I rarely watch television, but last night I indulged in a good ol’ spook-month thriller. The Devil’s Advocate is a B film, but I don’t expect more than that from a sci-fi thriller. I’m also not a huge fan of Keanu Reeves. But I do like Charlize Theron who played opposite Reeves as the advocate’s wife and how could you go wrong with Al Pacino as attorney John Milton—or is he the devil?
I’m so out of practice watching TV, that commercials flummox me. I know, most people have some Blue-ray or TiVo method of dealing with commercials, but I’m not sophisticated enough to own such high falutin technology. Back in the day, when I really did watch TV, I had a more or less scientific method of multi-tasking during commercials. I bounced up and down during the breaks to wash the dishes, fold the laundry, walk the dog, or clean the cat box. That was also back when I wore a size seven. I’m definitely out of that groove now.
It’s been so long since I’ve watched television that I kept thinking my TV was cutting out. Then I realized that someone in there was simply censoring the “fucks” and “damns.” What a waste of video tape. Why’d the director put those in if someone’s just gonna edited them out.
About two-thirds of the way through the movie Theron had a ten-second nude scene. I thought my TV was losing pixels! Oops, after the fact, I realized that the censors were at it again. Where her nipples should have been was a through-the-bottom-of-the-coke-bottle blur. The thrust and curve of her boobs was clearly evident, topped by a smudged-out spot where each nipple should have been. Now I ask you: What is wrong with women’s nipples? We see cute little baby nipples in diaper commercials. We see sexy men’s pec nipples in shaving commercials. But for a split second in a sci-fi horror movie, a woman’s nipples get the smudge treatment. What is up with that? Are women’s nipples freaks?
What a strange flippin’ world we live in.
And has anyone noticed how the commercials come faster and faster the closer you get to the end of the film?
Rangewriter 
Yeah, it’s a mystery, huh? TV is such a wasteland. I’m thankful for TIVO because at least I can avoid commercials now, but I only tape just a few shows and some movies. It actually has helped me spend less time in front of the TV wasting an hour on a show that ends up being a disappointment. I’m kind of bummed right now because Project Runway’s last show of the season was last night. What will I do??
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SDS, maybe you can find the reruns of Project Runway…..
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I cancelled cable and recycled my TV…I watch movies and as much TV as I want on my computer.
Yeah, talk about over-sensitizing part of human anatomy! If they just let it be, it would be as incidental as seeing male nips. Good grief. We will eventually evolve to the dress code of natives, from past centuries, who lived in hot countries. You know the one…the beauty that religion can’t bear to accept!
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Ya, SD, Americans are absolutely nuts when it comes to sex. The shows and advertisements on TV are filled with, in my opinion, inappropriate groping, tonsil-licking, and dry humping. Yet we’re afraid to show a woman’s nipples. I guess its not much different from our politics. Everyone wants the government to protect them but they don’t want to pay the government to do this.
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It is interesting that they blurred out the nipples and not her breasts. When I saw the title of this post I thought of some Freudian explanation I learned in college psychology. I don’t recall what exactly that was though.
On a different note, is the movie worth watching?
Have a good weekend. 🙂
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I think it is just typically American schizophrenia about sex, which you could probably trace back to Christian denial of human urges. Our entire national marketing plan is based on being youthful and sexy. But we’re scared as hell of the natural drug that sex is for us.
The movie is really good, Nel. It was good enough to keep me watching despite commercial interruptions and those laughable censorings.
Hope you’re up to something fun this weekend.
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I have less patience with television all the time. I turn it on maybe twice a week, usually sit through four or five full minutes of commercials, and bail out. I’m especially exasperated by the one-hour shows that are somehow stretched to two hours by stuffing in more and more advertisements. And a movie whose pace is interrupted every ten minutes for a commercial break is ruined. Do you wonder if there’s a limit to how much people will tolerate?
