NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) – The Federal Communications Commission has confirmed it received complaints about the uncensored broadcast of Oscar-winning war movie “Saving Private Ryan” on ABC-affiliated stations last week.An FCC official said several complaints were filed Friday, the day after the Veterans Day broadcast, but couldn’t say how many or who or where they are from. The commission has to have a complaint before it can take action.Groups affiliated with the American Family Assn., a conservative Christian group that monitors the airwaves, pledged Thursday to flood the FCC with complaints about the language and violence in Steven Spielberg’s film.

Someone, anyone, please…tell me this is a joke.

It’s…not a joke?

Well, it’s official. I live in the stupidest country in the world. Congratulations, American Family Association. You’ve just piled an entire once-proud nation onto the metaphorical short bus. Good show.

It is my understanding that, before the film aired, the FCC basically refused to say whether airing Saving Private Ryan would subject affiliates to disciplinary action, so a bunch of stations declined to air it at all, preferring to err on the side of caution — and regardless of what happened next, this is problematic, for two reasons. First of all, it suggests that stations don’t trust the FCC’s judgment post-Boobgate — that context and personal responsibility on the part of the viewer no longer play any part in the decision-making process. Second of all, it smells like a set-up — like the FCC shrugged all, “You do what you want,” knowing full well that complaints would come in and that it could then levy heavy fines proceeding from those complaints.

And sure enough, complaints did come in — and, considering the source, I would bet American money that many of the complainers didn’t even watch the broadcast, preferring instead to whine that, “in principle,” a movie as violent and upsetting as Saving Private Ryan should not be shown on broadcast television. The FCC is, to my mind, obligated to disregard those complaints entirely.

But I honestly can’t come up with a complaint pertaining to the Saving Private Ryan broadcast that the FCC shouldn’t disregard entirely. What possible basis could you have to report the airing of an objectionable movie to the government, and further to expect the government to do a goddamn thing about it besides stick your pearl-clutching letter into the crank file? Unless an ABC employee came to your house, strapped you into your easy chair, affixed Clockwork Orange eyelid clamps to your face, and forced you to watch Saving Private Ryan, this is not the government’s problem, or ABC’s problem, or anyone else’s problem but yours, and it’s a problem you could have solved by changing the channel, going into another room, reading a book, forbidding your kids to watch, covering your eyes during the upsetting parts, or whatever measure you feel you needed to take in order to avoid becoming offended.

Unless, of course, you just enjoy getting offended for its own sake, and in fact spend the bulk of your free time seeking out things about which to get, be, and stay offended, often on the orders of conservative watchdog groups, who surely have no ulterior motive in helpfully reminding you about offensive things and urging you to report them.

I can see finding Saving Private Ryan upsetting. It is kind of upsetting. The subject matter is violent and sad, and it’s difficult for some people to watch that kind of thing. Nothing wrong with that. But a little perspective is in order here. For starters, that movie is not supposed to be wholesome family fun on the order of Beethoven II: Electric Pup-a-loo or whatever the hell. It’s supposed to be…upsetting. Americans often view that invasion as a great triumph of U.S. might; Spielberg portrayed it as a horror show; the truth, I think, is that it was both. I’ve never stormed a beach in my life, so what I know about it wouldn’t fill a thimble, but, you know, it’s a war movie. War is hell. I can’t imagine the network didn’t air an extensive viewer-discretion warning prior to the movie, and I can’t imagine most Americans don’t know what it’s about, so if you left the TV on ABC after reading the warning and then you got upset, well, that could have been avoided. By you.

And not for nothing, but as far as emotionally demanding war movies go, Saving Private Ryan is one of the less upsetting ones out there. It’s not even the harshest war movie by that director. I’m not saying it’s easy to get through; the camera work in the opening sequence alone is an endurance test. But compared to Schindler’s List? I felt like I’d taken a physical beating after that movie, and not because it was long. And Lodz Ghetto was a power of ten more upsetting than Schindler’s List. The epilogue of The Diary of Anne Frank. Casualties of War. Primo Levi. The Deer Hunter. I could go on.

