| NEWS 2: The Naked Gun, the funniest film ever made (that's only my opinion, but we all know it's right), gets a whole scene cut out! Mad comedy The Naked Gun, starring Leslie Nielsen (if you've never seen it you've never lived!), showed on Britain's third channel, ITV on 13 October 2001, but due to the political climate then, just one month after al-Qaeda terrorists attacked the USA, the opening scene of the film was deleted. In it, the film's inept hero Frank Drebin invades a meeting between the leaders of Asian states, including Saddam Hussein and Mikhail Gorbachev (well, it was made in 1988) and starts kicking all their asses (in a funny way though). But, because showing something like this might have been insensitive, ITV cut it out when they showed the film (although to be honest everything on TV was insensitive then! Even showing Countdown was insensitive, apparently). It didn't really affect the rest of the storyline, but it's still too funny to get cut! That's the trouble with censoring comedy, you see - something funny will almost always be missing, and sometimes the story makes less sense too. Yes, the Simpsons, Futurama, Friends etc can sometimes have more adult humour in them, but that's what makes them so good! The trouble is, children might be watching at that time, and I think daytime/evening TV should be child-friendly programmes anyway, rather than adult shows forced to be child-friendly. So why can't they just leave comedy uncut but show it at a reasonable time if necessary? If BBC2 showed controversial Simpsons episodes at 9pm on Fridays, it would cause a lot less outrage among parents of under-10s who were shocked to find out that the Simpsons wasn't a kids' programme, it'd be on at a time when most people can still see it, and provide a contrast to the gardening programmes which precede it (plus, it might start a ratings war with C4's Friends, and I know how obsessed with those BBC are!). Futurama should do the same thing on C4. But, that isn't going to happen. And why? Because the Simpsons started in an evening/prime-time slot (back when it was regarded as a 'kids'' or 'family' programme) and has stayed there ever since. Futurama, because it's made by the same people that make the Simpsons, got a similar time on TV. But, if you think about it, it's not a kids' cartoon, it's an adult cartoon. How many kids' shows have the word 'bastard' and sexual references in them? Update - on 1 January 2003, ITV showed The Naked Gun with the first scene in. Phew. |
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