Rip my head off - but no tits please !!
 

Obviously spawned from another thread .. but i am curious about something :

there is something that has always disturbed the hell out of me about americans....


Violence = good
Nudity = bad

this certainly sets the USA apart from Canada and most of europe.

(in japan violence = nudity so we'll leave them out of this)


what the fuk is it where people think violence and gore is kosher but a pair of tits or an ass are offensive ?

this has come up before but i want to know widescale ... are all americans like this ? Is it part of the cultural upbringing ?

i really find the make war not love thing disturbing as hell.

i can understand that some kids are too young to have the facts of life explained to them ... but by the same token they are too young to see violent images - its about the same thing - the maturity level to understand.

i have a 6 year old .. we never freaked out about nudity ... we dont flaunt it but we arent prissy about it either .. he know enought to keep his pants on in public and that was the goal.

but in a movie i'd much rather he sees the natural images of peoples bodies .. than people getting their bodies ripped apart.

even if it is a kissing scene .. petting - whatever .. i'm far more prepared for him to see that and explain it - rather than acts of horrific violence perpetrated by people on each other.

what the fuck is wrong with americans ???


this is one Canadian standing alone against the rest of you lot ... give me your worst .. WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR DEAL ???


i keep editing because i just realized my C key is intermittently not working

Our country was founded by, and is still under the control of, religious extremists.

i think excessive nudity ruins a horror movie. (the new york ripper) and violence and gore is just awesomeness, plus i can watch it with my parents and not feel embarassed.

so i take it you find it disturbing as well ?

it's not a healthy balance ...

I don't understand what your problem is, I really don't.

Sex is bad, violence is good. Get over it! Jeez gosh you Camabians.

Good question.

I think its upbringing. When I was a tyke I watched horror movies with my parents [ nothing as violent as we have today ] but never saw any nudity....[I had to resort to National Geographic for that ].I'm not as up-tight about it as my parents were. My youngest is 15 and i'll watch pretty much anything with him.

Although it seems to be relaxing a bit, especially on the coasts and in bigger cities, you can thank Anthony Comstock and his bullshit purity crusade for a lot of it. Most of the folks I know anymore aren't that prudish, but you still find it just about everywhere you go.

I remember when I was younger, it was fine to watch all kinds of violent action flicks. Hell hath no wrath though like my family if a pair of tits were on screen when while I was about.

LOL...I was waiting for you to come out with this ;)

I really can't explain it to you any better than I tried to before...The best that I could come up with was the fact that my kids know the violence, blood, guts, death, etcetera is all fake...They even know exactly how it's done, and often critique the effects if they feel that they could have been done a better or different way...The nudity, however is real...

And...the sex parts are just boring for me...and NOT what I paid to watch...

"If I watch a horror movie...I wanna see HORROR...If I wanna watch people have sex, I'll get a porno"...and my other worn out quote..."I have never been scared by a tit or an ass in my entire life, and I doubt that I ever will"

I KNOW that doesn't make sense to you...But, honestly that's about the best I've got

I read a brilliant citation of Jack Nicholson on the subject a couple of years ago he said something along the lines of :

"If I rip off a breast in a movie, it's going to be a PG-13 movie, but if I kiss it, then it's going to be an R movie for sure!"

i was just about to say that..its just not necasary..that is unless its a troma movie. stuff as much nudity and shit in there as you want, it just adds to the rediculousness

I had a nice big rant in my head about how America was founded by Puritans, and how their mentality spread through the midwest of this country, and sets the standard for "morals" here, but you got stright to the point with one sentance.

Sails - wind = me.

However, this is the very heart of the thing.. Look what kind of people we have here: The puritans didnt want people wearing bright colors. You would be killed for this. Never mind that they began breeding at 13 i think. (at least, 13 year old girls)

our country has a long history of turning the words of a sweet natured guy who just wnated everyone to be friends (Jesus) and twisting them.

Do you really think "God hates fags"? i thought it was a sin to put words in god's mouth...

People here DO freak out about violence, but for the wrong reasons. They think that violent entertainment causes violent behavior, when it really just , at worst, gives a violent mind ideas. If someone watches, say, Swordfish, then straps plastic explosives and ballbearings to someone, then the movie didnt do anythign but give him an idea of how to channel his violent thoughts. Even if the movie did not exists, there was a pretty damn good chnace that THAT guy was going to act out anyway.

Also, look at the coutry as a whole with regards to the subject of sex. The same idiots who show pictures of dead babies to protest abortion, also protest teaching sex and providing contraception by schools. theya re apparently unaware that the current population is strainign what our planet is capable of supporting. but then again, they have a little bit of trouble with Science and "rality" in general.

