It's Curious, George: Even Cartoons Aren't Safe From Censors

By Randy Dotinga

Start with a space capsule. Throw in Curious George along with bananas and donuts, the inquisitive monkey's favorite foods. And then make everything weightless so he has to chase after his lunch, tumbling along the way.

The perfect script for the cute PBS children's show, right? Not according to animation censors, who anticipated some hot fruit-on-baked-good action.

It might seem surprising at a time when a Family Guy episode can include scenes like "Prom Night Dumpster Baby." But children's cartoons are a different story. As Craig Miller and a panel of other animated-show writers revealed at Comic-Con International last weekend, censors go out of their way -- and some might say out of their minds -- to protect little kids.

And it's not just the standards-and-practices departments that act as watchdogs.

"We get notes from studios, from networks, from educational consultants, from advertisers," Miller said. "One show I worked on, there was a list of 47 people who got shown every word a writer wrote -- the outlines, the first draft and second draft -- and had the opportunity to give their comments on what should be changed."

Miller, who couldn't recall the name of the show, sarcastically called it a "wonderful creative experience."

"What's entertaining is what points to human foibles and flaws, and (the censor's) job is to take that out of it," said animation writer Andrew Nichols, during a panel on censorship in animation. Nichols has written for titles including The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius and Casper's Scare School. He said he was told just last week to not use the words "heck" or "darn."

Other troublesome words for censors include "furnace," "vacation," "envy" and "remove" because they're supposedly too complicated for kids to understand, Nichols said.

Miller, meanwhile, once wrote the script for a show called Pocket Dragon Adventures and was told not to use the word "beseech" in a scene with a knight because it's somehow "blasphemous." Miller took it out.

While writers for adult animation shows often have more freedom, even they can run into trouble at times.

Censors would sometimes balk at certain Futurama scenes, recalled Patric Verrone, president of the Writers Guild of America, West and a writer on the show.

But the promotions department often had the last word. "Whenever we would fight with them to get it in, that would be what (promotions would) put in the ad," said Verrone.

It's not clear how networks decide what to omit in adult cartoons. It may be a matter of who complains the loudest.

The writers pointed to two episodes of The Simpsons which received many complaints. One featured a reference to Bart having Tourette syndrome which was excised after it aired, so the reference didn't appear in repeats or DVDs. The show also took out a mild reference to the Catholic Church.

"The point is they caved," Verrone said.

For now, the writers seem resigned to following the rules and the edicts of "creative executives," who "are generally not either," Miller said.