Talking About Stuff, with Mike and Christiana

Poor Janu. She really hasn't been very entertaining, but to be fair, other cast-offs have said on Survivor Live that she's been hardly able to keep anything down since day 3. That would really really suck. Still, I think Gregg said it best (Believe me, I was shocked too!) when he called her a buzzkill. Seeing someone all depressed and sick and weak like that just isn't very fun to watch. Seeing her quit so early in that immunity challenge was hardly a surprise, but it was just disappointing, especially after she had actually done pretty well in the team reward challenge.

That said, I was really disappointed in the others in the way they laughed at her. Especially Katie, but Ian a little bit too. He didn't say anything, but he was laughing. Now, I can understand that having her quit so quickly was a little unexpected and surely a bit of a relief, but still, I thought it was in bad taste to actually laugh and make fun. For a few of them, I agreed with Janu that their apologies and apparent concern was more about not wanting to seem like a bad guy than any real worry or compassion.

Katie has left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth now. With Ian, I'm inclined to be a little more forgiving, which may just be because I like him, but also because I suspect he's a bit like me in that he can occasionally forget to think about what effect his actions might have on other people, then regret it later. Those were the two whose reactions I particularly noticed anyway.

Anyway, I was a little surprised to discover that Tom, Ian and Katie decided to side with Gregg and Jennifer instead of Stephanie, though thinking about it rationally, I'm not sure why I should be surprised. Stephanie is clearly a threat. As much as I would absolutely love to see Ian, Tom, and Stephanie as the final three, when I put myself in the shoes of the individual players, I can see why they wouldn't want to compete against her.

Kudos to Stephanie though for realizing what was happening. I could really feel for her at tribal council. With her competitiveness and with the heartache she's been through from being on the losing tribe for so long, I can really understand why she would be so upset at the notion that she would be sent home before someone who actually wanted to go. I think Janu definitely made the right decision. That whole "they don't have a reason to keep me but I'm not going to tell them what they should do" was really passive-aggressive and irritated me. So I was glad when she stepped up and withdrew.

Especially after that "penalty" that turned out so positive, it was nice to see Janu able to go out on an active self-determined note.

And while I was really glad to see Stephanie stick around a little longer, I think she's still in serious trouble, and unless she wins immunity, she's almost surely the next person to go. The "Scenes from next time" suggest that she makes a play for the four remaining women (Katie, Jennifer, Caryn and Stephanie) to team up against the three remaining men (Gregg, Ian, and Tom,) That's the wrong way to play it, I think, and I doubt she'll be successful, since the whole reason she's in danger is because she's seen as a threat, and the women aren't any more likely to want to compete against her than the men are. That said, maybe she's just trying to play every card she has. All I can say is that I hope one of them works out for her, though I suspect that winning immunity may be the only Ace she's got left.

Still, that brings me to one of my all-time favorite Survivor moments. It's not her breakdown at tribal council, even though that was great TV, but it was related. Coby, I think, may turn out to be one of the best jury members ever, because he's got an opinion about everything and he makes GREAT facial expressions.

My favorite moment came after Janu's torch was snuffed out, and they were really just doing the wrap-up montage of everyone, but there was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment where Coby gives Stephanie this fantastic, "Just look what those tears let you get away with." smile and raised eyebrow. She smiled back with a "Yeah. Holy hell that was close, wasn't it?" It was great! I love this show!

Well, it's a little complicated. If it were out and out piracy, that would simplify things, but it is really not pirating the films. If you own the movie, you are free to skip or fast-forward through any scenes that you don't want to watch, so where is the wrong in paying someone to simplify that process?

Now, I have absolutely zero interest in these sanitized films for myself, even for the occasional film where I feel certain scenes were unnecessary. I think violence, nudity, language, used in film, are tools that produce an emotional effect on the viewer. As someone who considers herself a film enthusiast, I respect the filmmakers in their attempt to communicate their artistic vision, even if that vision is only to entertain me for a couple hours. By deciding which parts I want to watch, and which parts I don't want to watch, and by taking steps to edit out the latter parts, I am altering that vision, changing it from a piece of art into a mere consumable.

One of the stupider quotes in that column is from Ray Lines, one of the scrubbers defending his cuts of some of the violence and gore from "Saving Private Ryan". He says: "You still get the full effect" after the cuts. Now, I don't really swear much, Mr. Lines, but in the context of this discussion, I find it necessary. That is simple and utter bullshit. If the "effect" is the same after the cuts, then what difference did they make? Clearly, you found the effect of the film prior to the cuts to be objectionable, and after the cuts, you did not. Therefore, the effect has changed. The larger issue may be complicated, but this is not.