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Charles, I agree with you 100 percent. But I don’t think there’s a limit to how much people will tolerate when it comes to the idiot box. TV is, in many homes, sort of a background noise. It’s almost like having paint on the wall. People turn the tube on when they get up in the morning and leaave it on the entire time they are home. They don’t activily watch. Just as they don’t actively think about news headlines and news bytes. One of my pet peeves is to visit someone who keeps the TV going the entire time I’m there. That makes me feel a bit like background noise, too.
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Remember when cable was going be to commercial-free, because we were going to pay for it? About 1964, when people lived in smaller houses, rode their dinosaurs to work instead of driving, ate more meals at home, and didn’t have cell phones, ipads, gym memberships, etc.
But plain old rabbit ears still work! Here in Boise they pull in FOUR commercial-free PBS stations. PBS-World has riveting slice-of-life documentaries about people facing challenges in other cultures.
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I forgot all about cable being commercial-free! There’s one station that really is, well two…the local TVTV channel 11 and TBS. Bless Ted for sticking to his guns.
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I absolutely cannot watch a movie on television – here in India, each movie is interspaced a commercial break every 10 minutes – sometimes you wonder if you are watching the movie interspaced with commercials or a series of commercials interspaced with a movie! Also, find some of the censorship silly…. Good post!!
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Ari, your comment disappoints me. I thought the commercial cycle was a uniquely American foible. Well, thank heavens for movie streaming and DVD’s. Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment.
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Oh, and my dinosaur is right outside, too. Riding it keeps me from needing a gym memebership.
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Cindy, you have the perfect solution to both types of dinosaurs! Who needs a magazine to get “Simple?” (Have you ever seen that mag? it’s HUGE!)
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Linda – Boise’s very own Elisabeth McKetta was Real Simple’s guest blogger for October, after winning their blogging contest last month!
http://simplystated.realsimple.com/category/special/simply-stated-blogger-contest/
Elisabeth’s posts are more about relationships than about emptying out your closets or preparing a quick meal. Maybe people without cable TV and gym memberships have more time to think about such things.
CIndy
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I agree that there are too many commercials. Unfortunately, according to my techy s.o., Tivo and Blu Ray can’t deal with commercials. About all you can do is press the mute button, and as you say, “hop up” and do something, or you can read or some such during the muted commercial. What I like best is recording whatever show I want to watch, and then you can fast forward all the ads. Saves about 20 mins per 1 hr show. I guess women’s nipples are blurred out because they are just too sexy.
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Really, Rae Ann? I thought one of the selling points of TiVo was getting rid of commercials. Maybe that’s because it is also a recording device? Shows you what I know about TV. And Blue Ray? I really dunno what that’s all about. I guess you can game with it and stream Netflix movies. Big woop. I don’t game and I can stream through my computer.
So women’s boobs aren’t too sexy, just the nips? And men’s nips aren’t sexy? I just don’t get it. I’m not very sexy, I guess.
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Nobody’s nips are sexy. Neither are butts. I do not understand why people think butts are sexy. I guess I’m not very sexy either.
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Ah, come on sox, are you telling me that you don’t think Jack has the cutest little butt in the county? That you’ve seen, anyway…
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I’ve gone from having been completely addicted to tv and watching too much of it, to rarely watching it at all these days. I prefer to settle down with a DVD on my computer. So when the TV is on (if it isn’t the BBC – as I’m in the UK) the ads annoy me. The mute button goes on and I wait til they finish. But actually what annoys me far more than the ads are the pace of editing and the constant fast-visual action which literaly gives me migraines. I don’t know if it is age, probably it is, but I can no longer mentally process fast-edited action or visuals.
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Yes, Val, I’ve been told that fast-paced edits were born of the old MTV music videos. Kids who grew up watching those seem to crave that style of viewing. Maybe that’s why I don’t care for even the “quality” series that people seem to think are so wonderful. They simply don’t hold my attention. I watched the tail-end of a Mary Tyler Moore special that discussed how the role of women in TV has evolved through the years. It was interesting to get a fresh perspective of shows like Sex in the City, which I simply can’t abide…well, how do I know…I’ve never been able to sit through more than two minutes of it. I’m not sure if my impatience is born of the fact that the subject matter seems so prosaic to me at this stage of my life, or maybe it is something as simple as the pace of the photography.
