The Conical Glass: What's Wrong With America

Saturday, November 07, 2009

What's Wrong With America

I have been watching this show on one of our smaller local PBS outlets, KCSM, called "MHz Worldview Presents." I found out about it from a couple people in my book group. Worldview shows international mystery programs on a rotating basis -- French, Italian, German and Scandinavian. They air at 10 PM on Monday nights and are repeated at 1 AM on Wednesdays.

I am primarily interested in the Norwegian "Varg Veum" series, and Sweden's "Wallander." I think the Swedish-made films based on Henning Mankell's "Wallander" books are far superior to the English ones featuring Kenneth Branagh that air on "Masterpiece Mystery," and "Varg" is kind of goofy fun -- it's about a private eye based in Bergen who seems to get beat up about half a dozen times in every episode, but always lives to triumph over evil and charm the ladies with his rugged blond good looks. Since they are murder mysteries, not surprisingly, things can get pretty violent. There are dead bodies, dismembered corpses, children in peril, shoot-outs, blood, guts, and mayhem.

But hey, the show is on well past any child's bedtime, and anyway, what kid is going to want to watch a subtitled crime drama from Norway? However, whoever is packaging this show for American audiences obviously thinks they need to protect us from that racy European content. I'm not talking about the violence and death, mind you -- I'm talking about the sex.

dog photo

I swear I'm not making this up: in one broadcast, "Worldview" blurred a statue every time it appeared onscreen, presumably because it depicted a bare-breasted woman. (The image looked something like this one which I whipped up myself, except I think it was even blurrier. Naturally, that particular statue is in Europe, out in public where children can see it.)

In another episode, a woman was briefly shown in her bra and panties as she was getting dressed. Even though she was wearing underwear, she was still blurred. I hope the people who would be horribly offended by the sight of a woman in lingerie never click over to the Jockey.com web site by mistake.

So, in short, the dead body of a young girl stuffed into a barrel = no problem; bare marble breasts = an affront to our morals. Of course, I guess I shouldn't expect anything different in the country where movies like "Saw" and "Hostel" are rated R, while "Henry & June" got a NC-17.

posted by 125records @ 5:49 PM

2 Comments:

At 11:25 AM, vallerose said…

I'm a huge fan of the international mysteries and have also noticed the blurring on occasion. It's funny because any museum and many parks have nude statues out in the open for everyone to see.

I happen to also like the BBC Wallenders. I do hope that for future ones by BBC, he is able to get a shave.
At 8:51 PM, James said…

I was watching "Bram Stoker's Dracula" on commercial TV with a friend on Halloween, and we were amazed the censors left in all the gore and beheadings, yet blurred a brief shot of an illustration depicting a sex act in a book Lucy was reading. Blood and dismemberment are OK for viewers of all ages, but carnal pleasures are better left unseen, I guess.