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GaGa clip too strong for Video Hits

Frequent verbal and visual sexual references leave Lady GaGa's new video clip out of Video Hits' PG classification playlist.

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lovegameLady GaGa’s Love Game video clip has been axed from Video Hits because of its “frequent verbal and visual sexual references”.

The song repeats the phrase “I wanna take a ride on your disco stick”. TEN’s in-house censors have given Love Game an M rating. But clips must be either G or PG for Video Hits.

The show’s producer, Ben Fletcher, said there was almost no way the clip could be edited without “destroying its original intent”.

It is airing on ABC’s Rage and cable music channels V and MTV which screen under different codes of practice.

Despite the outcome, TEN makes sense by not resorting to a highly edited clip.

You can see the original clip here.

Source: news.com.au

25 Responses

  1. IMO this isnt as expilcit as some other material i’ve seen although i havent seen them on FTA which is explainable. i reckon they should be at least be able to show the uncensored content at a later timeslot seeing how most days of the week theres nothing but repeats or rubbish after 9:30pm.

  3. Glenn – No Way. The LoveGame clip is so much worse it’s not funny!! What clip were you watching?? The IfUSeekAmy clip is harmless – yes the lyrics can be considered dirty but the clip hardly is …. LoveGame on the other hand, contains dirty lyrics and a much, much dirtier clip.

  4. I have seen both this and “If U Seek Amy”. Both of them feature nudity, but “If U Seek Amy” is much worse. You definitely wouldn’t want your children to watch this crap.

  5. they play brittany spears ‘if u seek amy’ on the radio – thats worse.

    Parents should be aware of what their kids are watching – not using tv as a weekend morning babysitter.

  6. To Carta and Marco: It’s sad that there is no full countdown of the Top 40 singles in Australia on either radio or TV with the demise of the ARIA Chart Show on Nova. If you live in NSW, ACT, South East Queensland or parts of Victoria, you can get this week’s top 10 singles and albums chart in The Sunday Telegraph every Sunday. Otherwise, you will have to wait until 6.30pm AEST Sunday when the top 40 charts are posted at the ARIA Chart website.

  7. If I hear my little niece running around singing “If U Seek Amy, I’m gonna take a ride on your disco stick”, I think I’ll have to have stern words with her mother! 😉

    @Carta, hey I’m with you in chart-geekdom, but just saying don’t miss out on your fave clips by skipping Rage on Saturday mornings, cos a whole heap of them are shown week in week out. I miss the countdowns too!

    We started chart collecting at a very young age, we’ve got them as far back as the 3XY days (not Kent Report/ARIA report I know, but you get the gist of our fellow geekiness!).

  8. “Love glue gunning”? Had it not been highlighted and explained here, I wouldn’t even have picked it up (or necessarily realised what it was referring to). “Let’s have some fun…I wanna take a ride on your disco stick” leaves nothing to the imagination.

    Look at it this way – a five year old girl runs around singing “Love glue gunning”. No one knows what she’s talking about. The same girl declares that she wants to take a ride on your disco stick and no one would be left with any doubt over what she was singing about.

    Is VH airing “If You Seek Amy”?

  9. Everything’s too strong for Video Hits. I often noticed the blatant censorship on the show as a kid (and in many cases, the censorship was completely unnecessary); and I was pretty annoyed that there were many #1 videos over the years that never made it to air on VH or Rage due to censorship concerns.

    Judging from the Love Game Video, I wouldn’t say that it warrants an M as the sexual references are no different that of the majority of today’s pop music. The sexual references are mild at best, and children are unlikely to get the “disco stick” reference, which is already so discreet that even adults probably wouldn’t get it. Besides, Poker Face which (as Neon Kitten has mentioned) contains a reference to “love glue gunning” (i.e. ejaculation) which didn’t seem to bother the censors.

