Why is watching violence more acceptable than nudity/sex?

[JJM 777]

By the way, there is a commercial interest in not showing much high-quality sex on free-to-air television channels. It is a hugely profitable business to sell the videos etc, sending them for free would not be economically optimal.

 

[JJM 777]

Oh, that would be unfortunate, though. There's gotta remain some excitement in nudity

This is why I have a very low opinion about nudism. Those nerds want nudity to feel 100% neutral. Don't they know how great it feels for guys to drool over the voluptuous forms of a hot chick?

 

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

In defense of violence shown on TV, movies, video games, etc., though-

It is fake, no one got hurt in the making of it, it's intended to be a fantasy and about 99 percent of the viewers know that. People of healthy minds- teenagers and adults- can tell the difference between fiction and reality.

Very few, if any, people are likely to commit actual acts of violence because they see graphic depictions of it in the media. Well, just because of that- if they do, it's because they were pretty sick to begin with.

One can argue that graphic images in the media are a sign of a society that doesn't value human life. Or that the wrong person can get the wrong idea from it. Or that, even if someone doesn't commit a real act of violence, it's still immoral and wrong that he (it's usually a he) is enjoying this crap and getting pleasure from this fantasy. Or that it can be damaging for children too young for that kind of material to see. Certainly I'd never let any child of mine watch that stuff.

Nevertheless.

Film buffs see a lot of Bruce Lee and Sam Peckinpah movies but the homicide rate among film buffs, I would venture to suppose, is probably fairly low.

People who love the Kill Bill movies and James Bond flicks aren't sitting in jail- they are usually sitting around in their mothers' basements in their underwear and popping their pimples. The only harm these teenage geeks are capable of committing is upon their best friend's potato chip bag stash.

If everyone who saw The Passion of the Christ was inspired to commit an ultra bloody prolonged execution because of it, there would be no one left in America.

Plenty of young white suburbanites listen to gangsta rap. None of them are actual "gangstas" or ever will be.

The Sopranos is fairly graphic, as are Rome and True Blood, but HBO viewers tend to be white bread mild mannered vegetarian yuppies who hardly ever get excited (let alone violent) about anything besides the cheese prices at Whole Foods.

Practically every teenage boy in the world plays violent video games and very few of them shoot any of their classmates. If Doom made someone shoot up their school, it didn't. The real problem was, oh, you know, that they were COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY CRAZY!

Graphic images don't kill people. People kill people. Crazy people in particular.

 

[Belz...]

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?

Well, WildCat's post illustrates the OP perfectly; it just doesn't answer it.

 

[Belz...]

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

Careful, now... I'm sure there's much unacceptability in watching, too, in the eyes of many.

 

[Belz...]

In defense of violence shown on TV, movies, video games, etc., though-

It is fake, no one got hurt in the making of it, it's intended to be a fantasy and about 99 percent of the viewers know that. People of healthy minds- teenagers and adults- can tell the difference between fiction and reality.

...while video sex is real. I can relate to that argument.

But not in video games, however. The sex isn't real in there, either, and it's still less accepted.

 

[arthwollipot]

I devised a new drinking game.

While watching Rome, take a drink for every cock.

You're already three drinks down when the credits finish!

 

[JFrankA]

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.

That's a good question. Personally, I don't give a fig if the President cheating. Not my business. But the question is something I would love to pose to a few friends of mine, if that's okay with you, and see what the results are...

 

[Bikewer]

When asked about violence in the media, I always point out that humans have been capable of the most atrocious violence long before there was any "media" whatever.

WWII was already at it's bloody end before television began to be popular.

 

[Morrigan]

Nonsense. We all know Hitler did what he did because he played too much Wolfenstein and Call of Duty!

 

[jimtron]

By the way, there is a commercial interest in not showing much high-quality sex on free-to-air television channels. It is a hugely profitable business to sell the videos etc, sending them for free would not be economically optimal.

Kind of reminds me of prostitution vs porn--the latter is generally legal in the U.S., and results in a product that's mass marketed.

 

[Dorian Gray]

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

I'd hope the "with my mother" part would be the most important softening agent.

 

[JFrankA]

Another part of this double standard is that a violent person could be the big saving hero or the horrible villain in Hollywood's eyes. Clearly, there are examples of both. However, I am racking my brain trying to think of a movie in which the person who is extremely sexual, (e.g. a prostitute, a "boy/girl crazy" best friend, etc) is the big saving hero. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the movies that do have someone who is very sexual is either the villain, or someone who needs to be "redeemed" or something like that. I have never seen a sexual hero. (Well, except for porn of course, but that's not what I'm referring to. )

 

[Beerina]

Wiki has a history of toplessness in various cultures around the world, which is probably not safe for work.

...ironically, shaming the US.

 

[Beerina]

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.

And yet we cheerfully take our early teen kids to Spielberg's AI. There's a scene where the robot boy takes a metal pole to the head of a robot clone of himself, smashing it open. It would do those two scenes in Terminator 2 proud.

My 14 year old daughter flinched horribly during that unexpected bit.

But better not show a tit or it's way worse! The US has some seriously diseased ideas of propriety.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Another part of this double standard is that a violent person could be the big saving hero or the horrible villain in Hollywood's eyes. Clearly, there are examples of both. However, I am racking my brain trying to think of a movie in which the person who is extremely sexual, (e.g. a prostitute, a "boy/girl crazy" best friend, etc) is the big saving hero. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the movies that do have someone who is very sexual is either the villain, or someone who needs to be "redeemed" or something like that. I have never seen a sexual hero. (Well, except for porn of course, but that's not what I'm referring to. )

James Bond, although he's also violent as well as being a notorious sex addict. Perhaps he's excused the sluttiness because he kills so many people?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

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.

This actually reminds me of something even more bizarre: the Oblivion re-rating.

For whoever missed that game, it was a game not just involving violence, but which had mutilated or rotting corpses almost everywhere, from littering floors to hanging from chains to cages to impaled to, well, you name it. If there was some way to decorate a room or cave with a corpse, some Oblivion map designer probably already did it.

And one quest line has you stumble upon some people who just hung your former quest-giver upside down and gutted him like sardine. No, really, they actually hollowed out the abdomen and chest. And they describe it to you.

And that was, of course, perfectly ok for a teen rating.

But someone creates some topless armour mod and it turns out that the Bethesda textures actually have nipples. Just to clarify: there was no way in the non-modded game to actually see those, because every armour included covered that part, and if you removed armour completely you'd automatically get an ugly bra. But a part of the texture that was never meant to be seen had NIPPLES.

And that was such an outrage that Bethesda had to agree to re-rate the game to mature.

 

[arthwollipot]

There's also an explicit X-rated (NVE) mod, in case you're that way inclined...

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

There are all sorts of mods for games, and at least Bethesda's always had a race to the bottom with "enhanced female body" mods. But mods weren't the issue, as even douchebags like Jack Thompson can't really get many people worked up against company X for what a group of modders unaffiliated with company X did. The issue was simply that Bethesda's own textures had nipples. Again, which weren't even visible without a mod anyway. But they had included a texture with nipples in the game's .esm archives. Oh, the horror!

But at the same time the excessive gore was A-OK for a teen rating, which means 13 years old is ok.

 

[Anerystos]

"God invented sex as a joke.

It was only when people started taking it seriously that he made it a sin."

(OK, there's an assumption in this about religion. But WTF, it's a joke)