I saw the second half of this. I was astounded that the programme to get the third highest number of complaints was the Derren Brown Séance, of all things. I had not realised that the number of complaints (the vast majority received beforehand) for Jerry Springer: The Opera was as high as 50,000. This speaks of a considerable fundamentalist Christian movement in this country, which I personally find disturbing.
However, the most shocking and disgusting thing that I saw during that hour was the advert which showed two men kissing.
Two men are on a sofa, and they start snogging. My first thought was, "Oh, what an appropriate programme to have this advert in!"
Two girls come in with tea and stuff on trays, see the blokes and drop the trays in shock. The voice over comes on and says something like, "You've got rid of the girlfriends, now you can go after the really hot babes!" and the two guys break up their kiss with evident disgust on their faces. It's like the advert is saying, "It's OK! They're not really gay!"
I found that outrageous. I'm aware that the "lad's culture" is a current vogue in the media, but I did think that in the 21st Century it would not be considered at all acceptable to encourage homophobia amongst young men.
Originally posted by Silas: I saw the second half of this. I was astounded that the programme to get the third highest number of complaints was the Derren Brown Séance, of all things. I had not realised that the number of complaints (the vast majority received beforehand) for Jerry Springer: The Opera was as high as 50,000. This speaks of a considerable fundamentalist Christian movement in this country, which I personally find disturbing.
In the UK, JEDI outnumber fundamentalist christians. The only genuine threat from these nutters is our giving them credence - the BBC went right ahead and showed JStO, and have vigorously defended their right to do so.
What I found particularly amusing about the show was the part when the christian whackjob claimed that Satan was responsible for the events shown in the Seance program, despite the fact that the whole point of the show was that Derren Brown did it all. How thick was she? I mean *really* - how thick? [I think thick is a fair word here - the show explained that everything was faked, and she *still* said it was Satan].
On another topic, how cool is Derren Brown? I know that all he does is pay attention to very subtle aspects of body language, which is in no way magical, but it's still a big WOW whenever he does something.
I thought that advert was ironically funny with the type of programme that it was shown during!! Out of the whole documentary the one thing I found disgusting was definitely the man eating baby foetuses. It turned my stomach - all the others, I was aware of with recent documantaries highlighting them in the past
Evil Dead that followed, the film was grossed out too - and I like horror films!
Unfortunately I never saw Jerry Springer's opera -looks like I'll never again!
I'm looking forward to the rest of the documantaries this week and some of the films too - few of them I have seen in one form or another!!
Some of the complainers were quite funny in their very limited views, and I noticed that most of them living in houses with same awful decor and doilies. Urgh! The most funniest part was the telephone complainer after the showing of the Beastiality programme who exclaimed "What next? Gay sex on TV!". Surely someone who's TV viewing did'nt normally breach the 9pm watershed!
Originally posted by Jayke: Unfortunately I never saw Jerry Springer's opera -looks like I'll never again!
Yes you can. Despite the whinging of the god-bothering brigade, Jerry Springer the Opera is doing a full UK tour starting in October. Tickets are between 15 & 25 quid each, and I highly reccomend it.
I thought the documentary was great. I knew that a certain slice of the UK population were pig-ignorant, but it really opened my eyes as to how idiotic some people really are. One thing that I was really disgusted at, which was never mentioned in the Jerry Springer section, was the news that recently, a UK Cancer charity turned down a donation of over £3,000, from a special gala performance of JStO, just because a group called Christian Voice pressured them by threatening to picket their offices and persuade christians to cut off support to the charity. I think that is totally outrageous, especially for a group who claim to be christians.
One thing I noticed is that the Channel 4 researchers missed a trick. The documentary claimed that 'Footballers Wives' and 'Queer as Folk' were the first to portray explicit hetero and homosexual sex scenes on British TV, but the BBC2 show 'This Life' showed a gay sex scene and edgy hetero sex scenes years before either of those shows came along.
All in all though, it was a great documentary. I'm looking forward to the rest of the Banned season.
--------------- Every dead body that is not exterminated, becomes one of them. It gets up and kills! The people it kills, get up and kill!! - Dr Foster, Dawn of the Dead.
The documentary claimed that 'Footballers Wives' and 'Queer as Folk' were the first to portray explicit hetero and homosexual sex scenes on British TV, but the BBC2 show 'This Life' showed a gay sex scene and edgy hetero sex scenes years before either of those shows came along.