It's fucking retarded. Sex is natural and healthy and fun and it hurts no one!

I'm gonna put the blame on parents as well. I'm raising my kids to wildly open minded about sex (my 9 year-old's favorite film is Hedwig and the Angry Inch) in hopes of stemming the tide.

I hate that Mothman feels bad watyching nudity/sex scenes in front of his parents. It's an institutionalized fear of all things sexual.

well, i think your analogy breaks down here .. your posts suggests that horror is ok because it's fake, and nudity (which you keep curiously equating with sex - is real) but porno (which i never mentioned - just nudity) is ok if it's a porno you want.

the question i'm curious about - is why do you think nudity (not porn which is people graphically having sex - something you rarely ever see in a horror) is more innapropriate than gore - fake or not ?

thats the part i cant understand ...


personally - I think north american sex senes ARE boring as hell.. its about as appealing as cleaning fish.

i love the way europeans are completely aware that its a natural part of being human... and they celebrate it.

OH...Perfect example:

Hostel...HALF of that movie was a waste of time...No one even stubbed a toe in almost the entire first hour (which was nothing but softcore porn, and bored me to tears)...That is NOT a horror movie...If the entire movie had been similar to the last half hour, THAT would have been a HORROR movie...and a damned good one at that

Maybe it's boring because I can have sex whenever I want, and watching other people do it does absolutely nothing for me...BUT, I could NEVER just cut someone's head off, or rip out their guts, so it's fun to watch...Because it is NOT something that people do everyday...Does that make sense?...

It's like, I wouldn't wanna watch them doing laundry or washing dishes for an hour either...That's just boring every day shit...

I think Hostel is a great example of a movie that takes it too far. Eli Roth really should have gotten laid more in high school. No doubt he was a virgin until his late 20s...

Unless you were to do that topless.





sorry.......lost my train of thought

well
 

because nudity is just gross. but violence is sexy and hot in my opinion.

i havent even seen hostel but i can tell you this .. Hostel is a grindhouse homage.
Grindhouse was all about getting away with as much sex and violence on screen as possible - and a lot was possible because these films were never meant for the mainstream moviehouses.

not only has there been a broad recent trend of remaking old horror films - there has also been a growing nostalgia for the old grindhouse films and they're slowly but surely making their way back into the theatres..
and as in every new resurgence of anything old - the values people appreciated in the origionals are amped up 'to 11' in the new wave .. its the way they always do things ..

you see a shrink?

please dont have any children ... ever

I never particularly cared for nudity in movies. For the most part, i am neutral about it, if it's there, whatever. When it becomes intrusive, then i dont like it. When it is simply tacke don because the movie was going to have an R rating anyway, then i have no use for it. however, there are plenty of movies where it was just fine, to being integral to the plot (or just tastefully done as to not pull you out of the established atmosphere):

Terminator. Completely justified, and handled very well.
The Abyss. If you are watching her naked breasts in that part of the movie, you have HUGE problems...
Titanic. Perhaps not necesarry, but still handled well. plus, when was the last time you saw bigger than b-cups in a movie that werent saline or silicone?


okay.. well.. i seem to have established that Jim Cameron knows how to shoot knockers with class....

I knwo there are other out there, I am just drawing a blank.

Cat People used nudity in a very casual and tasteful manner.

Ohh.. Example of a nude scene i had no use for: Starship Troopers... Too much dude, for one thing... But, IMHO, not a looker in the bunch... Dina Meyer is SCARY topless. Eek...


is there more too it than me just not htinking a single person in the scene was attractive? Yep. The whole thing could have just as easily taken place in a lunch room. It pulled me out of the movie, and it doesnt help that pail verhoven was pretty honest about just wanting a scene where they showed that everyone would get naked in the same area together in his future world. Did it in Robocop too



By the same token, the little bit that was in Total Recall was completely in place. It was whore house on Mars...of course a whore house (brothel, whatever) is going to have body parts flashed about...

it's this kind of fucked up attitude that really pisses me off.

and yes, I find violence hot and sexy, but I find most things dealing with the flesh sexy.

Nudity is YOU! do you hate yourself?

You came into the world nude, you bathe nude, you fuck nude, being nude is the natural state of all humankind. A body is a body is a body.

Tell me about it. My city is in dire need of some financial assistance...yet the Churches have come together and killed a wet/dry reforendum that would inject an estimated $2million in new tax revenue to this city annually...they squashed it with a moral mudslinnging campaign entitled the Citizens to keep our city safe...we are the only city in the county that is dry...we are 8 minutes away from not one, but two wet cities....unbelievable.

