Penis on TV
A penis in an MPAA film is grounds for an R-rating. The odd bare breast or glimpse at a vagina on American television occur strictly on late-night premium cable. TV shows like Crank Yankers on basic cable that show animated or puppet naughty bits are extremely racy, and never air before 9 pm.
Arriving in Dublin where I get a lot of British programming, I was delighted to see lots and lots of penises on TV. It seems that television here has more of a sliding scale of propriety. While daytime TV is quite as innocuous as prime time American TV (and is indeed made up of mostly American shows) there are late night programs in which words like “fuck” and images of naked human beings can be seen. Even men! Apparently the men that get on TV here are sexual animals as well, not the emasculated men of American television. I’d even estimate I’ve seen more penises on TV than I’ve seen breasts or vaginas in the past few months, and I think it’s marvelous.
One instance was on a show called Autopsy where they had a naked guy with representations of the internal organs painted on his abdomen standing around on stage in case the presenters needed to make example of him. On Boy George’s Top 19 Queer TV Moments I saw half a dozen players from the French rugby team’s penises. It blew my mind.
I saw the film Resident Evil televised the other day and several of the most violent bits were edited out. At one point Milla Jovovich’s character smashes a zombie on the back of the head with a glass paperweight, but the impact of the assault is tastefully cut-away from in the TV version. Later on the same station was a reality TV show about a guy who directs Porn videos, complete with uncensored shots of him filming sex scenes.
I guess there’s no way to have any original observation regarding these cultural differences. I’m just writing to say I’m impressed. I had no idea there were such civilized places in the world.
Posted: March 15th, 2006 under Miscellaneous.
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