David Lavery

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(First Published on 14 December 2012)

Back in January America was all abuzz with the largely-media-created
controversy over whether or not the quintessentially British Ricky
Gervais had gone too far with his humor as host of the 2011 Golden Globe
Awards.

What can be got away with on the public airways has been a significant
question from the beginnings of American television. From the start the
creative individuals making TV have done battle with The Suits,
Standards and Practices, public taste, and the inherent Puritanism of
American culture.

On one of the extras on the *Seinfeld* DVDs, co-creator Larry David, now
working free from all restraint on HBO's beyond-the-pale *Curb Your
Enthusiasm*, explains how he
![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=300&height=225&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/Curb_David.jpg){.addCaption
.addCaption .alignleft loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300"
height="225"}and Jerry Seinfeld nevertheless managed to get away with
the infamous and unacceptable on one of American prime-time television's
greatest sitcoms. On episodes like the notorious "The Contest" (4.11),
for example, in which Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer engage in a bet
to see who can go the longest without masturbating, they "worked the
refs." In American sports, especially basketball, it is possible,
according to the received wisdom, to get the desired call from a referee
late in a game by contesting meaningless decisions early on.
*Seinfeld*'s showrunners discovered that if they fed the NBC censors
smutty ideas they never intended to use and which were swiftly rejected,
they were often able to slip past the softened-up gatekeepers equally
naughty, or even naughtier, story ideas later.

Such manipulation is, of course, not unique to American television. On a
special feature on the DVD of Preston Sturges' 1944 screwball comedy
*Miracle of Morgan's Creek*, we learn that the ingenious writer/director
likewise worked the refs, in his case not NBC's Standards and Practices
but the disapproving Hays Production Code Office, in the process
(according to Sturges' widow Sandy) honoring the letter of the code
while entirely violating its spirit ("Censorship: Morgan's Creek vs. the
Production Code").

![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=363&height=300&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/Miracle_morgan_creek.jpg){.addCaption
.alignright loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="363"
height="300"}Someone should do a book on the ingenious ways television
writers have found to say (and show) really x-rated and sometimes
blasphemous things in ways that would find their ways past the censors.
This Telegenic can only hint at what such a study might contain.

As film historian Ed Sikov explains, the code was like the sonnet form,
a strict blueprint which actually inspired the work of creative geniuses
like Sturges and Billy Wilder to become all the richer. With malicious
genius aforethought Sturges, like David a half century (and another
medium) later, would put in inconsequential stuff knowing it would be
taken out so the Haysers would not notice the good stuff they really
wanted to leave in. Morgan's Creek's lead actor Eddie Bracken recalls
the entire cast and crew howling with laughter at the Hays Office's
astonishing stupidity. In his review of Sturges' new film the famous
novelist and film critic James Agee would observe that the Hays Office
had been "raped in its sleep." Today's television creators are likely
howling with laughter as well at the obliviousness of the overseers they
outfox at every turn.

**![Agee](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=180&height=279&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/Agee.jpg "Image courtesy of fantasticfiction.com.uk"){.addCaption
.quoteBox .alignleft loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="180"
height="279"}Salacious TV.** Any volume on Getting Away with It on TV
(GAWITV) would have to include a central chapter on Joss Whedon (*Buffy
the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Doctor Horrible's Sing-along Blog*),
and indeed a forthcoming book of mine does devote many pages to his
supremely subversive naughtiness. I will limit myself here to only three
examples.

Educated in England, Whedon would incorporate English profanity into
*Buffy* with nary a complaint from his American overlords. So we find
characters, in particular the Victorian era vampire Spike, regularly
uttering "wanker," "bugger," "bint," "shag," "sod," "ponce,"
"bollocks"--- words whose American equivalents would be much more
difficult to gain approval.

In "The Zeppo," a Season Three episode (written by Dan Vebber) of the
always-risque BtVS, we have the following dialogue in a scene in which
Xander loses his virginity to bad girl Faith:

**FAITH:** (smiles sexily) You up for it?** **

**XANDER:** (nods) Oh, I'm up. I'm suddenly very up. It's just, um ...
I've never been up      with people before.

**FAITH**: Just relax ... And take your pants off.

**XANDER:** Those two concepts are antithetical.

![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=369&height=277&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/xander_faith-1299266596.jpg){.addCaption
.aligncenter loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="369" height="277"}

![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=230&height=219&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/Up_With.jpg){.addCaption
.alignleft loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="230" height="219"}That
[Up With People](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_with_People) was, of
course, a schmaltzy Christian singing group and "moral re-armament"
organization made Xander's reference to his first-ever non-solo erection
all the more delicious.

