To honor Veterans’ Day (and make a buck), ABC plans to show “Saving Private Ryan” this evening. Unfortunately, I won’t get to see it. Why? Well, my local station is afraid to televise it. It’s concerned about profanity in light of the new militancy shown by the FCC. And apparently there are some twenty other affiliates which are also petrified.
Can anyone say “chilling effect?” What’s next on the self-censorship menu?
You have got to be kidding me. They’re censoring a boring, heavy-handed, mediocre, almost schmaltzy movie because of profanity and NOT violence? How strange.
I have to say I’m not comfortable with that first 30 minutes of D-Day carnage being shown on broadcast TV at 8pm. (Which doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be allowed to show it, but I sure wouldn’t let kids watch it.)
Really, any kid who sticks it out through the entrails and the gore and the soldiers getting blown in half while they’re being dragged up the beach is not going to be traumatized by naughty words.
I agree about the violence, but the thing that astonished me was the station’s willingness to change programming for fear of the FCC’s heavy hand.
Maybe they could show that Sinclair Swift Boat documentary instead, she said bitterly.
I wouldn’t let my kids watch that movie either… I found it quite disturbing.
But then I don’t have to turn the tv on and tune it to that channel.
Of course I don’t have any children, and rarely turn the television on to any channel, anyway.