To make matters worse here, the volumne of commercials is appreciably louder than the the shows that get sliced and diced by those commercials. The mute button is a basic survival tool for the ears!
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I’m with you on sex and the city, I couldn’t stand it.
I like watching older films and tv shows (on DVD) that are slower for my eyes and my senses.
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Our totally irrational puritanical roots showing up again perhaps? There’s no logic to the censorship and no consistency…even sometimes from station to station. I never thought about the fact that it’s just women’s nipples that are objectionable though. Very interesting…and discriminatory and irrational. It reminds me of the irrational nature of people’s attitudes towards animal abuse. The definition of abuse is all over the map, depending on what species people are the most emotionally attached to. It’s okay to eat beef and chicken but not hunt “wild and free” animals. (Big in California.) Or the treatment of domestic cattle, pigs, and chickens in industrial farming is okay but grab the pitchforks if a dog, cat, or horse is abused. Asians are sick for eating dogs, the Japanese are cruel for hunting dolphins, but we keep gigantic Orca whales in tiny little parks to perform for an adoring multi/million dollar American public. What amazes me most is how unaware most people are of their own emotional biases. We all tend to think what we feel most strongly about is based on reason and ethics. It’s fascinating.
And now nipples, too!
I refuse to pay for cable commercials. We source from a number of different options for our entertainment viewing…netflix and hulu of course, local antenna TV (we’re huge fans of public broadcasting), and internet TV. I hook up the laptop and stream all kinds of stuff onto the bigscreen. It’s the BEST way for Cal and I to watch TED talks, interesting video links people send me in emails, and Youtube videos of all kinds, together. I actually love the incredible variety of stuff that’s available these days…something for everyone.
My only other thought is I wish that advertisers would make their commercials and advertising more worth watching. I think there’s an easier way to win viewers than trying to hunt them down and tie them to the bedpost with their eyelids pinned back. Just make better commercials. Look at how famous the commercials for the Superbowl have become…people look forward to the commercials almost as much as they look forward to the game. With all the money and creativity that gets poured into these things, you’d think they would have figured it out by now. Viewers want to be either entertained or educated, as well as sold.
Enough!!! 🙂
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Oh dear, animal abuse. That is a bottomless pit! I continue to ponder how we culturally categorize animals and their “usefulness” to us. Like, for some reason, fish aren’t supposed to feel pain. What? Throwing a live lobster into a scalding hot pot of water is okay? BTW: you would appreciate this article: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6474
I need to explore Hulu. I don’t even know what it is. And, tho I do stream Netflix via computer to TV screen, I haven’t adequately explored doing the same for online news.Thanks for the suggestions. More for me to explore. I am constantly on the verge of ditching Cable TV. I hardly ever watch it and its very expensive. I think I’m simply supporting my bf’s Bronco football addiction…support which he fails to appreciate. Enough…
I watched a program about “Life before birth” on Discovery channel last night and noticed that the advertising during that show was really quite tastefully done. Mostly, it was advertising for some online college…which one, I couldn’t tell you. I guess advertisers would call that ineffective advertising. I would call it lack of interest in the subject matter. Oh well.
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Aaaah…Bronco football. We should get our men-addicts together. 🙂
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Very nice post.
TV is weird. Sometimes you watch movies and you see women completely naked. You see EVERYTHING. However, you only see men’s butts, not that I am interested in seeing more, to be honest, but I find it unfair. And now they want to be “decent” so they hide nipples? What the *beeeeeeep*?
And commercials… GOD! They are kind of useful because you can go to the bathroom, prepare something to eat, clean, etc., but I am sick of them! Like people have been saying here, something that was supposed to last X amount of time, now it lasts 2X because of commercials, and if at least they were good, no problem then, but they keep showing you magic creams to make you thin, or junk that you “need”. Why don’t they use commercials to make you think about things that matter? The environment, education, etc.
