warm_enema
New Member
Although, I've known incarcerated individuals that were more free than I could ever hope to be.
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America being ridiculous...again
- Thread starter Stewart
- Start date
Freedom is one of those tricky things. Everyone interprets it differently. Does making a movie available or not available on network television imply freedom? Not to those with no access to network (only satellite here, folks, with no local channels). Not to those with no television. Is a person free to watch the movie? Certainly. It's available for sale, for rental, for borrowing at the library. You almost can't escape finding the movie. I didn't particularly enjoy it, so it's no matter to me.
This isn't a freedom issue, IMO. Freedom is the ability to choose without intervention. cajunmama chooses not to show it to her children. Novella chooses to watch it and believes it's no different than MTV or others. Both are free choices, and won't result in knocks on the door or midnight raids. Even the Thread title implies that somehow "America" is less free for not broadcasting a particular movie (and that somehow the whole of the country's freedom is ruled by network television ~ truly laughable). That the "people" of America are somehow ridiculous because of the actions of three corporations that don't accept imput from the public, but from the sponsors.
It's strange that books can be banned -- totally removed from the public's ability to obtain, but one movie without a network broadcast makes the country less free.
Very weird indeed.
Cathy
This isn't a freedom issue, IMO. Freedom is the ability to choose without intervention. cajunmama chooses not to show it to her children. Novella chooses to watch it and believes it's no different than MTV or others. Both are free choices, and won't result in knocks on the door or midnight raids. Even the Thread title implies that somehow "America" is less free for not broadcasting a particular movie (and that somehow the whole of the country's freedom is ruled by network television ~ truly laughable). That the "people" of America are somehow ridiculous because of the actions of three corporations that don't accept imput from the public, but from the sponsors.
It's strange that books can be banned -- totally removed from the public's ability to obtain, but one movie without a network broadcast makes the country less free.
Very weird indeed.
Cathy
bobbyburns
New Member
SillyWabbit said:
take it from yoda.
bobbyburns
New Member
Cathy C said:
just because we have choice, that doesn't make us free.
novella
Active Member
Cathy C said:Novella chooses to watch it and believes it's no different than MTV or others. . .
It's strange that books can be banned -- totally removed from the public's ability to obtain, but one movie without a network broadcast makes the country less free.
Very weird indeed.
Cathy
In fact, I choose not to watch it. I have not seen that movie. Nor do I watch MTV. I choose NOT to watch violence for pleasure.
If you read a little more carefully, you will see that I was addressing the spurious distinction between that movie and any other violent thing on televion, of which there is plenty. My point is that so-called "moral" broadcasting decisions are spurious, inconsistent, and without basis.
I choose to follow the REAL war because I want to be informed, but it is no less harmful psychologically for a child to see real beheadings during primetime, over dinner perhaps, than to watch Saving Private Ryan. A young child is incapable of discriminating between reality and fiction at that level. So, my point is, who are these regulations serving?
It IS a freedom issue when the government decides to censor material from free public view based on an ill-conceived, false moral dictum. Sure, everyone with private means is FREE to go pay for this movie, but that is not what's at issue.
Broadcast media censorship should be carefullly scrutinized because the government IS curtailing what is available through the free media, and their reasons are inconsistent and without any sound basis. There is a tremendous difference between a private citizen paying for a porn channel over private cable and having the government fine Janet Jackson for showing her breast to a bunch of football fans over broadcast media.
Don't you see the difference? I am not arguing that I choose to watch Private Ryan, but that the government, through imposed "standards," will not ALLOW it to be broadcast.
As for your second point, I fail to see your logical leap: How does discussing the broadcast airing of a movie indicate anything at all about how one feels about book banning? I am certain nobody on this thread is in FAVOR of book banning. What makes you think people care any less about that?
Actually that's what I think => The USA is less free than for example countries in Europe! In the USA books are banned form (school) libraries (including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, Go Ask Alice or Flowers for Algernon), evolution isn't taught in some schools (that's pretty fundamentalistic) and most of all the media is censored (pictures of the coffins of fallen soldiers weren't shown because your president didn't want to). You wouldn't get throught with that in my country.Cathy C said:
mr_michel
kickbox
That's a good one and this little boy is so cute! The scene with the tatoo is my favourite.mr_michel said:
...but as long as I'm here there will be no book burning on this forum.
