ATHF Flouts Censors - Python Member Fights Cancer

If you saw [Adult Swim] last night, you are probably either a regular viewer or you tuned in to check out the new episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. We've waited two years for a new ATHF episode and, depending on your take, the wait was either totally worth it or we got dragged into a fight between the artists and standards and practices.

All shows have to deal with Standards and Practices which are, basically, a kind of review board of censors who tell the stations/shows/producers/etc. what can and cannot be aired on the network. These things are usually handled long before the show is anywhere near its scheduled time, but not always. South Park, in particular, is famous for finishing things extremely close to air-time -- tweaking the episodes right up to the time it airs (well, like a day or two before -- before it airs). 

ATHF has taken on S&P before, with the episode pertaining to a billboard on which Jesus was supposed to be evident in a stain (S&P apparently would not let them refer to the Messiah by his name, instead the references called him things like "J-Man" and so on), but never quite like this.

The episode was entitled "Dickesode" and the entire thing dealt with... um, a penis that went around, chopping off folks' manhood in order to build a spaceship out of... um, peni. Yes, that... is what it was about. There were over 4000 graphic representations of... um, peni -- not including the major enemy, who was very obviously a phallus -- not a "phallic representation," but an actual weiner, replete with actual testicles for feet. The word, "dick," was used 53 times.

Some older readers -- particularly those who are interested in comics and sequential art -- will recall the late-80s run of Bloom County in this same... um, vein. Opus became a garbage man forced to wear a face mask which made his oversized nose look exactly like... um, a penis. Several major newspapers, including The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, TN (a city known for its open sex trade ¹ and, perhaps not ironically, the setting for both the Deepthroat movie trial and the recent rap-based movie, Hustle & Flow, the title track of which -- It's Hard Out There for a Pimp, by Memphis-based rappers, 666 Mafia -- won last year's Academy Award), refused to run the strip for at least part of this storyline. But even that was nowhere near as blatant as last night's ATHF episode.

The question is: Was Dickesode necessary or simply overkill? I welcome your comments.

But, I will say this much: For all the hoopla over censorship in this country, specifically as late, very few people have even the faintest notion of what actually constitutes such. To wit, a number of concerned citizens banding together to make sure [what they consider to be] obscenity is not made openly available to members of their community and/or their children is not really censorship; that's community standards. It's the same thing as telling someone, "Don't use that language here because it's inappropriate for this setting." That's a far, far cry from actual censorship, regardless of what any of those damn, dirty hippies tell you.

AOL commits censorship. The ACLU favors, and fights for, censorship. The Muslim community uses terrorist tactics to enact censorship. Your local church group protesting the aforementioned South Park is not censorship; it is, in fact, merely an attempt to effect community standards -- however misguided.

Put simpler: Just because you cannot do whatever the hell you want to do when and wherever the hell you want to do it does not necessarily mean that you are being censored. It simply means you cannot control yourself, or refuse to, to the extent that others have to step in and enact restrictions to keep you from offending them. OTOH, enacting laws to ensure no one is ever offended by anything you might do or say is censorship. And there is a difference.

Terry Jones, former member of Monty Python and director of their films, as well as others, including The Wind in the Willows, is recovering from surgery he underwent to fight cancer. I'm sure I speak for us all in wishing him a speedy recovery!

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¹: M.E.M.P.H.I.S.: Making Easy Money Pimping Hos In Style