Why did CBS censor The Smothers Brothers? How did The Smothers Brothers respond to CBS’s attempts at censorship? How did questions of what constitutes appropriate content for network TV play out in the late 1960s and early 1970s and how do they play out today?
CBS censored The Smothers Brothers because they became very blatant in their political opinions on the air. Originally, the network didn’t think the TV show would even last an entire season. This was because it was in the “Kamikaze” time slot of Sunday evening at 9 PM, opposite one of the most popular shows, Bonanza. The Smothers Brothers started off with fun comedy routines, which gradually gained popularity. As their ratings went up, they started to think more outside the box and aired segments that satirized politics in the 1960s. The audience loved this fresh take on a TV show and the approval ratings kept climbing. However, as they integrated more of their political opinions into the show, CBS decided it needed to be censored. According to Bodroghkozy, the Smothers Brothers got around the censors in several ways. One way was a segment where they wanted to show a sketch about censorship but CBS wouldn’t allow it so they showed the literal script on the show saying “see we promised we would get it on the air”. Another way they got around the censors was with Leigh French’s segment “Share a Little Tea with Goldie,” where she openly talked about drug culture, but in slang terms so the censors didn’t completely understand the references. By hiding these opinions in plain sight, they were able to outsmart the censors.
ReplyDeleteCBS censored the Smothers Brothers as they became increasingly more controversial in their shows. In section, we discussed the trajectory of the show over the course of three seasons. The first season, as Bodroghkozy describes in his essay, was geared towards a wide audience. It appealed to both the younger, more liberal generation, and the older conservatives of the time. Many of the sketches from the show's earlier broadcasts contained some form of slang or political opinion, but these weren't obvious. For example, in the documentary we watched in class, the use of the word "roaches" on TV was discussed. Goldie O'Keefe, a recurring character on the show, asked housewives to send in their old roaches. To an older woman, this would sound innocent, but a younger audience would make the association between roaches and pot.
ReplyDeleteThe Smothers Brothers discovered creative ways to get around censorship, such as using slang that older censors wouldn't understand, as well as attacking the censors for cutting out the funniest sketches that they wrote. The documentary showed a clip from the show that portrayed the thought process of censors. The actors went down the line reading scripts that they thought were funny and then proceeded to rip them in half and throw them away. The last actor said something like, "This isn't funny at all. We'll let it through." By doing this, the Smothers Brothers dealt with censorship frustrations through humor. In addition, this let the audience know that they weren't responsible for the lack of funny material.
If the censorship present in 1960s and 1970s television existed today, much of the material we see today on TV would be banned. "Saturday Night Live", for example, writes some incredibly political skits. Soon after 9/11, they wrote a sketch about Osama Bin Ladin. The writers felt that they needed to address the terrible event, and they managed to do it, surprisingly, with humor. I don't think that a sketch like that would have been allowed on television in the 1960s and 70s, nor would the several other controversial topics mentioned on nearly every contemporary show.
During their time on the air, the Smothers Brothers were subjected to extreme and often harsh forms of censorship from CBS due to the controversial and suggestive content of their show. To begin, the Smothers Brothers began their show by broadcasting their show to the general population, with no set specific audience in mind. However, as the seasons progressed, they began to narrowcast their show towards more of the younger more extremist and politically active audience. One segment of their show, “Share a Little Tea with Goldie,” which featured a young hippie woman, Goldie O’Keefe pricked the ears of the censors as she began promoting drugs under slang terms that often went undetected. As the seasons progressed, the Smothers Brothers material become more and more blatantly politically charged, and the censors began to crack down. In one memorable episode, the censors refused to allow the brothers from performing a skit on the air, so naturally the brothers decided to show the actual script on the air, not acting it out, but simply showing the papers to the camera, a blatant and scathing remark to the watching censors. While the censors were trying their best to reign the brothers in, the brothers continued producing their comedy and doing their best to remain true to their comedy, and entertain their audience. However, though the brothers attempted most valiantly to keep the risque comedy alive in their show, the censors had the ultimate say, which led to the ratings of the show drastically decreasing. Eventually, the censorship was the ultimate downfall of The Smothers Brothers Show which led to its cancellation in 1969. For the censorship during the 1960s and 1970s much of it was directly connected to the Smothers Brothers bashing the government or the network, in an appeal to their younger more radical audience. Censorship is still prevalent today, though to a much lesser degree. One example that comes to mind is Seth MacFarlane’s show Family Guy which directly criticizes and demeans political figures such as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and President Obama. The show is also known for making direct addresses to the audience poking fun and calling out Fox Network, something that would not have been allowed during the Smothers Brothers reign in the 1960s.
ReplyDeleteOver the course of its airtime, the Smothers Brothers aired opposite of Bonanza and it became more and more geared toward attracting a youth audience. CBS censored the Smothers Brothers because their skits grew more controversial and political. Bodroghkozy explains that the shows skits became more politically charged based on what was occurring in America at the time. Mainly, the skits were geared toward the war effort and the President.
