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Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

The sex-bad-violence-good meme confused me at least since I became aware of its existence aged about 14.

I was 16 when I got a letter published in a UK national newspaper on this topic, pointing out the absurdity that deliberate murder could be shown in a cartoon aimed specifically at young kids (i.e. BBFC rating Uc), but people “my own age”[1] couldn’t see pictures of uncensored sex even though we could legally[1] perform those acts.

I’m now in Berlin, where “Dildo King” is advertised on rotating billboards in the City Centre next to adverts for kid’s dentists and nobody bats an eyelid.

In the other direction, I also remember being shocked when I first visited the USA and seeing “to my dad” and “to my daughter” Valentine’s Day cards in the supermarket.

[1] My own age at the time being the age of consent in the UK: 16

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> The sex-bad-violence-good meme confused me at least since I became aware of its existence aged about 14.

It's even more confusing because hypersexualization is totally fine, as long as the areola et al. remain invisible and you don't use plain language to refer to sex.

Ah yes, the good old “Dildo King” ads always put a smile on my face and remind me that Germans (and Berliners even more) are not yet 100% sucked up into the US / SV stance on morality and censorship.

I noticed in Berlin startups that this is sorta changing. Seems the exported “culture of being offended” is slowly taking hold of, surprisingly, mostly younger people.

Surprisingly? I'd expect any cultural shift to take place among young people. Older people already have their culture.

I guess you’re right, just weird to see young people turn to a form of conservatism.

Rebelling against the rebels?

How apt. :-)

I think it's normal. We now live in a world were liberalism is being shoved down our throats at all levels (mass media, education, ...). Young people are rebels by nature, so now, young people are moving to the right, especially in Europe.

What I mean to say is that this is not the result of US puritanism moving to Europe. Instead, I think it's a natural, homegrown trend, unrelated to religious sentiments.

Left/right is a seating arrangement, literally as well as metaphorically.

Free-market/command-economy is different axis to dynamic/conservative is a different axis to populist/evidence-based is a different axis to moralist/libertarian.

If you just tried to transplant the UK’s Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, SNP or Green parties to the USA, they not only would be unelectable “socialists” for supporting the NHS, but also all support policies the USA considers unconstitutional (variously: ‘guns are bad’, ‘censor more’, ‘the Queen should disolve the government every so often’).

Likewise, the UK’s Labour Party is currently wobbling on the left side of the UK’s Overton Window, despite being a moderate centerist by the standards of several EU nations.

This seems to be the nature of things, we rebel against or parents, and mature and change, our children rebel against us, ...

I think American attitudes are prevailing in a lot of things, hence comments about cultural imperialism. Not surprising really, nor Americans not really noticing it - it's hard to notice the idiosyncrasies of the place that inculcated you. It takes an American or other outsider to notice the strange habits or ideas that shaped me in Britain, and vice versa.

Just by seeing those mostly US views everywhere online my kids and their friends have a more American view, whether that's in social mores or simply not being aware that EU or UK have better consumer protections or other differences. It's rather sad to see everywhere slowly homogenising.

I think sex is just different from violence. Violence is something quite pulic. Sex is not. It's intimate. Also ~violence, not day to day drive to harm or kill people, just ability to attack for defense, is almost a desired skill. If you don't do that you'll be stepped on. If not physically, emotionally. So displays of violence is almost pedagogical. Reminds me that, as a kid, Japanese animated show were censored heavily because it was fights with blood.. but the warriors were always defending (fist of the north star, saint seiya,...). There was no psychopathic desire for aggression there.

that's the most frustrating thing about being an european in a internet dominated by American "puritan" tech giants...

Linguistic and cultural imperialism are a thing. I don't know how to fight back. Those companies have a lot of money.

It's even harder for old-school Japanese norms. What used to pass as mildly titillating in Japan is XXX porn in the US. And some of what's shocking there is easily child porn in the US. That's even so for some German naturalist stuff, and that was never even intended to be shocking.

For example, one of my favorite Miike films ("Visitor Q") begins with sex between a guy and his teenage daughter, who has been working as a prostitute to earn pocket money. And there's some necrophilia too. But it's all in good fun, you know.

Is this the same Japan that blurs out genitals in porn films? Even in puritan America that doesn't happen.

Yep, it is.

So there's less censorship involving age or species, but pixilated genitalia. Go figure.

For example, in Miike's "Fudoh: The New Generation", there's a ~preteen assassin who uses a blow gun that's hidden in her vagina. There's one sequence where she's performing in a strip club, popping balloons (and hitting her target with a poisoned dart). And yes, the actress was 22 when the film was shot, but she looks a lot younger.