My point isn’t that finding Saving Private Ryan distressing makes you a wimp. It makes you a human being. My point is…that that’s the point. That’s what Spielberg is trying to do, to get you to respond to that in his art. If it’s not your cup of tea, fine; you’re not a bad person if you’d rather watch Happy Gilmore again. The subject matter is disturbing. But it’s one thing to find it disturbing and decide not to partake. It’s another thing to find it disturbing and then complain to the authorities that, basically, it exists, and you don’t want it to. Because the last time I checked the Constitution, we…don’t really do that here.

And it’s a third thing entirely to conflate “upsetting” and “offensive.” You have to put these things in a context, and you have to distinguish between things that you personally don’t care for and things that are offensive generally. Can I see why certain devout Christians would not care for Serrano’s “Piss Christ”? Of course. Can I see why certain other people would think it’s gross to use pee in art? Sure. I can list half a dozen reasons why that piece is off-putting, not least the fact that it’s too obvious. Still. Do you need to get all bent about it if Serrano is not forcing you to display it in your home? No, you really don’t. You’ve got better things to do.

The same principle applies, I think, to the allegedly offensive elements of Saving Private Ryan, which I imagine include graphic violence and crude language. Neither of these things particularly bothers me (obviously, since if they gave out PhDs in either “Tekken 2” or creative use of the verb “to fuck,” I’d be Dr. Bunting, please and thank you), but some people don’t like them. To each her own, of course. But I don’t think you can ask the FCC to do anything about that when you have the option of not watching it and/or of not allowing your children to watch it. “I don’t need my daughter hearing that kind of language!” No, you probably don’t, although if she’s over the age of five she’s heard worse already, I’ll bet, but the thing is, it’s not the FCC’s job to make sure your little angel doesn’t hear a few F-bombs. It’s yours. It’s not a family film, we can all agree; the little angels don’t need to see guys getting shot in the head. So…don’t let ’em. Put ’em to bed and turn the TV off. Not every aspect of the culture is child-friendly, because not every citizen of the culture is a child, so don’t expect the government to kid-proof everything for you when the only thing this administration has successfully kid-proofed is education funding.

And don’t get offended by something that you can easily avoid. Don’t get offended by the idea that some child somewhere might see a soldier get shot, and what does this say about our society’s values, it’s a slippery slope, blah blah blah blah blah. There’s already a shitload of violence on TV, and if you don’t want your child exposed to that (and who does), monitor and limit her intake. My parents did exactly that; I could watch one hour of TV a week, plus cartoons, and that hour had to pass muster with them. I watched a lot of PBS and a lot of nature shows, because they thought most other programming would make me dumb, and I read a lot of books. But…my parents made that call, not the government. It’s not the government’s job to sanitize all entertainment to the point where nobody could possibly get offended because what’s left is so boring that we’ve all fallen asleep. You have to make your own entertainment choices, you have to help your kids make their entertainment choices, you have to stop expecting the government to classify everything you don’t like as dangerous and bad, and if you really found the airing of Saving Private Ryan on Veterans Day offensive, you have to take a minute and get a grip on yourself. No…you really do. Because either you don’t have any actual problems in your life, or you ignored actual problems in favor of getting in a twist about…that. No good. Find a better use of your time.

The FCC is not a babysitter. It thinks it is, apparently, but it isn’t. It doesn’t exist to shield the thin-skinned from entertainment product that they find unpleasant — product which, it bears repeating, nobody has required the thin-skinned to consume. I certainly hope that the same people who have enough time on their hands to get offended at, and protest, the airing of a war movie have also filed a complaint with the government about the actual war currently taking place in Iraq, which is genuinely offensive.

But they probably didn’t, because they probably know that such a complaint wouldn’t get any results. Bitch about the nation’s mendacious and muddle-headed foreign policy, and you get branded an unpatriotic troop-hater; bitch about American rug-rats accidentally hearing the word “shit” on TV, and heads will roll.

Christ. You know, Colin Powell submitted his resignation this morning, and I hope his first act as a private citizen is to march down to FCC headquarters and turn that martinet kid of his over his knee for an overdue spanking. I hope his second act is to go on Conan and expose his breast for a split second.

November 15, 2004

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