Irene Wilde
New Member
That's Walmart for you, and by extension, America: Swear words are bad, a copy of Playboy Magazine is bad, BUT guns are good!
Irene Wilde
How can anything this country does surprise anyone after Nov. 2?
Irene Wilde
VTChEwbecca
kickbox
Unfortunatley, you're right. America is getting more conservative. In some ways, the country is more conservative than it was in the 1950's.
The whole movie thing was idiotic. Stations were afraid of getting fined (an aftermath of the wardrobe malfunction...because seeing a woman's breast is certain to screw our children up for the rest of their lives), but the FCC would not tell them if they would or would not be fined for showing Saving Private Ryan uncut. The FCC merely stated that they would be fined if they "received enough complaints."
It seems that many in our nation are so afraid that their children might see/hear something immoral on TV that they feel it necessary to pass laws to prevent any thing from being shown on tv. I'll be the first to say that the programming is pretty much only trash, so I make the obvious choice and do not watch it. If parents are so afraid that they are unable to prevent their children from watching crap on tv, then they've got bigger problems than tv programming.
The whole movie thing was idiotic. Stations were afraid of getting fined (an aftermath of the wardrobe malfunction...because seeing a woman's breast is certain to screw our children up for the rest of their lives), but the FCC would not tell them if they would or would not be fined for showing Saving Private Ryan uncut. The FCC merely stated that they would be fined if they "received enough complaints."
It seems that many in our nation are so afraid that their children might see/hear something immoral on TV that they feel it necessary to pass laws to prevent any thing from being shown on tv. I'll be the first to say that the programming is pretty much only trash, so I make the obvious choice and do not watch it. If parents are so afraid that they are unable to prevent their children from watching crap on tv, then they've got bigger problems than tv programming.
novella
Active Member
VTChEwbecca said:
I so disagree. America is more diverse, tolerant, and open to change than it's ever been. If you look at the real changes, not the President's rhetoric, you can see how flexible and tolerant the national character is.
Interracial dating and marriage is widely accepted, handicapped and mentally ill people have their rights protected, there's infinite access to the media through cable and the internet (with an overload of information on everything, and everyone's opinion gets published somewhere), political activism is at a high (for both conservatives and liberals), it's okay to be openly gay, kids in school now accept this social openness as natural.
Every generation sometimes feels oppressed, that things were better sometime before, that the world is worse off now, etc. There's a famous editorial in The New Yorker from about 1900 that bemoans the downfall of civilization, the inevitable mess that NY is becoming, social intolerance, crime, disease, every pox visited upon mankind ruining our fair city. I guess it just felt like that at the time.
Remember, the 1950s was the decade of Charlie Parker, Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Holly, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Bernstein, Mailer, Saul Bellow, MLK, establishment of the Commission on Civil Rights, Rosa Parks, Brown v. Bd of Ed, Pollock, de Kooning, Rauschenberg, J.D. Salinger, International Style, the list goes on and on. If you look at the so-called "liberal" 60s, what can compare?
The myths about culture and history, like the 50s being so conservative, are facile ways to describe difficult times.
cajunmama
Active Member
In my opinion, my country is way over regulated, but it has to be one of the most sue-happy in the world. Just look at the sheer number of lawyers and the price of physicians malpractice insurance. Where else can a man sue the maker of a deer stand because he fell asleep in it and subsequently fell out of it? If the movie was being shown uncut, I simply wouldn't let my kids watch it. They are 10 and younger. A 15 year old, okay, no problem, they would be old enough to understand, not just be frightened and grossed out. It is parent's job to decide what is good or bad for their child, but soooo many of them just don't decide anything, too concerned with being their kid's friend. Then when something bad happens, they look for someone to sue. So tv stations and Wal-Mart have to protect themselves.
an offtopic thought.
sometimes i just thought its funny and ridiculous about these kinda stuff. There are thounsands of children who are killed, kidnapped, missing, dying for hungry, being molested..... either in the United States of America or in any other places, and thousands of other sad thing that have happened, is happening and still will happen, but we people just come discuss and babble. I don't mean to offend anyone here, but its just i feel confused and frutstrated that i cannot do anything useful to really help.
am not pretending am universal fraternal. just being honest with what i have thought.