Or recall the moment in "Who Are You" (4.16) in which the
fresh-from-a-coma Faith announces her realization that Willow has become
a lesbian with the words: "So Willow's not driving stick anymore. Who
would have thought?" I could (and do in my forthcoming book) cite scores
of additional examples of Whedon, like Sturges before him, making a
laughingstock of the censors while engrossing us with his, and his
creations' off-color wit.

Whedon, of course, owns no monopoly on such x-rated drollery. In the
second episode of sixth season of the hit CBS sitcom *How I Met Your
Mother* (in "Cleaning House" the gang helps womanizer Barney Stinson
\[Neil Patrick Harris\] pack up his childhood possessions), we find the
following breathtakingly faux-obscene exchange between Barney and the
series' main character Ted Moseby**.**

**Barney:** Ted, that thing you're packing is way too big to fit in that
box.

**Ted:** That's what your mom said.

**Barney:** How dare you!

**Ted:** No, she actually said that.

Would this exchange ever have made it to air if it had not given with
one hand while taking away with another?

The double-entendre and the sitcom may be natural partners,
[[^\[1\]^]{role="button" tabindex="0"
onclick="footnote_moveToReference_2631_83('footnote_plugin_reference_2631_83_1');"
onkeypress="footnote_moveToReference_2631_83('footnote_plugin_reference_2631_83_1');"}[As
the almost always insightful TV Tropes website suggests: A Double
Entendre is a word or phrase which can be taken at least two different
ways. Archetypically, one meaning is obvious, literal, and ... [Continue
reading]{.footnote_tooltip_continue
onclick="footnote_moveToReference_2631_83('footnote_plugin_reference_2631_83_1');"}]{#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2631_83_1
.footnote_tooltip}]{.footnote_referrer}

but sitcoms cannot claim sole ownership. Doubling can be found elsewhere
in American television as well. Recall that moment, for example, in
FOX's *X-Files*-reborn-*Fringe*, now one of the best shows on TV, when
adorable mad scientist Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble) arrives at a
fringe scene that reminds him of his past:

Kent Street! I used to frequent a massage parlor around the corner. I
used to get off right here! ("The Box," 3.2)

Get off? Kent Street is a trolley stop, but massage parlors, of course,
offer an entirely different kind of "happy ending." Why only a dirty
mind would even notice the salaciousness!

Television Blasphemy. Since I have already written about the depiction
of religion in American television in [a previous
Telegenic](http://www.criticalstudiesintelevision.com/index.php?siid=13794),
noting there that American audiences seldom take kindly to unorthodox
depictions of the dogmatic, I will limit myself here to merely two
extraordinarily blasphemous moments from the last decade of American
television.

In only the second season of the premium channel masterpiece *The
Sopranos* ("D-Girl," 2.7), an about-to-be-confirmed A.J. Soprano, the
none-too-bright son of a mob boss, insists to his father that god
doesn't exist, and Tony responds:

I don't care if he doesn't exist, you are still going to kiss his ass.

As already alluded to, the creative team behind such an HBO series can
generate such irreverence virtually free of the fear of lighting bolts
from above. Still, Tony's outburst must count high---on the top ten list
in fact---in the history of blasphemous utterances, any age, any medium.

Such a list would also necessarily include a moment, just before the
November 2008 American Presidential elections, from Comedy Central's
*Colbert Report*. Playing a clip of an Iowa minister's invocation
calling out the Christian deity to defeat the deities of those
supporting Senator John McCain's opponent, Stephen Colbert (in real life
a devout, Sunday-school-teaching Catholic) asked, sacrilegiously and
profanely:

Did Reverend Conrad just call god a pussy?

I certainly do not meant to suggest that the naughty, blasphemous
brilliance I am calling attention to here is American only. When I
taught in the UK for two years I took note of many examples of
GAWITV---that time, for example, in the fourth episode of the splendid
BBC's *Life on Mars* when the Gene Genie and Sam Tyler force their way
into the office of Manchester mobster Stephen Warren, where they find
him fellating a young man. "How dare you come in here!" Warren growls
angrily. "You could have said that to the boy," Gene replies. He said
that---on the BBC! In a series paid for by my television tax pounds! And
did not that British import Gervais end his scandalous performance on
the Golden Globes in January with this blasphemy, pronounced as the
credits rolled, which almost went unnoticed after his jibes at Tom
Cruise's not-outnedness and Robert Downey Jr's troubled past:

And last of all I want to thank god for making me an atheist.

