Nice outside the box thinking, especially the last paragraph. I disagree though. The artist’s vision had a word that’s now been altered so it’s “censored”. Bottom line is if a word is offensive to you deal or don’t listen. The fact that we still know what word belongs there doesn’t make it any less censored but it makes the whole exercise hypocritical and pointless. Especially if it’s designed so kids don’t hear naughty words as that word is now more entrenched in their mind as they had to d
Walmart drove me crazy with this. Especially because they did sell explicit music if it wasn’t labeled as such. So you could clearly hear Jim Morrison say “the F bomb” a dozen times from a CD you bought but if an artist or label self reported you got the, let’s call it altered, version which was not true to the artist’s intent.
I'd forgotten about this but have come back to it as a result of landing on it from a search engine result.
The so-called clean version is altered and it is censored to the extent that what is "censored" is part of the original sound. However, it does not censor the meaning, where that is still known. This is "meaning" in the sense of it means the individual word rather than "meaning" to the song being through emotion in the way these types of words are originally said. However, putting the so-called clean version alongside the so-called explicit version, we may as well say that the so-called explicit version is also "censored". It is censored because it censors the altered sound, or lack of sound, material that the so-called clean version uses. It uses the actual sound of the word instead - but, by not having the altered part that is in the so-called clean version, the so-called explicit version censors that. So the so-called explicit version is also, in this sense, "censored" - it censors the replacement part that the so-called clean version contains that you don't have or hear (or in the case of silence, notice) in the so-called explicit version. A lot of "so-calleds" I know - however I don't accept the description "clean" and I don't accept the description "explicit" in relation to what these are commonly, in my view wrongly, called.
The word is offensive to me in that environment, or perhaps the so-called clean version's replacement part is when it makes me think more heavily about the word that bothers me. How exactly do I not listen to something when it is out in the air around me? I cannot turn to avert my eyes from it since it is sound or something heard or noticed through the ears, I am unable to shut my ears to make myself totally deaf unable to prevent the sound or lack of sound with surrounding sound from entering my ears in the middle of a public place supermarket. I do not choose voluntarily to listen to this; it is played without me wishing it to be and whilst I'm in the middle of the supermarket and can't escape as there is no time to do so (it takes up to a minute to walk to the exit, too late as the offensive material has already been experienced). You've given the advice "don't listen" - however this does not work in a public place when it is audio or audio surrounding that implies in between that gets to you and where I do not choose to listen to it but involuntarily have to because it is there around me.
Indeed the word is more entrenched in my mind - that's precisely one of the problems I have with it. It causes me to think, ponder and get upset about it and the 'hidden' nature to it and its conveyance through not using the actual word sound, as I fear it will be clear to people around me what it means - and it is impossible to ignore it as it is more entrenched - makes me seriously uncomfortable. It is more offensive than the so-called explicit version. On this occasion, the so-called clean version sounds way too close to the word that it amounts to saying the same thing. It is still saying the word, by a method other than the use of its unaltered sound. It sounds too close and, at the same time, adds an unpleasant distorted sound that makes it sound like the actual word being said in a very nasty way, with a horrible tone to it. Rather than just saying the word, which is not always offensive, in a normal way, it is unpleasant swearing. It is offensive and inappropriate material and I am offended by it, in a public place where I do not have access to an off switch, do not have the ability to avoid hearing or experiencing it and am given no choice to be able to avoid it. It will be entirely clear to all, because of its sound, which specific word it means and because the actual word sound of the so-called explicit version is not used it is adding an offensive reminder of unwanted baggage of offensiveness. It is telling people of the word and that the word is a problem, and doing that makes the altered sound offensive and uncomfortable to me when other people are around me, especially as it draws attention to and points itself out (again problematically) and gets me more bothered because it is in my mind and heavily and heavily.
