A couple days before Christmas, Squishy was supposed to be working on some stuff, and while I needed to make a dessert, I was looking for a movie to throw on as background noise. After not being able to find what I had wanted to watch as a free stream, and feeling lazy enough to not want to walk over the movie closet, I settled on Austin Powers, which Squishy ran from. Unfortunately, she's had so much wonderful reinforcement from her father and my parents that she now fights the idea of anything new in any way. Wonderful.
Anyway, after about ten minutes I call her in for a dopey funny part, and she winds up glued to the movie for the duration. As I listened though, and watched bits while baking, I noticed what was censored.
See, this was my sister's favorite movie for a long time. I saw it in theatres, and we all had the movie memorized for a long time. I am very familiar with every moment of this movie, and every little change.
And oh, was there a lot of changes.
Now, if you haven't seen this movie, or just don't remember, the vast majority of it is some level of veiled innuendo. The sort of thing that by the time you understand all the jokes, you're old enough that you make the same ones in school already.
But, there was so many odd things changed. Removal of the word "Penis", as though genitalia is too horrible to mention. At one point, they change a character's name, which winds up sounding like "vagina" but later in the movie show that name on screen, so they don't even have character continuity. But gods forbid we ever mention any genitals. They even blue out the tops of floating boobs in a hot tub. That's not even nipple. You can see that much boob walking around somewhere and seeing someone with a low cut shirt.
As far as I was concerned, this movie was made in a way that works perfectly with anyone. If they're too young, they honestly won't understand most of the jokes, and by the time they do, they make the same jokes at school already. There's nothing graphic in regards to sex or violence (because while innuendo is fine, kids can't really consent to watching sex scenes until a certain age). And mentioning actual body parts isn't something that needs to be censored because that in and of itself demonizes parts of our bodies and that's absolute shit.
So, next time, because Squishy did love the movie, I will take out our dvd, and put that on. She can watch that, and enjoy the movie unchanged, and I hope we take a look at what we're censoring, and encourage kids to see more things that don't have such forceful censoring in the future.
Anyway, after about ten minutes I call her in for a dopey funny part, and she winds up glued to the movie for the duration. As I listened though, and watched bits while baking, I noticed what was censored.
See, this was my sister's favorite movie for a long time. I saw it in theatres, and we all had the movie memorized for a long time. I am very familiar with every moment of this movie, and every little change.
And oh, was there a lot of changes.
Now, if you haven't seen this movie, or just don't remember, the vast majority of it is some level of veiled innuendo. The sort of thing that by the time you understand all the jokes, you're old enough that you make the same ones in school already.
But, there was so many odd things changed. Removal of the word "Penis", as though genitalia is too horrible to mention. At one point, they change a character's name, which winds up sounding like "vagina" but later in the movie show that name on screen, so they don't even have character continuity. But gods forbid we ever mention any genitals. They even blue out the tops of floating boobs in a hot tub. That's not even nipple. You can see that much boob walking around somewhere and seeing someone with a low cut shirt.
As far as I was concerned, this movie was made in a way that works perfectly with anyone. If they're too young, they honestly won't understand most of the jokes, and by the time they do, they make the same jokes at school already. There's nothing graphic in regards to sex or violence (because while innuendo is fine, kids can't really consent to watching sex scenes until a certain age). And mentioning actual body parts isn't something that needs to be censored because that in and of itself demonizes parts of our bodies and that's absolute shit.
So, next time, because Squishy did love the movie, I will take out our dvd, and put that on. She can watch that, and enjoy the movie unchanged, and I hope we take a look at what we're censoring, and encourage kids to see more things that don't have such forceful censoring in the future.
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