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Comment by prirun | Hacker News Reader

I have never understood why nudity and consensual sex - basically harmless activities - are deeply frowned on by the ratings groups, yet stabbing someone in the throat and having their blood gush out everywhere is fine and dandy.

Everyone knows that men have dicks. Why is seeing one such a big deal? Or a butt for that matter: everybody has one! It's no wonder our society is screwed up when it comes to our bodies. We learn shame for them at a very early age.

Most movies and shows have become so violent that I don't even look for new stuff anymore. If I want to waste some time at the TV I just go watch a Star Trek rerun rather than spending 45 minutes trying to find something to watch, then finding out it's gory and turning it off.

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Sex and associated shame are used for social control by most major religions. Violence, on the other hand, is used for competition with other societies so it's "good" when people are inoculated against it. It's not about human wellbeing. It's about human resource efficiency.

There is even the effect imo that it creates a gap in development. You never learn the different modes of nudity and that it can be more than sexual. Because what is implied as well, is that a nude body surely MUST mean sex. Which is a gross simplification. The amount of folks who equate nudity with porn is staggering (and unhealthy, as the article reasons as well)

There are some pretty good articles and videos about the subject; some random points:

Puritans, who believed that sex was sinful and suffering was noble.

The likelihood of something happening in real life. Most people will live their whole life without getting into a violent situation, which keeps it a fictional one, but almost all will be confronted with a sexual one. Violence in media will not beget violence in real life, generally speaking (if it did, given how much violence there is in video games and movies, we'd have a Problem), but sex in media will normalize it. Or that's the theory anyway.

Another one: Sex is always happy, a happy relationship, people looking pleased with themselves after the saxophone-music-pan-out smoking a cigarette (to invoke the 80's trope). Violence is almost always bad, the hero in agony, the bad guy coming to a gruesome end (falling off Nakatomi Plaza, into helicopter blades or a jet turbine, getting roundhouse kicked into defeat, etc), etc. It's a punishment, whereas sex in a film is depicted as a reward. Generally speaking.

Try some European stuff? These are all excellent and non-violent: - Normal People - Call my agent (Dix pour cent) - Fleabag

Fleabag was fantastic, highly recommended.

Fleabag was brilliant but the first season was a very difficult watch towards the end.

I would recommend it to anyone but don't think it's just a laugh.

Funny, Normal People comes out of Ireland, historically a very sexually repressed nation under the thumb of the Catholic Church. Times are changing rapidly in Ireland though.

My favorite Netflix show set in Paris is "The Eddy".

are deeply frowned on by the ratings groups, yet stabbing someone in the throat and having their blood gush out everywhere is fine and dandy.

I'm trying to think of a movie where so graphically murdering a real human with a real weapon wouldn't get a frown and an R from the MPAA like nudity would.

Kind of ironically, though, one way to dodge harsher ratings for violence is to kill non-humans (like aliens) with made up weapons (like phasers) and show no gore while doing it. Everyone has viscera, after all (I assume, maybe some aliens in the Star Trek universe don't); is seeing it such a big deal?

Most movies and shows have become so violent that I don't even look for new stuff anymore.

There are a lot of new movies and shows out there (including new Star Trek shows), especially considering how there are so many platforms distributing new content. I'd venture to say most of them are at the violence level of Star Trek or below. It's totally fine if you want to rewatch the same stuff because you know you like it, but to write off decades of new media like you have, without even seeing it, is kinda lazy.

> I'd venture to say most of them are at the violence level of Star Trek or below

You mean the new Star Trek, right? Because the new Star Trek is much more violent than the old, TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT shows. Not just overtly violent, but also psychologically violent. It's disgusting, frankly. And the difference is, while I'd happily show my kid the old Star Trek when they hit 7-10, there's no way in hell I would let them anywhere near close Picard/Discovery at that age.

I used to think the same about gun play, and still do. But I realized what the driver is, having kids.

No one wants to watch people getting it on with their eleven-year-old. An adult rating makes an easy warning.

That's my point: why is it okay to watch people getting killed with your 11 year old, but not okay to watch people naked? I'm not talking about a porn scene of course.

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