A reader named Carl commented on my post about Bleep and Cut Your DVD. The post was about a Salt Lake company called ClearPlay that is marketing technology that makes your DVD player skip profanity and nudity as you watch a film.

I don’t consider myself squeamish just because I do not care to hear profanity when I watch my DVDs. Movies that featured foul language, sex scenes and graphic violence had no place in family entertainment when I was growing up. Now that I have reached adulthood, I still find such movie content repugnant. Thanks to ClearPlay filtering (not censoring), my family is not subjected to movie material that does not harmonize with our values. (emphasis added)

Hollywood, for the most part, does not care for family values. Making money is their driving force. Consider this. According to the New York Sunday News Magazine, May 16th, 1982, it was reported that the major motion picture “Annie” was originally rated G. The producer worried that a G rating would not draw well. He asked that one of Carol Burnett’s lines be rewritten to include a “G– D—-.” This was done and the movie was reclassified PG. Now, the reasoning went, it would appeal more to the new-morality public. So much for promoting family values!

As Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction said, “allow me to retort.”

Carl, thank you for leaving your comments on my blog regarding ClearPlay’s DVD Filtering technology.

I understand why some people don’t want to hear profanity or see nudity in Hollywood movies. My mother is always complaining about some movie she saw that she really liked, except for the swearing. And based on ClearPlay’s success, it is obvious that you and my mother have a lot of company (and I wouldn’t necessarily call you prudes, either.)

Here’s why I have a problem with ClearPlay: it is a third-party making unauthorized edits to an artist’s original work. Now, if a director makes a movie and films alternate scenes without profanity or nudity, I’m all for these bowdlerized versions being shown. In fact, this is somewhat common. The creator of HBO’s “Sex & The City” filmed alternate takes with an eye toward future syndication on non-HBO channels. You can see these versions now on TBS. It’s also a standard practice in the adult video industry; directors will film soft-core angles of the sex acts at the same time they film hard-core angles — the hard-core makes it to the DVD and the soft-core goes to in-room hotel pay-per-view.

But ClearPlay makes these decisions without the director’s consent. As a writer and a musician, I instinctually fear any meddling with an artist’s vision. For example, Steven Spielberg set out to make “Saving Private Ryan” a realistic portrayal of the Normandy invasion on D-Day. Realism dictates that Spielberg had to show exploding body parts and salty language. If ClearPlay skips the blood and substitutes “Holy ____, my _______ leg just got shot, ___ ____ it!” for more realistic dialogue, then it is not conveying the message, feelings, and reality that Spielberg intended.

In your comment, you take care to point out that ClearPlay is filtering, not censoring, the DVDs. I agree with you. Censorship is when government prevents the free-flow of ideas. In this case, however, you are choosing that a private company should restrict the free-flow of ideas in your own household. Fair enough. Still, unless a director consents to this filtering, I don’t think it is right, because the director never intended for those segments to be filtered.

This is a sticky issue. For example, what if you took your own time to watch a DVD and make notes to yourself as to when the swearing and nudity happens. Then, when you watch with your family, you carefully mute or skip parts according to your notes. You’d be doing your own “manual” ClearPlay! I actually wouldn’t have a problem with this, and I’d have to applaud you on your diligent parenting.

The problem is not ClearPlay’s filtering so much as it is their making a profit off of it. You are paying someone else to do your parenting for you. This company is making money by providing instructions on how to alter an artists’ original work. That just feels wrong to me. In a sense, you are buying ClearPlay’s “remix” of a movie.

Here’s what really bothers me about the whole issue: if your family values are such that most Hollywood movies require ClearPlay filtering, then why do you want Hollywood to bend to your morals? Why not just reject Hollywood? Wouldn’t they get the message better if morally-conscious viewers boycotted PG, PG-13, & R movies? By renting DVD’s and using ClearPlay, Hollywood is still getting your money, and perhaps getting higher returns on their PG, PG-13, & R movies, thus motivating them to make more of those movies.

My guess is this: the “family values” crowd is a far smaller share of the Hollywood consumer base than the “filth-lovin'” crowd like me, and a boycott by the “values” crowd wouldn’t be a drop in the bucket. Your point about adding the “god damn” to “Annie” to bump it up from “G” to “PG” illustrates this. Us folks in the “filth” crowd see a “G” and we think “goody-goody kids movie” and we don’t go to see it. As a “PG”, we think it’s still for kids but not so completely bland that we can’t sit through it. So Hollywood throws in a superfluous “god damn” in trade for a much larger audience.

To be fair, this principle works in your favor, too. A director will pare down some steamy sex scenes to get a movie reduced from the box-office-receipt-killing “NC-17” to a better-attended “R”. Similarly, a big summer blockbuster like “Spider-man” will get trimmed of nudity or violence or profanity so it can slip from an “R” to a “PG-13” that will bring in the huge receipts from the teenage audience.

(I wonder what ClearPlay does with Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”? I guess there’s no swearing or nudity involved, but does it skip past the eighty minutes of brutal, sadistic, bloody beatings?)

Suppose there was a ClearPlay option for books. Would that change your mind about this subject? Suppose a company sold copies of the Bible, but it’s been ClearPlay’ed for all references to smiting, vengeance, polygamy, abominations, and killing. Aside from being a much shorter book, would you feel comfortable with the edits made to the Bible that make it more palatable to my family values? Would you not feel offended that someone has taken liberties with editing the artist’s meaning and intent?

If you don’t like swear words and nudity, don’t watch movies with swear words and nudity. Watch PAX, ABC Family, Nickelodeon, Hallmark, or any of the other “family friendly” channels out there. Or just watch “G”-rated movies.

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I actually do think there are some compromises that could be made. I think the movie rating system could better approximate the TV ratings system. For example, movies assign a “G” to the most wholesome content. However, that “G” can be a Care Bears animated movie that a child would enjoy but an adult would sleep through, or it could be a nature documentary that adults find interesting but kids wouldn’t follow.

The TV rating system is a little more clear. They have a whole set of TV-Y ratings that indicate a show is for kids (like cartoons) and includes variations of TV-Y. Then there is also a TV-G, which indicates content that is OK for kids, but not necessarily for kids.

Also there are the L (language), V (violence), N (nudity), and SC (sexual content) ratings I see when a movie starts on cable. I think that gives the consumer a better way of deciding on their movie choices. Maybe I don’t mind my kid seeing a movie with L & N, but I don’t want to promote the V or SC.