First of all, let me reintroduce myself as my last diary here is dated October 2006.
At the time I wanted to make a regular diary series about how US politics is viewed abroad, mainly in Germany. Unfortunately, I just made two diaries before life intervened – let’s just say, circumstances led to a situation in which writing diaries or any other stuff wasn’t very high on my agenda anymore. Anyway, when times got better I wanted to participate actively again on dailykos, but I postponed writing new diaries time and again. Not because of a lack of topics, rather the opposite, but I always was afraid that I might annoy, bore or offend people with my thoughts. But not anymore!
I finally realized that no matter what I write and publish, there will always people who agree or disagree and I shouldn’t see this as an opportunity to win friends but to offer readers a different perspective on various subjects. I didn’t imagine that my first topic would be beheadings, but here we are. So without further ado, follow me below the orange doodle to learn about overreactions, unnecessary censorship and influencing the masses.
So what was the spark that led me to write this diary?
Well, it was more of a final straw because I am sick and tired of people censoring entertainment media in any way, shape or form just because of the “tragedy of the day”. You know “Doctor Who”, the long-running British science fiction series? Three weeks ago they showed an episode concerning Robin Hood which contained a fight scene between Robin and the Sheriff of Nottingham in which the Sheriff was decapitated by Robin Hood. The BBC decided to cut that scene before transmission.
The BBC has edited a Doctor Who episode to remove footage where a character is beheaded, after the murder of two US journalists by Islamic State militants.
The corporation said it had made the change to Saturday's episode "in light of recent news events".
A BBC spokesman said: "In light of recent news events, we have made an edit to episode three out of respect."
When I read the above I had enough.
Enough of being patronized by film/TV companies.
Enough of the bullshit reasoning behind it.
Just because some crazy fundamentalists beheaded two people (at that time) and published the videos of their beheading it was necessary to censor some entertainment?
Congratulations for making Daesh (Oh yeah, I follow the French lead calling ISIS/ISIL Daesh as they apparently do not like that very much...) feel more powerful than they really are. Does the BBC really think people are too stupid to tell reality from fiction apart and are therefore offended by fictional beheadings?
Conjecture: People are perfectly capable of making this distinction of being horrified and disgusted by the deeds and videos of Daesh on the one hand and enjoying fictional entertainment containing beheadings on the other hand.
And don’t get me wrong here. I don’t care about the edited scene in the slightest one way or the other. It is the idea behind the decision to edit the scene which annoys me to no end.
In a free society people should have the opportunity to decide for themselves what they want to see in their fictional entertainment and film and TV companies shouldn’t make that decision for them especially not depending on or influenced by the tragedy of the day.
If they feel the need to address some content people may find offensive in light of current news events they could simply put a message in front of the programme to inform the viewer and that would have been sufficient. But no, they had to cut it and make a big announcement about it.
Which leads me to the following question: What was the real reason they edited the scene and made the announcement of it?
Let's take a closer look at the statement of the BBC spokesperson who said they made the edit “out of respect”.
Out of respect to whom?!
Let's break it down, shall we?
Who is so affected by the tragic beheadings that it warrants an edit to a fictional entertainment programme?
The victims? Not really.
Somehow I very much doubt that their final thoughts were “I hope they don’t show any fictional beheadings on TV shortly after my death. That wouldn’t be respectful…”
I imagine they probably thought something more along the lines of “I don’t want to die” or “I wish I could see my family one last time”.
And as they were journalists, I don’t think they would have approved of censorship of any kind. But their thoughts certainly concerned themselves and their loved ones, which leads me to the next group.
Friends and family of the victims?
That may have been the intention to show respect to them but if so, it is misplaced for various reasons.
First of all, does anyone really think that the friends and relatives of the victims are in the mood to watch some stupid entertainment shows shortly after the horrible death of their friend/relative? Bloody unlikely… and even if they do: How likely is it that they watch a programme containing a beheading of all things? The probability of offending them with a fictional beheading is marginal at best.
But even if they were the intended target of the editing, it would still be wrong-minded: To protect/respect the feelings of a very small fraction of the potential viewership, the BBC changes the contents of a programme? Really?
If TV/film companies would do that every time something tragic happens in real life or when someones feelings could be hurt, we would only have heavily edited programmes. But what if the target of the edits was the general public?
General public/potential viewership: If they edited the episode out of respect for the feelings of the general public at the time of airing, it would be even worse.
Not only because as stated above, I firmly believe that the general public should be very much capable of contextually distinguishing between fictional and real beheadings and people should decide for themselves what kind of entertainment they want to watch. It would also be hypocritical to the nth degree.
Let's recap: We are editing fiction because two people (at that time) were horribly killed in real life and the deed was published all over the world and therefore people shouldn’t see anything in their entertainment that reminds them of this tragedy. Okay, again, if this reasoning would be applied to all instances where people would be reminded of tragedies in real life, there wouldn’t be anything left to show in fictional entertainment.