ReplyDeleteSmothers Brothers began responding by masking its material with language only the youth culture would understand, therefore avoiding some of the CBS censors. An example of this listed in Bodroghkozy would be Goldie O’ Keefe on her show. Goldie used slang to reference many drugs, allowing much material of that show to sneak past the censors. Furthermore, the Smothers Brothers added more political and controversial material such as folk singer Joan Baez, and tried attracting even more of a youth audience. The Brothers tried moving from the TV Variety setup to a show centered around more interaction with the audience.
Questions of what constitutes appropriate content for network TV played out in the late 60s and early 70s when the Smothers show was cancelled. Many people had mixed opinions regarding the cancellation. There were people who thought CBS was at fault and violating freedom of speech, but others that thought CBS censors were doing their jobs in censoring some aspects of the Smothers show. Today, we have a much more lax idea of what constitutes appropriate content for network television, and many of the shows that exist today would most likely have been heavily censored in the late 60s and early 70s.
CBS began censoring The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour as the show's content became more and more overtly political and therefore controversial in the eyes of the network. In attempts to hail their "politically and socially disaffected, youthful audience," The Smothers Brothers showcased politically charged content on their show. This was a change from the "inoffensive, middle-of-the-road quality of much of the first season" that Bodroghkozy discusses in her article. As CBS began to censor much of their content during the second and third seasons of their show, The Smothers Brothers dealt with this censorship the only way they knew how, through the use of humor.
ReplyDeleteA more obvious attempt of their rebellion would be the opening teaser of their October 13, 1968 show, which showcased men in suits ripping out pages of a script. These men, who were meant to represent the network, were "censoring" the show. The sketch ends with a single page left and no trace of humor, which is then deemed "okay" to broadcast. This sketch was an attempt to not only mock the censorship process, but also show the audience that the show sometimes had no control over what the network did.
The Smothers Brothers also found ways to get around the censorship of the network through the character of Goldie O'Keefe. As Bodroghkozy states, "her comedy revolved around television's taboo subject when it came to depictions of countercultural activity: she affirmed and celebrated mind-altering substances," yet a lot of her content was allowed. This was because the brothers had her refer to these substances with slang that wasn't recognized by the censors as well as the older viewers.
Looking at television today, a lot of what we see on our TV screens would be banned by the censorship of the 1960s and 1970s. Think of shows like Saturday Night Live, a majority of the sketches from this modern-day variety show are politically charged, overtly sexual and completely inappropriate. These topics would never be allowed on The Smothers Brothers, let alone any show during the 1960s and 1970s. We even have shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, which are solely filled with politically charged discussions and content. Although there is much more leeway with political content in the media, an interesting question to ask is, why is it that political involvement in today's younger generations seems to be decreasing?
The Smothers Brothers tended to have skits and dialogue that were considered radical or controversial in regards to politics and issues of the time. Because of this, CBS began to censor what the show could and could not say in an attempt to keep the show as clean as possible. This did not stop the Smothers Brothers, though. Their skits were cleverly planned so that they used words that had double meanings without making it extremely apparent to the censors. Because of this, the show could appeal to both types of audiences: the younger generation who took pleasure in the hidden context and could appreciate it, and the older crowd who watched on oblivious to the jokes that were flying over their heads. In addition, the show would address the censored skits head-on: they would announce to the audience that they were not allowed to say certain things, calling the network out and informing their audience that they were not necessarily showing the things they really wanted. In the wake of the Smothers Brothers, I think they opened up a door of freedom for future television shows. While many things were still heavily censored in the 60s and 70s, eventually shows gained more creative freedom and could gradually have more control over what was put into shows. Today a majority of the things censored are actual images that could be considered inappropriate or pornographic, as well as particular swear words. However, today almost every show slides some type of hidden joke or image passed the censors into their show, even shows for children.
ReplyDeleteCBS censored the Smother Brothers Comedy Hour because much of its content had to do with criticism of the government's policies and the support of counterculture. One example of the ways they criticized the government involved a skit that was about wealth and who clothing so those that wore less clothing were the "less-ons" and the ones who ran the country and had more clothing on were the "more-ons". This was a biting criticism for the government because it was saying that people in control were morons. Another example of how the show was censored involved a script that they wrote about the Censors watching the show and how they reacted to the content. This show never made it to air because the Censors told them that they could not show it.
ReplyDeleteThe Smother Brothers responded to the attempts at criticism by hiding their content or outright rebelling against what the censors asked of them. Using the earlier example of the script that they were told they could not air, they still did a skit about the script itself and talked about elements that probably were the reason they could not perform it. One of the ways they would hide the content that would be seen as perverse was with their use of language. The show featured a segment with Goldie O' Keffe who would have a conversational discourse with the audience in which she would use double entendres to reference things in drug culture while to those who were not in the loop would not get the reference.
Most of what was seen as appropriate in the late 60's followed the moral code of the 50's these morals were increasingly questioned as the times moved toward the early 70's. Today the rules around appropriate content are very relaxed compared to the late 1960's and the early 1970s.