Why is watching violence more acceptable than nudity/sex?

[Fnord]

It seems that there are many more instances in the Bible of God ordering the deaths of those who opposed Him, and since those deaths were carried out in a violent way, then images of violent death are okay.

How many times did God tell two people -- I mean, between "Be fruitful and multiply" and the Annunciation of Mary -- to have sex? Not often ... thus sex is not okay.

Stupid Puritans.

 

[Ferguson]

I've got a friend who wouldn't let her daughter watch the second Matrix movie (whatever the hell it was called) not because of the violence, but because of the (single) sex scene.

I never understood that.

In her defense, it is Keanu Reeves. I can't even bring myself to watch that scene.

 

[arthwollipot]

In her defense, it is Keanu Reeves. I can't even bring myself to watch that scene.

You may have a point there.

But then again, it is Carrie-Anne Moss...

 

[Newtons Bit]

Why is watching violence more acceptable than nudity/sex?

Because I don't pop wood while watching a violent TV show with my mother.

 

[Damien Evans]

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?

Because of the children.

 

[uruk]

American TV broadcasters try to please or satisfy the largest common denominator. They try to offend the least amount of the consumer demographic.
If a tv show offends people who have disposable income, advertisers are reluctant to buy advertising time during that show. The TV show no longer becomes profitable for the broadcaster who either cancels the show or forces the producers to alter the content.

The Middle American public has a strong christian based strain running through it. For some reason most christians (especially those who's church going beliefs are based on or fragmented from the catholic church) have a big hang up with sex. The catholics are down right obsessive about it. They have preoccupation with the mother of christ being a virgin born of another virgin and being "unspoiled" and virginal throughout her life right up to her ascension into heaven. They also have the idea that original sin was sex or sex related.

There is also the Middle-Eastern cutural hangup about sex. (christianity being an off shoot of judaisim which is a religion which formed from in the Middle East and that cutural base.)

This Middle-Eastern hangup about sex usually has to do with the preservation of the male ego or male honor. Sex (and thus nudity) is very private and hidden in that culture.
A publicly naked man is a man behaiving dishonorably. A woman is a man's mother, wife or daughter who, if behaiving dishonorably, must be punished severly in order to preserve that male honor. In fact the woman has to be coverd from head to foot without showing any flesh at all.

Of course these cultures are not without thier share of hipocracy concerning sex and nudity. It's just usually hidden.

Violence is another issue altogether. Violence is ok because the religious doctrine really says very little concerning violence other than don't murder and (hypocritcally)god going around killing multitudes of people.
Struggle, sacrifie and pain is something honorable when achieving a goal. Violence is reveared to a certain degree. We won our independance from Brittain via violence.

Which sounds more honorable and glorious? We won our independance by fighting and killing and defeating the Brittish. Or our founding fathers attained our independance via inviting the Brittish military over for a "spot of tea and a bit of shagging".

"Hey guvna' wanna have a go with ole' Frankin here"
"Blighmey! Wots the goin' rate these days?"
"Oh, nothin' too dear guvna, just our little ole' independance."
"Alright! let's get this done then!"

 

[uruk]

Because I don't pop wood while watching a violent TV show with my mother.

Violence is something to be shared with a loved one. Sex and nudity on the other hand......

I had no problem watching a sex scene in a movie with my mom. My mother (a devout catholic) had no problem with it either just as long as it was necessary to the story.

Now I would have a problem with watching a porno with my mom. Porno is meant to arouse, sex in a movie as part of the story is not.

I am very secure with my oedipal tendancies. Thank you very much Mr. Freud!

 

[uruk]

Because of the children.

WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Well, if it wasn't for sex, there would be no children.

Personally, I would use the Janet Jackson incident as a learning oppurtunity. See that kids? Heavy nipple jewelry makes the boobs sag faster.

 

[uruk]

I think we are all capable of an emotional disconnect regarding violence which we are not regarding sex. Sit down for a minute and try the experiment of imagining a violent scene and a graphic sex scene. Notice any difference in your emotional response?

I think this has more to do with de-sensitizing. In our culture you, as a child, are more exposed to violence than sex. My first exposure to violence was Warner Brothers cartoon. Exagerated cartoon violence. My first expose to movie violence was not quite so fun. I was watching Death Race 2000 (the original version with David Carradine) with may parents and I got upset by the portrayal of violent death, but may parents calmed me down by explaining that it was not real. Movie violence never affected me as much afterward untill I got to the point where it has very little effect other than "cool, his head fell off".

I'm sat at a PC watching the rain fall. I imagine a movie in which one guy shoots half a dozen people. I feel nothing.
I imagine a sex scene in the same movie. I feel several things.
And I'm 55 and not even watching the movie.

Sex has a physiological effect. Sex is a biological function where as violence is not so much. But there can also be de-sensitization to nudity. Think about the primitive cultures that are in the South American rain forests. These people walk around nude all day long. Nudity does not have the same effect on those people as it does in our culture. (also think nudist colonies)

We can distance ourselves from violence when we know it's fake. (Either innately or through habituation I don't know. I do know I recall seeing John Wayne gun down Red Indians when I was six and I didn't get upset by it then either). It surely didn't get me hot and bothered at fourteen. Jane Fonda in Barbarella did.

