Tuesday, July 01, 2008

radio edit

in high school i was in the drama club. my freshman year we did a play with a lot of profanity in it. (though i can't remember the name of the play i remember the entire story) the art teacher who also doubled as our set designer was a born again christian and insisted that we change most of the words to something else. basically we had to step down every word to another curse word. the f word was changed to "screw" the s word was changed to "damn."

it was actually pretty comical how many times we had to relearn lines for the sake of his sensitive ears.

panic at the disco is one of my favorite bands. they have a song called, "i write sins not tragedies" which uses the phrase God-damn.

i love words even words that can be very ugly and feel that there is an appropriate place for all of them, especially in art. i can also curse like a sailor, but there are certain phrases that i would prefer not be played on the radio and this is one of them mostly because my kids are exposed to the same music i listen to.

so the other day i turned on my car radio because i forgot to bring along my ipod and this song came on. i expected an edit. what i didn't expect was which word they would edit. at first i thought i heard it wrong. sometimes when they bleep out a word you can still sort-of hear it, but then it happened again.

apparently "God" is the more offensive piece of that phrase because that's the word that was edited out.

it was like stepping down the phrase... we did the same exact thing in our highschool play with this particular profanity. but if the purpose of a radio edit is to clean up the language of a song then why choose "God" to be the word they clean up?

ah well...

*bleep* peace y'all

7 comments:

CatNFiddle said...

That's been one that's confused me for years. Is it the whole Lord's name in vain?

BostonPobble said...

I, too, have found myself puzzled by that. And can't even come up with as good an explanation as Jacklyn did so I will throw my vote in with her (with thanks for coming up with *something* to explain it.)

CrackerLilo said...

I actually don't get why "goddamn" offends Christians. (Maybe that's another post for you?) It seems like an acknowledgement of God's power and ability to damn, if you think about it. I'm being perfectly serious, and I hope it comes through.

That said, I do remember leaving the Assemblies of God church--Katy Perry, of all the stupid people, stirred *that* puddle of sludge up again--and taking to saying "goddamn" a lot precisely because it was so offensive to my erstwhile leaders. It felt like filing for divorce. I still like it, as you have seen, but that's more of a redneck-chick thing. I don't feel that *need* to say it so much anymore, for which I'm really thankful.

Di said...

That's a little bizarre...

It's funny, my husband works with a woman who strongly objects to swearing, and so substitutes other words for the common 4-letter ones.
If the sentiment is the same thing, what's the difference?

BostonPobble said...

Wasn't the show called "Black Comedy" or something like that? I know it *was* a black comedy ~ but I also think that might have been the title...

2 Dollar Productions said...

I've seen other instances of this kind of bizarre editing too, and if you figure out an answer/rationale/etc., please post again. It's just strange.

Rick said...

Cats,

I've responded at my place to your condom assertions posted at the DPS. In case you're interested.

http://www.brutallyhonest.org/brutally_honest/2008/07/desperate-preac.html

-Rick

"and vivian followed."

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