Satire is a bitch, if you’ll pardon the expression.
That’s what I’m thinking in the wake of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council’s decision to censure a St. John’s radio station for airing Dire Straits’ song Money For Nothing without bleeping or replacing the word “faggot.”
Station CHOZ incurred the wrath of the CBSC after a listener complained when that classic putdown of gays was left in the song
To refresh your memory, have a listen to the 1985 hit here:
There are other versions of the track available for broadcast which replace the word or bleep it out entirely. This alt-versions were created to cope with the fact that “faggot” is among a list of words that are no-no’s on air – nigger is another, all expletives are included. As I reported in the pages of NOW last week, Christopher Plummer was forced to cut the line “You faggot,” during his performance of an excerpt from Barrymore for media cameras. He wasn’t happy about that.
In the Barrymore case, the line is intended to show John Barrymore’s contempt for a co-worker and it’s meant to make the actor, not his colleague, look bad. Money For Nothing emerged out of Dire Straits main man Mark Knopfler’s experience of hearing a bigoted, unworldly and completely ignorant viewer express his dismay while watching a music video that a bunch of guys could make tons of money and have unlimited sex (“Money for nothing/Chicks for free”) while not doing much of anything to earn those privileges.
In which case, Knopfler wasn’t hurling the word faggot out there as a put-down of gays, but rather as a indicator of the man’s messed-up values.
At first blush – and I said as much on my regular 9 am spot on Radio Talk 640’s Media and the Message panel this morning – it sounds like the CBSC came down a little too heavily on the Newfoundland rock station and adhered too strictly to its list of don’t-go-there words.
Kinda of like not allowing a filmmaker to portray too explicitly a violent rape because the images violate pornography laws. Isn’t context everything?
Egale Canada says no. The gay organization supports the CBSC’s decision to compel CHOZ not to play the tune and to explain why Representative Helen Kennedy says that in these times, when gay teen suicides are so high in number, abusive language no matter what its intent, has a negative impact. Stop using the word, she declares.
And yes, context matters but things aren’t so simple. In the face of comments on the blogosphere – where the anti-censorship rants have been typically wild – I’m having second thoughts. One sanitized version of Money For nothing replaces “faggot” with mother, another bleeps the epithet entirely, so that “See the little faggot with the earrings and the makeup,” becomes “See the little (bleep) in the earrings and makeup.” Seems to me that the context is still there. We know the character is deriding those 80s rockers with the big hair for their apparently feminine ways.
So, does promoting a list of verboten words have to mean the end of creativity? I don’t think so.
And the problem with context is that there are no guarantees that audiences get it. And let’s be honest – rock radio listeners aren’t necessarily the most discerning. Take this case in point. The Station CHOZ listener who complained to the CBSC didn’t grasp the song’s concept and thought it was a putdown of gays. It’s just as likely that another listener would listen to the song and cheer for what he thinks is Knopfler’s own homophobic vitriole. Either way – and even though the two have opposing values – both would have missed the point entirely.
I ‘d favour scrapping the no-air list if there were an alternative CBSC regulation demanding that a DJ give the context whenever an offending song is played. That means that broadcasters have to do their due diligence, listen to the track to make sure it doesn’t violate the standard and, if it does, talk about it, explain it and make that part of the show. That way, we get to hear the song in its pure form and have a conversation about it, too. Both good outcomes.
As for anything goes on the air, I say no to that.
