The Disney Corporation, I’ve just heard, are going to be the first studio to ban images of smoking in their movies. Now while I am all for smoking bans, I’m not entirely sure how you can be affected by second-hand smoke from a cinema screen. However I can see what they’re doing – they don’t want to glamorize it, especially to younger viewers. Fair enough. They’ll have to edit out the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. But to ban it completely…it does seem a very big move against artistic freedom, I’m not sure how I feel about it. So why don’t they ban depictions of people being shot?

I was thinking this the other day while watching TV (I think it was a movie; I rarely watch TV these days unless it’s a quiz show or travel show, or football with Mexican commentary), and I noticed that the swear-words had been edited out (with anomalous moments of silence), and yet the random bloody shooting of people remorselessly by what were being portrayed as normal people, not psychopaths, was absolutely fine for these sensitive viewers. Watch a guy have his guts blasted across the living room wall, you can even smell the lead, but you can’t hear it when he says ‘fuck’. Heaven forbid. It’s one of the famous seven banned words on American TV. Obviously, you hear someone saying fuck, you’ll want to tear down society, whereas watching the casual use of guns, that won’t affect you. Just a thought.

Originally posted at 20six.co.uk/petescully