So I don’t really watch TV much, it’s kinda useless. However, and I am ashamed of it, my mom LOVES this kind of shows where famous people go and talk about their lives “she slept with this guy, then she said, then he did, and the wife whatever, blah blah blah”. It’s so sad, but not sad because she watches it, sad because ENTIRE SPAIN watches it… we’re dumb.
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I’m sure Spain/Spaniards are no dumber than dumb Americans who watch the same ….! And the “reality” fakeries that drive me up the wall. But you better believe people are watching the stuff, cuz otherwise the advertisers would pull their funding and the program would disappear like a puff of fairy dust.
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You covered a couple of pet peeves here.The first was the abominable nipples and the second was the frequency and content of advertisements. I agree with your points. Due to the tendency of the networks to strongly prioritize advertisements over the viewing pleasure of their customers, my wife and I have downsized our cable plan down to the most basic one available. We may even get rid of that once we feel adjusted enough after coming down from the fearsome information super source high.
The second point is one that I’ve thought a lot about as well. God knows boobs are fine for family viewing, it’s those damned nipples that are going to get us. Censorship is like a well written government program (e.g. “No Child Left Behind”), it always looks great on paper, but far too often it is impossible to implement. I do hate it when I hear people say that there should be no rules regarding morality on the air. “Be like the Europeans”, they say. I feel like reminding them that despite my respect for the cultural diversity of the Europeans and their overall way of life, I’ve not forgotten that our forefathers fought valiantly for the purpose of not being like the Europeans (pardon the oversimplification).
I myself would like to see some kind of subjective purpose adhered to in order to bring about a safe family situation on television. Not a wordy law that states that Rob has to sleep in another bed separate from Laura (The Dick Van Dyke Show), or that this cuss word is fine during these hours but not these other hours etc.
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Yes, I just made a change to my cable viewing. The jury is still out on whether this is a viable alternative. In theory it sounds great. Since I have a HD TV and had it plugged into an old cable box, changing the box resulted in a brand new DVR device. In theory I record the programs I’m interested in and then view them later, fast forwarding through the commercials. But this does require a bit of study and consultation to find out what upcoming programs I might want. I tend to watch TV more spontaneously, so I’m not sure how workable this will be.
The next source of irritation is the new remote that came with a hundred bells ‘n whistles, none of which are adequately described in the silly flyer that came with. The technical writer in me wants to take this remote as a project and built CableOne a proper instruction manual so a person could actually use the darn thing instead of trying an endless series of buttons till something happens, then wondering…how’d I get here? It’s much the way I feel about my smartphone which has the ability to make me feel like a moron.
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Pingback: Hey Advertisers: We’re hiding from you for a reason | The Odd and Unmentionable
Well Dia,
Once again, you’ve pulled a few worn threads from my posts and woven them into a magic carpet. That last video brought tears to my eyes. It is funny how the advertisers manipulate us. One thing’s for sure, the types of ads that win Cleo awards cost probably 100 times what we are normally trying to avoid during normal TV watching. But, what a concept, what if advertisers, switched from paying for multiple bits of 60-second air time to replay the exact same cheaply produced (relatively speaking)commercial over and over (sometimes back to back) and instead simply produced one really fine, 3-minute commercial that would play ONCE in the middle of a program? Of course, then when would we have time to jump up and go to the bathroom or pop some corn? Thanks, BTW for the pingback…or whatever that’s called.
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One of the oddest things I have seen in a move was a woman’s nipples totally edited out… she only had fleshy boobs without ANY nipple… It was pretty disturbing looking…. Thank about creepy looking…
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Yes, I can imagine. And what’s so weird is…WHY? We’re subjected to men’s nips all the time!
Thanks for stopping by.
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Unfortunately, this is still a man’s world… As much as women have progressed, they are still calling the shots on The Hill.
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Too true. It is up to us to speak up and to vote! “We’re not gonna take it any more!”
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