South Park: Censored

Last night I returned home, eagerly anticipating the episode "201," a conclusion to last week's 200th episode special. I missed the original airing and caught the re-air that occurs ever Wednesday two hours after the initial one. I was slightly surprised it was a recent episode, "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerBalls" and thought maybe this was a joke: after all, I had thought South Park might not air the episode like they did 12 years ago to pull an April Fool's Prank.

Now I see that that is not the case. Comedy Central pulled the re-airing and as far as I've heard have pulled all scheduled re-airings for the next week. Why, you may ask?

It all has to do with the Prophet Mohammed. Remember back in 2006, when a Danish cartoonist depicted the Prophet and incited the unholy wrath of a bunch of pissed-off extremists? Well, South Park aired a two-part episode called "Cartoon Wars" in which the show Family Guy is coming under fire for trying to air the image. The episodes raised great questions on the limits on what is and what isn't ok to show on TV, and how you set that precedent. The episode ends with Family Guy depicting the image, though ironically Comedy Central wouldn't allow the image to be shown.

Why is it ironic? Back in 2001, South Park aired an episode titled "Super Best Friends" in which Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Lao Tsu, Sea Man, Joseph Smith, and yes, Mohammed, all teamed up to fight an evil David Blaine. Back then, no one cared. True, it was two months before 9/11, but Comedy Central set precedent that Mohammed was ok to show. And even after the "Cartoon Wars" episodes, "Super Best Friends" was re-aired on syndicated television (I know because I saw the episode on CW channel).

So that brings us to now. Last week, to commemorate their 200th episode, South Park went back and rehashed a lot of old jokes, one of them being the Mohammed controversy. The episode ended with Mohammed dressed in a bear suit, as the townspeople debate what to do with him. During the week in between episodes, a radical website called Revolution Muslim posted a note saying that Matt and Trey better watch out or they'll end up like Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh was a documentary filmmaker who made a film about Islamic abuse of women, and was killed by extremists in Amsterdam in 2004.

Though I wasn't able to watch the episode live, I did find it online and watched it there. I was surprised that the word Mohammed altogether had been bleeped completely. I assumed it was a joke and Matt and Trey's part, as did most of the Internet community. Additionally, the character Kyle gives a speech on what was learned, yet that was bleeped out completely. That, again, I assumed to be a joke.

Today, it was revealed that Comedy Central added the bleeps over Mohammed's name to protect Matt and Trey, and Matt and Trey later released a statement saying Comedy Central bleeped out the end speech as well. The episode isn't available uncensored, as all episodes are, for the show's website: instead, there is a note saying that Comedy Central won't allow them to put it up.

Now, I understand why Comedy Central wouldn't let the image of the Holy Prophet be broadcast: they were trying to protect the staff of South Park, who would all be in as much danger as Matt or Trey if these threats were somehow became real. But I think it is the start of a terrible chain reaction that they bleeped Mohammed's name from even being uttered. Muslims have no problem with his name! They say it all the time! And Mohammed spent the whole episode behind a black censored bar (which I firmly believe Matt and Trey put in there) and didn't say anything this week! Why bleep his name? And why bleep the end speech, in which Mohammed apparently wasn't mentioned but about intimidation and fear.

Even the episode "Super Best Friends" isn't on the South Park website anymore. It's gone. Kapoot. Luckily I own season 5 on DVD, and there are dozen other places you can find the episode. But still, it is a terrible move on CC's part. Last time Mohammed wasn't shown, Matt and Trey showed Jesus and George Bush shitting on each other, poop-a-flyin'. This week, Buddha snorts coke and Jesus is accused of watching Internet Porn. Comedy Central has now set the standard South Park warned against four years ago: if you give in to threats, then soon more people will threaten you. It will start a landslide until, boom, you can't do anything taboo anymore.

Ultimately, I'm not calling for the episode to air with Mohammed uncensored. I don't think that will ever happen. But the episode should become available without Mohammed's name or the end speech censored. It's just ridiculous and doesn't make sense. The name isn't the thing forbidden, it's the image. I'm quite interested to see what South Park does next week for it's mid-season finale.

Kick-Ass (2010)

Kick-Ass starts out with a noble goal: "Why hasn't anyone ever tried to be a superhero before?" inquires the hero, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson). "Probably because they'd get their ass kicked," responds one of his friends. And when Dave first dons the outfit of Kick-Ass, he does get his ass thoroughly kicked, so much so that he nears death. You'd think this would stop him, but instead it screws up his nerves so that he can't feel pain as much and can endure more.

Dave is a normal High School nerd who dreams of the hot girl (Lyndsy Fonseca) and whacks off daily, with an ever-expanding collection of comic books. Fed up with getting pushed around, he becomes Kick-Ass, with the hope to do good, though he fully acknowledges he has no reason to seek vengeance: no murdered parents or otherwise.

