Sex and Violence in the Movies

[Skwim]

Funny innit?
I was watching a police drama a couple of days ago, Blue Bloods.
A cop was furthering the plot by discussing a dramatic twist with his girlfriend in bed. They had blanket up to the waist, but she also had the sheet wrapped around her boobs as though she didn't want her fiance to see them.
Yeah right.
I don't think a flash of boobage is going to scar the children for life.
Tom

More likely than not it would scar their parents. It's the older folk who get so upset about them, no doubt fostered by religious proscriptions against such things.



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[Skwim]

Treat all nudity as sexual and that's exactly what your children will pick up. Give it an air of the forbidden and it will always be titillating -- and something to be hidden. The net will always be full of porn and there will always be lad's magazines on the top row.

Thank god for the net. At least kids in households where sex is a verboten subject will learn that it can be quite fun.

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[Rival]

Is there a reason you seem so concerned with my interest? This isn't the first time you've made such a comment. It appears my posting about sex disturbs you.

If you aren't aware, RF here has a Private Community called Eros Room, which has been specifically set up to make post of a sexual nature.

Eros Photos

Eros Poetry

Eros Literature

Eros Jokes​

And, there's even an open sub-forum in The Social World category called Sexuality for posting about sexual issues. So obviously RF recognizes that sexual issues are a valid subject, yet you . . . . . you get a bit bent out of shape when I take RF up on its invitation to talk about such things. All of which makes me wonder why my occasional posts involving sex draw your attention. I haven't seen you raise questions when I make threads about North American Politics, OR when I make threads about Games/Pics/Jokes/Stories, OR about Evolution Vs. Creationism. Yet you apparently get hung up when I make an occasional post involving sex. Makes me wonder if your interest is in my posting about sex or sex and me.

Care to pull up a chair and tell us about it, Rival?

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You make a lot of posts specifically concerning this. And of course I know about those subfora.

I guess from a European perspective, American attitudes toward sex as a whole are just weird. It's like, wow so dicks go in vaginas, big deal. Yeah kids see and do it. So what.

Even I don't get the strange interest and I've been writing smut novels as a hobby since age 12.

 

[metis]

I'm much more concerned about the high level of violence, especially with young children. Their basic personalities are established usually by age three, and if violence is portrayed as being all fine & dandy, this is likely to have a lasting effect. Since the sex hormones haven't kicked in by that age, the kids can't relate to sex.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

Brings to mind one of the better exceptions among French movies, the delightful Amélie with Audrey Tautou, which snapped along at a very nice pace.

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Haven't yet seen that one...haven't watched very many movies in the last few years because of a severe and constant headache...but I think I remember seeing a review, seemed positive...

 

[Stevicus]

I'm much more concerned about the high level of violence, especially with young children. Their basic personalities are established usually by age three, and if violence is portrayed as being all fine & dandy, this is likely to have a lasting effect. Since the sex hormones haven't kicked in by that age, the kids can't relate to sex.

I agree, although I think even at a young age, kids are able to differentiate between real-life violence and "pretend" violence they see on TV. They see Wile E. Coyote flattened by a giant boulder, but in the very next scene, he appears alive and well as if nothing had happened. But the violence of their parents, siblings, and neighborhood peers would probably have a greater influence.

I remember growing up in a somewhat rough neighborhood. Not necessarily gangs or any major criminality, but just a lot of jerks going around thinking that hitting people is the way to resolve disputes. And if someone hit you and you didn't hit back, you're a wuss who deserves to get beaten up. You gotta toughen up and learn to fight, so you can flatten that kid the next time you see him. It's this mentality that pervades the overall culture. TV and movies might reflect that to some degree, but I was never convinced that it was as influential in a child's development as what they saw in real life.

 

[Skwim]

Haven't yet seen that one...haven't watched very many movies in the last few years because of a severe and constant headache...but I think I remember seeing a review, seemed positive...

It was given numerous awards and received five Academy Award nominations. If you get the chance . . . . . . . . .

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[Akivah]

Why? I suspect Christianity. Christianity seems more accepting of the necessity of war.

So engaging in sex, good. Talking about it bad.

Engaging in violence, bad. Talking about violence, fictional accounts of violence, all good.

Don't know if it is genetics or culture. Assuming culture, I blame Christianity.