I **do mean** to suggest that American television naughtiness and
blasphemy must do battle with stricter, stronger, restrictive, and more
inspiring institutional forces. Wink wink. Nudge nudge. Say no more?

 

 
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:::

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[References]{.footnote_reference_container_label .pointer role="button"
tabindex="0"
onclick="footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_2631_83();"}[\[[+]{#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_2631_83}\]]{.footnote_reference_container_collapse_button
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::: {#footnote_references_container_2631_83 style=""}
<table class="footnotes_table footnote-reference-container">
<caption>References</caption>
<colgroup>
<col style="width: 50%" />
<col style="width: 50%" />
</colgroup>
<tbody>
<tr class="odd footnotes_plugin_reference_row">
<th id="footnote_plugin_reference_2631_83_1"
class="footnote_plugin_index pointer" scope="row"
onclick="footnote_moveToAnchor_2631_83(&#39;footnote_plugin_tooltip_2631_83_1&#39;);"><span
class="footnote_plugin_link" role="button" tabindex="0"><span
class="footnote_index_arrow">↑</span>1</span></th>
<td class="footnote_plugin_text">As the almost always insightful TV
Tropes website suggests:
<p>A Double Entendre is a word or phrase which can be taken at least two
different ways. Archetypically, one meaning is obvious, literal, and
innocent. The other is usually sexual.</p>
<p>The Double Entendre’s popularity in comedy stems from the fact that
if you don’t get it, you won’t realize something dirty just happened. As
a result, clever use of a Double Entendre can keep a show
“family-friendly” by allowing children to appreciate the joke on one
(non- sexual) level while adults enjoy it on another level.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if the Double Entendre fails to be funny on the
obvious level, it can result in a show which is “safe” for broadcast in
family time slots but which younger viewers do not enjoy.</p>
<p><a
href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoubleEntendre"><span
class="footnote_url_wrap">http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoubleEntendre</span></a></p></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

References
:::
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(First Published on 14 December 2012)  Back in January America was all abuzz with the largely-media-created controversy over whether or not the quintessentially British Ricky Gervais had gone too far with his humor as host of the 2011 Golden Globe Awards. What can be got away with on the public airways has been a significant question from the beginnings of American television.

THE NAUGHTY, THE BLASPHEMOUS, AND AMERICAN TELEVISION

(First published on December 14th 2012) Image from AMC.com. I am watching Walking Dead on the small flat screen television that sits beside my computer.

::::::::::::::::: {#article-box}
(First published on December 14th 2012)

![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=400&height=300&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/Walking_Dead.jpg){.addCaption
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**Image from AMC.com.**

I am watching *Walking Dead *on the small flat screen television that
sits beside my computer. It's the third episode of Season Three ("Walk
with Me") of AMC's fabulously successful zombie apocalypse series, the
one in which we meet The Governor and visit Woodbury for the first
time. *Dead *is my third most favorite show on basic cable's surprising
powerhouse (after *Mad Men *and *Breaking Bad*), but tonight, only about
a week from the US Presidential election, it seems newly relevant.

Thanks to Joss Whedon, the cult television creator of *Buffy the Vampire
Slayer, Angel, Firefly, *and *Dollhouse *(which gave us a neurological
zombie apocalypse brought on by an evil corporation) and, more recently,
movies like *The Cabin in the Woods *(which features a backwoods zombie
family)* *and *Marvel's The Avengers *(now the third highest grossing
film of all time---try to keep up), we now understand that a Republican
victory could result in much worse than war with Iran, eradication of
the Affordable Care Act, and extermination of women's reproductive
freedom.

![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=300&height=200&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/ShaunOfTheDead_shop.jpg){.addCaption
.aligncenter loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="200"}

**The grocery from *Shaun of the Dead. *Image from
movie-locations.com.**

Surprisingly, in a time of Twihards and *True Blooders, *decidedly
not-sexy Zombies have for some time been gaining popular culture
prominence. First they had
their [night](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/) and
their [day](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088993/). They took over
the [mall](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077402/) and
the [land](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418819/). They have
gone [meta](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0848557/). They [menaced Jane
Austen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_and_Prejudice_and_Zombies). [Shaun
battled them in Crouch End](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365748/), and
they overran England (in only [28
days](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043/)). They have given AMC its
biggest hit.

