If you walk around this university and ask “name an animation?” you will get the same answers appearing: Disney films such as Snow White, along with the Warner Brothers and Hannah-Barbara cartoons, will all be popular choices. When asked, most British people see animation as something for children. However, in other countries such as Japan, animation is aimed at older teens and young adults. This so-called “animation age ghetto” can cause problems when the cultures and their broadcasting standards meet. However, even domestic and live action shows have problems with censorship, with sometimes hilarious results.
Sexuality can often be a problem with censorship, in America a kiss between a homosexual couple will give a film an instant rating of R (the highest age rating in America). This can cause problems, one of the most famous was the American version of the Japanese cartoon Sailor Moon. In the Japanese version two of the characters are lesbians and this is portrayed in a romantic and healthy way. In the American voice dub they said they were sisters, yet they removed none of the visual innuendo that is used to signify their romance. This formed many awkward scenes and left many plot holes.
Changing values can also be an issue when it comes to censorship. What is offensive now, may not have been deemed offensive a few years ago. Loony Toons has undergone lots of censorship over the years, first with the removal of race jokes, then guns, and now violence in most forms. This has also seen many shorts which before would have been shown regularly being totally banned from air with many stations refusing to show some characters at all (Speedy Gonzales most commonly) for fear of causing offence.
Censorship can also come in when the network decide to show a show before the watershed. One example is the UK sitcom Red Dwarf being shown during a children’s slot on BBC America. Once the sexual jokes had been removed the resulting show made no sense, with odd cuts and punchlines to jokes that were never set up. This reaches its peak when networks decide to show films like “Scarface” before the watershed, forcing them to remove most of the violence and re-dub the most famous lines in the film to remove the swearing. Daytime versions of shows such as Scrubs and Friends have to cut out many of the more sexual jokes for a daytime audience. This often leads to the words being removed, but any reaction shots or laughter being left in, leaving the show feeling disjointed and hard to follow.
Overall, you are always going to get culture clashes. However, sometimes unessential censorship is added by misinformed scheduling. Surely it is best to not show something rather than censor it so that it can be shown, but becomes totally unintelligible. Surely the product should be shown as the original writer intended, and people should try to appreciate the different culture’s media.
Jonathon Greenall
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