    Surely a discreet metaphor doesn’t have the same impact as the actual meaning. The very purpose of innuendo is to allow subtle sexual subtexts which adults can easily grasp, but children cannot. :-/

  10. Marco – it’s still not the same as the countdown ;-). Major chart geek here with a collection of the printed charts dating back to July 1983 (my dad used to pick them up each week for me and bring them home because I was way too young to go to the music store myself!) and an ARIA subscriber since the early 1990s. At one stage, the Rage Top 50 was the first place that the charts were even revealed! I remember the excitement of watching the countdown each week, wondering what was going to be #1, waiting with bated breath towards the end of each video to see if my favourite was going to be higher up the chart etc. etc. (told you I was a chart geek!! ;-). Yes, I know Rage shows most of the charting videos these days, but not having them in order is annoying. You don’t have tp agree with me :-).

    The Take 40 Countdown used to use the ARIA charts but then the rights were taken away from them when Nova came on board. Now that Nova has pulled the plug, no one has the rights to air the official ARIA charts (Take 40 is a hybrid chart, as someone else has noted). As I don’t have pay TV, I’ll just have to live in hope that ABC management will reconsider their decision.

  11. Carta, trust me, I’m 40, I grew up watching the Rage Top 50 too.

    Seriously, you should tune in, you’d be surprised how much of the Top 50 they actually show (my partner and I have been obsessed chart-watchers since we were kids – we’ve kept all the old printed aria charts etc since way back when, so I’d like to think I know a bit about what I’m talking about). I loved seeing the countdown too, but at least we’re getting the top clips in some form, even if they’re not in a countdown order.

    I haven’t missed any of my favourite clips on Rage since the change. The only things that have annoyed me of late are Rage showing a live version of Pink’s ‘Please Don’t Leave Me’ instead of the actual video (which they only showed once or twice and never again, probably because of the violence), and also cutting a scene of Pink’s hair going up in flames in ‘So What’ – again probably because of the horror factor.

  12. Channel V and V2 do top 50 countdowns now. I agree, though, top 50 on Rage was a tradition. I’ve got tapes going back to March 1998 of rage top 50’s. On radio, there’s a countdown on Sat afternoons on some stations but think its based on a combination of downloads, requests/votes combined with sales.

  15. Eathquake – thanks for the tip! Done!

    Marco – it’s not the same at all and they don’t play “most” of the Top 50. I guess you didn’t grow up with the tradition of watching the Top 50 on Rage every Saturday morning for nearly 20 years :-). Now, with Nova dumping the official ARIA chart show, there is no full countdown of the Top 40 singles in Australia on either radio or TV. I used to record Rage every Saturday morning and flick through the Top 50 at some stage over the weekend. I haven’t watched Rage since they scrapped the Top 50 and I’m completely out of touch with the latest videos, which I haven’t been since I was about 8 years old. Now, I tend to buy videos from iTunes….which is better for the artists, really, since at least they get some royalties from it!

  17. They pretty much play most of the Top 50 on Rage every Saturday morning anyway, just not in order. It’s no biggie, I still get to see my favourite clips every week.

  20. A wise move – the song really is very explicit!

    On a semi-related note, David, do you know why the ABC decided to drop the Top 50 from Rage two years ago? The Rage producers are adamant that it was an ABC decision and ARIA support this, but I was wondering if you knew the reasoning behind it. They could very easily re-instate it on ABC2 or something. The decision prompted hundreds of complaints on the Rage message board (driving the moderators crazy).

  22. So the reference to “love-glue-gunning” in “Poker Face” was okay for the kiddies then? How about “we’re all gettin’ hosed tonight” in “Just Dance”? (Teen Binge Drinking Encouragement Horror!)

    And they get scared of “disco stick?” Seriously, Ten.

    Let’s face it, 90% of US chart pop and R&B is blatantly sexual. Those old enough know that already. Those too young to need to know won’t even notice.

  23. The song and the clip is naughty but I love it. At a couple of points she looks like she doesn’t have a shred of clothing on.

    Apart from the disco stick catch-cry, the next best line of the song is:

    I can see you staring there from across the block
    With a smile on your mouth and your hand on your (huh!)

    For someone who looks like a mime-artist, she is actually quite fantastic vocally, and was brilliant the other night on American Idol.

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