Fuck A Duck - Censorship

Censorship

The films Ulysses and I'll Never Forget What's'isname (both 1967) are contenders for being the first film to use the word 'fuck,' although the word 'fucking' is clearly mouthed silently in the film Sink the Bismarck! (1960), and the title character says it in the cartoon Bosko's Picture Show (1933). Since the U.S. adoption of the MPAA film rating system, use of the word has been accepted in R-rated movies, and under the older rules, use of the word in a sexual way would automatically cause the film to be given an R rating. Later changes could allow for a maximum of three non-sexual and strictly exclamatory uses of the word in PG-13 movies.

On August 19, 1969 the acid rock band Jefferson Airplane played their song We Can Be Together uncensored on The Dick Cavett Show, including the 60's countercultural slogan "Up against the wall, motherfucker!" (which was also the name of an anarchist group at that time). This was the first appearance of the word on U.S. television.

In 1970, John Lennon successfully got the word past the censors on his song "Working Class Hero" with the lines "They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool, till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules" and "You think you're so clever and classless and free, but you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see."

Since the 1970s, the use of the word "fuck" in R-rated movies has become so commonplace in mainstream American movies that it is rarely noticed by most audiences. Nonetheless, a few movies have made exceptional use of the word, to the point where such films as Fuck, Good Will Hunting, Casino, The Last Detail, Menace II Society, The Big Lebowski, The Departed, Scarface (1983), Pulp Fiction, Blue Velvet, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, and Goodfellas as well as the HBO TV series The Sopranos are known for its extensive use. In the movie Meet the Parents, and its sequels Meet the Fockers and Little Fockers, the main character's last name of "Focker" is a running joke. In the popular comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral, it is the chief word, repeatedly uttered, during the opening five minutes. In HBO's TV series The Wire, Season 1, Episode 4, entitled "Old Cases," there is a long segment in which two homicide detectives, visiting a crime scene, communicate using only variations of the word "fuck". To many, one of the most humorous tirades demonstrating various usages of the word appears in the comedy, Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987), where Steve Martin expresses his dissatisfaction in his treatment by a rental car agency. The movie Student Bodies inserted a scene in the middle of the film to explain to audiences that movies with an R rating are more popular than those carrying a PG rating, which the movie could easily have had. He ends his address with, " ... the producers of this motion picture have asked me to take this opportunity to say 'Fuck you'", at which time the MPAA R-rating banner appeared.

In several PG-rated movies, however, the word is used, mainly because at the time there was no PG-13 rating and the MPAA did not want to give the films R ratings; for instance, All the President's Men (1976), where it is used seven times; The Kids Are Alright (1979), where it is used twice; and The Right Stuff (1983), where it is used five times. Spaceballs (1987) is one of at least four anomalies in that it was rated PG after the 1984 introduction of the PG-13 rating, yet it includes Dark Helmet's line, "'Out of order'?! Fuck! Even in the future nothing works!" The second is Big (1988) which has the character of Billy asking Tom Hanks' character, "Who the fuck do you think you are?" The third is Beetlejuice (1988) which has the character Betelgeuse kick over a fake tree and scream, "nice fucking model!" The fourth is 1988's Caddyshack II where Randy Quaid's character shouts out he is going to break down a door with a "fucking baseball bat."

In the 1999 film "Galaxy Quest," Sigourney Weaver's character Gwen DeMarco is edited from the line "Well, fuck that!" to "Well, screw that!" The change was made to avoid a PG-13 rating, and the original line is obvious when reading her lips.

Films edited for broadcast use matching euphemisms so that lip synching will not be thrown off. One televised version of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown, for instance, had the actors dub in the words frick, Nubian, and melon farmer for fuck, nigger, and motherfucker, respectively. In similarly dubbed versions of Die Hard and Die Hard 2, Bruce Willis' catchphrase "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker" is replaced by "Yippee-ki-yay, Mister Falcon" or "Yippee-ki-yay, Kemo Sabe." Similarly, the TV broadcast edit of Snakes on a Plane has Samuel L. Jackson saying "I have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane," emending two occurrences of motherfucking. In the film The Big Lebowski, John Goodman's character repeatedly yells, "This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass" while trashing a car. It was infamously censored on television as "This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps." His character also repeatedly says to Steve Buscemi's character, "Shut the fuck up, Donny," or "Donny, shut the fuck up." In the television version, fuck is censored with hell.

Many stand-up comedians who perform for adult audiences make liberal use of the word fuck. While George Carlin's use of the word was an important part of his stage persona, other comedians (such as Andrew Dice Clay) have been accused of substituting vulgarity and offensiveness for genuine creativity through overuse of the word. Billy Connolly and Lenny Bruce were pioneers of the use of the word in their shows for general audiences.

Recently, the hip-hop group Black Eyed Peas' hit song "Don't Phunk With My Heart" was only played on many radio stations in an edited version, "Don't Mess With My Heart." James Blunt's first major song, You're Beautiful, featured the line "she could see from my face that I was fucking high" – this was censored to "flying high" for broadcasting purposes.