Why is watching violence more acceptable than nudity/sex?

[WildCat]

Small minority groups. Generally people get the TV and films they find acceptable to watch.

By and large, these are the same small minority groups complaining about sex.

 

[Mark6]

I think because the moralizers are idiots and there's somehow more personal involvement in pushing up, down, up, down, A, B, start, select and seeing a prostitute get murdered than just simply pushing play on a DVD player.

Also because a lot of people in US (and there is large overlap between two groups) think video games are harmful even without overt violence. "Rot your brain", etc.

 

[Modified]

You're wacthing FREE TV. You have to pay for sex.

You do realize you've typed this on the internet, right?

 

[Checkmite]

Sex does still carry some sort of stigma, while simultaneously being the thing lots of people obsess about. Go figure.

I don't think there's so much of a "stigma". Maybe there used to be, but not anymore. The so-called "puritanical" sex-is-evil mindset has merely evolved into a sex-is-private mindset. It's perfectly common to hear sex - all aspects of it - discussed on daytime television; even talk shows which use explicit medical terminology. For instance, I saw a medical talk show a while back that explained the causes and significance of the various colors of the labia, complete with a kinda-sorta "prop". But in our culture in general, the actual sex act is a personal, private kind of thing.

That's not to say there aren't still a number of people out there who have distinctly religious reasons for not wanting sex to be even discussed on television, but I think there are a lot fewer of them and they're getting way too much credit from people on this board.

 

[JFrankA]

I know, you never hear any complaints about Grand Theft Auto, for example, or other violent video games.

I see what you are saying, but I didn't say (nor do I think) that the complaints about violence were non-existent. However, from what I've experienced, and I admit, it's my own observance, I think there's far greater complaints about sex than there are about violence.

 

[RockNroll]

I've never really related to the "they complain about sex but not about violence" argument. In my experience, puritan types who whine about about sex also tend to whine about violence (unless it is featured in a movie about Jebus ).

Anyone remember the "video nasties" era in England?

 

[Bikewer]

It's my impression that most of the civilized world other than the US is pretty blase' about sex. Why it continues to be mostly taboo on regular broadcast TV in this country is an interesting comment on our society, I'd say.
Violence on TV is generally portrayed in terms of good vs. evil. Nasty people doing nasty things until the good people catch up with them and deliver justice.

With sex it's usually a mutual thing.... Except on crime dramas, where portrayal of kinkiness is perfectly OK as long as there's no actual copulation. Even "dramadies" like Bones have had fun with all sorts of kink, including "equine" play... But no actual naughtiness was depicted.
I watched the opening show of the new "Hawaii 5-O" last night, which in the first few minutes featured more carnage than your average war film...
Yet Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" got half the country's knickers in a twist.

Difficult to figure. Someone else posted the question of whether America is a Puritan country at heart. I fear it may be so.

 

[Captain.Sassy]

I agree with the OP and I've wondered about this myself.

I remember watching a network broadcast of 'Dumb and Dumber' a few years back. They left in the part where Jim Carrey rips out some guy's heart, but they edited out the part where he lifts up a girl's skirt and you can see her bum.

 

[Belz...]

Couldn't that be explained by watching violence in a movie being passive, while being violent in a video game is active?

More interactive. Watching sex is, um, also more interactive.

 

[Taarkin]

The answer is "because the bible depicts and endorses graphic violence".

I know, you never hear any complaints about Grand Theft Auto, for example, or other violent video games.

San Andreas was pulled from shelves only after a mod unlocked fully clothed sex scenes.

Violence on TV is generally portrayed in terms of good vs. evil. Nasty people doing nasty things until the good people catch up with them and deliver justice.

With sex it's usually a mutual thing....

Violence on TV is a morality play that teaches us it's ok to kill people who disagree with us, sex on TV is communist propaganda

 

[pgwenthold]

There is also an issue of degree. Where is the line for acceptable "sex" and acceptable "violence"? Just seeing a nipple is enough to get at least a few people in a tizzy, and cause a serious uproar. How is that sex? Meanwhile, would carrying a gun but not using it ever be construed as violence?

I think my position is that it's not just that sex isn't acceptable and violence is, but the degrees of what is acceptable/unacceptable sex or acceptable/unacceptable violence seems really off. In fact, it's not really sex vs violence, it is NUDITY and violence.

Heck, sex is mostly ok if there is no nudity.