Except that Christian countries don't rate sex the same way. In the US, films with strong sexual content are often restricted to older viewers, whereas in countries such as France and Germany, sexual content is viewed much more leniently. On the other hand, in Germany and Finland, films with violent content are restricted, whereas countries such as Australia offer more lenient ratings to violent movies.

 

[Skwim]

You make a lot of posts specifically concerning this. And of course I know about those subfora.

I guess from a European perspective, American attitudes toward sex as a whole are just weird.

Damn right they are, but not without reason.

It's like, wow so dicks go in vaginas, big deal. Yeah kids see and do it. So what.

Well, I don't believe kids should be doing it, mainly because they're not responsible enough. However, I would give an okay to those age 15+ who have a good handle on sexuality and contraception.

Even I don't get the strange interest and I've been writing smut novels as a hobby since age 12.

Thing is, you were probably lucky enough to have grown up in a society that doesn't repress sex and sexuality like the USA does. Over here bare boobs in public are a scandal, and showing genitals in a movie almost never happens. In some sex ed classes the only form of birth control that's allowed to be taught is abstinence. By in large people in America have been brought up to believe that sex and anything to do with it is "naughty." People just don't talk about such things or even admit they do them. Hence, many movies over here focus on violence and only hint at sex. It's all assbackwards.

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[Erebus]

I'm going to go with violence as the more concerning of the two, though I do have a few asterisks to add to that.

Firstly, violence is an unavoidable part of life and I feel that art and media in general can potentially be beneficial in enabling people to confront that reality. Children, ranging from those still in school to those old enough to draw a pension, are going to have to confront violence in some form eventually. If a film can in any way prepare them for it, then it's all good by me.

Now the reason I put it as more concerning is that violence can also be badly misrepresented for (what I consider to be) cynical purposes. There have been any number of propaganda films aimed at getting the young pumped up and ready to join their country's military for example. When fictionalised violence is used in that manner, that's when it becomes concerning to me.

 

[LukeS]

Breeding out violent traits is better than breeding out sexual traits.

 

[Polymath257]

I find American attitudes to nudity and sexuality to be absolutely insane.

Guess what? We were all born naked. If we are normal, healthy people, we will have sex at some point. Perhaps even frequently. And there is nothing at all wrong with that.

Violence, on the other hand, is just bad. Even when it is necessary, it is bad. Teaching kids that it is a good thing, or even something that should be done without a LOT of thought, it crazy.

I would much, much rather a child see a harmless boob (or even other parts) than to see someone get killed, even in fiction. I would much rather they see that people can have loving sex (even explicit) than to see explosions and guns as normal.

 

[Silverscale derg]

"When one of my children was younger, we went on an ill-advised excursion to a press screening of the first Transformers movie. No reviews were out yet, but I figured it was a movie in which cars turn into robots: what could go wrong?

Halfway through the film, the child had an urgent question. I shushed him. At the end of the movie, sitting among the critics and refined entertainment reporters, he asked again. I told him we could talk about it later. On the way home, in a crowded mass transit vehicle, he demanded the answer prompted by one tiny scene squeezed in between all the gear-grinding and jalopalooza: "What's masturbation?"

Thank you Michael Bay. [executive producer of the movie]

I probably should have known better than to take a kid to something that I knew would have so much weaponry, but I'm not alone. A new study on movie ratings has found that parents are much more worried about their children being exposed to sexual content than to violent content.

The Parents Ratings Advisory Study, which was commissioned by the Classification and Ratings Administration (CARA), found that more parents (80% of those surveyed) are concerned with their kids seeing graphic sex scenes than with graphic violence (64%). And while only 56% of them are worried about the depiction of realistic violence, a full 70% are distressed by full frontal shots of people au naturel.

To some, there's a disconnect here; violence is more harmful to people than sex. Parents universally hope their kids will never have to be violent or even experience violence. Sex, on the other hand, is a part of life that everybody wants their offspring to enjoy eventually. So why care so much more about depictions of sex than brutality?"
source
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Two questions:

Why is sex more of a worrisome subject than violence in movies?

And, what is your personal view on the two?​

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I don't like violence, I try to avoid it as much as a dragon can considering the bloodlust. I don't mind human on human violence quite as much but a big no no for me is dragon slaying, Movies misrepresent us, call us evil, call us monsters and have a "hero" (cough cough coward) who slays us peaceful creatures. Only one movie I have seen pulls it off very well and that movie is dragonheart, It wasn't a needless dragon killing and it was a story of sacrifice rather than a humans part mesuring contest.

Sex to me is gross. I don't care for it