Don’t show car crashes, people are victims of car crashes a lot more often than of beheadings. Don’t show people suffer or die related to fires, explosions, guns, shooting, alcohol, drugs and so on. But those elements aren’t cut and edited even as tragedies related to these nowadays occur thousands of times more often per year in real life than beheadings but society as such does not care about those things, they are considered belonging to the daily life in our modern society, among other things because there is no frenzied media reporting about those things 24/7, in contrast to the current reporting about the deeds of Daesh.
Which leads me to one of the saddest parts of all this: The only party maybe gaining any tangible benefit from this editing is Daesh! Had the BBC shown the episode as intended, almost no one would have cared or made a big deal about the scene in question. Of course there might have been the odd complaint about this but probably nothing major. By doing the editing and announcing it to the world the BBC demonstrated to Daesh that their vile actions have an effect on people, no matter how small and insignificant on the surface and that is what they want to hear/read. If they are really that savvy regarding internet and social media, they are certainly aware of this. Of course they do not care about an edited episode of a British TV show – they care about why it was edited: Because of them, because of their disgusting deeds – they had an effect on Western society and that is one of their goals, building their image and spreading fear along the way.
And image and fear were the real reasons for the BBC to do the editing no matter what they say officially. But the BBC wasn’t afraid of Daesh, they were afraid of their own viewers. They were afraid of a viewer backlash if the scene offended the viewership, they were afraid of a possible shitstorm on social media and as they are in the process in building up their brand in new territories (BBC America) they were afraid of pissing off American audiences and by this damaging their new brand.
And yes, I am aware that there was a beheading of an 82-year-old lady in a London suburb two days before the episode aired, so the BBC could very well have included this under “recent news events” but my points above remain equally valid in this case.
Because the BBC linked the edit explicitly to the deaths of the two American journalists which means the American audience was the main target of the edit. I hope it became clear that I don’t particularly care about the scene in question but about how art/entertainment in general should never be affected by real world events in the form of censorship.
And for readers who still aren’t convinced that the editing was a pure business decision by the BBC to prevent the risk of a shitstorm, here is more evidence of that: Two days before the BBC announced their editing, another entertainment company had created a little shitstorm for themselves as the PR firm ThinkJam started the Marketing campaign for the DVD/Bluray release of the first season of FOX’s Sleepy Hollow series, declaring the day #headlessday just on the day the beheading of Steven Sotloff became news.
To borrow a quote from Rick Perry: “Oops…”
No doubt, the BBC saw the public and media reaction to the Sleepy Hollow PR debacle and thought better safe than sorry and decided then to cut the beheading-scene from their internationally popular flagship show.
Regarding the Sleepy Hollow PR debacle I am sorry to say I found the campaign as such quite funny and hadn’t the real life events happened at the same time I think a lot of those people who complained about it as being tasteless would have, too. The campaign was fine, only the timing was most unfortunate…
But again, the only people who should have been offended by the extremely poor timing should have been friends and relatives of Steven Sotloff and James Foley and somehow I doubt that they would have been even aware of the Sleepy Hollow campaign if social media hadn’t made such a big fuzz about this.
On this note, I wonder if the timing really was poor planning on behalf of the PR firm or if they released the campaign fully aware of the real life news of that day. Knowing PR firms in general, I wouldn’t put it past them.
The old saying “Any publicity is good publicity” still applies because the shitstorm created such publicity that many people who weren’t even aware that this show existed heard of it, the premise and the upcoming DVD release.
The campaign generated more contacts than they would have normally. If those contacts will translate into potential buyers at a later date is questionable but the level of awareness about the show has certainly risen significantly.
But I really don’t know so they get the benefit of the doubt.
And those letters of apology from the PR firm and Fox may even have been sincere as they are explicitly directed at the family and friends of the victims as it should be.
I could go on about censorship of entertainment media because of real life events ad infinitum as there are many, many more examples like the reshooting of “Gangster Squad” after the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado in 2012, the pulling of a Buffy episode after Columbine, the pulling of the first Spiderman teaser after 9/11 and so on. But this could be the topic of another diary. Here we will focus on the subject of beheading and how the masses are influenced by headlines.
But as this diary already is freaking long and it is almost 3 o'clock in the morning here in Germany, I need some sleep and have decided to make this a two-part diary and deal with the influence of mass media and a short history of beheadings in human society in Part II.
I hope to see you all there!
As I am barely able to keep my eyes open at the moment I won’t be able to participate in the comment section now and tomorrow I only have the opportunity to be online at home after work and then I’m going to write and publish part II before reading any comments as I want to finish this without any outside influence from comments on Part I.
So please excuse my "hit-and-run"-approach to part I - as soon as Part II is online I will gladly participate by reading and in some cases answering comments. Until then, have a nice time!
Steve
We are one world and one people. As long as humanity as such as well as their supposed leaders are unable or unwilling to grasp this simple but true concept and act accordingly, there will be no lasting peace, prosperity or progress on this planet.