Censoring Classic TV

The other night I was watching an episode of Room 222 entitled “What Is a Man?”

The story opens with Alice (Karen Valentine) proposing a reading of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in the way it would be performed in Shakespeare’s day, with all the parts played by men. 

 

 

Howard, a student in the fine arts program, takes on one of the female roles and reads the lines with conviction the way any talented actor would.

 

But that performance, plus the fact that he’s not a good athlete and is shy around girls leads some of his male classmates to suspect he might be gay. That generates whispers in the hallway and some jokes in poor taste, culminating in a scene where Howard and Mr. Dixon (Lloyd Haynes) leave the classroom and notice a crowd around Howard’s locker.

 

Those gathered silently part, as Howard approaches his locker and sees a word scrawled on it by an unknown vandal. What did it say? I can make a guess, but that’s all I can do because the word was blurred out by the cable network Aspire TV.

 

How do you feel about that?

 

I’m tempted to stand up on an anti-censorship soapbox and rail against this current culture and its spoiled oversensitivity, and this ridiculous expectation that artistic works from decades ago must be altered to reflect the mindset of our more “enlightened” 21^st century times.

 

But taking a scissors to art is nothing new, and did not start with the generation that invented safe spaces. For decades, when theatrical films aired on network television, profanity and scenes of nudity or extreme violence were altered or cut. When a television show goes into syndication, the full episode is routinely trimmed by a few minutes to accommodate more commercials.

 

Still, what happened with this Room 222 episode seems worse. This was not censorship required by FCC broadcast standards, or the result of economics. This was someone deciding they didn’t like that word, so no one should be allowed to see it.

 

It made no difference that the scene at Howard’s locker was intended to have a specific and powerful impact on those who watched it when it first aired 50 years ago. That word was there to jolt the viewer, especially at a time when any reference to homosexuality was still rare on network television. Within the context of that moment, blurring the word was a gross disservice to the episode’s creators, and to its audience. There was no plausible reason for it to happen. But it did.

 

And if you haven’t noticed, edits like this are becoming commonplace on cable networks like Aspire and MeTV. It’s a topic I discuss in a couple of places in my book When Television Brought Us Together. Whether it’s the Confederate flag on the roof of the General Lee in The Dukes of Hazzard, or a comedic take on characters of varying ethnicities on Get Smart, the shows of a bygone era are no longer deemed suitable for a general audience. 

 

 

I think it’s a disturbing trend, and one that gets worse the more it is tolerated. Words and symbols that almost everyone dislikes are always first to go, and then the movement expands to those that may not be as negative, but still don’t fit the agenda of those who wield the levers of cultural power.

 

Power – that’s what is almost always at the root of censorship. And it is almost always wrong. When art offers something uncomfortable, it should inspire a teaching moment, or an opportunity for discussion. When a series as progressive and inclusive and empathetic as Room 222 is deemed too offensive, that should be a sign that perhaps there is a better way to deal with situations like this. 

 

 

My suggestion: let “What Is a Man?” play unaltered, and air a parental guidance warning before it starts that the episode contains material that may be too mature for younger or more sensitive viewers. The easily triggered can then change the channel or proceed at their own risk.

 

This way, the station is absolved from having to decide what to air and what to cut – and that is as it should be. Purchasing the rights to broadcast a series should not come with the authority to deface it. When Room 222 is picked up by other cable stations, will they each get to make their own round of corrections? In another ten years there may not be enough left to fill a 30-minute time slot.

 

 

Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” hangs in New York’s Museum of Modern Art, but that doesn’t mean the curator should be allowed to remove a few swirls from the moonlit sky, because he thinks it looks better that way.

 

Leave our TV shows alone.