there are authours that keep producing books loaded with violence and conflicts, and killing, don't they see that there are already enough outside and around themselves???
well, maybe there is only one reason that can explain, i think, people need to live with conflicts and violence, which is so much enjoyable. (well, an eden garden-like paradise can be boring.) at least one thing is good to them/us, because they at least can laugh rather than have nothing on their faces.
what else? oh. and i don't understand either that how come people who are highly-educated, and who have read soooooooooo many books can still do harms to others???
omg, Cathy C, you write much more than me. good!
ah......... i mistakenly delet what i have said previously. something still missing.
well, why i bother with those things?? its none of my business. but then whose business??
sometimes i just thought its funny and ridiculous about these kinda stuff. There are thounsands of children who are killed, kidnapped, missing, dying for hungry, being molested..... either in the United States of America or in any other places, and thousands of other sad thing that have happened, is happening and still will happen, but we people just come discuss and babble. I don't mean to offend anyone here, but its just i feel confused and frutstrated that i cannot do anything useful to really help.
am not pretending am universal fraternal. just being honest with what i have thought.
there are authours that keep producing books loaded with violence and conflicts, and killing, don't they see that there are already enough outside and around themselves???
well, maybe there is only one reason that can explain, i think, people need to live with conflicts and violence, which is so much enjoyable. (well, an eden garden-like paradise can be boring.) at least one thing is good to them/us, because they at least can laugh rather than have nothing on their faces.
what else? oh. and i don't understand either that how come people who are highly-educated, and who have read soooooooooo many books can still do harms to others???
omg, Cathy C, you write much more than me. good!
ah......... i mistakenly delet what i have said previously.
something still missing.well, why i bother with those things?? its none of my business. but then whose business??
Gizmo said:
And see, I disagree. I actually think that the U.S. is more tolerant than many places in the world. Of the thousands and thousands of schools here, there are a very few where the bannings occur, and they seldom occur for long (usually only until the next month's PTA or school board meeting). Same with evolution. Having been a public library trustee, and worked in an elementary school in a conservative area, there are always requests from both sides of the argument (one side who wants Harry Potter out, and the other side who wants Penthouse in -- in an elementary school!) But the moderates -- those people who don't have any disagreement with anyone about anything -- aren't the ones who show up in the press. The day-to-day good things in America never make the press. The people who are perfectly happy to let people live their lives number in the tens of millions, but nobody sees them. Our little town of 5,000, where the poverty rate is over 40%, donated over $60,000 of school supplies and clothing for an Iraqi town because one of the soldiers asked for donations. It took over 300 boxes and crates, but people didn't hesitate to do it, because it would help people who needed help -- people who had even less than us. No press, no applause, just a bunch of strangers in another country who couldn't grasp the concept of a "donation" from people who had never met them and who couldn't believe they could keep the items forever without some price.
Generally, moderates ignore the press. I'm an independent. Some of my views are conservative, some are liberal, but most of the time, what other people do isn't my business, and shouldn't be the business of the government. I'm not sure where the world got the idea that the president didn't want coffins of fallen soldiers on the air. The president has little to say about it. The presses and networks make their own decisions. Just ask the New York Times and Fox. I do know that the Pentagon requested that certain coffins not be shown without the permission of the soldier's families, but that's not the same thing, IMO. Unfortunately, there's little room for "real" news on broadcast television here, because they're too busy concentrating on Janet Jackson (yes, STILL!), and the Peterson trial (don't ask...
) and whether or not Justin Timberlake hit a photographer (like I care). Novella, I wasn't trying to imply that banning books and Private Ryan have anything in common -- other than the fact that it's frustrating to me that whether or not it's broadcast gives a certain impression to the world (or even to the citizens) and there's little reaction to books, other than mention during a particular week of the year. There aren't that many books banned, just like there aren't that many instances of "censorship". There are a few. There are everywhere in the world. Different places, different things.
From what I've heard, the Saving Private Ryan airing had little to do with the FCC. The network was much more concerned about their sponsors. Nobody wanted to pay for the broadcast, because the sponsors were afraid that nobody would watch it during the 7-9 period. Therefore, none of the networks would air it. It was a simple money issue and had little to do with the government.
Anyway, the perceived image of America seems to be much different in the world than to those who live here. That's all I meant.
Cathy