I heard the genitalia censorship is a western influence, but I haven't found a really solid source. This is from a Cracked article:

>Despite what the censored porn might imply, nudity has never been taboo in Japanese culture. Not only were women used to walking around topless, but what we call porn was just another common genre of books, like cooking or travel. Japanese porn, or shunga, was a traditional form of visual media that had no stigma attached to it. Most artists created it without violating any type of social code. They were just making pictures of people fuckin'.

>It was only in the 19th century, when Western morality came to Japan, that the Japanese government decided to crack down on such traditional practices as public nudity, in order to make the case to the West that Japan was totally a civilized country. By the time World War II rolled around, Japanese porn had gone from an everyday part of Japanese culture to a demonized art form that, as the Pulitzer-winning expert John W. Dower noted, now inexplicably valued idealized Western versions of beauty, like long legs and big tits.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19098_6-wtf-japanese-trends-y...

That was my understanding. Censorship got seriously going during the Meiji Restoration in 1868. And it got strengthened after Japan's surrender in WWII.

And it wasn't just sex that got censored. It became illegal to criticize the occupation government, object to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, complain about Japan's loss of the war, etc, etc.

As I understand it, that's what the 50s monster movies were about. The monsters were metaphors for the nuclear and firestorm attacks on civilian populations.

Those laws no longer exist. And so Miike gets into those issues in a few films. "Izo", for example, begins with an extended fast-motion contemplation of WWII, ending with the nuclear attacks. But "Izo" is more generally about the absurdity of nationalism, and how it's used by the powerful to control the masses. Indeed, it takes on all forms of authoritarianism, including religion.

But not all genitalia. For example, there's the Kanamara Matsuri ("Festival of the Steel Phallus").[0] And some anime includes extremely detailed genitalia.

0) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanamara_Matsuri

I just read a plot summary of Visitor Q… seems completely and utterly ridiculous. Who even comes up with such grotesque stuff?

>Who even comes up with such grotesque stuff?

An internationally-renowned and highly influential director.

Takashi Miike reminds me a lot (in various ways) of Luis Buñuel, David Cronenberg, Jean-Luc Godard, David Lynch, Sam Peckinpah, and Quentin Tarantino. And (yes) Akira Kurosawa.

His 2010 "13 Assassins" is a true classic of the samurai genre. Clearly "Seven Samurai" level.

My understanding is thst no one's actually saying 'sex bad', it's just that sex is a private endevour while violence is more universal.

The Church is definitely saying sex is bad, sex is a sin, must only be used for making children, not for pleasure, even in married couples.

It's insane.

Sex clearly isn't a sin unto itself because it's needed for making children, so it's not that. If this was it why wouldn't pornography of married couples be a-ok?

You missed the "not for pleasure" part.

No I didn't, by your logic breeding pornography of married couples should be ok.

Come on, that's ignorant. Nobody is saying that.

I went to a Catholic secondary school. Some people definitely were saying that.

I did, too, and never heard it. Maybe you're confusing the idea that you shouldn't have sex not for procreation (ie the stance against birth control) with the idea that sex is only for procreation? IOW the Catholic teaching is that procreation is a necessary but not sufficient reason for sex.

Plausible. It was about 20 years ago now.

If you mean the Catholic Church, that is incorrect. That teaching is that sex is good, sex is not a sin by itself, but must happen in the correct context of a mutually consenting married couple and must be ‘open to conception’ (i.e. no artificial changes to the procreative ‘mechanisms’, such as condoms or birth control.) They even teach ‘Natural Family Planning’, which is basically how to enjoy sex in rhythm with woman’s fertility cycle so as to ‘naturally’ avoid conception.

Not practicing Catholic anymore but that’s what I was taught from the Catechism et al several years ago as a convert.

In America maybe? I don't live in a violent society, you can spend decades not getting involved in violence but every spring there is sex in the air.

I live in Britain actually.

I think a lot of it's for the kids. Kids are naturally violent but shouldn't be having sex.

Kids shouldn’t really be violent, both in their childhood and throughout the rest of their lives.

Yeah but leave them alone and one will hit the other. You need adult supervision to stop it all going Lord of the Flies.

If you leave kids alone they also “play doctor”. What’s natural is a poor indicator for what’s a good idea (that said, it’s generally agreed that kids playing doctor is generally a healthy activity — the same is decidedly not true for hitting each other, or other forms of violence).

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