The Censorship Handbook, Part 2

Last time discussed this matter, I asked why certain things were censored when other things were not. For example, why it is the "hole" part of "asshole" that gets censored. However,a new Britney Spears song now has me asking a new question: why censor words that you're allowed to say anyway?

This isn't anything new, and it's always bothered me; the Everlast song "What It's Like" is particularly guilty of this. The song has very loud and abrassive noises that it uses to hide such harmful and offense words as "Colt 45" and "green", because of the context they're in the song. You know what? If you can't talk about shooting people and smoking weed on the radio then why are you trying to play the song to begin with?

The new Britney song is even worse, however, as the word that is being censored, in this case by changing it instead of bleeping it, is the word "seek". There is nothing evil or harmful about this word, however the title of the song is "If You Seek Amy". I'll save you the time of rereading that 50 times until you get it and tell you that when spoken, particularly in the rhythm of the song, it sounds like "F-U-C-K Me". Obviously, the entire song is nothing more than cute censor evasion to begin with, since you can't write a song called "Fuck Me" and expect it to be played on the radio. To fix this, in the song they change the line to "If you see Amy", which is actually more effective than when the try to censor actual swears. The thing that baffles the mind, however, is that the radio stations can still announce the name of the song properly. In fact, I was listening to the radio and the DJ kept repeating the name of the song and explaining what you're supposed to hear over and over again. If the DJ is allowed not only to keep repeating this line but also to explicitly spell out the joke, pun intended, then why not just play the song as is?

Expect to hear a censored version of Britney's upcoming single: "Doom Ian Their Ear".

dr_jeebus@sydlexia.com

Whatever happened to wholesome songs like "Rock Me, Amadeus"?

© 2009 by Dr. Jeebus