you know, i’m not the first person to say this, but isn’t it odd that in mainstream movies we can watch people being dismembered by gunfire but we can’t watch naked people kissing?
i’m flying to san francisco and i was just walking around looking at the movies being shown on the in-flight video monitors. in one movie i saw someone being attacked with an axe, in another movie a man was lying in a pit filled with decomposing bodies, and another movie involved a fight scene wherein hundreds of people were brutally killed by automatic weapon-fire. i’m not particularly troubled by violent cinema, because i recognize that it’s fiction. and i think that most adults are more than capable of making the distinction between fiction and reality. but if people aren’t offended by the cinematic depiction of human beings being slaughtered, then what does it say about us that people are offended by the cinematic depiction of people naked and/or having sex?
it’s very bizarre. the christian right and the moral arbiters of our country don’t seem to mind when people on tv or in movies are shown killing each other, but nothing seems to offend the religious right more than people on tv or in movies being naked or having sex.
if continental airlines were to suddenly start showing movies wherein people had graphic, consensual sex it’s safe to say that the religious right would levy a boycott against continental airlines.
but i’ve just seen a bunch of movies on this airline wherein people were getting butchered, and i don’t hear a peep from the religious right.
isn’t that just odd? that the religious right doesn’t seem to be troubled by the cinematic depiction of barbaric murder, but that they are deeply troubled by the cinematic depiction of people consensually procreating?
personally i’d rather watch people consensually having sex with each other than blowing each others brains out, but maybe i’m some sort of social deviant. it’s been said a million times before, but why can the networks show people being slaughtered by gunfire but they can’t show pubic hair, a womans nipples, or genitalia? last time that i checked, the majority of us have pubic hair, nipples, and genitalia.
we see them all the time in the shower. in bed. at the aquarium…(hahaha, just acknowledging the comedic genius of troy mcclure).
so in closing, why can’t they show fictional husbands and wives naked on tv? why is it that a tv show wherein the husband wants to tie his clothed wife to a chair and shoot her with a gun is deemed ok by the religious right and by the censors, but if the same tv husband and wife were to sit naked on the chair and kiss each other then the religious right and the censors would be outraged and incensed and start boycotting something? it seems strangely inconsistent.
-moby
p.s-as if to prove the point, i’m watching ‘the royal tenenbaums’ on the inflight monitor and the censors have digitally covered up the scene wherein margo tannenbaum romantically kisses another woman. but on the next channel they’re playing ‘behind enemy lines’ and they just had a scene where at least 30 people died gruesome deaths from automatic weapon fire. strange world, huh. a romantic kiss gets blacked out so as to not offend anyone, but people dying from automatic weapon fire is shown in all of its entirety and with the knowledge that no one will be offended. a romantic kiss is considered offensive and people being torn apart by automatic gunfire is not offensive?
ask yourself this question: what would you think if you had a friend who was entertained by human suffering but was offended by nudity and physical intimacy? you would rightly think that they were a fucking lunatic and you would probably stop being their friend. so what about our culture, where we’re entertained by human suffering and offended by nudity and physical intimacy? are we, collectively, a bunch of fucking lunatics?
it’s really odd.