 

[TragicMonkey]

And there are subtleties to the violence also. The more gore, the less acceptable. The more realistic, the less acceptable. Which leads to some strange things sometimes--gunfights with a pile of corpses but not a drop of blood being okay, but a slow and realistic death of a single person might not be. I think the key isn't the violence itself, it's the treatment of it--how upsetting it is to the audience. One overly realistic strangulation scene would be more offensive in its violence than a scene where someone kills a dozen vampires which explode into inoffensive dust.

 

[geni]

There is also an issue of degree. Where is the line for acceptable "sex" and acceptable "violence"? Just seeing a nipple is enough to get at least a few people in a tizzy, and cause a serious uproar. How is that sex? Meanwhile, would carrying a gun but not using it ever be construed as violence?

It's far less effort to draw lines in the sand with regards to sex than it is with violence. "Show may not contain nipples" is an easy line to draw and a difficult one to game. By comparision any line with regards to violence is going to be a lot loser which gives authors far more space to find loopholes which results in the levels of violence shown slowly increasing while the levels of sex related content remain the same.

 

[Beerina]

I can think of lots of possible explanations, but I'd be interested to see what other people think are the reasons for the difference.

E.g., last night in the space of one hour from 9pm to 10pm I watched on a national free to air TV station: a man being poisoned and dying of a heart attack; women being beaten; men being shot dead/executed; a man being choked to death. Yet if a free to air TV station had broadcast a programme which graphically featured men and women masturbating to orgasm in the same time slot, I imagine every single page of the Daily Mail could be filled with the letters from appalled people who 'don't want to see that kind of thing' on TV.

Why?

Good question. In 1990/91 I lived in the Netherlands. There, I saw Terminator 2, which had two interesting edits not in the US.

There are two places people are slammed, face-first, into a hard place: In the hallway when Arnie first makes his appearance, and a little bit later when they are fleeing in the parking garage.

In both cases, in the NL, the loud "crack" sound as the face hit was greatly muffled (or maybe that bit totally deleted, I can't recall.) In any case, I recall it being odd.


SO grossly violent things (I think the scene with the T 1000 slamming the heavy, hanging thing into Arnie's head repeatedly was also tampered with) are dampened.

But I also have seen full frontal nudity of women and men on state-run, broadcast TV there. On a Sunday afternoon.



But the Netherlands isn't perfect -- they did house the Pilgrim puritans prior to their journey to the New World on the Mayflower, which is why the US is so effed up with sexual hangups.

 

[bookitty]

I can think of lots of possible explanations, but I'd be interested to see what other people think are the reasons for the difference.

E.g., last night in the space of one hour from 9pm to 10pm I watched on a national free to air TV station: a man being poisoned and dying of a heart attack; women being beaten; men being shot dead/executed; a man being choked to death. Yet if a free to air TV station had broadcast a programme which graphically featured men and women masturbating to orgasm in the same time slot, I imagine every single page of the Daily Mail could be filled with the letters from appalled people who 'don't want to see that kind of thing' on TV.

Why?

I don't know why but I do know that it's been going on since before TV. Newspapers, novels, books - no matter how far back you go, it's easier to find descriptions of violence than descriptions of sex. A man can be stabbed on stage but the curtain closes over a consummation.

Of course, the counter to this is the pre-contact legends from non-European peoples which have very graphic descriptions of lusty gods and heroes.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

This is a Society of Death. Sex, being the cause of breeding and life, gets in the way of our Society's personal interests.

 

[caniswalensis]

This is why when I watch porn, I make sure that it is the most violent porn I can find. The wholesome violence dilutes the terrible evil of the sex.

 

[Pardalis]

I never understood that. I did a comic and the editor asked that I remove all the appearance of breasts, but the character getting shot in the head at the end that was fine and remained untouched.

 

[NotJesus]

This is why when I watch porn, I make sure that it is the most violent porn I can find. The wholesome violence dilutes the terrible evil of the sex.

This made me come laugh.

 

[Morrigan]

I know, you never hear any complaints about Grand Theft Auto, for example, or other violent video games.

Funny you should pick that as your sarcastic example, considering the biggest "issue" with GTA San Andreas was the Hot Coffee mod. Was it the possibility to murder citizens, go on a chainsaw rampage, steal property or commit all sorts of crimes that you can do in the game that caused controversy and made the game change rating to AO (Adults Only)? No, it was the discovery of a hidden, fully-clothed "sex scene".

So I'm afraid that citing GTA as example only furthers Ivor's point, not yours.