It is amplified music so is heard across the entire store, in some parts orf it more than others but there we are - it comes across exactly the same as someone in actuality therefore shouting the actual word across the entire supermarket and doing so, because of the distortion and exact way in which these 'edits' sound, in a nasty unpleasant tone. That is how it is to me, and someone in actual life shouting swearing across a store would cause offence, I would imagine, and make uncomfortable, many more people than just me having a problem with that. As this is the same thing to me, and as it is akin, because of not saying the word in a 'normal' tone of voice (although even that *shouted* across a supermarket, so as to be heard in all, or almost all, parts of it the same as this played song was, would be offensive), to saying the word as if aggressively and horribly, with an unpleasant almost mumble to your voice yet so as to be heard across the whole store, it is completely unacceptable and offensive as well as potentially embarrassing for me to hear coming from the soundtrack when members of store staff are walking around.
I guess I do think "outside of the box". I have an autism spectrum disorder so, I nowadays gather, I see things in a different way to most people.
You mention Walmart, although I'm elsewhere in the world and I understand your points there. If it's not marked, they will allow "explicit" material. The one that got me was a story, I saw elsewhere on the internet, that a mom wouldn't let her son have albums marked "explicit" because of their content and graphic content inappropriate for her child. She then named a specific album she had bought for him because it didn't have an "explicit" sticker. She seems to have seen nothing wrong about this and didn't comment about it - seems to have bought it on the (incorrect) assumption that unstickered albums are therefore fine. More fool her - I googled the lyrics of one of the tracks on that album and found a graphic description of a sexual act using swear words in the lyrics of one of the songs on it! Material blatanly unsuitable for a young child - 8 years old I think she said he was. Wouldn't let him have "explicit" albums, or rather those labelled as explicit but had clearly given him this album without checking it or listening it to and seems blissly unaware of what she has let him listen to. As well as labelling albums as explicit when they are not - such as albums that use general swearing rather than explicit use in a sexual sense or use swear words when the meaning of the swear is ambiguous and could have another meaning, therefore is not explicit as it is not clear which of the two meanings it means - the labelling of albums as "explicit" but failure to label every such album since it is a voluntary scheme gives parents the false assumption that something that does not carry the label therefore has no swearing and is fine. It's basically there, historically, in order to stop government regulation and applied so inconsistently - albums with numerous swears get no marking whilst one with a single swear does - as to be IMO of little use. Other than perhaps to draw attention of children to material that is more desirable that they may want. You get albums labelled about "sexual content" when there is virtually none; I find the albums that don't have that addition to the labelling contain the most sexual content (and therefore are desirable, good and enjoyable to listen to when listening entirely alone at home).
Where into all this the so-called clean versions fit is unclear - and they are not marked or classed as explicit - yet I would put them into that category myself. It's the albums of the Walmart-altered type, the "family friendly" versions, that make me entirely uncomfortable to listen to in the presence of my family.
Sorry, I've edited these several times and added more and I've gone on now. It's Asperger's Syndrome, that causes me to consider and write in detail on every point.
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I meant if you are choosing to listen to something not if it is being forced on you.
I notice tonyr6 had hit my point on the head (in their first sentence and far more succinctly than me).
I didn't choose to listen to it. I suppose I may indeed call it forced upon me.
I do choose to listen to the same songs, and so-called explicit versions, in my home when listening alone. However, I do not experience them as offensive in that context. It's the so-called clean versions I have particular problems with - that are played in public places in which, I suppose, the actual word would offend me and therefore the replacement material meaning the same thing also does - or even more so since it is highlighted (problematically) by the alteration. In fact the places only play the so-called clean versions and never play the so-called explicit ones, so the so-called explicit versions have never yet caused me offence or been played inappropriately around me, but the so-called clean versions are and they are my only problem. It's those that are my problem and caused me offence so regularly and repeatedly as to be the same as harrassment and abusive conduct resulting in stress, clinical depression, and eventually to post-traumatic stress disorder that I now have. My trigger is the censor edits in the so-called clean versions - that replacement material or lack of material in the context of meaning swearing triggers me and makes me suffer uncontrollable heart racing amongst other numerous bad experiences for days on end afterwards - sometimes up to two weeks after encountering it again, in a public place. For me the so-called clean versions now contain post-traumatic stress trigger material that the so-called explicit versions do not have (although they may have it for someone else that was abused by actual swear words as a child and to the extent of developing PTSD) and, while I could listen alone with headphones to so-called clean versions decades ago, I can't even do that in my home now without triggering or risking triggering myself - instead the so-called explicit versions are now the only ones I can safely listen to there.
