I would rather see breasts than blood any day of the week.
originally posted by erislover:
[Q]It isn’t that you necessarily don’t want your child to not see Debbie fucking everything that moves, but rather that your child would recognize just like you recognize that it is, in fact, purely gratuitious, and use that as the blanket context in which the information is viewed.[/Q]
But these are children we are talking about. It’s sort of difficult for the rookies of the world to establish in their minds what is appropriate and what is inappropriate behavior if they are routinely exposed to the latter and not so frequently exposed to the former. We can hope that children are given a well-balanced diet of “good” behavior and “bad” behavior to learn from, but if the media becomes overpopulated with raunchy head-carving and gumptionless fucking, the question that begs to be answered is will our children’s perception of appropriateness gravitate away from what is truly healthy?
Take violence, for instance. For all of my 25 years, I’ve been exposed to gorey depictions of mutilation via movies, TV shows, and video games. Nowadays when I watch the 6:00 news, instead of feeling shock and dismay when hearing about the latest mass murder, the most I usually feel is a sense of “oh, damn, that’s messed up”. But do I lose my appetite? Do tears well up in my eyes? Do I get on the phone and tell a friend about it? Do I go to bed thinking about it? Do I wake up thinking about it? Am I even afraid that something like that could happen to me?
No. Because I’ve been desensitized to violence. The same things that sent my parents (when they were my age) into a tizzy only make me go “murder, eh? that’s messed up”. What’s up with that?!? Is it healthy for me (and others like me) to have such a blase attitude towards truly fucked up things? Or is it perfectly okay to barely flinch when the news-reporter tells stories of criminals pistol whipping store clerks and whatnot?
[Q]I want (would want) my child to have a sense of appropriateness, not to put rose-colored glasses on him, so at any time I would let him watch one I would let him watch the other. [/Q]
So you’re saying that it’s a good thing to let him watch “inappropriateness” so that he has a better feel for what is “appropriate”? That’s all well and good, I guess, as long as the kid understands which one is which. Right?
Hey, you with the face. You can quote by putting “quote” (not “Q”) in the square brackets.
And If you goof up with the vB coding again, I’m going to pistol whip you gratuitously. 
I’m not saying it is a good or bad thing to watch inappropriate things. I’m saying that when I would let him watch one I would let him watch the other.
If you say so. I thought it was because we can’t care as much about people we don’t know. When my grandmother died, I cried. I wasn’t desensitized to death.
That isn’t the assumtion of the question you asked.
Even if you consider the sex or violence gratuitous, I would still have to know the context to judge which is worse.
Say it is a good movie. Suddenly there is some gratuitous nudity. I actually think this could be a good thing, because we need nudity to be in good movies if we are going to get rid of our terribly unhealthy attitude towards it. A gratuitous sex scene in a good movie, if it is good sex between people in love, could also be a healthy thing, although I would be less likely to show it to kids (but the OP did say we had to choose one).
Now, what about gratuitous violence in a good movie? I don’t see the value. The difference is, nudity is not a bad thing. Violence usually is. So putting gratuitous violence in a good movie may cause children to not see violence as that bad a thing.
Say it is a bad movie. Gratuitous sex and nudity in this movie will cause children to associate sex and nudity with bad things, or at the least it will devalue them.
What about gratuitous violence in a bad movie? Well, the movie is already bad, the gratuitous violence is also bad, so kids should be able to understand it is bad. Of course, kids may like bad movies. So they may still come to see violence as kind of cool. But I think that it still better than them believing that sex and nudity are supposed to be bad. That leaves them very vulnerable.
So, if it is a good movie, I would choose gratuitous sex, if it is a bad movie, gratuitous violence.
In other words, I would rather see Mary Poppins nude than see her get her head blown off, and I would rather see Matt LeBlanc get decapitated in Lost in Space than see an explicit sex scene.
I’m opposed to gratuitous anything. As Joe Bob Briggs (of “Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-in” fame) declares:
Just pick up a copy of Victor/Victoria. 
[slight hijack]
If the sex or violence was essential to the plot of a good movie, which would you rather your children see/not see ?
[/slight hijack]
There are plenty of good movies that I would not necessarily want my hypothetical child to see at all, because there are good movies that children would find boring, confusing, upsetting, or frightening. I wouldn’t have my children watch a movie that I thought they were too young to appreciate or understand, no matter how good I thought the movie was. However, if we are talking about good movies that I thought my children would appreciate and enjoy then I would not want to censor any essential elements, including sex and violence.
