Hooray for heckin’ VidAngel! I love it so much! No more smut in my home 
I do have the impression that monotheism is absolutely pervasive in Hollywood content, especially when the target audience includes children.
Basically, whenever questions of God and the Afterlife come up they are answered with at least a tentative “yes”. The only people who would answer “no” in American movies are middle-aged white men conforming to the Dr. House stereotype, or people who are “struggling with God” because something bad happened to them. The latter usually are cured of their “cynicism” by the end of the movie.
And of course no American-style rousing patriotic speech is complete without “God bless America”, so basically every American movie that has patriot heroes gathering under the star-spangled banner counts as “Christian” for me.
This is of course not very surprising, given that 89% of Americans believe in God (Gallup, 2016) vs. the 44% of Austrians that I’m used to.
However, If you don’t count some movies produced by Mel Gibson, hardly any of this is in any way offensive for me, so I’m not tempted to censor.
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I like to think the opposite of bowdlerisation is ‘Australianisation’, because regardless of the artistic medium, evey glorious moment deserves to be fucking glorious.
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Truly. I do watch fanedits sometimes and enjoy them:
A true fanedit is of course is most of the time more than removing scenes. However just removing superfluous content can improve a series or a movie immensely, exhibit A being Mythbusters Streamlined:
https://www.reddit.com/r/smyths/
I can think of many series that would be more watchable without the fluff.
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Some @midnight episodes seem to be available both censored and uncensored, although I’ve only seen thursday episodes uncensored.
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While a lot of vidangel users are from faith based homes, others benefit from the filtering options as well. Some mentioned families with small kids and being able to edit a few things here and there so parents feel more comfortable sharing a fun “family film” minus a few bad words or sketchy scenes. It can also help someone who spent time in war, reduce triggers by removing certain violence blow out scenes that could possible put them in a bad place for the rest of the night, just because they wanted to see a certain action movie. I also know that there are others who took great steps to beat addiction, whether to alcohol or drugs, and having the ability to remove those scenes or visuals or discussion might help someone not have that craving in the middle of a movie. As a former smoker I can tell you it’s hard to watch House of Cards and not crave cigarettes even though I quit several years ago. You might not agree with the reasons for filtering but everyone should agree with the RIGHT to filter, on screens we own, in our own home, for private viewing. I haven’t listened to a commercial in my home in almost 20 years, I’m like Clint Eastwood with the quick draw remote the second a show cuts to them, saying I don’t have the legal right to mute an ad is really dangerous territory regarding freedoms…filtering is the same. Thanks for the article.
I used Vidangel to filter the movie Battleship while streaming through Amazon so my kids could watch it with me. I bought the movie on Amazon. If I didn’t have the ability to filter it, I would not have bought it.
I think this is awesome more people are starting to talk about our rights within our own home! Excellent alaogy to the books- I’m sure I would make every author cringe if they new I skip the the middle or end at some point while reading almost every book! Directors probably cringe when I want to skip the “pivotal” sex scenes (because every movie needs this now🙄) or dialogue littered with swear words, but it’s my right and I’ll either close my eyes and plug my ears or have it done for me.
Well, I must say, this is one of the stranger, if more superficially pleasant egg raids we’ve had on these here boards…
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I’m sure that I’m in the tiny minority but AS AN ADULT I prefer not to hear or see content that I find objectionable. This doesn’t make me sheltered or an Evangelical. I just don’t get profanity. There are many movies, that are otherwise terrific, that were previously unwatchable for me. Now, with services from VidAngel I can enjoy the content. And no, I’m not missing out on anything. I can easily follow a conversation despite not hearing the profanity.
It’s such a funny argument against it. BoingBoing nailed it. Imagine a world without playlists - where you had to listen to an entire artist’s body of work. Even your favorites have songs that you skip over. You CHOOSE what you want to hear and not hear. The artist may have felt it important (hence the reason why they included it on the album) but that doesn’t mean you have to like it.
It’s all about choice. We live in a time when technology gives us easier access to customized content. I’m all for people leveraging whatever tools are available to help them enjoy life more. If that’s a profanity-filled sex romp on the big screen power to you. Watch away. For me, I’ll focus on content that I find enjoyable and skip the stuff I don’t like.
The remix of Straight Outta Compton that ONKY consists of profanity is great.
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Related anecdote:
The first time I saw Blue Velvet was as a cut-for-broadcast-television version.
The edit had two main effects:
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They chopped a fair bit of the lead up to the Jeffrey/Dorothy/Frank sex scene. This turned a dark-but-interesting exploration of gender and violence into just an out-of-context bit of gratuitous BDSM.
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They went through the entire movie and overdubbed every instance of “fuck” with “freak”. Given the nature of Dennis Hopper’s character Frank, this meant that about 1/3 of his dialogue was dubbed. “Freak you, you freaking freak” was a memorable line.
Weirdly, this actually made Frank more frightening. Here’s this murderous, ear-chopping, nitrous-huffing psychopath, but for some bizarre reason he seems to feel that swearing would be just one transgression too far…
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Explicit Content Only: Straight Outta Compton
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FTFY
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You call it “dumb”, I’ll call it valuable. Glad to see we can both call it a right.
There’s a great cut in “barbarian queen”. There’s a torturer raping his female victim, who’s bound eagle spread. Among the cuts is one where he frees her legs for better access, which she uses to wrap her legs around him and then crushing him, forcing him to release her.
Since that looks all too much like sex - raping and gore seemed to be okay for the censor - it got cut and the result looks as if he crushes him with her vagina. Before dumping him into a vat of acid.
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I read it as Vidan-gel, and thought it was some under-leg deodorant product.
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