Censorship up in the air

Dullness. I’ve been pondering why people live in incredibly dull places. Most of America is incredibly dull. Incredibly large Super Target stores with incredibly enormous parking lots. Incredibly boring malls with all of the same stores that are at all of the incredibly boring malls in all of the other incredibly dull places. Incredibly drab people shuffling their incredibly plain children in and out of their SUVs at incredibly uninteresting athletic fields and amusement parks and CVS parking lots. Eating at the Olive Garden and Outback and all of the incredibility blah dining establishments located on the side of the US’ incredibly wide freeways and shuttered shopping centers.

Perhaps because I was half-heartedly watching Up in the Air on my United Airlines flight from Texas – not an American Airlines flight – and hearing the grouchy young woman talking about how she moved to Omaha, Nebraska for the man of her dreams and gave up a job offer in San Francisco. Now he’s broken up with her by text message and George Clooney and the married woman he falls for are trying to make her feel better.

I was watching George Clooney fly to various places in the middle of the country. I was listening to Lady Gaga on my iPod. I saw George Clooney walking with the uptight young woman (“Natalie”) toward the airport and decided it would be interesting to listen in to see how United Airlines could get away with showing this film – a film prominently featuring American Airlines – and how they would “modify” it.

Change is in the air. The modifications are quite amusing, really. As Clooney is showing uptight chick through the security lines, he says something like “Don’t get in line behind families, with children; don’t get behind old people – they have so much metal in their bodies even they don’t know where it is. Get behind Asians – they pack lightly and follow the rules (or something equally inane). And then Natalie says, “That’s racist.” The United Airlines version is “Don’t get in line behind families, with children; don’t get behind old people – they have so much metal in their bodies even they don’t know where it is. Get behind business people – they pack lightly and follow the rules (or something equally inane). And then Natalie says, “That’s racist.” The words 'Business People' are said in a moderately bad imitation of George Clooney's voice.

The United Airlines' film's version of the American Airlines check-in counter is a weird zoomed in picture of faces only. The airplanes are blurry and unrecognizable as being part of a competitor’s fleet. The Admiral Club door is not shown. The logo is not shown anywhere. The best line for us geeky Premier Executive 100,000 Mile Flyers is when Clooney is telling Natalie that certain benefits are reserved for people with Executive status, dubbing in a uniquely (and awkward) United Airlines term in place of the “Platinum” word.

Of course, my childish side enjoys all of the poor-quality voiceovers with the following approximations:

· Fuck you=Go off

· Think of me as a version of you with a vagina = Think of me as a version of you with _____

· Fuck off you fucking asshole = Bug off you unkind person

· You’re an asshole= Don’t be an ass

And plenty of others.

It makes me wonder what the passengers on American Airlines flights are hearing and seeing when they watch Up in the Air on their flights. It also makes me wonder what I’ve missed in all of the other films I’ve seen on airplanes: those that I’ve seen for the first time up in the air. Has my movie world really been censored and modified all along, so I’m only seeing a knockoff of the original without any of the racist, foul cleverness or mindboggling product placement?

Tired of this movie soundtrack. I’ve switched my headset to another channel. I see the movie continue to play on the screen ahead of me and the one across the aisle, and the one over my head. Instead I listen to the pilots talk to the air traffic controllers and hear that my pilot is instructed to contact Emerson, wherever that may be. A Sun Country Airlines pilot asks if he may increase altitude. A Delta pilot asks if she may increase altitude. The air traffic controller tells them both to wait eight minutes until the bumps smooth out. Continental and Southwest pilots report back on their moderate light chops.

It’s better to watch the film this way.