Alan Alda discusses censorship on MASH - EMMYTVLEGENDS.ORG

I didn't worry about controversy a didn't know controversy was something I had to worry about I was probably my Eve in that regard but we weren't in danger of we weren't ever in danger of political censorship we were you know subjected to other kinds of censorship all the time every day I've just recently heard that they no longer have an office of standards and practices at networks which shocks me because every network each of each of the three networks had it then and it was the the organ of censorship on the network which was only only had a thinly-veiled connection to two politicians I mean I may be going too far to say this it may not be quite accurate but the impression that I have is that historically politicians have wanted to tame television tame the content of television that is to say in terms of not not politics but in terms of sex and violence which are always linked I'm not sure why but they put pressure on historically I think they put pressure on television networks and said if you don't clean up your act we will which of course I think would be unconstitutional and I think they have the right to just as they did with movies with the Hays office and then the which grew into the what do you call it the I would the MP MP yeah yeah now so they had us censoring ourselves so that they wouldn't have to sensors which I think self-censorship is the worst kind but the network not only would censor you they would get you to collaborate they would get the artists to collaborate the writers and directors to collaborate in that self-censorship here's the funny thing we were censored much more stringently in the beginning when we weren't successful than we were when we were successful all of a sudden as soon as we were successful we could pretty much do and say anything we wanted in the early days there were some ludicrous examples of this the radar at one point and one of the early shows said that he was a virgin this word was excised by the censor can't say the word virgin now I thought I thought being a virgin was something that they would like you know except character on tell today if a character on television announced he was a virgin you wouldn't be able to do the show the network would take it off the air we don't want any virgins on the air here what are you doing trying to kill us right so on the contrary you couldn't say the word virgin so Larry Gelbart was so pissed at this that he got even with it got even with them by the next week having a character say when he would characterize the character where you're from soldier he said the Virgin Islands sir they couldn't take that out well I mean there's the silly games I mean they would tell you every week you're saying too many dams you should only say three dams one hell of course you couldn't say son-of-a-bitch you couldn't say these are bastard the words that are now there's spoken you know they say they say they say stuff that you didn't even say in private then you know wait by the way I did language to me I think language ought to all be demystified I don't think I don't I don't think that that gutter language ought to have the power over us that it does it's it's what it is it's a thoughtless crude way of expressing either anger or or an attitude towards something and you ought to you already so demystify it that it's that it doesn't have that power anymore and people are going to have to start using real words to express themselves but I love the Curtis I curse a blue streak sometimes I'm not against language I'm just interested to see the difference between what we were allowed to say under censorship and what they say nowadays it's very it's it's very interesting and in addition that it was very interesting to see what we were allowed to say before we were successful and how much more we could say afterwards Larry asked us if we'd like to go down and talk at a press conference I think it was at the end of the first or second year because the networks were starting to do something called at under pressure from Congress starting to do something called the family hour and this was I think from 8:00 to 9:00 you were only supposed to have family oriented shows and you could only say and do certain things and we were objecting to this because it was in fact censorship and my complaint was if you censor our jokes then why what will keep you from censoring our political jokes next and after that what will keep you from censoring our political thoughts and I'm a political statements that aren't funny I haven't seen by the way I haven't seen that progress then the progress from the first of those to the last of those take place although I think it's still sensible to be worried about that but but but we they did do the family hour for a while I think then they stopped it because everybody was complaining about it so much well into the show well into the series when after we were very popular and we could mostly do what we wanted I had written the show in which Margaret Houlihan comes into the tent into my tent and she says at one point in the scene she says how dare you parade that thing before me and she points to a pile of laundry where there's an athletic supporter or a jockstrap the network said you cannot you cannot name it you cannot show it you can't even see a bit of white cloth now this is really interesting you can't see a piece of underwear that a man wears but every week for several years we had never been censored seeing ladies brassieres panties silk stockings I'd get hit in the face with these things and walk through clotheslines and getting tangled up in their underwear but because because it came in contact with women's erogenous zones it was okay but not men's really interesting if that was somehow filthy and and degrading to do that and that was after that was after we we didn't have much censorship pressure on us then it was crazy I tell you when you allow censorship I think you get crazy thinking that just that rises to the surface when you have a system like that like like like like when you had communism in Russia you had a black market economy people find ways around it we we knew that they would they would cut in half number of dams that we had in script so we put twice as many in if we went if we felt we needed a dam I mean that it's get so silly it's childish these why should you make such an issue out of the this language because the languages it's just words you know in my opinion anyway you

Channel: FoundationINTERVIEWS

Views: 347,067

Keywords: Television history, Interviews, Emmy TV Legends, tv, academy, censorship, Alan Alda, M*A*S*H (TV Program)

Id: 37HXBdOMKOk

Length: 8min 40sec (520 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 18 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/RoundSparrow]

It's characteristic of democracy that majority rule is understood as being effective not only in politics but also in thinking. In thinking, of course, the majority is always wrong. - Campbell, 1985, Moyers/Lucas

Carl Sagan: 'Science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking', Carl Sagan's last interview - 1996

[u/RoundSparrow]

I think it is highly relevant to point out, regarding /r/GreatSealUSA topic, that MASH was right near the Bicentennial, and the Great Seal was actively being taught/pondered. But as you will hear from Donald Fagen over on /r/SteelyDanMyth - people are gullible and he says it got worse with the election of a film actor, Ronald Reagan, a Star Icon like Donald Trump (both Myths, Jung called Hitler a Myth). Both media stars, and this is /r/CriticalMediaTheory - so I'm not talking politics, I'm talking way deeper than that at the Carl Jung Psychology (Edward Bernays, Cambridge Analytica, Vladislav Surkov too) level.