Really it's my parents/teachers/society's fault for creating the concept of swear words and describing certain words as being "swear words", something you can never ever ever ever ever say under any circumstances whatsoever as a child I was told and that made them hugely bad. I've had problems with swear words in certain situations ever since - as a result of this harmful social conditioning as a child. I still can't even physically bring myself to say any of the words that I understood to be swear words in my childhood, not even begin to start such a word, except when with just my brother of similar age.
There are places in which the actual words don't offend me now, due to them being used so much in the past so that there can't be used too much anymore. I'm finding I sometimes like people saying things in situations where they may not have done before. I actually really enjoy public swearing - when said in a normal conversation way between friends of similar or younger age to me, when not loudly across an entire place and with no older generations around. The shops etc. have managed to find a place in which I actually am offended by swearing and my problem from the past is so severe that I can't even cope with the so-called clean versions. They are clear what they mean or else they make me think they mean something and have me reacting to that, because I'm uncomfortable at what they *might* mean, regardless whether or not they actually do, because that's what it comes across as suggesting, and puts more in my mind, and the 'hiding' of the words, when it is always no hiding, makes me uncomfortable (it's therefore been part of the offensive nature that, for me, these so-called clean versions, when played in public, have) and leaves the swear words in my mind lingering in the air. I then repetitively think about them at intervals for minutes afterwards, and intrusive thoughts are also part of some forms of PTSD.
So there we are - not only can the so-called explicit versions not be played in certain places (and are not played in certain places) because they might offend someone or are generally considered to be inappropriate and people wishing to do what they can to avoid causing offence, but the so-called clean versions, of this type can't be played in any place in which the so-called explicit ones would not be played. That now makes the so-called clean versions entirely pointless as the point of having them is that they can be played in wider situations but, for me, this is not so. I am offended on every occasion in any place in which the so-called explicit version might offend me.
In fact, I'm offended by so-called clean versions in some situations even when the so-called explicit version wouldn't offend me or, maybe if played in error, does not actually do so. It's not choice as to whether I feel uncomfortable or my heart twists inside uncontrollably or not because I recognise what something means and it is referring to "my problem" for me. The so-called explicit versions I can ignore or pretend people may have missed the word, if it wasn't too obvious, but the so-called clean versions point it out, without doubt, and make it clear it has no innocent meaning to it. In addition, the hidden nature that makes so-called clean versions, that do not use bleeping, uncomfortable for me because it's trying to hide stuff and because of what it is trying to hide, namely a swear word, also makes them, for me, offensive when listening with other people around me. There is no choice for me to pretend it's oay as the so-called clean version is saying it is not and is telling everyone and doing so even more so and, because for me it is doing this, it is making me, in my own right, entirely uncomfortable and bothered.
Bleeping is literally a bleep sound - "Bbbbblllleeeeeeeeeppp!!" and no other method at all. Signature sound remnant of words or their trace is not bleeping - it is signature sound. Silence or pausing is not bleeping - it is silence or pausing. Bleeping literally has to be a bleep sound. It's the only version I had as a child with my parents around, which they put onto television when around me, so that's the reason I am (or was) okay with that it seems. Pausing or silence came many years later for me and I never had that put on by my parents when I was a child and was never okay with it.
I am offended in those places of hearing them, or noticing the part in the case of silence, only by so-called clean versions of this particular type and not by all clean versions, those that for me are properly clean versions. The so-called clean versions of the type I refer to are namely ones with "censor" edits that imply or suggest words, or contain pauses between words, incomplete sentences where a swear word is thereby left lingering in the air at the end of them, reversed soundtrack, bleep sounds (very rarely used, I would actually have preferred them as they are the only version I could safely listen to with my parents around me, although even bleeping has managed to hit me and caus me offence in public), signature sound, silence between words, the repetition of a word when the second use does not make a natural sentence but means a potentially offensive word - I have had a problem with that making me uncomfortable as I felt it was entirely clear and meant that offensive word, which I had in my mind, instead - it doesn't come across as a repeat of the word but instead as if it is the offensive word on the second occasion - are offensive for me.
