America vs. The Evil Nipple Of Death

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Well now Spike Lee is involved. He claimed this morning that Justin Tinkerbell and Janet Jackson’s pornographic behavior marks a new low for entertainers and speaks to a decline in artistry in America.

Well he has the artistry part right. For me the new low occurred when that skinny castrato beat the legendary Johnny Cash for Artist of the Year. But all of this talk of horror at the sight of a nipple to me marks a new degeneration of a stupid and paranoid population.

Why this enduring controversy over a split second, long distance flash of a nipple covered by a silver pasty?

WHY dammit why!!!

I just want to illustrate just how utterly pathetic the offended population is.

Why this endless outrage over what amounts to a weak publicity stunt by a pansy, no-talent sissy boy and the non-fucked up Jackson trying to save two careers that are slowly circling the bowl bothers me to no end.

To me it speaks volumes about a nation that is completely and totally bass-ackwards and terrified of its own sexuality.

I’m not sure what they put in the water but North Americans are one foot above Muslims on the sexual paranoia ladder. The sheer outrage at the briefest glimpse of a booby during a football game is both sickening and strangely humorous. How many times have I seen that fat ass with his naked chest painted with the team’s official colors or the shot of five of his buddies spelling out a name on the man-tits? Why doesn’t anyone say anything then? They’re bigger and are far more outrageous. At least Janet’s were somewhat perky.

The incident reminded me of an article I read shortly after Titanic was released. Some Republican family buffoon in the U.S. (Where else) wrote into Time Magazine to express his horror at the film’s PG rating. He explained that the film depicted blatant nudity, sexuality and was inappropriate for children.

Funny, he didn’t seem to mind the over one thousand people who perished during the film, including a scene in which over eight hundred of them are seen floating dead and frozen in the North Atlantic. It was a booby that was shown within the context of the drawing of a still life that got his flag-waving Christian ire up.

Only in America.

This nipple-gate controversy is stupid and useless. Now there is a full investigation pending. MTV is loosing sponsorship and Janet has apparently borrowed her brother’s Vaseline-encrusted video camera to tape and broadcast an official apology. CBS is passing the buck, The Grammies are being filmed with a ten second delay to edit out any offensive copycat antics and Conservative groups in the Midwest have cancelled upcoming shows by both performers.

What morons!

I know I l know, here comes the part where I praise the Europeans. But it’s true I tell you. Soap commercials, soap operas and family television depict full frontal nudity with a graceful ease. Erotica is seen on regular TV and the population is surprisingly cool with it……almost as if it was natural.

I’m not sure if there is a direct relation but youth crime rates are lower and violence is not as severe. It’s no coincidence that most of America’s most violent serial killers came from strict, conservative Christian families. Ed Gein’ s mother repeatedly drilled into him how evil, manipulative and seductive women were. He was denied his natural inklings and told they were sins throughout his life and we all know what he wound up doing.

But that is another rant.

I agree that artistry in America is a mile wide and an inch deep at best. The airwaves are clogged with repetitive, commercialist, empty, vapid digital shit. But this new low that Spike is talking about is foolish and stupid in every way. North Americans are terrified of sex and would rather expose a child to gory, masochistic violence than let them see the beauty of the feminine form.

Hell, now they are putting fig leaves over the genitals of nude paintings and placing kilts over naked statues of Vulcan.

For all of this talk about North America being strong, the argument doesn’t hold a lot of weight when headlines are clogged for three days over a half-second flicker of a nipple. If that is all it takes to grind America’s attention to a halt, what chance does it have for survival?

I see a large iceberg on the horizon.

2

Preach it, Brother!

That’s all I have to say really. You’ve summed up my views on the matter of sex in the U. S. quite nicely, I think.
I’m just showing support.

3

PG-13.

7890

4

Great rant! May I reprint this in Teemings Extras?

5

By all means.

I’d be honored.

6

This American is heartily sick of the paranoia over nudity in this country.

I’d love to be able to go to a nearby park or beach and bare all, but parks where nudity is allowed do not exist, AFAIK. Though nude beaches do exist, they are f e w a n d f a r b e t w e e n, and due to change without notice due to the capriciousness of local objectors. The working rule seems to be that if there is the remotest possibility that a child might see a nude person, a naturist advocates have to fight for a nude beach’s existence. In many cases, unsuccessfully. Private naturist clubs also exist, but they tend to be in remote locations.

And I don’t see this cultural quirk changing any time soon. I don’t want to turn this into a general debate about immigration, but we do have a lot here. And almost all the immigrants are coming from cultures that are even more repressed than ours. Conservative Roman Catholics, Moslems, East Asians–all these cultures do tend to prize modesty. We’re not getting refuges from Cap D’Agde, France, nor German expats asking where the nude parks are. Looking at a globe of the world, I’d say that Western Europe is an island of naturist liberality in a sea of increasing conservatism and repression.

7

Hey, that’s very good point Spectre, I hadn’t thought of that before. It makes a lot of sense that given that the US is continually letting people from very oppressed societies in, that we would suffer from similar social oppression. That’s going to be my deep thought for the day.

As to European versus American prudishness, all I can say is WORD. Americans are idiots when it comes to nudity.

