Our TV Censorship is Dumbing Us Down
Back when I was in 3rd grade, a local TV channel in my country of Indonesia is constantly playing a Hollywood film every Wednesday and Friday starting from 9pm. I remembered quite vividly watching Die Hard 2 on a school night, staying up late while my mom’s watching it with me (awesome!), all the action, explosion, expletives are all there to see. In fact, probably the first time I watched the three Die Hard films was on this timeslot. Films that are screened on that hour varied from classic blockbusters to hard-R horror films; from flops like Mystery Men to the sensual Original Sin (which I never watched because it’s on the ‘banned’ list from my parents). Mexican standoffs, blood, and passionate kissing are shown clearly, unless it’s too much —for example, some scenes in Final Destination was cut but it still showed the brutal deaths which is undoubtedly the whole point of the film. It was a pretty ‘liberal’ for Indonesia at that time.
Fast-forward fourteen years later, I turned on my TV to the same channel (they are playing films everyday now) and The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies was playing. It’s pretty cool to have this film playing on a local TV as it was quite recent. It was already in the climactic battle — that scene where Orlando Bloom defies gravity — and I’d rather watch this bland entry to the Middle Earth than the news. As I was watching it, suddenly at one point in the film, my screen turned black and white, so I thought, “what was wrong with my TV?” But immediately after that, it’s back in color again. Then it’s back to black and white. It turned out, it was not my TV. It was the film. It was a quite bloody scene so they “censored” it by making it black and white. Everytime it cuts to a character covered in splashes of blood, it went Tarantino-The-Bride-plucked-a-guy’s-eye. It wasn’t like the scene was as gory as the shower scene in Psycho that Alfred Hitchcock decided to make the whole film in black-and-white. It’s just Martin Freeman mildly has blood stains on his face.
This style of censorship adds to the growing ridiculousness of Indonesian TV censorship. I can still get by the censorship of swear words used in films. But now, you can also see blurred women’s cleavage, weapons or cigarettes. Back when I watched movies at third grade, there was no censorship of women’s cleavage, weapons or cigarettes. As a film enthusiast, it is effing annoying. But apparently it’s not only in films shown on local channels but also in other programs like reality shows or news. Kid-friendly shows like America’s Got Talent got blurred (Sorry Mel B!), Ariana Grande’s album cover came up on the news when the Manchester bombing happened and it was also blurred. As if all Indonesian people are easily turned on by spotting a little bit of women’s cleavage. And the frustrating thing is: the channels are still playing films that are obviously bound to be heavily censored like 300, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, the original Total Recall, etc. If the PG-13 Hobbit films are censored, what becomes of the hard-R films? Why bother licensing the film at all?
This begs the question: is it you or me? Is it the Indonesian Board of Censorship that is overly protective and conservative in what they can and can’t show? Or is it the Indonesian people in general that are under-educated to learn that these stuff shown in movies are a part of other culture or fiction? I can recall in my fourth grade or so that we were taught about the advantages and disadvantages of globalization and what we should do about it. I can still write word for word what I wrote down in my exams: We should acknowledge and learn about globalization but filter what’s right and wrong wisely. Wisely. Should we outright pretend that sexy clothes, guns, and Marlboro do not exist in movies? Or should we put on a disclaimer and clearly classify TV programs based on age? In Indonesia, the quality of education still can’t catch up the speed of globalization. If they get proper education that they learn respecting women, the hazards of smoking or the dangers and consequences of weapons, we can all enjoy Die Hard in its entirety on local TV— probably with “Yippi-kay-yay bleeped” though.
It all comes to education. If we understood it, we would not be afraid of it. However, for the time being, just simply blurring it out as if we’re pretending it isn’t there is not going to work.
Remember when Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt tried to explain the concept of inception to Ken Watanabe?
“Don’t think about elephants. What do you think about?”
Don’t think about women’s cleavage, guns, blood or cigarettes. What do you think about?
