Rating The Internet

Seven words that you can never say on TV but are OK on the internet

When I seek out entertainment, I depend on the various ratings organizations to help me avoid explicit portrayals of sex, gratuitous graphic violence, foul language or unacceptable vulgarity. I am familiar with the movie ratings systems which warn me of "R" or "NR" or "PG-13" content. When I turn on the TV, I check the rating box in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, and reach for my remote at the first sign of offensive material. When I purchase a video game, I make sure there is no "A", "M" or even "T" on the box.

While there is no comparable safeguard for web browsing, some simple common sense measures have heretofore stood me in good stead. I don't respond to email promises to increase the size of my penis or enhance my sexual experiences. I don't reply to requests from correspondents with names like "CandyPantsXXX" or "NaughtyGirlOXOX" who promise to be my friend or relieve my boredom. Most off-limits web sites reveal their intentions right away by bombarding you with racy music, presenting pre-pubescent nymphs who want you to "get to know them" and, finally, soliciting your credit card number in order to see more.

So imagine my surprise as I was browsing the web site of the Parents Television Council, "ParentsTV.org," which purports to survey and rate the content of television programming for the parents of impressionable children, so they don't have to. According to their "About Us" link, the Parents Television Council "is a non-partisan education organization advocating responsible entertainment. It was founded in 1995 to ensure that children are not constantly assaulted by sex, violence and profanity on television and in other media." Attached to each program is a color code rating, green, yellow, red to serve as a parental guide. These codes are defined briefly as follows:

Red: "Show may include gratuitous sex, explicit dialogue, violent content, or obscene language, and is unsuitable for children"
Yellow: "The show contains adult-oriented themes and dialogue that may be inappropriate for youngsters."
Green: "Family-friendly show promoting responsible themes and traditional values.
Blue: "Not yet rated by the PTC."

Well naturally I wanted to know more about what actually goes into the various ratings categories, and so, ignoring the warning that the ratings details contain "graphic descriptions," I clicked on. I don't think I can adequately describe my horror at what I discovered.

To my chagrin, I learned that the "Red" designation refers to the following words (out of modesty, I have replaced letters with random characters): "Sh*t, d&ck, pr$ck, f@ck, !sshole, c^ck, G—damn, profaning Jesus Christ." These words in their unexpurgated form were accompanied by explicit details of the types of sex and violence, and their frequency, that would warrant red, yellow or green designations.

I also learned that the frequency of "veiled or mild innuendo" or "responsible discussion of sexual issues" may bump the rating from "green" to "yellow," where even one depiction or mention of "sexual innuendo, marital sex, sex implied, homosexuality, pre-coital and/or post-coital or responsible discussion of pornography or masturbation" would suffice. More than three occurrences of the former per half hour gets the bump from green to yellow. Three or more per half hour of the latter group gets the red. I think you get the idea.

Here via a link available to anyone, of any age, is web content that would offend everyone, of every age, from the youngest sprout to the oldest beanstalk. So the question springs to mind, who rates the raters? If we can't rely on our media censors to clean up their act, who can we trust? The Parents Television Council may be performing a noble function visavis television, film and literature, but I'm afraid that until they censor themselves, I cannot in good conscience recommend their website.

For that matter, their example suggests that any website, no matter how innocuous, may contain offensive material. Until an organization takes the burden of discovery off of me by publishing a comprehensive rating list of all internet web sites, I'll just have to console myself by listening to my new collection of George Carlin CDs.

George Carlin, Google and Community Values

Taboos change as new communications media determine what is accessible and what is not.

More often than not, commentary on the recent death of comedian George Carlin centers on his famous "7 Words You Can't Say on TV" routine and his confrontation with the FCC. If you haven't heard it yet, gather your children to your side and click here.

Carlin's "7 words," which he correctly identified as taboo in the 1970's, have become less so in the 21st century. Cable denizens, including South Park cartoon children, Sopranos Mafiosi and Comedy Central fake newsmen use any and all of Carlin's words with impunity, while their broadcast counterparts must still watch their mouths. Even so, some proprieties are preserved on cable. Cartman on South Park can say “Shit” and Tony Soprano can say “Fuck”, but John Stewart and Stephen Colbert still get bleeped. Meanwhile, if Oprah or Barbara Walters drop the F-bomb, network executives tremble. One gets the impression that the FCC cracks down on broadcaster language slips just to show they can.

All societies have their taboos. More often than not, forbidden words or places or things define acceptable and non-acceptable public behaviors and tend to support and reinforce the status quo and the existing power structure. Sexual taboos, which are included in Carlin’s “7 Words”, try to define both adult and child boundaries as well as a society’s sexual preoccupations.

As Joshua Meyrowitz documented in his ground-breaking book No Sense of Self, modern communication media have blurred the boundaries that existed in the print era between public and private and between adult and child. Meyrowitz discusses how literacy requirements created learning hurdles that allowed adults to limit the spread of some types of information to prying young minds. With no necessary education required to watch TV, view a movie, or access the World Wide Web, the former taboos are now brought under scrutiny.

Case in point. An article in today's New York Times discusses how the attorney in a Florida obscenity case is using Google search data to defend his client:

In the trial of a pornographic Web site operator, the defense plans to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like “orgy” than for “apple pie” or “watermelon.” The publicly accessible data is vague in that it does not specify how many people are searching for the terms, just their relative popularity over time. But the defense lawyer, Lawrence Walters, is arguing that the evidence is sufficient to demonstrate that interest in the sexual subjects exceeds that of more mainstream topics — and that by extension, the sexual material distributed by his client is not outside the norm.

To those of us who came of age under the tutelage of George Carlin, the hypocrisy of so-called obscenity standards has long been evident. Dick Cheney can say "Fuck You" to a United States Senator in the United States Senate, but Janet Jackson can't show a bare breast. Richard Nixon surreptitiously records political, sexual and scatological epithets spoken in the Oval Office while George Carlin and WBAI lose their right to free speech before the Supreme Court.

That cable programming allows Carlin's “7 Words” without hesitation and that Internet giant Google's usage data can be used to challenge attitudes about community values is further evidence of the transformational powers of new media.