[hijack] When I was 18, I was just finishing up a year as an exchange student in Germany. My father and brother happened to be in France, so I went to visit them. We went to the beach, and I changed into my bathing suit. ON THE BEACH. Just like everyone else. Didn’t think anything of it. Thought my brother would DIE of embarrassment. [/hijack]

Anyway, I don’t understand who these people are that are so uptight and paranoid. Raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, I am surrounded by like-minded, more relaxed people. California is always so out-of-step with the rest of the country (thank the goddess). When the tech industry collapsed, I hoped that we would be seen as extraneous and allowed to secede from the US since the rest of the country doesn’t like us and sees us as freaks anyway. No luck so far, though.

8

I agree, wholeheartedly. The extent of the “outrage” over this is bewildering to me. We’ve all seen more nudity than this on the cover of National Geographic.

I mean, it’s a piece of flesh, maybe 1" x 1" square, and it was still mostly covered up! If there’d been a millimeter thick piece of fabric over it, it would have been perfectly acceptible?

For once, I agree with the Europeans mocking American culture. How bad is that?

Well, at least we still have our good old fashioned ultraviolence on TV…but I fear even that is getting slowly eaten away by the moral pundits. I mean, they used to machine gun people on “Johnny Quest.” But now they won’t even show blood on most cartoons.

Star Trek might turn out to have been right when it predicted that TV would become an insignifigant form of entertainment after 2040…but it won’t be because something better comes along, or that humanity evolves beyond the cultural need for it. It’ll be because the moralists won’t let anything slightly controversial be shown on it. And then the industry will act surprised when no one’s interested in buying into all the bland crap that’s left!

9

What’s *truly * pathetic is you people who are pretending to be enlightened sexual sophisticates with a superior understanding of the “beauty of the human body.” What you really are doing is lying. You are being intentionally dishonest by ignoring the real complaint which is the **context ** of the nudity. Nobody is screaming in horror at the hideous breast that was glimpsed. They are complaining that it was exposed in an improper way at an improper time.

It is a fact that the sexual stimulus of nudity is relative with regard to context. A male doctor in the examination room sees the female body as a subject for evaluation. But he sees it differently in the bedroom when it is undulating suggestively in fishnet stockings and stiletto heels.

It is childish sophistry to separate body parts from sexually stimulating contexts and speak of them as mere biological components. I suppose from this reasoning that it would be a beautiful and natural thing for me to hang my weenie out of my pants at the public library. (And cut the crap about the female breast being nothing more than a mammary gland with no sexual connotations.)

If you think I am a prude then come to one of my sex parties. I’ll bang your willing sister on the kitchen table while you, your friends and family cheer us on. But I WON’T do it in public in front of unsuspecting parents and their children who have a RIGHT to NOT see sexual behavior or nudity when they don’t want to.

I don’t know what nauseates me more, your dishonesty, your sophomoric ignorance of sexuality, or your arrogant disregard for the rights of others.

10

I guess if he got to rub an ice cube on it and film it, like he did to Rosie Perez in “Do The Right Thing”, then it’s high art. :rolleyes:

11

I can’t understand the whole flap! Basically, everybody KNOWS why the whole stunt was performed…Janet is 37 and near the end of her pathetic career…and she needed something to get attention and sell albums! Its nothing more than good-old American hustling! As for Timberlake, he’s also perilously near the end of his marketability, plus he was honest (his song lyrics said that she would be naked by the end of the song).
Anyway, why is anybody upset? You had all of those scantily-clad chearleaders doing a T&A show…what’s a litlle boob flash?
And, asothers have pointed out, the aureole was covered by that uncomfortable-looking ornament!

12

Leave us out of this, if you don’t mind.

13

Well then, how do you justify the hue and cry after the network executives, affiliate stations, the NFL, and MTV? The producers of the halftime show are not mind readers, and can’t be blamed for not knowing what the performers were intending to do. I heard one woman from a conservative Christian organization saying heads should roll at the network over this. I’m not completely blind to the point you are making. The performers went a step too far and deserve to be sanctioned in some manner. But not so much as if they’d sold dope to grade schoolers.

14

Bravo!! I could not have said it better!

MeanJoe

15

Thanks from me too, Ex Machina.

What bothers me about events like this is when so-called “performers” deliberately set out to push the bounds of what is generally considered polite and proper, and then bemoan the reaction when others consider it rude and crass.

It’s an act, surely, because the whole point of the exercise is getting the reaction in the first place. You can’t push the envelope of artistic freedom without the bluehairs and bible-thumpers pushing back, after all. And everybody loves a good laugh at those who display that least fashionable of emotions - offense.

It’s been noted many times that celebrities are like big children, and this case is proof of that. Janet Jackson needed some attention that she wasn’t getting anymore, by virtue of being a musical has-been. Justin Timberlake, though much younger, also is very close to has-beenery. So like toddlers who say bad words to get attention, they acted out.

Maybe the best approach would have been to ignore the whole thing, much as you ignore the toddlers dirty words so as not to encourage them. And it would have been easy to ignore - she’s 38 now, has had as much surgery as she can, and is still a fading star.

I wonder what she’ll do when she’s even older. Are Cher/Madonna like excesses ahead? There’s a constant supply of young pop starlets today, and you have to compete.

I hear they’re hiring at the Foxy Lady Lounge.

16

That’s your opinion, and you’re entitled to it. My opinion, and the opinion of others, was just that an exposed nipple is no more fundamentally sexually stimulating than, say, an exposed ankle. Which, in the right place and time, would have been just as, or even MORE scandalous than an exposed nipple. We were clucking our tongues at how pointless and arbitrary the current “horror” over an exposed nipple is.

Could Janet and Justin’s act be considered “impolite,” or “inconsiderate”? Sure, perhaps. But is it a fundamental moral outrage striking at the very heart of man? IMO, No.