Recently CBS ran a series of ads comprised of clips of the iconic holiday classic Frosty the Snowman mashed-up with the voices of two of the networks biggest current stars.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_mhXpVejt8
As you can see from the video, the dialogue coming out of Frosty's mouth is nothing like that of the original movie, but much more reflective of the characters personality's that Charlie Sheen and Neil Patrick Harris play on Two and a Half Men and How I Met Your Mother respectively. Not surprisingly many people found it very offensive to hear Frosty talking about his porn collection and suggesting that he and his friends visit a strip club later. I have mixed feelings about this. First off, I do find it pretty funny. My stance on censorship is generally the less of it the better, so naturally my reaction was that if people don't want to see this kind of content or let their kids be exposed to it then shut off the television. After ruminating on it a bit though I have regressed from this stance a bit. This is after all a Christmas and cartoon classic that has been corrupted in the ads' own words, in an "inappropriate"way. Children watching that won't understand the context and will miss the purity of Frosty the Snowman that I enjoyed as a child. I do find that kind of unfair for them. Another noteworthy aspect is that the lines Frosty spoke were all genuine pieces of dialogue from the actual shows. They didn't contain anything new or push the obscenity than other CBS shows clearly already do. I think in the end, people are just mad and turned off by seeing something as pure as Frosty the Snowman and the holiday special shock them like that. Notice that at the end of the ads CBS insists that "Some holiday classics are better left untouched." Maybe they should have taken their own advice.
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