venta

Warning. Rant approaching.

I've just been watching the NME chart show, which is on MTV2. Watching MTV2 over the past couple of years, I've been quite surprised occasionally by their use of pixellation. I'm familiar with faces of suspects in court cases being pixellated out. I wasn't hugely surprised to see hands pixellated out when when the hands were making rude gestures. I was amused to see the mouth of the girl in the Puddle of Mudd video She Hates Me blurred to prevent lip-readers being corrupted as she lip-synched to the chorus she fucking hates me.

But tonight pixellation has made me quite cross. Number one on the NME chart is The Libertines' swan-song Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads. The video shows two boys, aged about ten hanging out together, playing and generally pissing about after the fashion of ten year olds everywhere. They ride bikes, fight, hold spit races off a building, bounce on the furniture, and so on. One of them tries an experimental drag on a cigarette and - while still clearly visible - the image is pixellated. Later in the video they smash a telly up with sticks, throw furniture and a shopping trolley in a pond, and go shoplifting. None of these, however, are as evil as trying smoking.
Vandalism ? Fine. Stealing stuff ? Sure, no problem, just don't have a fag while you do it.

Now, I'm assuming that blocking out an image of smoking is mainly aimed at kids - they're not expecting the hardened 40-a-day brigade to be affected by a video of a kid smoking. I'm quite happy with the idea that children should be discouraged from smoking - after all, it's an expensive habit that can be potentially fatal. But instead they're making it mysterious - what's this pixellated image that's being hidden ? I remember being ten - nothing was as interesting as the things they didn't want you to see or hear. Smoking is too dangerous to show on telly ? Hey, it must be cool, let's try it!

I do wonder whether there are legal restrictions on showing an under-16 smoking. In which case, frankly, the relevant bodies should stick to their guns and make sure that people actually don't show it. Pixellation is a half-hearted sop - there's no room for any doubt at all that it's a fag in the kid's hand.