c. 1999 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Roll over, Arnold. Put a sock in it, Bruce.

There’s a new video sheriff in town to clean up offensive language in popular action films and television shows.

You’ve heard of Must-See TV. Now there is Curse Free TV, a product that came on the market last month that aims to let viewers take God out of the profane world of Hollywood and leave the divine references in the televised Sunday Mass or Billy Graham special.

The little black box that separates the sacred from the profane and seeks to apply electronic soap to popular videos and TV shows was one of the hottest new products at the recent Christian Booksellers Association convention in Orlando, Fla., the main trade show for the evangelical marketplace. It joins a host of other entrepreneurial products aimed at the evangelical market and parents seeking to sanitize media from computers to movies.

Retailers huddled around demonstration tapes as Schwarzenegger’s voice was muted out and the unprofane phrase”Oh man”appeared on the screen to express his character’s surprise.

The product, still untested by independent research, promises to put language appropriate for 5-year-olds back into”Kindergarten Cop,”allow children to listen to”Home Alone”alone and remove all 58 instances of offensive language in the movie”Volcano.” Talk about unsettling. Chris Tucker was speaking to Jackie Chan in”Rush Hour”in complete sentences without obscenities. The dialogue printed on the screen _”I cannot believe this”and”What did you just say?”_ actually was more intelligible without the curse words mingled haphazardly throughout.

This is not a V-Chip that blocks out objectionable programming. Curse Free TV is designed to expand the entertainment options of viewers concerned about objectionable language.

The product reads the closed captioning for the hearing impaired required by the FCC of nearly all new shows and films, and intercepts more than 100 objectionable phrases as selected by a panel of clergy before they hit the screen, according to Randy Gorman, spokesman for the New Orleans-based Curse Free TV company.

Viewers can either have the objectionable language muted out, or allow the computer to print alternative phrases on the screen. The product also has a setting to allow references to God to come though unfiltered for a Veggie Tales video or religious broadcast.

The product is not foolproof. It does not work with live programming and what you see _ whether it is nudity or gunplay _ is still what you get.

The company’s own promotional materials say its tests show about a 95 percent accuracy rate in filtering out offensive language. Gorman said that should improve as closed captioning becomes more sophisticated, and there are fewer spelling errors that can cause words to pass by unfiltered.

What the product offers, says the Rev. Jonas Robertson, company president, is a way for Christian families to watch PG and PG-13 videos without worrying about the profanity Hollywood adds in to avoid a commercially dreaded G rating.

Robertson, pastor of the Church of Abundant Life in New Orleans, said he, like other religious parents, has kicked the television out of his home in frustration.”I’ve been through it, brother,”he said.”Now, God has given us an alternative.” Curse Free TV went on the market in June. Gorman would not release any sales figures, but said the company is distributing it in Christian bookstores and on the Internet. The suggested retail price is $199.95.

There are times when watching Curse Free TV can seem a bit disorienting. Because they do not want to use words like dumb or jerk or stupid and avoid even neutral references to the posterior, the alternative language doesn’t always make sense.

So a dog preparing for a painful part of a physical exam tells Eddie Murphy in”Dr. Doolittle”to pass along to the vet that”my toe is great.”And Tucker says about Chan in”Rush Hour”:”I’ll drop his toe off at Panda Express.” For the most part, however, what is striking in watching a demonstration of Curse Free TV is how gratuitous most profane and obscene references are in feature films. An action film without a profanity is more often like a CD without a record player, or a surgeon preparing for an operation without a couple of drinks.

For example, substituting the words”go away”for”up yours”in the movie”Independence Day”does not distort the meaning, Robertson said. However, Robertson said, the device’s most important feature is in protecting religious ears from hearing God’s name taken in vain.

If it only removed blasphemous references to the name Jesus Christ, Robertson said, Curse Free TV”would be worth its money in gold.” Eds: Further information is available by calling 1-877-662-8773 or on the Web at http://www.cursefree.com)

DEA END RNS