The American Way

On a lazy Sunday morning, after taking the dog out for a morning hike/bathroom break, I settle on the couch to surf the channels for a few pre-breakfast minutes. Fortune smiles on me and I stumble upon Die Hard on A&E HD, a cable movie channel that shows a large number of awesome, though edited, feature films.

As a believer in free speech I prefer owning the unedited versions of everything I purchase, but there is some fascination for me in viewing something I’ve seen a million times in a restricted form. It’s always interesting to see what gets cut.

Stumbling into the film just as Hans and his squad are busting up the Christmas party in the Takagi building, I was not at all surprised when the chest of an up-close topless woman was blurred away. Now, we all know the preference in American media for violence over nudity and even profanity, but the coming moments were pretty stunning by even our standards.

In his office, Mr. Takagi refuses to cooperate with Hans in opening the electronically coded piece of the corporate safe. After a countdown, Hans looks Takagi in the eyes and shoots him in the face, with a large amount of blood exploding out the back of his head and covering the glass door windows behind him. As the audience, we hear the gun fire, see Takagi’s head jerk backward, and blood cover the windows in front of the camera.

The fact that this is unedited is a little disturbing, but it is the juxtaposition with what follows that truly captures the moment. After a mishap, John McClane is upstairs, berating himself. “Why didn’t you save him, John? ‘Cause then you’d be dead, too,” followed by blurred mouth, and silence. The missing word, for those of unfamiliar with the film, is asshole.

A moment later, staring across the street into a lit apartment, a woman is undressing at a great distance. Though barely visible, even in HD, there is a blurred circle over her lower body. You’d think I needn’t explain what makes up the missing picture, but you’d be wrong. This is not some lurid shot removed for the sake of the children, but a barely discernible image from some fifty yards. The director edited the scene with distance and darkness, and we didn’t need a digital cloud to get the job done.

As a recap, the audience has now seen a man’s brains blown out in direct view, followed by the removal of a not-that-bad-of-a-word and the blurring of telescopic nudity. Graphic violence: check. Bad word and almost nudity: no check. This is the censor’s equivalent of nailing Capone on tax evasion.

I thought I was okay with the status quo in American media, but I’m just not sure I can accept it any longer. It’s just childish to be offended by one and so nonchalant about the other. I’m not arguing for on-screen sexual acts, but could we at least pare down the gap in the double standard? Either lessen the nudity controls or crank up the violence ones. We may need to examine our values as a society when we view a bad word as worse than an execution right before our eyes.

Side note: after completing this post and doing a couple chores, I came back and caught the end of the movie and the beginning of the next, Analyze This. I loved seeing Karl get shot at the end of the former, blood squirting and body heaving, and then watching Paul Vitti (Robert De Niro) interrogate somebody with the censors on overdrive. Any De Niro mafia performance comes with its fair share of F-bombs, and the absence of his catch word makes for high comedy, especially when their removal comes immediately after a brutal killing.

Cultural Arrogance

I had a conversation/debate with a family friend the other night when the concept of cultural superiority came up. Now the politically correct answer is all cultures are equal, but we know this isn't true. I believe all people all created equal, but by this belief I must exclaim that not all cultures are so, as many groups do not recognize this right.

When I say our culture, I mean the greater American Culture, the macroculture of our nation, if you will. I never claimed our culture was the best, simply that it was superior to many. She disagreed, arguing no culture was superior to any other.

She then went on to argue that many women take great security in the burka, and that we have no place to assist a culture in getting rid of it. She then defended monarchies, and said we had no right to suggest democracy was superior. She stated a free press was not necessarily better than a government controlled one.

I am not kidding.

I said ours was superior; she said that was arrogant. I said fine, and superior. No, just arrogant.

I no longer respect the opinions of this individual. I mean it: her thoughts are trash to me, and I'll waste no time giving them time or energy. The First Amendment is the line in the sand. If we stand for, fight for, die for anything it should be the rights of speech, religion, and the press. We can debate much of the rest; bearing arms, wiretapping, torture, presumption of innocence, abortion, the death penalty; I can find arguments for both sides of any of these topics off the top of my head. Some things are simply facts, one-dimensional truths.

Our culture is better than one where a woman raped in a mall is the offender for being in public alone. Period. Voting for office is better than having someone born king or queen, lord until death. Period. Guaranteeing an individual the right to select their own faith, or none at all, is better than forcing a religion upon the masses on pain of death. How can a nation claim to have its population be of a certain religion if the people have only one choice? If all are a faith by force, then none are that faith by choice.

How naive can an individual be? Is this the level of idiocy people have devolved to? I don't even have to tell you to which party this person belonged. Other members of this group should be embarrassed, the same way I am by the bigots in my party.

I'm not saying American culture is better than French culture. Nor do I look down upon the Germans, the Italians, the Brits or any other group that stands for freedom and democracy. I don't know who has the best culture in the free world, if any one nation does. But I don't have to choose, because I have the choice to enjoy them all.

You see, what it comes down to is I hold these truths to be self-evident. I believe every human being is entitled to certain, inalienable rights. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. The right to be free from oppression. These are not just words. They are the heart and soul of what is right in this twisted, violent little world of ours. They are all we can agree on, what we must agree on.