TV Censorship US Style

7.30 am and the SciFi channel is showing Red Dragon (certificate 18 in the UK), one of the Silence of the Lambs horror films. In the first scene the detective captures Hannibal and gets violently stabbed in the stomach before himself stabbing Hannibal with a bunch of arrows before shooting lots of holes in him.

Where is the censorship? Well, when a character says, BULLSHIT, the 'SHIT' part of the word is dubbed over so you only hear the 'BULL' part. So, violent stabbing and shooting and a horrific plot are all fine at 7.30am but bad language, oh no, that's definitely out.

On the flight back to the USA recently they showed 'Children of Men' on the big screen in the cabin. Everyone in the cabin could see the movie but only those who had a headset could listen to it, though that was mostly everyone. The movie is rated R (or 15 in the UK) which means, "strong violence, language, drug use and brief nudity". It's a pretty decent film but is it really suitable for children in the cabin?

Censorship in the country is bollox. Excuse the bad language but is the language really the problem when it is apparently acceptable to show people being violently stabbed on the TV at 7.30am in the morning?