Comment by virtualritz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by virtualritz | Hacker News Reader

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TLDR; US: nudity & sex: no, violence: yes!, Europe: nudity & sex: np, violence: not so much.

> Movies and TV shows are things to watch with friends/family. It's awkward and annoying for sex scenes to come up.

I and all pretty much all my pan-European friends that I talked to about this issue are always flabbeghasted about this.

Can you elaborate why this is awkward and/or annoying to you? This is an earnest question out of pure curiosity.

Specifically weird for us is that in PG13-rated US movies/series/etc, depiction of sex (and nudity) is not ok but violence (and even death!) commonly is (as long as there is no blood or the blood is from aliens, i.e. green or purple). "Alien vs Predator" is an example.

In Europe it's literally upside down. When kids are watching we don't have an issue with sex scenes as much as with violence. Depiction of consensual sex is ok. Sex is fun, it's natural, it's wonderful (hopefully). You can explain that to kids. Violence -- not so much.

Nudity? What's the issue? When I leave my house in Berlin in summer the park next door is full of kids running around naked (as are most playgrounds). The issue with nudity (and the obsession of taking offense with female breasts/nipples) is completely beyond most people in northern Europe.

Basically, if many European family movies ever made it to the US market (they don't, ofc), quite a few would probably be edited for nudity (or even sex scenes) for that market.

Vice versa, US movies often do get edited for violence to become more "family friendly" for the European market. "Lilo and Stitch" is a good example; Disney edited the German version down by 1.5minutes to get a FSK-0 (no age restrictions) rating here. [1]

Specifically, female breasts occasionally visible in a kids movie won't raise eyebrows in atheist/agnostic/protestant northern Germany but in catholic southern Italy they may.

And speaking of the latter: Berlin is the first city that has acknowledged that actual gender equality requires women (or any gender for that matter) to be topless too, in any public bath [2].

So if you go with your kids/teens to a public bath here, they will see nipples (i.e. "nudity").

[1] https://www.schnittberichte.com/schnittbericht.php?ID=1004

[2] https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-clarifies-gender-equality-rules...

I thought about this for a bit.

I agree that if violence is ok, sex should be too, however keep in mind that in life violence and death are met way earlier than sex, at least in current society.

Violence is something children face (in a minor shape, but still) at age 3 when they argue with another kid. Death, they start facing it very rapidly: dead insect, dead bird. My 3 years old recently realized that when we say "we eat chicken" we mean that we are eating an actual chicken and was shocked. Took him a while to digest, he connected the dots with death.

Sex? They don't know what it is. Dad and mum do it behind locked doors. They will find out from tv before real life experience.

That being said, if you look at farm animals, those deal with sex basically as soon as they are born. So I'm not sure how society grew hiding sex for a good chunk of life (not saying it's wrong, I just have no idea how it happened).

It's a hard topic

Sex scenes in movies are just soft core porn. Would find it awkward to watch hardcore porn with your family and friends? I would. But if you wouldn't find that awkward, I think that's a cultural divide that's just too big to explain.

Regarding being topless, I realized the same. In Canada, BC, all women are allowed to be topless.

We had a huge issue at the homeowner association I'm part of because of the swimsuit of a man showing the shape of their genitalia (not in a sexualized wa) "more than usual", whatever that means. To which I responded that if a woman will show up topless, what are you going to do? And then after some research, I discovered that for gender equality in bc, women can go topless.

I'd like to think I'm progressive on that stuff, but I'm embarrassed watching sex scenes with family, pretty sure this has to be due to the behavior of my parents with me about it. And yet, it bothers me being embarrassed, I wish I could fix the brainwashing, but emotions are not rational.

A lot of US nudity & sex tends to be bordering on soft-core porn. It's often gratuitous. I honestly don't think you are watching that with your little ones (if you have any) and your parents.

> Specifically, female breasts occasionally visible in a kids movie won't raise eyebrows in atheist/agnostic/protestant northern Germany but in catholic southern Italy they may.

In 2024 they won't even in Southern Italy. We are not in the middle ages.

IIRC, America's weird relationship with sex is rooted in our Puritan history.

Idk about our comfort with depictions of violence. We definitely have a history of "cowboy & indian" films, so it could come from the glorification of our genocidal past (or the genocidal past itself). The Vietnam War on the TV every night for a couple decades is another good option.

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