This Blog Has Been Formatted to Fit Your Screen

I own it. I can quote every line.

“Let’s blow off seventh and eighth, go to the mall, have a calorie fest and see the new Christian Slater!”

I could pull it off the shelf at any time, pop it in the DVD player, and enjoy commercial-free teen culture. But whenever I come across “Clueless” on cable, I drop everything and watch. Why?

In theory, it should be a fan’s worst nightmare to watch her beloved film hacked apart by a sadistic butcher, all under the guise of being “edited for time and content.”

“The Seven Year Itch,” the film that gave birth to the iconic Marilyn-Monroe-with-the-billowing-skirt pose, is argued to be the first theatrical film edited for content for broadcast on television. This is widely unconfirmed, but would make sense. The film, released in 1955, is about a married man’s temptation to stray, with sex symbol Marilyn providing the temptation. Definitely racy territory. It has been suggested other films were edited for broadcast before this, but using other criteria like time constraints.

While the timeline of content editing for television broadcast is muddy at best, one date is certain: February 8, 1996. On that day, then-president Bill Clinton signed into law the Telecommunications Act, approved by Congress a month earlier. This Act sought, among other things, to establish guidelines for programs containing “sexual, violent, or other indecent material about which parents should be informed before it is displayed to children.” (Full text of the Telecommunications Act can be found at www.fcc.gov/telecom.html.) The FCC created a rating system, similar to that of the MPAA film rating system, to be voluntarily used and independently assigned by the networks.

Even though nearly all theatrical films made after 1968 carry an MPAA rating, content editing created the need for a television rating. Based on the sexual, violent and/or profane content left after the studio or network edits the film, it is assigned a TV-G, TV-PG, TV-14 or TV-MA.

This way, you can compare the MPAA rating of your favorite film to the TV rating to determine just how ridiculous the edited version will be. It’s my opinion that anything more than a one-rating jump will render a film nearly un-watchable.

That said, some people prefer to leave out the sex and violence. While some would just avoid movies with ratings beyond their comfort level, others seek out edited versions of theatrical films. Companies such as CleanFlicks and CleanFilms used popular online rental company Netflix’s model to offer manually edited versions of major motion pictures. A 2006 lawsuit stopped these companies from offering their edited copies due to copyright infringement, but Canadian companies, such as FamilySafe Movies, were untouched by the U.S. lawsuit and remain in business.

Personally, I would never seek out an edited version. I don’t mind the sex, violence and profanity. So why do I watch the watered-down revisions offered up by network television? Perhaps it’s because I don’t feel as committed to watching as I would if I made the effort to cue up the DVD. Maybe it’s because I don’t have to look through my movie collection and make any decisions; the decision has been made for me. Possibly it’s because I have too much time on my hands and really need a hobby.

Maybe I’ll never know. But for now you’ll have to excuse me. “Dirty Dancing” is on TBS in five minutes, and nobody puts Baby in a corner.

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To Emily (and anyone else it may concern):

I promise there will be a new post no later than Monday at 3 p.m. It may even be earlier. But I work better with deadlines.

MySpace Stole My Soul.

*Author's note: I wrote this for a class in the fall of 2006. All facts were accurate as of the due date, but may not be anymore!

MySpace stole my soul. It’s true.

When I signed up for an account more than a year ago, I didn’t anticipate the price I would pay. After all, the registration page claimed signing up was free.

Many months later, I can’t go a single day without logging in to check for new friends and new comments. Sometimes I can’t go a single hour. MySpace stole my soul. It is controlling the transmission. It controls the horizontal. It controls the vertical.

Indeed, MySpace cast its spell over our society like something straight out of “The Outer Limits.” Alexa Internet, a search engine that also publishes a list of the most-visited Web sites, reports MySpace the fourth most-visited English-language Web site. Only Yahoo, MSN, and Google are ranked higher. Globally, MySpace is number five – a popular Chinese search engine sneaked into the number four spot.

Founded in July 2003 by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, MySpace is a networking Web site that allows users to design a profile page, find and add friends, send messages and comment on other’s pages. MySpace also provides options to establish and join common interest groups and create band pages featuring songs that can be added to profiles.

Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. purchased MySpace and its parent company, Intermix Media Inc., in July for $580 million, according to CNN.com. Anderson and DeWolfe stayed on as president and CEO, where they continue making improvements and developing new features for their lucrative enterprise.

MySpace surpassed 20 million registered users this past summer, according to CNN.com. On average, 230,000 new accounts are created each day. Numbers like those beg the question: Is there anyone left who’s not on MySpace?

The answer is yes. There is at least one person not on MySpace, and that would be my friend Brian. Brian is the poster child for the MySpace backlash. He shuns the site and ridicules the people who use it.

“Why do I want to put all that information out there for everyone to see? I don’t need the government and the FBI checking up on me all the time.”

Brian might be slightly paranoid. But he brings up an excellent point. Anyone can access the information posted, including potential employers. According to an online article from The New York Times, searching the Internet and MySpace has become commonplace for many employers. Applicants must be careful about what they disclose online, or risk losing out on a job.

Even so, as a member of the cult that is MySpace, I find it hard to imagine how Brian functions without it. How does he know how many friends he has? Where does he discover the latest music by the latest bands? How does he receive validation as a person without a place for his friends to leave him misspelled and grammatically incorrect comments? In short, how does he communicate with the outside world?

I asked him this one night, as we sat in his living room. He just stared at me and blinked a couple times.

“What do you think we’re doing right now?”

He had a good point. But it’s really hard to care when you no longer have a soul.

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