As for nudity, from a parents standpoint I don't care too much for it in mainstream movies...doesn't offend me at all, just don't like to watch a sex scene in a horor movie that my 14yo wants to watch with us...oh and by the way...the same Church(es) group caused the video stores in this city to have to remove all pornographic/back room movies in 1990...now its alcohol...in 5 years it will be the Citizens to keep the city THIN and they will try to force a ban on all BUFFET restaurants in the area.

if you're making a movie about people - and complaining about a scene involving nudity - its like complaining about scenes where people are eating dinner. Or shopping, or sleeping.

sometimes people are nude each day ! gasp !

i dont think many people after sex sit up in bed talking with the covers up around their necks as a rule.

people really dont put on roves over their nightgowns in the summer to go downstairs to get a glass of water..


there is nothing natural about the way nudity is handled in films in america.

and yeah - in dumb slasher movies nudity is taked on .. big fake tits for the horny teenage male viewers .. but so what - the movie is shit anyway and usually the little flash of breast flesh is the only redeeming quality of the film. and it gives a truely untalented los angeles blonde clone a way to make a couple of bucks off her knees.


but the italian/french films ... they handle nudity the way it should be - a reflection of how it exists in day to day life.
and if it is a film about love and sex is an integral part of the film .. then the scene will be worth watching ..

Watch out, once they burn Allessa, you are all fucked....

Nudity doesn't bother me....graphic sex scenes are another matter. I can't watch stuff like that with my nine year old. He's going to do it one day whether I agree or not, I just don't want him to be obssessed with doing it before he hits puberty. Just me. I'm not saying anybody else's child rearing techniques are right or wrong, velcro them to the ceiling for all I care, it's just my personal feeling about it. I've met way too many people who lost their virginity at eleven or twelve, but so far I've only met one preteen murderer.:p

With gore it's not real. It's incredible to watch the creativity and talent that goes into making something fake look so disgustingly real that it makes people sick. With nudity it's real, it's already there and showing nudity isn't as tough as creating good gore. I don't have a problem with nudity in movies or in life at all but I will say this; I have thought a movie or two would have been better with more or more realistic gore but never thought a movie NEEDED more nudity.

*sigh*...Let me try again...I equate sex with nudity, because in most (not all, but most) movies where there is nudity there is sex, about to be sex, or just had sex, people have sex when they're naked...As for ME, I have no interest in watching people have sex, or seeing people naked...As for my son, he has no interest in sex (he's 11), and needs not to have any interest piqued yet, and I was hoping that the first time he saw a woman naked it would be something special for him...I would like for him to remain innocent of adult matters until he is an adult...If he has seen a million naked chicks before he even has a girlfriend, how special will his first experience really be?...How much MORE special might it have been?...I don't think I can explain it any better than that...and I'm trying like hell...lol

As for the porno thing...I personally would never watch a porno...I'm just saying that if I wanted to see naked people, I would watch a porno...And I would be surprised if people were getting their guts ripped out in a porno...And I would never allow my son to watch a porno...


I agree...which is another reason that I'd rather keep it out of my horror movies...

I have nothing against nudity or sex...In fact I LOVE nudity and I can't get enough sex...BUT...I wouldn't have sex in the grocery store, it's the wrong place for it, as is a horror movie (in MY opinion)...And, again, I have no desire to see any strangers naked...AND, my son doesn't need to see it AT ALL...Not yet, anyway...

Okay...I'll break it down like this:

For ME: It's boring and wastes time that could be spent on something 'horrorish'...and I REALLY do not want to watch other people have sex...

For my kids: It limits which movies they can watch, and that sucks...And it isn't just a matter of me not wanting them to see it, THEY don't want to see it either...

I can't make it anymore simple than that

Agreed...But...Can't we leave something for the kids to look forward to when they're adults?

And I wouldn't wanna sit and watch 30 minutes of THAT in my horror movie either!

But we would NEVER run around naked in front of our kids...If the kids weren't here, we could be as naked as we wanted, whenever we wanted, and that wouldn't cut into the amount of actual horror that was in our horror movie either..So, no problems there

See this is interesting, and I think it has a HUGE impact on how people see sex and nudity. i dont view sex or nudity as dirty, but i have always been very aware that the people around me did. My first exposure to anyt of this was getting my hands on a Penthouse at 9. That kind of thing sets a pretty different stage from kids who get a more gentle, realistic introduction to the subject. I spent a huge portion of my life with little confidence around women (i use the term to descibe females around my age at the time, in highschool and then after) because I didnt know how to handle myself around them. if i was attracted to a girl, that was it, i was completely unable to communicate with her properly. I ended up dating girls who pursued me because in every case, they were someonei would not have thought of in that light, becaus ei was not immediately attracted to them. they were people, so it was easy.

