wondering how Ari Gold manages to convey his charm without all the
cussing, you're right to wonder. But then again, I was surprised by
how many non-cussing lines Ari has!
Most TV shows and movies here are shown with subtitles. The TVs don't
have closed captioning since most of the programs are in non-English
languages and most of the viewers watch regional language programs
anyway. So since people apparently have a hard time following
American/British accents fast enough to watch movies, the subtitles
become a must. And along with the usual censoring of cuss words in the
audio, we also get the subtitles censored. What is interesting though
is that the subtitles are censored different from the audio. So we get
to hear words in the audio but they get "bleeped" out in the
subtitles. So when Mrs. Gold tells Ari, "Tell me I am sexy Ari" I read
"Tell me I am Ari" on the screen. Another word that gets dropped is
"Gay". "Gay" is apparently a "bad" word. I don't even know where to
begin with that.
Of course, the icing on the cake is that the word "douchebag" gets
included both in the audio and in the subtitles. Apparently whoever
did the censoring didn't know what it meant. But then again, I'm
reminded of a scene from "The Signs" where the girl who works in a
pharmacy asks Mel Gibson's character if "douchebag" is a swear word
and he responds by saying it depends on the context. I think he would
agree that this context qualifies as swearing. Another odd fact is
that drug usage doesn't get censored.
Also, with all this censoring of words and scenes, we get these
30-minute ad-free episodes shrunk down to fit a 30-minute episode WITH
ads. That itself isn't bad because the networks that shows these
syndicated US shows don't show as many ads as the channels in the US.
So with a show like Friends, I am actually seeing scenes from the
earlier seasons that probably ended up on the cutting room floor of
the rebroadcasting station. On average, I think you miss about 3 jokes
per episode when you watch Friends on WB as opposed to Star World
here.
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