Not mention BBC's Lady Chatterley's Lover and Ch4's Dennis Potter series Lipstick on Your Collar years before that
The documentary claimed that 'Footballers Wives' and 'Queer as Folk' were the first to portray explicit hetero and homosexual sex scenes on British TV, but the BBC2 show 'This Life' showed a gay sex scene and edgy hetero sex scenes years before either of those shows came along.
Not mention BBC's Lady Chatterley's Lover and Ch4's Dennis Potter series Lipstick on Your Collar years before that
Of course, well remembered.
--------------- Every dead body that is not exterminated, becomes one of them. It gets up and kills! The people it kills, get up and kill!! - Dr Foster, Dawn of the Dead.
Razic, I agree with the decor thing. That woman with shitloads of crucifix on her wall! Isn't that what serial killers do? :P
Also,the baby foetus thing Cant have been real,or the "artist" would of been arrested for canniblaism.I think it was all a publicity stunt.I remeber reading about it ages ago.
Also,I found it infuriating with that stupid woman,whinging about swear words but laughing at racsist sit coms. What a hypocrite.
Originally posted by Jayke: Thanks!! I was a young whippersnapper of a boy of about 11 or 12 when i 'discovered' those programmes and discovered other things about myself too!
Ahh, memories
--------------- Every dead body that is not exterminated, becomes one of them. It gets up and kills! The people it kills, get up and kill!! - Dr Foster, Dawn of the Dead.
I think the people who whined about the seance were proberly nutty cristians or people annoyed by the fact they had played along and felt hard done by when they realised it was a trick (i.e the people who paid to phone up and lie about their wardrobes moving)
Did anyone see Derren Brown Messiah Cause I thought that was Pretty good aswell.
After watching the documentary tonight I was a little disappointed that there wasn't much on Video Nasties but it was very good especially the bit on the Falklands.
But the programme in general is about censorship,not just video nasties. I do admit, my attention lapsed slightly at the falklands bit though, but I am glad it wasn't as dumbed down as Sundays programme. I remember the drama over video nasties, but my friends and I still managed to watch extremly violent and horrific films under age. Not that I'm complaining
We were lucky, the guy who ran our local video shop at the time shifted all his best stuff out of the shop during all the video nasties raids, so his copies never got siezed. He continued to rent them out, to regulars who he knew quite well, from either his house, or he'd drop them round in his car. We got to see all the cool stuff at a young age thanks to that guy.
--------------- Every dead body that is not exterminated, becomes one of them. It gets up and kills! The people it kills, get up and kill!! - Dr Foster, Dawn of the Dead.
I was under the impression that the series would be split up into certain areas of censorship like the video nasties one night, music another and so on. It's an interesting idea to do it chronologicaly but if so why start in 1980 to today? The 60's and 70's were a hotbed of controversy especially in the movies.
I always laugh when some smug liberal believes that nobody should be offended by a four letter word on TV, and mocks those that do, yet when the word P*ki is used, they become all self-righteous and vitriolic.
That's what I meant when I was taling about the Racial comment. I think I worded it poorly now iv'e read it again. I was trying to say that many people that disaprove of blantent on screen violance or sex tend to belive that programs like Mind Your Language are fine because they look fine and don't use bad language but they fail to see the rasist undertones. I just did'nt have enough time to explain if.
The documentary claimed that 'Footballers Wives' and 'Queer as Folk' were the first to portray explicit hetero and homosexual sex scenes on British TV, but the BBC2 show 'This Life' showed a gay sex scene and edgy hetero sex scenes years before either of those shows came along.
Not mention BBC's Lady Chatterley's Lover and Ch4's Dennis Potter series Lipstick on Your Collar years before that
Thank You! I knew there was something distinctly wrong about that!!
As a matter of cold fact, and never mind anything Channel 4 try to tell you, there is far less sexually controversial stuff on any of our TV screens now than there was during the 1970s and 1980s. But it's always the way. There was a huge kerfuffle in 1986 about Patrick Malahide's buttocks in The Singing Detective and back then I remember thinking, "huh? Bums have been seen on TV before!!"
There was a huge kerfuffle in 1986 about Patrick Malahide's buttocks in The Singing Detective and back then I remember thinking, "huh? Bums have been seen on TV before!!"
The other reason why it was controversial was because It was his mother and I think she says somthing like "don't go" and they classed it as incest.