![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=290&height=441&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/prideprejudicezombies1.jpg){.addCaption
.aligncenter loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="290" height="441"}

**Image from Google Images.**

And, of course, they have not only spawned a slew of critical and
theoretical discussion seeking to explain their political and popular
culture significance (see the bibliography) but begun to stalk (slowly,
haltingly) our language: now we have [zombie
candidates](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/18/plight-of-the-republican-presidential-race-s-zombie-candidates.html), [zombie
banks](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/z/zombie-bank.asp), [zombie
feminists](http://www.salon.com/2008/09/11/zombie_feminism/), [zombie
bees](http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/science/120925/zombie-bees-are-the-first-insects-join-zombie-apocalypse).

The zombie threat has become so real that in the US both [the Centers
for Disease Control](http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies.htm) and
the [Department of Homeland
Security](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/06/homeland-security-warns-the-zombies-are-coming_n_1862768.html) issued
instructions for preparing for a zombie apocalypse.

[![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=496&height=342&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/CDC_Zombie.jpg){.addCaption
.aligncenter loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="496"
height="342"}](http://emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies.asp)

**Screen capture from the Centers for Disease Control Website. Click on
the image to visit the site.**

[![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=332&height=313&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/DHS_Zombie.jpg){.addCaption
.aligncenter loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="332"
height="313"}](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/06/homeland-security-warns-the-zombies-are-coming_n_1862768.html)

**Screen capture from *Huffington Post. Click on the image to visit the
site.***

Which brings us to Whedon's video.

The recent, not-Zombie-related, official Obama campaign video by Lena
Dunham, the provocative creator of HBO's *Girls, *comparing voting with
a first sexual experience, [provoked a firestorm on the
right](http://www.salon.com/2012/10/26/conservatives_flip_out_over_lena_dunham_obama_ad/),
even though conservative icon [Ronald Reagan had used the same
metaphor](http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/lena-dunham-first-time-ronald-reagan.php?ref=fpb) (in
a much more disgusting
manner^[1](https://cstonline.net/zomney-attack#ref1)^) in 1980.

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[Foaming-at-the-mouth conservative Erick Erickson, for example, would
proclaim](http://www.redstate.com/2012/10/25/cheap-tricks-and-one-night-stands/):
"If you need any further proof we live in a fallen world destined for
hell fire, consider the number of people who have no problem with the
President of the United States, via a campaign ad, ridiculing virgins
and comparing sex to voting."

Joss Whedon's anti-Romney video is not likely to provoke the same kind
of "end-of-days" pronouncements from the right as [Dunham's cunning,
tongue-in-cheek feminist
message](http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/10/26/lena_s_dunham_s_your_first_time_video_sex_joke_sparks_conservative_hysteria.html) (though
both are sure to be taken as further evidence that "Hollywood" is in the
pocket of the Democrats). It is, after all, itself an end-of-days
pronouncement.

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For, unlike the delightfully impish Dunham, Whedon is entirely,
fantastically serious. Trust him. The man knows apocalypses.

![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=440&height=245&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/Zomney.JPG){.addCaption
.addCaption .aligncenter loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="440"
height="245"}

**Screen Capture from "Whedon on Romney."**

 

**David Lavery** is the author of over one hundred and twenty published
essays and reviews and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of twenty books
published or under contract.  He is also the organizer of international
conferences on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos, and Lost, a
co-founding editor of the journals Slayage: The Online International
Journal of Buffy Studies and Critical Studies in Television, he has
lectured around the world on the subject of television (Australia,
Turkey, the UK, Portugal, New Zealand, Ireland, Germany) and has been a
guest/source for the BBC, NPR, the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation, The New York Times, A Folha de Sao
Paulo (Brazil), Publica(Portugal), The Toronto Star, USA Today. To learn
more about him, [**visit his home
page**](http://davidlavery.net/). [**His C.V (in PDF) is also
available**](http://davidlavery.net/CV/Lavery_Curriculum_Vitae.pdf).
:::::::::::::::::

::: {#footnotes}
^1 ^Reagan: "I know what it's like to pull the Republican lever for the
first time, because I used to be a Democrat myself, and I can tell you
it only hurts for a minute and then it feels just
great."￼￼￼ [↩](https://cstonline.net/zomney-attack#ref2)

 
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::: {#comments}
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(First published on December 14th 2012)
<strong>
 Image from AMC.com.
</strong>
I am watching
<em>
 Walking Dead
</em>
on the small flat screen television that sits beside my computer.

Postagens de Rogue Scholar

THE NAUGHTY, THE BLASPHEMOUS, AND AMERICAN TELEVISION

TELEVISION, THE AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, AND THE ZOMNEY APOCALYPSE