Sadly, if i was immediately attracted to someone, they were an object, some sort of unatainable thing.

looking back, it is incredibly sad that i grew up this way. My outward attitude and actual feelings on the subject are probably the healthiest around, but my core psychology underlying all of it is pretty fucked up. Fortunately knowing this makes one able to work through it.

I was raised in a super conservative religious family, and in most things I'm the polar opposite of what I was taught when I was a kid....I was terrified of men for a long time, and I don't want my son to have that problem with women. If I thought that were the case, I'd just change my opinion on the subject. I just have a feeling he's going to run into sexual material plenty more than I did when I was a kid and there's no need for me to be involved directly with it. You can go ahead and sit through something like Basic Instinct with your preteen and explain every part of it, but I find that creepy. It's like the beginning of an after school special or something. Now, if we were walking down the street and ran into homeless people boning in the park or something, I'll explain it no problem, because then it's necessary. I won't stop walking down the street.....but I can decide not to view things like that with my kid until he's older.

I would like to stress that I am NOT putting down your way of raising your children, because that is your choice. The preceding opinion is MY choice.
Different strokes and all that.

yeah .. actually being with someone is special .. seeing an image is just that ...


i personally think that exposing them to scenes of death robs a child of his youth and innocence in a far greater degree than seeing a naked body.

my kid is interested in 'scary movies' but not where people get killed (onscreen/graphically) so even if he understands its fake - the images of pain and suffering still disturb him .. thank god for that.

so i have the challenge of trying to find movies that satisfy his sensibilities so that we have things to watch together..


as far as people naked who had sex, or are about to have sex ... its just naked bodies - no biggie. he's not ready to see anything harder ... for the same reason he's not ready to see the hard violence .. lack of maturity and true understanding.

This all reminds me of something I saw on MSNBC last night... Child prostitutes as young as 8 in cambodia. It was a horrifyingly scary situation, THAT is somethign that will/can damage children. The worst part was how casually the pimps and pretty much everyone was treating the subject. they could have just as easily been someone hawking Ipods. they even had their own vernacular, i'll let you try and decipher what the difference between "boom-boom" and "yum-yum" were.


Personally, i would rather my kid accidentally see some boobs in a movie. God forbid we were wathing this and lily was older and had comeout of her room for some reason... THAT is some scary shit to have to explain to your kid.

Agreed...But we do not watch snuff films and they know that there are NO "scenes of death"...There are only scenes of people in costumes and make-up, some CGI special effects...etcetera...I would NEVER let him watch an actual murder...Or even someone getting beaten...There really is a difference...At least here there is...

Honestly Urge, it has been established that I really am incapable of helping you to understand my position...


I really enjoyed discussing it with you, though...Thanks for the debate :)

yeah .. i see no harm in protecting your child from the harsher realities of the world for as long as possible.

eventually they have to konw - be street smart - understand that sadly - not all people are nice and decent ...

he's a sweet little kid - still believes in santa claus, still loves his blankie, but he's smart as a whip - intuitive, funny, and a little scamp - i think he'll be able to make the transaction from little boy - to boy with no problems

Its still too early to tell, but i see Lily ending up the same way. She learns thinsg like nothing, once she figures out a trick, she is a pro in no time. But i LOVE seeing that curious, innocent little psarkle in her eye. ihope she can maintain that lust for learning. I never lost it, even though schools and family did their damndest to squash it. It has helped me out tons, carreer wise. onc ei am interested in something, nothing will stop me from learnign as much about it as possible.

7 years ago, I taught myself HTML. Now, i know more than 13 computer languages, 3 of them full fledged programming languages. I cant wait to find out what Lily's interests are an help her pursue them as far as she can.

I was limited in many opportunities as a kid. i never got to take martial arts or gymnastics like i wanted too. I moved every few years, adn as a result, my ability to socialize was hurt. Hell, i still have pronblems getting close enough to people to have any real friends. But i love to write, and i love to learn.

Man, i am in a rambling mood today. Poor Bree, i will probably babble her ear off tonight.

i think i understand the position - but i also think that there is something deeper below the surface when it comes to nudity with you.. maybe something you arent even aware of .. a subconcious product of your environment perhaps..

for the record - my parents were VERY private .. doors closed - no nudity ..
i just reasoned as i got older that it wasnt natural to feel that way about our bodies. it simply made no sense.



i think its hilarious the way nudity is handled by americans as well ..

a woman isnt considered topless unless the nipple is visible ... the entire boob can be exposed as long as that little nipple is covered.
People will say it's bad taste - but not nudity.

but a man can show a nipple - and its not nudity.

i'd love to hear that one explained to me..

is that what you kids are calling it these days ? :D