In regards to the OP’s question of gratuitious sex and violence, I would hope to shield my children for as long as possible from movies that contain any gratuitious elements. This has less to do with my love of children than my love of film.
This is one thing I never understood. Generally it is not considered ok to show a husband lovingly caress his wifes breast (or just lovers, whatever) but it is generally more acceptable to see a person be killed numerous ways and fairly graphically.
Once example I recall is when Schindlers List was shown on TV several years ago. I was listening to a conservative talk show in Dallas and there were numerous calls complaining that the very beginning of the movie, where you see Schindler caress his wifes breast was going to be shown. I think that scene was either cut or partially cut. However no one said anything or objected to the unpleasant violence depicted in that movie being left uncut. This seems backward and a bit disturbing to me.
What’s the significance of the “R” rating in the US? The film got a “15” rating in the UK. I was interested that IMDB said that the “R” rating was partly for “sexuality” rather than “sex”…
And in other news, I vote for gratuitous sex. Gratuitous sexuality even! Yes, totally irrelevant straight people just wandering into scenes for absolutely no good reason whatsoever!
Oh, wait…
Embra
For me, it’s gratuitous sex all the way.
First, as a matter of personal preference I prefer sex, gratuitous or otherwise, over violence. If I have a choice between watching a movie were the lead actress takes her clothes off on camera or a movie where the lead actor is shot on camera, I’ll go with the nudity everytime.
Second, if the arguments that impressionable audience members can have their behavior altered by on screen activity are true, I’d have to ask myself: what would upset me more, my hypothetical children growing up and killing someone or growing up and having sex? Once again, sex is the answer.
Back when I was single and actually went to the movies I always hated it when a perfectly good R rating was wasted because of violent content when the characters could have been having gratutious sex instead.
“IMHO, no kid has ever been screwed up by seeing sex in a movie”
Sorry, I don’t know how to do those nifty little quote thingies yet.
Anyhow, I know a man whose parents didn’t pay much attention to what he watched as a kid. When he was 5 he stayed up late one night and watched some movie with a lot of explicit sex. Now 20someodd years later he has a problem with pornography. He’ll tell you it started for him with that movie, all those years ago.
Not saying all kids who see sex at that age will turn into porn addicts, just throwing out a bonus story.
As for me, there are too many factors to be considered. How old is the kid? What KIND of movie is it? If you’re asking if I want my daughter to see Deep Throat vs. Gladiator, I’m gonna pick Gladiator anyday.
[This is paraphrased from a previous discussion of this topic, maybe on this board. I don’t remember]
The problem is that it’s easy for parents to explain violence to their children. Unrealistic slapstick or action/horror movie violence can be dismissed as fiction. “In the real world Junior, people don’t solve their problems with chainsaws.” Even realistic and totally justifiable violence is unlikely to come up in a real world sceneario and can be easily explained and dismissed.
Sex is harder. “Don’t do that Junior, ever” is good advice when you’re watching Micheal Corleone blow away two guys in an Italian resturaunt, but not so when he kisses his topless new bride.
We dislike violence, as a general rule, and can thus explain our position towards it to our children easily. We like sex, but only within certain situations. It’s a much longer and embarassing conversation, that young chldren won’t have to deal with when they’re young (or so we’d like to think), so we put it off.
Is there in fact such a thing as gratuitous sex?
I think that this is because graphic violence is simulated violence. The evil ax murderer doesn’t REALLY chop off the camper’s head, everyone’s just acting, etc. On the other hand, graphic sex is sex. For reasons I don’t quite understand, the MPAA thinks that real sex is worse than fake violence.
I can think of a couple movies were the love story didn’t need to be there and actually detracted from the quality of it COUGHPEARL HARBORCOUGH.
In that sense, yes.
The only real gratuitous sex (as opposed to gratuitous romance) would be in Enemy at the gates, I didn’t think the sex scene in the barracks was in anyway something that needed to be in the movie. Particulary in the middle of your sleeping buddies. “I HOPE YOU BROUGHT ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE, COMRADE”.
I didn’t have a problem with the sex scene in Enemy at the Gates since it drove home just how screwed up and unnatural their situation was; under constant seige, getting whatever relief they could.
There was a similar scene planned for Alien, but it was killed on the perfectly logical grounds that it made no sense whatsoever for Ripley and Dallas to take time out for a quickie while the alien was still running around on the ship.