Profanity nudity violence = $
p2pnet.net News:- “It just feels good knowing that you can watch great Hollywood movies without having to worry about the profanity, nudity and gory violence,” says the ClearPlay home page here.
The company has decided to cash in on the fact that much (most?) of the content routinely pumped out by Hollywood is full of totally gratuitous violence, totally gratuitous scenes of people having each other away in close-up with full audio, totally gratuitous filthy language, and et cetera.
Normal Hollywood ‘product’, in other words.
Orrin Hatch, Diane Feinstein, Howard Berman, Lamar Smith, Patrick Leahy and the many other Hollywood supporters of their ilk spend a lot of US tax-payer time attacking p2p networks, claiming they [the networks] open children to pornography.
And yet they find Hollywood movies perfectly acceptable.
ClearPlay’s “staff of movie professionals” go through “individual movies and identify content which may have contributed to a movie’s PG-13 or R rating. The content they identify generally falls under the categories of graphic violence, sexual content, and language.”
The Passion of the Christ is, for example, OK (extreme blood and hard-core sadism in every frame) and Schindler’s List (a wonderful historical piece, but shocking in its portrayal of horrors perpetrated under the Nazi regime) and they won’t be altered, writes Claudia Puig in her USA TODAY story here.
But, says ClearPlay, it had to prune movies such as American Splendor, Big Fish, Cat in the Hat, The Haunted Mansion, The Last Samurai, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Master And Commander, The School of Rock, Timeline and Win A Date With Tad Hamilton.
Puig isn’t very impressed with ClearPlay’s technique saying, “too often, the cuts are clunky, eliminating portions of sentences and leaving only dead air, or speeding over objectionable items so they emerge almost as ‘blips.’ The awkward presentation could backfire as a way to sanitize mass entertainment and make it palatable for family audiences. Plus, the cuts are so obvious they could pique the curiosity of young minds. Sometimes a vivid imagination can be worse than the reality.”
Maybe the for-a-fee-censors will get better as they go along.
However, the fact the company is able to enter the market at all with a product such as this raises a Big question – and it’s not whether or not you want to pay someone to sanitize your movies.
Rather, what’s really at issue is the fact that on the one hand, the entertainment industry is ripping into p2p file sharing and file sharers as if they’re the greatest evil the world has ever known, incorrectly claiming that p2p apps are filling the cyberwaves with porn …
… while on the other, Hollywood (the common name for the major movie studios, recording labels and hardware and software manufacturers) daily pumps out more filth than the world has ever seen before – and gets away with it.
May 12th, 2004 at 5:51 pm
This post may not be exactly on topic but it’s sort of related anyway… It seems to me the American public has a very high tolerance and/or acceptance level for graphic violence. Sex and nudity on the other hand are viewed as a terrible offense. Take for example the Janet Jackson Superbowl thing. I don’t get it. You would think she was engaged in some over the top vile porno act judging by the public’s reaction. It was a brief glimpse of a breast with the nipple covered! Get real! Letting your kids watch movies or play video games where people are beat to a pulp or brutally slaughtered in endless ways and numbers is somehow okay, but a woman breast-feeding her baby in public is offensive. American values… So twisted.
BTW, I am an American, and at the moment not particularly proud of it.
May 13th, 2004 at 2:51 pm
ClearPlay’s unauthorized censorship is mostly ignorant ideological desecration, rather like the Nazi book burnings and similar censorship from 65 years ago. It pays little attention to context or art and makes few distinctions based on anything sensible. If you dislike much of what Hollywood produces (as I do), there are better ways to make that known.
In this matter as in others, the USA is becoming both the bully and the laughingstock of the free world, behaving more like the countries it ruthlessly wants to eliminate.
October 17th, 2004 at 5:20 am
If the USA is a bully and a laughingstock as you say it is, please tell me why so mant foreigners are willing to risk their lives to come here. I’ll tell you why. They come here because the governments of their native countries deny them basic freedoms that we sometimes take for granted here. One of those basic freedoms is the freedom of choice. ClearPlay gives its customers the freedom to choose what they wish to see while enjoying certain films in the privacy of their own private dwellings.
Instead of using ClearPlay’s “unauthorized censorship”, you say there are better ways of making it known to the movie industry what the consumer doesn’t like in what it produces. What protests did you log with Hollywood? Did it listen to you? Let’s face the facts, shall we? Hollywood is all about making money. Today, movies that include profanity, sex, and excessive violence make huge profits at the box office. G-rated movies are going the way of the dinosaurs. Even the number of PG films is shrinking rapidly. For those of us who are turned off by such moral filth, ClearPlay is an excellent alternative.
Are you really serious when you say that ClearPlay is on the same plane as the Nazi book burnings of WWII? How ridiculous! For your information, the Nazis forced themselves on their victims. ClearPlay is not forced on anyone. The only people who will purchase this product are those who are offended by some of the inappropriate conduct found in otherwise acceptable movies.
This country is all about choice. ClearPlay is all about choice. If you don’t like what ClearPlay does, don’t buy it. The choice is yours.
Carl Booth
October 17th, 2004 at 7:33 am
If the USA is indeed a bully and a laughing stock of the free world as you claim it is, please tell me why so many foreigners are willing to risk their lives to come here? I’ll tell you why. They come here because the governments of their native countries deny them basic freedoms that we sometimes take for granted here. One of those basic freedoms is the freedom of choice. Among other things, in this country, we have the freedom to choose what movie content we wish to see in the privacy of our own homes. ClearPlay gives us that choice.
Instead of using ClearPlay’s “unauthorized censorship”, you suggest there are better ways of making it known to Hollywood that some moviegoers dislike what it produces. What protests have YOU logged with the movie industry? Did they listen to you? Let’s face the facts, shall we? Hollywood’s main objective is making money’ lots of it. Nowadays, movies that include profanity, sex, and excessive violence make huge profits at the box office. G-rated films are going the way of the dinosaurs. Even PG movies are becoming scarce. PG-13 and R-rated films rule the silver screen. ClearPlay is a healthy alternative for those who don’t want to be exposed to indecent conduct in otherwise acceptable films that are privately viewed.
Are you really serious when you say that ClearPlay is on the same plane as the Nazi book burnings of World War II? How ridiculous! For your information, the Nazis forced themselves on their victims. ClearPlay is not forced on anyone who doesn’t want it. The only people who will purchase this product are the ones who are sensitive to movie content that they feel is inappropriate.
This country is all about choice. ClearPlay is all about choice. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. The choice is yours.
October 17th, 2004 at 7:46 am
I rewrote my first comment because I didn’t think it was posted. Sorry.