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Goofy Ass Censorship!
5 years ago
General
In eternity, where there is no time, nothing can grow. Nothing can become. Nothing changes. So death created time to grow the things that it would kill and you are reborn but into the same life that you've always been born into.
So yeah...I keep forgetting about this then remembering it. Elmer Fudd won't be hunting Bugs Bunny with a gun anymore in the new Looney Tunes cartoons they're making. Reactions to this decision have been all over the place. What's really thrown everyone for a loop though, is what they have Fudd using in place of his iconic gun: a scythe. And dynamite. Apparently a number of the staff members working on this new Looney Tunes just felt it was in bad taste with the shootings and all that. But I gotta tell you, giving Elmer Fudd a scythe takes him from incompetent hunter to Serial Killer in Training!
Censorship gets really interesting. There are, of course, the cartoons I grew up on where they had to go through a board of censors (Animaniacs, Tiny Toons, etc.) before being aired. They loved fucking with the censors. There's also the stuff that gets censored for national T.V., talking about movies and such. Sometimes they replace swear words with the weirdest shit. One of the most infamous examples I can think of was the T.V. edit of "The Big Lebowski" where John Goodman's character is going on a tirade, yelling at a teen kid while he's busting what he believes is his fancy car. What he's yelling is "Do you see what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass?!" The censored version? "Do you see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps?!" I'm pretty sure whoever came up with that was smoking more pot than Lebowski was!
Another one that really got my gears turning a while back, where I just couldn't calculate how the T.V. edit was any less "offensive" than the uncensored version. The movie was "Good Will Hunting", and one of the subplots of that movie has Matt Damon's character, the titular Will Hunting, going to therapy sessions with a psychologist played by the late, great Robin Williams. Over the course of the movie, they form a connection and after their last session, Will hugs Robin's character (his name eludes me) and while they hug, Will asks "This doesn't violate the doctor-patient relationship, does it?" and Robin's character wittily replies "Only if you grab my ass." Funny, for sure! Vulgar? Ehh. But the censored version? It removes that naughty "ass" word, but as far as vulgarity goes, it could be argued that it's worse. In that version, Robin's character replies to the question with "Only if I turn around." It's still funny, imo! But it really clued me into what the real priorities were with censorship. And the real priorities are fucking stupid.
Which brings me back around to removing Elmer's gun. Don't want him to chase after Bugs Bunny with a gun? Alright, whatever. But why not give him a crossbow or a bow and arrow? Why a scythe? The difference between all of those is the scythe really implies more sadistic intent.
Censorship gets really interesting. There are, of course, the cartoons I grew up on where they had to go through a board of censors (Animaniacs, Tiny Toons, etc.) before being aired. They loved fucking with the censors. There's also the stuff that gets censored for national T.V., talking about movies and such. Sometimes they replace swear words with the weirdest shit. One of the most infamous examples I can think of was the T.V. edit of "The Big Lebowski" where John Goodman's character is going on a tirade, yelling at a teen kid while he's busting what he believes is his fancy car. What he's yelling is "Do you see what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass?!" The censored version? "Do you see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps?!" I'm pretty sure whoever came up with that was smoking more pot than Lebowski was!
Another one that really got my gears turning a while back, where I just couldn't calculate how the T.V. edit was any less "offensive" than the uncensored version. The movie was "Good Will Hunting", and one of the subplots of that movie has Matt Damon's character, the titular Will Hunting, going to therapy sessions with a psychologist played by the late, great Robin Williams. Over the course of the movie, they form a connection and after their last session, Will hugs Robin's character (his name eludes me) and while they hug, Will asks "This doesn't violate the doctor-patient relationship, does it?" and Robin's character wittily replies "Only if you grab my ass." Funny, for sure! Vulgar? Ehh. But the censored version? It removes that naughty "ass" word, but as far as vulgarity goes, it could be argued that it's worse. In that version, Robin's character replies to the question with "Only if I turn around." It's still funny, imo! But it really clued me into what the real priorities were with censorship. And the real priorities are fucking stupid.
Which brings me back around to removing Elmer's gun. Don't want him to chase after Bugs Bunny with a gun? Alright, whatever. But why not give him a crossbow or a bow and arrow? Why a scythe? The difference between all of those is the scythe really implies more sadistic intent.
Also to give your an answer to the more "sadistic intent" point you brought up, oh you know Elmer Fudd just plans to go The Predator on poor Bugs with all the skinning alive and what not! xD