A Case for Censorship: Motown, Modesty, and What We've Lost

Recently, while driving, I listened to The Temptations' "Treat Her Like A Lady", and I found myself immersed in their discography through my playlist titled Motown. I was struck by an observation: there was no profanity and no vulgarity. Just soul. The kind of depth that makes perfect sense once you remember these men learned to sing in a church choir before they ever learned to sing for a paycheck. This was authentic rock and roll, doing what it is supposed to do. Music with, dare I say it, a spine.

Which naturally leads to the question no one in a boardroom seems to be asking: why does everything now— music, television, the algorithm feel like it's auditioning for the darkest possible version of itself? The current appetite for the explicit doesn't read as artistic bravery. It reads like nobody could think of anything better to do.

Before the Bleep Was Necessary

We must ask producers: do you know your audience is tired? Explicitness has quietly become the industry's laziest move, a stand-in for storytelling, deployed whenever nobody can be bothered to write real tension. The solution is simply to remove their clothes and call it chemistry. And the distance we've traveled to get here is almost comedic. This is an industry that once operated under the Hays Code, a set of guidelines so prim that I Love Lucy  (a married couple!) filmed from separate twin beds, as though proximity itself might be scandalous. What might have been a masterclass in restraint becomes, instead, something you'd rather not be watching next to your mother.

Somewhere along the way, relaxing in front of the television started requiring a strategy. There you are, mid-episode, minding your own business, when the urge hits: holy water, please, and quickly. A spiritual palate cleanser, mid-scene, as though the Almighty himself needs to weigh in before you're cleared for act two. So much for passive viewing: instead, you're sitting there, remote gripped like a weapon, one thumb hovering over fast-forward, just in case. At a certain point, you have to ask whether the show was actually worth the tactical planning.

Fatigued, and Finally Saying So

There's a term for this, apparently: sociologists call it digital fatigue, or sensory burnout, which is a very polite way of saying we're exhausted and nobody asked us. The internet is already a swamp of vulgarity twenty-four hours a day; what people actually want from film and television is an escape from that, not a rerun of it. We turn to stories hoping for connection, for beauty, for something a little more elevated than what's already loose on our phones. The industry, meanwhile, keeps repeating "sex sells" like scripture, when in practice it usually just means nobody wanted to pay a better writer. It's considerably easier to drop a few curse words into a chorus, or shoot a music video inside what is essentially a cabaret, than it is to write something genuinely edifying. Genuinely good, even.

Lately, I find myself reaching, instinctively, for the "clean" version of nearly everything, not out of prudishness, but because my own growth has made me considerably more particular about what's allowed in my environment. What I'm hoping for isn't a ban. It's a revival, a version of Hollywood that isn't quietly, cheerfully designed to leave its audience a little more depleted than it found them.

Choosing, Not Consuming

Apparently, this occupied more real estate in my subconscious than I gave it credit for. It followed me straight into a dream, where Pastor Phillip Anthony Mitchell appeared and informed me that we are not obligated to consume whatever's put in front of us. That there are, in fact, systems built for exactly this. I woke up, did what any reasonable person does after a suspiciously specific dream, and Googled it. Sure enough: an entire ecosystem of apps quietly stripping vulgarity, profanity, and gore out of your queue before it ever reaches you. Which is, in its own way, deeply reassuring. Curation isn't a defeat. It's a discipline. Conveniently, it's also now a subscription.