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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if the answer isn't more mundane, money. Parents today seem to have no problem with their children seeing a movie where people are eviscerated on screen but won't let their kids see movies with sex in them. I found it funny that "Bridgerton", and "Game of Thrones" both produced with more sex, have been quite popular.

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Putting aside parenting choices, the two types of images (sex and violence) are not equivalent.

Sexual images produce a physiological response... you get horny.

Violent images don’t really do much, maybe revulsion. But, other than that, not much at all.

A picture of a bullet-ridden corpse will not make you want to shoot people.

A picture of a naked chick having sex, on the other hand, will elicit a desire to have sex.

Apples and oranges.

To be sure, there are many who blame the ‘violence in video games’ and the like as the cause of crime. Those people are idiots... getting a good headshot in Counter-Strike gives you the exact same kind of thrill as making a basket or a hole in one ... nobody says, “Hell yeah! Now I want to kill someone!”

But, watching porn? That’s exactly what it does... the imagery itself makes you go “Hell yeah! Now I want to fuck someone!” (Which, to most porn watchers, means fucking their hand.)

The important difference between violence and nudity on film is that the violence is completely fake, while the nudity is actually real.

Citation strongly needed.

If anything, a bullet-riddled corpse should evoke sadness, not the desire to shoot more bullets into it or other things.

Maybe you meant that watching one character inflict violence on another triggers audience feelings of aggression or fear, depending on which character we empathize with. What we watch undoubtedly causes all manner of emotions: horniness, elation, shame, fear, revulsion, pride, etc.

You have overlooked that some people can get an arousal from violence. Perhaps not a large enough part of the population to worry about.

I don't think it's just the parents. I think Hollywood relies on an export market. They don't want any country blocking a film from being shown to teens, in the theatres. Teens have the largest disposable incomes, of any market segment, especially when it comes to watching movies. Comical violence is an easy sell. If you add anything sexual, there is the risk of it being censored.

Game of Thrones has plenty of nudity, including full frontal (ermagerd!). But it doesn't have a whole lot of sex that you'd call erotic, as opposed to just being violent rape, carefully catalogued here:

https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Rape

It's telling that the closest thing to a loving, normal relationship seems to be the incestuous brother-sister saga of Cersei and Jaime.

The paying audience for blockbusters is now global - and many movies earn more outside the U.S. than in it. As such, movie makers are probably now paying more attention to what is considered appropriate versus obscene elsewhere.

Or just aiming for the lowest common denominator - and taking out anything that might be controversial in any of their global markets. (Take out sexuality for the American market, and take out politics for China).

A $100m+ budget doesn’t have room for risks.

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