It is sad then that the movie's best characters, Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) conform to the conventions of the comic book. Big Daddy is seeking revenge for one reason or another, and has trained his daughter to become a totally bad-ass killer. Yet in a movie that is trying to convey realism, it is these characters that shatter that realistic barrier, taking on dozens of villains by themselves and standing victorious over them all. And while their scenes of kick-assery provide much of the movies action thrills, I was more interested in Dave's story of grappling with the responsibility of being a superhero, rather then Big Daddy's quest to take revenge on Mob Boss Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong).

Some people may find the notion of Hit Girl altogether unsettling and quite disturbing. She is, after all, a kid who kills dozens upon dozens of people. And superheroes traditionally don't kill when they have to, right? I have no moral qualms over her actions (does that make me a bad person? Maybe so), but I think the movie has a bad sense of timing in the fun it's going after. In the first scene when we see Hit Girl annihilate a crowd of baddies, it is completely awe-inspiring. But when she storms D'Amico's New York penthouse to Joan Jett's Bad Reputation, the stakes have changed, and the fun factor is all but null. In fact, when Hit Girl is getting her ass kicked, it seems like the movie is still going for laughs. What?

I really enjoyed the movie, but I can't help but pick apart it's inconsistencies, and I have one more complaint: the movie seemed to be heading in a totally unexpected direction, and for a good minute I thought that this movie would do the unexpected. But, alas, it conforms to the clichés of the genre and disappointed me somewhat. While the tone of the film would have been much darker, I think it would have been a bold way of challenging audiences. Just saying, I think they pussed out.

But, overall, the movie is still a fun entertainment. It succeeds more then the film version of Watchmen (2009) did of examining the life of a superhero, so that's something. But, in the end, it's not near the satire it quite wants to be.

Pygmalion (1938)

People often say that there is no original work, that something had to stem from somewhere and everything is based off of something that came before it. OK, this is true a lot of times, but there are some instances where someone really used their imagination to take some original material and transform it into a great story set in then-modern times. Take the mythological story Pygmalion: it tells of a sculptor who had no interest in women, but carved sculptures of them, until one day he fell in love with one of his own sculptures. Praying to Aphrodite, or Venus, depending on which way you look at it, she took pity on him and brought the statue to life.

Henry Higgins (Leslie Howard) is obviously drawn to be comparable to Pygmalion: he seems to have no interest in women, yet obsesses over dialects and proper speech. He takes on the challenge of turning the lowly Eliza Doolittle (Wendy Hiller) into a lady, with proper speech and accent and all. And, of course, he comes to love her.

Movies back in the day liked to spell out their themes or references for the audience; after all, people didn't have access to the Internet and its wide bank of knowledge. The story of Pygmalion is told to us through text, at the beginning, so that we may know exactly what the filmmakers are aiming for and what their true intentions are. Today, no such scroll would precede the movie, and audiences would be forced to look up Pygmalion and discover the title's source.

The movie is exceptionally well made and is better, I think, then the musical My Fair Lady that came out 27 years later (the film version, anyways). For one, it's an hour shorter, and while I have no problems with long movies, I didn't feel that the plot supported the length. Here too the movie seems to meander, and it is only slightly over 90 minutes!

But the performances are also very good. Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard may be no Audrey Hepburn or Rex Harrison, but they still deliver thoughtful performances and their chemistry lights up the screen. As we watch Eliza progress, we care about what happens to her. There is a hilarious scene where she tries out her new dialect, and speaks in tongue twisters as if they were normal conversation. The subsequent reactions to this are priceless.

Part of what drags the story of Pygmalion down, for me, is everything that happens after the ball scene. The whole movie builds up to that point, and then continues for an extra thirty minutes (My Fair Lady goes on for another hour). It's such a great scene, and the buildup is worth it. The Queen employs a former pupil of Higgins to find out where Ms. Doolittle is from, and he makes the astute observation that "...only people who are taught English can speak it well."

The movie delivers an important message of women being just more then objects, as evidenced by Higgins' treatment of Ms. Doolittle. Early on Higgins' assistant refers to her as "Ms. Doolittle," and that level of respect makes her smile. Of course, Henry sees her only as Pygmalion saw his creations: as statues. Until she comes to life and fights for herself, he continues to disrespect her.

All versions have a particularly odd ending, as Eliza returns to Henry after leaving him, and he really realizes he is in love with her. Upon her return, he simply states, "Where the devil are my slippers, Eliza?" I accept that as a game that they are playing with each other, by the end, and that Higgins really does have newfound respect for Eliza.

One note: David Lean, the acclaimed director of Lawrence of Arabia and several other epics, was the editor on this film. One should note he was an editor for several films before he broke out into the directing world, and didn't edit again until his final movie, A Passage to India. Just a fun note. I spotted his name in the credits.