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Comment by jraph | Hacker News Reader

Maybe another solution would be to encourage discussions before or after seeing movies about the stuff that hurts the current sensitivities.

Or, if the stuff we would like to edit is actually very annoying, have an edited version but keep the original.

I've been certainly annoyed by edits to songs and music videos. Yesterday I watched the video clip of Stan by Eminem. The copious editing of swear words, of mentions of violence and of screams at the end of the video makes the song annoying to listen to and a big part of the meaning is lost, the edited version is hard to understand. It's very annoying. Fortunately, I know the uncensored version. I understand that stuff related to violence can trigger traumas, but swear words are part of the music and are not actually offending, for fuck sake.

"Fucked up" just means "messed up", but more strongly said. I see no reason to censor that.

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What has been lost, in the UK at least, is the concept of a watershed.

Previously violence, nudity, and profanity would only end up on screen / radio after a certain time (9pm iirc).

In an on demand world, we're now expected (rightly or wrongly*) to make that decision for ourselves at the point of consumption. Couple that with platforms that make only hand wavy efforts to actually validate the age of consumers, and you have ubiquitous access to potentially inappropriate material.

Granted, the (seemingly) puritan basis of the large American streaming services means we won't be seeing sex and nudity on these platforms, but my goodness, as an adult, some of the gratuitous violence in even 15 rated content nowadays surprises me. Take everything everywhere and the gratuitous bloody beating to death with a massive dildo for example.. that's the sort of content that wins 7 oscars..

I'm aware that I sound like a right prude, and this has turned into a rant, but fuck it, digital content has moved so quickly that we've gone from Mary Whitehouse [0] to apathy in a generation.

*I say rightly or wrongly, because I don't think we in the UK have had a grown up conversation on that front. We're a complete nanny state, except for where we're not. Publicly broadcast material adheres to the watershed, but digital content seemingly doesn't need to.

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Whitehouse

Minor edit to reference streaming services not culture

I could absolutely do with less gratuitous violence indeed. (In Stan, the violence is not gratuitous - it's shown because it is questioned)

I'm sure we could do with more sex, even for teenagers. That would be a great path toward learning / exploring / getting familiar about important aspects of it (consent, safe sex, different ways to find pleasure with it, not necessarily heterosexual sex, not necessarily sex involving exactly two people, also the fact that some people are not interested). There's no point in it being taboo. It's part of everybody's life (at the very least everybody comes from it). It just needs to be carefully handled.

> I'm sure we could do with more sex

I would disagree. I've a very healthy sex life, but I have always disliked watching sex. Watching it simply does not interest me one bit.

I'm not into it much neither, but there are also many other kinds of stuff I'm not into that are not taboo (action movies, heroic fantasy, …).

I too am shocked by violence in shows that are apparently deemed ok for children to watch. Children being anyone under the age of 18.

When Stan came out on MTV, the swear words were definitely edited out. That is the only version I heard when I was growing up. The full version is something that played only late night and I was not watching TV at that time.

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