“Raw Language Of War Will Fall On PG-13 Ears,” headlined the
Washington Post last Friday. The story told of how a new
documentary about the Iraq war, Gunner Palace, is to be
viewed without its original “R” for language, since the Motion
Picture Association’s Ratings Board had upgraded its earlier
rating, “agreeing with the filmmakers that the raw language of real
American soldiers in Baghdad was appropriate for younger audiences
— who themselves might be considering joining the armed forces.”
Actually, the whole concept of the ratings board, instituted by
Jack Valenti back in the 1960s, was based on the idea that what was
“appropriate” for their children was a matter for parents to
decide. The Board was just supposed to tell them with its ratings
what was in a movie, and “raw” language of a certain description
automatically meant an R rating.
The question of “censorship” also arose with respect to the Iraq
documentary “A Company of Soldiers” aired last week on PBS’s
“Frontline.” The language used by soldiers who had come under
attack was not, as described by one commentator I heard, “profane.”
Any amount of profanity — that is disrespect for sacred or holy
things — will hardly get you an “R” rating anymore, and it can be
heard routinely on television. What this observer meant to say was
“indecent” or “obscene” language — that is the formerly forbidden
words for bodily functions and sexual acts about which the FCC and
the ratings board both remain unaccountably fussy. But surely,
these words are signifiers of authenticity? As Friday’s Wall
Street Journal put it, “War is never pretty, and bad language
is the least of it. In the documentary, the curses underline the
alarm and fear among men literally fighting for their lives.” Well,
yes they do, but only because they were once forbidden. Now that
they have become so common everywhere except for network television
and in PG-13-rated movies they have lost much of their power to
“underline.” As the Journal’s editorialist points out, the
things described by the naughty words are often to be seen even on
network TV, though the words are not heard.
The larger problem here, I think, is entertainment overload. We
spend so much time watching TV, including what TV itself with
considerable chutzpah calls “reality TV,” that war itself and men
in danger of their lives just looks to us like more TV. As one of
the soldiers in Gunner Palace puts it in a rap lyric:
“…for y’all this is just a show, but we live in this movie.”
The documentarians themselves contribute to the problem by
operating in a too-predictable world and with a too-familiar
language, so that soldiers on TV nearly always look like TV
soldiers. Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein, the directors of
Gunner Palace do their darndest to color within the lines
laid down by Vietnam War documentaries, so their soldiers are
alienated and isolated and remote from the thoughts and concerns of
those who have sent them into harm’s way. And “A Company of
Soldiers,” though it is less politically motivated, just can’t get
enough of the men’s emotions when one of their buddies is killed.
Didn’t even one of them tell the film-makers to get their cameras
the bleep out there when they were trespassing on a private
grief?
But of course there’s no such thing as a private grief anymore
in the view of TV, just as there is no more an absolute prohibition
against indecent language on TV, and for the same reason. In both
cases, those most sympathetic to the soldiers and their mission are
likely to apologize for the breaking down of traditional barriers
on the grounds that it makes us all love our boys who are doing
such a fantastic job over there even more than we already do. It
makes them look more “real” — at least “real” in the televisual
sense. I am alert to the hopelessness of bucking the cultural tide
which would abolish — and very nearly has abolished — the
distinction between public and private. But at least I may point
out that those of us who are hold-outs against the trend for more
and more titillating forms of indecency on the airwaves are
fighting the same hopeless fight.