I do not have a problem with actual clean versions, but they make very few of those these days. (They make a lot of so-called clean versions that they claim to be clean but that is an unsubstantiated assertion and for me they are not.) I do not have a problem with songs that say "messed up" as that has an innocent meaning, of "messed", that I can pretend it is and take comfort in. And I don't have a problem with actual clean versions such as Radiohead saying "very special". However, for me, pause and then "special" would not be a clean version - pause means the swear word and it comes across inexorably as usual and does not for me constitute a clean version, on the assumption that the word itself, which it means, is not "clean" (an assumption that I don't accept myself but, on their own approach of alleging their so-called clean versions be clean, thereby for me they are "dirty". And the word "dirty" may be defined as "inappropriate to the environment in which they are played", which the so-called clean versions when played in public thereby fall squarely into, as they are inappropriate in those places because they are causing me offence and always making an issue about their language which is contributing to me having an issue with it and with these versions in those environments in which they cause me offence as well as triggering me even in other places now).
I have gone on - I actually lost my mother over a decade ago, which didn't help but nonetheless, completely rationally wrongly, I did not experience anything as bad as I have from the so-called clean versions. I cried during the time she was ill (with terminal illness) but for me things were resolved, not in the way I would have liked, when she died. I felt relieved that she was out of it and it was final. The experiences I have had from the so-called clean versions, always negative and then hugely so, have persisted other decades of them being played inappropriately now, and that continues to the present day, have given me PTSD and continue to affect me to the present day, even if underlying. In total, the whole emotional rollercoasters have been worse than the death of my mother.
The so-called clean versions are digging into and pressing into, and reinforcing, the fact of a social taboo and giving me a problem with them for that reason and numerous other reasons as well (such as their pointing it out, sometimes embarassingly). They are not lightly passing over the word - they are referring to and going right into, and digging me into, it. The whole 'censor' edits are now so completely associated with and linked to the words they mean that, in public places, the 'censor' edits, unlike the actual words, are now outright offensive for me. And when I say "offensive" I don't, unfortunately, mean a mere personal opinion - I mean serious emotional effects that have included butterflies in my stomach, heart twisting and racing, anxiety and uncontrollable physical shaking of a bad nature as well as the worst experience in my entire life, that gave me in retrospect the PTSD, when a 'censor' edit physically and uncontrollably hit me with such force that it felt like my heart physically sank to three storeys into the ground below. Eventually, it became clear at work that I was having problems which I did not want to discuss with anyone because of the topic it referred to and because I knew those people and they were not like strangers on the internet. A colleague ended up concluding "if it bothers you that much, don't go [to the leisure centre]". The problem is it did bother me that much. So I was then upset at not being able to do my leisure activities that were being constantly disrupted by this thing and causing me to terminate my sessions early and go home upset (until a family member months later noticed I was upset and that it always coincided with returning from there and asked if someone was doing something to me at the leisure centre) - I could not speak to anyone at the leisure centre face to face because of the nature of the topic (and probably because of my Asperger's syndrome that got diagnosed later but which I have 'always' had). I was forced to cease going to the leisure centre entirely - or any other which played the same offensive songs, as they were pop songs, 'clean' version being the offensive version of every one of them as far as I have experienced - and as no leisure centres play any other music, culdn't go anywhere else. I changed leisure centre. The same thing happened there. I have been eventually forced to quit going and would probably suffer a PTSD experience if I were to try to go to one now and haven't been to one and have been unable to get exercise in one for nearly a decade. It has had a profound effect on my life - I worry when any song I haven't heard before (which is most new songs) comes on in public places now in case it might contain my trigger material. I get triggered at the thought that it might contain such material, and it makes me uncomfortable the moment the song starts up, even if it then turns out not to do so. I feel relieved when a song is over, unless it is then followed by another unfamiliar song that I then feel uncomfortable throughout the entire of, in case it contains 'censored' swearing.
