A couple of nights back, we were watching When Harry Met Sally on the Star Movies channel, which is operated by NOW Broadband, part of the largest telecommunications company here, PCCW.
We were of course waiting with baited breath for THAT scene. Well, it came, but Meg Ryan didn’t. She wasn’t given the chance. The idiots at PCCW decided that a film shown between 9 and 10.40pm would pervert the youth (or more worryingly the adults) if it included more than half a dozen grunts from Ms Ryan, cut to the Jewish lady saying “I’ll have what’s she’s having”.
Absolutely pathetic. And yet they routinely show people torturing each other and killing each other. And cheating each other, and lying to each other, if you want to get all moral about things.
I agree that it’s pathetic, but this argument is an apples to oranges kind of thing. Normal people don’t want to kill or torture, but everybody wants to fuck. Showing violence doesn’t present a temptation like showing sex does.
Not the point. Sex is a (relatively) harmless and (mostly) pleasurable activity. What is the harm of providing some titillation, even if it is a temptation.
Violence on the other hand is harmful and only pleasurable to some. Most people by your own words don’t want to participate, so why make a big deal out of it.
However, the two need not be mutually exclusive of course, in that a film could contain both violence and sex, or neither.
But what does that mean? We can show very gross stuff because no one will ever copy it…we can’t show normal stuff in case people decide to go off and be normal?
There is something very sad about a society when then they censor sex before violence…most societies
In The People vs Larry Flynt there is a scene in which Flynt presents a slide show where slides alternate between mutilated bodies from the Viet Nam war and naked women. “Take a picture of a mutilated body”, he says, “and they give you an award. Take a picture of a naked lady, and they put you in jail. I ask you, which is more obscene?”
It’s a powerful message about censorship. And yet when this movie plays on TV, which pictures from the slide show are blurred out? The naked women, of course.
I know. These crazy Puritanical values have made America into a completely prudish society. We should be more like those Eastern countries that value sexuality.
What’s that you say? We’re not talking about the US? Huh.
Well, kinda, yeah. It’s similar to the difference between showing a motorcycle jumping the grand canyon, or a kid on a bike jumping a homemade 5-foot ramp over a pit he poured gasoline in and lit.
Which do you think would be more “dangerous” for the general public to watch?
(I’ve never seen the latter depicted in film, but it was a fun personal pastime in my misspent youth.)
I disagree with the prudish attitude about sex adopted by the FCC, and see no harm in depictions of sex, but I do understand why people get uptight about sex moreso than violence. It makes perfect sense to me, despite the fact that I disagree with the underlying premise. (Sex is bad.)
I’m kind of curious about that, too. From my short visits to Hong Kong, it appears that almost everyone lives in a tiny flat in a huge block, sharing maybe 10 square meters with a family of 10 or so, including grandparents. Where *do * HK’ers go to fuck? Hotels?
Perhaps it’s simply necessary to do what they can to keep their libidos down, or they’d go crazy.
I thought the Japanese just objected to showing pubic hair. Leading thousands of Japanese porn stars to shave their genitals in the name of public decency. And probably contributing to the American fad for the same. Prudery has some interesting consequences dunnit?
I kinda doubt that. Not just because I’d wager that Japanese porn isn’t all that popular stateside… Personally, I’d put my money on oral sex rather than Japanese culture as an influence.
Apples and oranges indeed. There is little correlation between the morality/propriety of an act itself, and that of showing the act in a movie.
There are few activities more normal or everyday or morally neutral than taking a dump, but I have yet to see this depicted explicitly in any movie not involving Cartman’s mom—nor do I want to, nor do I expect to.
