeding a permissible limit of these in any play.
The sketch was based on actual experiences playwrights and producers were having in the late 1970s, at the hands of the then Publications Directorate. Instead of banning words or phrases outright, the official censors had decided they would try to bargain. They would call for scripts and then summon the writers or directors and try to barter off the “undesirable” words or ideas, one against the other.
It was like a stock exchange in genitalia. Some densely powdered elderly Afrikaans widow from the directorate would chair a meeting. Completely unfazed, she would stroke her cement-like hairstyle while dishing out little bribes of sweets, as if to misbehaving children. “Look, I see you’ve got a cock on Page 32 and another cock on Page 35. Shame. If you take out your cock on 35, I’ll let you have your shit on Page 47.”
It didn’t stop there. Halfway through the Cape Town run of one of my shows I received a phone call from a secretary at the directorate — verbatim: “Mr Lighton has been looking through the script of your production [which he had demanded to see] and he has noticed that you have two ‘balls’ on the same page. He says please would you try to get more space between your balls.”
The strategy of trying to get writers, directors, performers to work in collaboration with censors was abandoned after a few months and the Publications Directorate is, itself, a thing of the past. What will never be nullified, though, are the tweezer-brain responses that are a hallmark of all censors, and which obviously inspire the busy souls at M-Net. The only rational explanation for the partial censorship of Bill Maher’s show is that it was subject to an M-Net pre-ordained Profanity Frequency Schedule. Once the show had used up its stipulated ration of “fucks”, “pussies”, “tits”, “cocks”, “assholes” and “Gods”, M-Net’s blank-it-out button was brought into play.
Maher’s show was by no means the first one. As any M-Net viewer will confirm, similar excisions are made in movies, most especially the blanking-out of the words “God”, “Jesus” and “Christ”. I’ve often wondered why M-Net so -“religiously” deletes these words in its transmissions. Either the M-Net board members are closet atheists, or M-Net presentation flunkies think the word is some sort of yet-uncategorised obscenity. Either way, I am sure the divinities are grateful for the assistance to their eternity offered by the defenders of spiritual faith at the Randburg Vatican.
The end effect of blanking out words in television shows is counter-productive and more than a little ludicrous. Each time a word is blanked out, the viewers immediately are tempted to work out what the word was. Unless they are -complete boobies, that is. Blanking out draws attention to the usages while giving the audience a sense of being patronised by some -anonymous prude.
The use of expletives in the material of contemporary comedians, films and other television shows is quite common. If offence is thought likely, this is dealt with by age advisories and warnings attached to the broadcasts. There is also an agreed “watershed” period — later in the evening — when more explicit material may be shown. Bill Maher’s show was broadcast between 10pm and 11pm and well within the watershed. What grotesque M-Net policy deemed that the later half of the show should be censored, but not the earlier?
But if there’s one thing that -censorship guarantees, it is a feeling of pity for the people who impose it. With their stuffy pretensions up for all to admire, their weapons-grade rectitude out on show, they usually only succeed in looking magnificently stupid.