If it worked, which it didn’t always…
I think, in theory, it’s possible for a kid on the aisle in the row opposite and behind you to see. Or kids walking down the aisle.
I want to point out this was a movie with a few minutes of nudity out of three hours! It was not porn!
I concede the issue that my opinions go against how many feel, and will adjust my actions in the future.
That said, the opinion that kids seeing sex in movies is somehow damaging, while movies like The Avengers or Superman, where thousands of murders occur, or movies like The World’s End or This is the End, with glorified drug use, all of which I’ve seen on in flight entertainment in the last year, are fine to watch in public is just so odd.
And by “odd”, I mean “incorrect”. I have two young kids. Of sex, violence and drugs, I hope they never have much experience with the last two, but I want them to have a full panoply of experiences with the first. But, I came here seeking the societal norm, and I will adjust my behavior accordingly.
And I’ve seen ones on US airlines that have *not *been edited to remove anything.
lol what a bunch of prudes you people are!
I understand where you are coming from, but I think there’s more to it than that. I know for me, and I think for many people, the whole process of puberty, of my developing sexual awareness, was awkward and had all sorts of deeply confusing and ambivalent associations. It was something intensely private, for reasons that I think go beyond mere societal brainwashing–I was changing, transforming, losing a version of myself I liked and turning into something new. It was also changing my perspective on other people (OMG! This has been going on all this time!) and made my relationships with others odd.
Anyway, for a pretty extensive period of time there from, say, 10-18, I would have been deeply uncomfortable seeing something arousing in the presence of, well, lots of people. My parents, certainly, because I wasn’t sure how they felt about me growing up, and on some level I didn’t want them to know that I was now capable of erotic feelings. Random strangers, certainly, because I wasn’t ready to share this new world, my awareness of this new world, with outsiders. Random strange adults? Absolutely, because my growing sexuality was fundamentally changing the way I interacted with and fit into the adult world, and I wasn’t at all comfortable with that. I also would have been intensely uncomfortable with the idea that a random strange adult near me was aroused, because I was certainly not ready for the world of adult sexuality to intersect my own sexuality in any way.
Violence doesn’t have any of those problems. Violence wasn’t about me. Violence might be gross, but I could turn away. Sexually charged material? Much more complex.
I am not saying one should shield children from all images of sex, or that images of sex are “harmful”. But they can be awkward and uncomfortable, and that’s reason enough to limit situations where people cannot avoid them.
If people are nude on the plane I’m going to watch anything I want.
I’ll just say to this that my standard in a crowd is not the same standard I’d apply at home or what I’d use if I had my own kids.
But in a crowd, we have to design everything for the lowest common denominator, especially when we’re talking about something like a movie, where I can easily substitute another form of entertainment without seriously inconveniencing even myself.
I always seem to find that the movie I’ve selected to view on the plane has way more nudity/sex in it than I’d anticipated. Also, those scenes are apparently carefully calculated to show up right when the flight attendant is offering me a drink. I generally turn it off or switch movies if it lasts longer than a short time.
I agree with dracoi about different standards applying in different places. It’s not that I think there’s anything wrong with nudity or sex in movies. I also think that our cultural values and movie rating system that says nudity and sex are horrible but graphic violence is just fine are out of whack. Although I do appreciate the points that several posters have made in this thread about their personal reactions to sexual themes and not wanting to deal that that in public.
While you’re on a plane is not the time to make a determination of what should be discomforting for other people. You’re all crammed together in a little aluminum tube, and you should be respectful of other people’s mores (or what you think they might be), regardless of whether you agree with them. The courteous and respectful thing to do is to turn the movie off if other people can reasonably see it and you think they might not want to (or their parents might not want them to).
One of my girlfriends brought Love Actually onto a plane to watch on her laptop. She popped it in, while seated next to a kid, completely forgetting about the porn couple. It came up, she shut her laptop, and pulled out her book.
It’d sure make going to airport security less of a hassle. 
Suddenly gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “snakes on a plane.”
All I have to add is, if you’re going to watch kiddy porn, at least wait 'til you get to the hotel.