War Is Heck
Cussing by soldiers is far from the most shocking thing on television.
Friday, February 25, 2005 12:01 a.m.
PBS caused a stir last week when it told the producers of the "Frontline" series to bleep a handful of expletives in a documentary about U.S. troops in Iraq. In the original version of "A Company of Soldiers," some men could be heard cursing when their convoy came under fire from insurgents, and PBS worried that a particular word could get everyone in trouble with the FCC. In the end, at least 39 public television stations decided to go ahead Tuesday night with an unedited version of the documentary, although some stations moved the broadcast from 9 p.m. to a later hour. As of yesterday, they had no cause to regret their decision.
In this rare instance, that's probably how it should be. War is never pretty, and bad language is the least of it. In the documentary, the curses underline the alarm and fear among men literally fighting for their lives.
What makes this minor flap notable is that it occurred in a week when much more shocking, and arguably more gratuitous, things could be seen on network TV. In the genre of pure entertainment, for instance, CBS offered an episode of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" that plumbed new depths, even for that graphic show. Called "King Baby," it had a plot about adult infantilism, in which a middle-aged man acted out his erotic fantasies of returning to babyhood. There is no way to describe the practices this entailed without being revolting. To give only a few examples, the show zoomed in on human excrement and dirty diapers, and lingered over the role and products of a wet nurse.
Over on NBC, meanwhile, an episode of "Medical Investigation" titled "Half Life" opened with shots of severed limbs and featured a lion, its muzzle red with blood, gnawing on what looked like a human leg. It proved pretty irrelevant to the plot, but what the heck, where else are you going to get a quick kick like that except on TV? Ditto, in a way, the references to the sexual practices of vampire fans and demented swingers in recent episodes of NBC's "Law & Order: Criminal Intent."
Our point here is not that the FCC should go gunning for such shows. Actually, the FCC has no mandate to patrol the airwaves. The agency springs into investigative action only when members of the public file complaints, and even then it holds the bar pretty high. In general you really have to try hard and be relentlessly vile to push its buttons.
However important the FCC's role--say, in trying to protect children from assaults on their innocence--it can't protect adults from themselves. If they want to peer at mutilated bodies and explore the corridors of human depravity, even in realms once inhabited only by incipient serial killers, that is their choice. Quite apart from its insalubrious aspects, "CSI" is an intricately plotted and well-acted show, though these attributes alone probably did not propel it to the top of the ratings.
All the same, the needle on the shock-o-meter never stands still. What titillates people this week will not have the same effect next year. Whatever comes next, we suspect that it will make a few bad words uttered by soldiers look quaint by comparison. |
