At the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Philadelphia earlier this month, C3 Consulting Researcher Kevin Sandler presented the latest in his continuing work on censorship and managing concerns with regulatory powers, through a compelling project in which Kevin spent time looking at the negotiation between the creators of Fox's hit animated series The Family Guy and the standards and practices department of Fox.
Kevin spent three weeks with the Fox S&P department, in addition to time in the production offices of The Family Guy, giving him a chance to examine scripts and notes and the back-and-forth between the creatives and the network, to better understand the internal architecture of media regulation within the company, so as to better ascertain the method by which self-regulation within the relationship between a network and show producers takes place.
From this presentation, my understanding is that Kevin is using this study of standards and practices to build on the work of others like Elana Levine to create a more robust body of work on what is being called "production studies," better understanding the ways in which these shows are being put together and the many creative and regulatory forces that are involved with the creative product.
Kevin has done a significant amount of work in the past on the development of particular ratings, for instance the status of the NC-17 rating. He has been working on research about violence an the PG-13 rating. He also spent a significant amount of time working with FX and Shawn Ryan of The Shield, along with colleague Danny Bernardi, spending between three and four weeks on the set talking with the cast and crew of the police drama in preparation for a book he's putting together on the series.
This research here focused on the ongoing production struggle between Fox and The Family Guy, particularly on finding the balance between the irreverent humor of the animated series and network concerns about the sensibilities of individual viewers and especially lobbying groups that might call the Federal Communications Commission to act on what they see as offensive visuals and dialogue. He opened his presentation by showing a clip in which The Family Guy mocked the networks' over-censoring nature after some complaints, including blocking out any references in text or audio for "dick" and "dyke" in The Dick Van Dyke Show, changing Ralph Kramden's threats to knock Alice "to the moon" for fear of offending viewers with treats of domestic violence, and blocking out the cleavage of Suzanne Somers' character in Three's Company.
Because The Family Guy is particularly lucrative for the 18-49 male target demographic for Fox, there is much negotiation about how the creative team can continually push the envelope and tackle problematic issues. Since the show has built its reputation on pushing boundaries, Kevin said that it was a unique case for standards and practices, treated differently than other Fox shows, because viewers expect the show to constantly "up the ante" in terms of crudeness, while Fox wants to maximize those profits while dealing with reform groups.
In short, Kevin said he adopted Leia Jacobs' approach, looking at censorship in the media industries as self-regulation and as a negotiation among managers, artists, and performers rather than a prohibition. He said there were two stages of regulation among standards and practices at Fox: an evaluation stage and a negotiation stage. The evaluation stage involves isolating elements in scripts that are likely to offend reform groups or government regulators, while negotiation involves comprises made during the editing process. Since there is no firm criteria from the FCC for indecency and profanity, it can sometimes be particularly difficult for artists and the network to accurate predict problematic spots, so there is some guesswork involved with whether dialogue will be considered as offensive or not.
Kevin concluded with a specific case study, looking at original versions of a Family Guy episode dealing with homosexuality and gay marriage and then demonstrating changes that were made both from fear of offending a more conservative viewership with crude slang references, as well as fear of offending lobbying groups like GLAAD in not wanting to seem to take a position against gay marriage or homosexuality.
The access Kevin was granted to the standards and practices team appears to be opening doors for ongoing research and publications that will help expand the understanding of how final media products are constructed through the creative influence and regulatory input of a variety of forces in a media conglomerate, and we look forward to sharing more information on Kevin's research here in the future on the Consortium's blog.
