by Max Fine
Whatever "sacre bleu" means in French, why did PBS translate it in subtitles as "*******"? Surely we have enough strong words and idioms in American English for a translation that would fit the scene. Usually when strong language appears in a PBS TV show PBS doesn’t allow us to hear it, no sound at all, sometimes for as long as a second, and then the closed caption has "******". But I heard "sacre bleu" in an episode of Astrid. Someone decided to let me hear that.
Back in the last century PBS didn’t go as far as they do now to protect their viewers from exposure to strong language and nudity. Do you recall the first showing of I, Claudius? Too young? You missed a terrific series.
I also recall a police procedural on PBS where the police detective visited an art class and, for no reason at all, a nude model stood posing for the students. A bowl of fruit in place of the model would not have changed the story, as I recall.
I believe that nowadays people who know where to look on the internet have easy access to all sorts of content that PBS censors. Must PBS interrupt the narrative flow of a drama with periods of silence whenever a character uses strong language? Apparently the answer is: Yes. But why? PBS carefully blurs out any female nipple, even on a corpse. Don’t PBS viewers know that adult females have nipples too?
I could protect myself from exposure to nudity or strong language on TV by watching MeTV or other channels that show only old commercial TV content. Beware of TCM, some of the really old (pre-code) movies have raunchy content. And nature documentaries on whatever channel, even PBS, sometimes show reproductive behavior.
In an episode of Monk a naked woman appears on a beach. In the credits for that episode the actress appears as "naked woman" or maybe "nude woman" I don’t actually recall. But I did check the credits to see if that actress got credited for her appearance. She did. Do protect your internet savvy children from viewing that episode of Monk. Breasts! Pubic hair! Sacre bleu!
Originally published in Forvm, the newsletter of Central New Jersey Mensa.
Central New Jersey Mensa 