Again this is due to the amount of exposure and de-sensitizing. I doubt you would be as bothered by Barbarella if you were raised in a nudist colony.

We cannot distance ourselves from "pretend" sex in the same way we can from "pretend" violence. Our physiological response to pretend sex is more or less the same as our response to real sex. Anyone who has ever been involved in real violence will agree that is absolutely not so in the case of real violence as opposed to pretend violence.

I think people who are trumatized by real violence would not be as confortable around fake violence. I remember reading articles about WWII veterans leaving "Saving Private Ryan" during the opening D-Day scene because the depiction overwhelmed them.

None of the above justifies the double standard of which the OP complains, but I suspect it is closely tied to the explanation.

 

[Piscivore]

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.

This. My wife just got done watching Nip/Tuck all the way through. Even I was starting to feel it was a ludicrous amount of sex. I think literally everybody porked everyone else on that show at some point- graphically.

As for violence- traditionally. the way violence has been portrayed in the movies and on television since the very beginning is as a totally justified response to "evil" or "badness". There have been a few exceptional movies that explore the actual complexities of real violence, but to put butts in seats there is hardly an emotion with as much power that is as easy to tap into and exploit than self-righeousness. Almost everybody feels put upon by somone else, as some point.

 

[Morrigan]

Is this it then?
NSFW - gta_mod

Still far more graphic than the violence, yes?

I don't know if it's "it" since as far as I know the game data only had fully clothed people, but to call this more "graphic" than the possibility to mass-murder citizens and commit other crimes is so ludicrous, I don't know whether I should laugh or just shake my head. Dry-humping is worse than murder? Really?

 

[Taarkin]

Is this it then?
NSFW - gta_mod

Yeah I think so.

Still far more graphic than the violence, yes?

If you define characters mimicking sex acts to be more graphic than characters performing violent acts, then yes it is more graphic. But that would be a silly way to define "more graphic" and you would be a silly person to do such a thing. Stop being a silly person! This is a serious thread about butts and nipples.

 

[fuelair]

btw, there has been nudity on US broadcast TV, though admittedly rare. In 1980 the mini-series Shogun had nudity.

I seem to remember quite a bit of nudity in a mini-series about Paul Gauguin in that era also... can't remember the name though.

Elizabeth R, I, Claudius, Steambath, S. Holmes/Mystery, Rumpole, and more on PBS. Benny Hill (Aussie show/s), Dave Allen network..... Heyday of this was '73 - ca.'85. As this was pre-vcr, I used S8mm and 35mm to preserve. Now some is on DVD from those days.

 

[NotJesus]

Elizabeth R, I, Claudius, Steambath, S. Holmes/Mystery, Rumpole, and more on PBS. Benny Hill (Aussie show/s), Dave Allen network..... Heyday of this was '73 - ca.'85. As this was pre-vcr, I used S8mm and 35mm to preserve. Now some is on DVD from those days.

Rumpole nude? Glad I missed that one.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Rumpole nude? Glad I missed that one.

It was the artist's wife/model in the case who was topless while being painted. The artist later died that night, and she was charged with it.

Rumpole got her off, of course.

 

[fuelair]

Rumpole nude? Glad I missed that one.

Actually an artist's wife posing nude for him. Also the Holmes and a Wimsey/Vane had the nudity as artist's model. The good news is that none were even slightly/remotely necessary to the plot!!!

 

[NotJesus]

It was the artist's wife/model in the case who was topless while being painted. The artist later died that night, and she was charged with it.

Rumpole got her off, of course.

Yes, but how did the case turn out?

 

[jimtron]

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.

OK, this is a perfect example in my view of the insane hypocrisy. Why is the former more objectionable than the latter? Some thoughts off the top of my head:

• young men and women can't be too against violence if they're going to join the military...so it's not in the national interest to encourage pacifism
• sports get pretty violent (hockey, football...) and in that case violence is thought of as being macho/strong/winning

On the other hand, sex is something to be ashamed of, and generally not talked about...it's like using the toilet, we all do it but it's shameful and secret.

 

[elgarak]

I just realized that the question is wrong: It's not the watching. It's the SHOWING that's deemed unacceptable.

On DVD, in the USA, one can get and watch pretty much any content possible. The limitation are brought in by showing on TV or in the theater. To understand that, one has to understand how the entities doing the showing make money. For instance, network TV does not make money from us viewers. It makes money by promising a certain viewership, and selling those promised viewers to advertisers. That works best when you show content that's acceptable by everyone, including minorities, and does not have the danger of backlash against the advertisers. PBS got away with more since they do not sell ads -- they live by money coming directly from viewers, not from advertisers.

High budget feature films shown in the theaters are similar: Once they have reached a certain budget, the movies have to attract pretty much ALL the regular movie-going public in order to get profitable. Hence the attraction of PG13 rated movies, which are the sweet spot to get the broadest possible audience.

 

[Travis]

I once asked a very conservative woman if she'd rather have a president that was cheating on their spouse or had actually murdered someone. She chose the murderer because he/she might have had a good reason for it while she seem to be repulsed that anyone, including the President and his/her actual spouse, would have sex in the White House.