I would suggest that Mr. Spielberg made his movie as violent and gory as he did for a very specific reason. Which is worse, a war movie that contains horrific images of gore and violence, as Saving Private Ryan did, or one of the "classic" war films where we never see any blood, the good guys always win, and on the rare occasion that someone does die, they do so with plenty of time to make a closing speech inspiring his fellow soldiers to go on and make sure he didn't die in vain, then, to expel his last breath with a sense of peace. War is really really horrible. Sometimes it's necessary, and I would never suggest otherwise, but it is the worst of all things, and I for one, hope we never forget that. Those "sanitized" war films certainly don't tell us that. For me, Saving Private Ryan did.

Listen, I totally understand. Watching scenes of gore and blood and violence is unpleasant and disturbing. IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE!!!! Spielberg made his movie that way on purpose, so we would be able to experience in some small way the tremendous horror and sacrifice that soldiers must face in wartime, hopefully taking that out of the theater with us and making us think twice the next time we suggest using violence to solve things.

Now, of course, that's a little bit of a straw man argument, because I've chosen the easiest to defend of the films and scenes in question. So let's look at a harder one.

The nude scene in Titanic.

Now, personally, I think Titanic is a great film and I was thrilled that it won as many Oscars as it did. That said, I think it's great as a piece of popular entertainment. It's not something that I think will change the world in any way. It doesn't have a powerful statement to make about society. It doesn't have lessons to teach us. It's just an exciting action-romance story that takes place in a notorious setting.

Does the nude scene have to be there? Frankly, no. I highly doubt that, had it been left out, I would have been sitting in the theater thinking: "Well, that was pretty good, but it really needed more boobies."

I don't know that that particular scene really made or broke the film either way. It does however impact the effect the film will have on the viewer, whether that impact is positive or negative. Clearly, there is a market for people who want to watch the film, but don't want to have to see that scene, most likely, in order to make the film more suitable for children. And the truth of it is, that removing that one scene takes a movie that is PG-13/R and makes it PG.

I really have a lot of sympathy for parents trying their best to monitor the various media their children are exposed to. There's a lot of great children's entertainment out there, but there's also a lot of stuff that is not suitable. (There's also a lot that, while technically "suitable", is still utter crap.) Wading through all that can be almost overwhelming, I'm sure. That's one of the reasons that I fully support websites like Common Sense Media which rate movies based on content, and work well as tools to help parents know what to expect from that video their kid really wants to watch.

Frankly, I find them a little uptight, but there are lots of uptight people out there, and if these websites can help them to avoid having to walk out of a film they never should have gone to in the first place, then I'm all for it, one less person blocking my view of the screen. Likewise, I do agree that there are things that children shouldn't be exposed to until they are old enough to understand them. Violence, sexuality, etc.

So the movie scrubbers offer to make otherwise family-unfriendly films into something the whole family can watch. Yet, I can't help but wonder if simply removing objectionable scenes is really the right way to go. If a film is not suitable for kids, can it really be made suitable simply by cutting out the adult content? The fact of the matter is that the world has a lot of adult content. It's important to ease kids into that, but simply pretending it doesn't exist is not necessarily the right way to handle it. What about talking to your kids about this stuff?

For example, Kate Winslet's boobies. I'm a grown up. I've seen them before. Got a pair of my own in fact. Now in the context of the film, that scene might raise lots of questions, but it seems to me that could be subject for conversation. Should she have allowed him to draw her that way? Should she have slept with him after only knowing him such a short time? All of this could be discussed, but pretending that body parts possessed by 50% of the population are somehow objectionable in and of themselves seems to me to be the wrong message.

So ultimately, I'm not interested in these "sanitized" films for my own consumption, but I don't know that they should be illegal. After all, once I buy a movie, I can do anything I want with it short of selling pirated copies. But for my own use, I can copy it onto VHS, I can edit it on my computer, I can microwave the disc if I want. Once they've got my money, the filmmaker doesn't really have any more say. I can make my own scrubbed copy if I want. Then if someone else wants to scrub their own copy, but they don't know how, should it be illegal for me to help them and then charge for my time?

So ultimately, I don't like these sanitized copies, but I don't really think that the filmmakers or the studios really have any ground to stand on legally speaking, unless there is true piracy going on. For those looking to buy them however, I would urge you to really give it some additional thought. I know it may be difficult to find child-friendly media, but it does exist, and which is really better, taking adult entertainment and cutting out all the naughty bits but leaving the mature themes and concepts, or simply starting with something that is genuinely appropriate for them to begin with? Such things are indeed out there, so ask yourself whether these "scrubbed" movies aren't really just an attempt to avoid doing the work.