I think the reason violence is more acceptable than sex on television is this:
Sex - normally evokes a kind of emotional and physical state of openness and vulnerability. A nakedness in more than just the physical sense. This is true even in the case of simple recreational sex between two or more consenting adults.
Violence - evokes a closed psycological state. A state of defensive and aggressive behaviour. It’s a more primal kind of emotion because it often appeals to our survival fight-or-flight mechanism. It’s more viciral because nothing demands and more immediate response than a threat to one’s very life (or the life of a loved one).
Add to that the fact that women are still largely attracted to men who yield certain power (physical, financial, social) which directly translates into their ability to protect her and her children and you have a recepie for a species that relates to violence on a very basic level regardless of how they rationalize it.
Now this is not to say that the more violent the male the more attrative he is to the female gender. There is certainly a level at which highly aggressive individuals are seen to be a threat. Still, ability to protect and win battles is seen as a sign of verility and strength by both genders. It’s no surprise that our heros in movies manage to balance strength and compassion better than the villains who seem to posess great strength (and often intellect) but little compassion.
So what is television teaching our kids by seemingly glorifying violence? Well, it teaches them that sometimes violence is the only way of resolving a conflict but it must be tempered with compassion. There must be sufficient cause to resort to violence and once the villain is vanquished, peace must return to rule the day.
Now I think it’s silly to compare/contrast a Hollywood movie script to real life events. Few of us are trapped in office buildings while terrorists hold our wives hostage. Few of us are police officers who are involved in international money laundering scams involving foreign dimplomats. Few of us are put in a position to defend all humanity from futuristic androids who’ve travelled through time to change history.
It’s hard to make judgements about the levels of violence in Hollywood films based on our daily lives. Given the movie plot lines, I hardly ever think that the level of violence is unjustified. Bad guys doing bad things to good (innocent) people calls for the good guys to respond decisively, violently and directly at the root cause of the problem. Having the good guys invite the bad guys to a counselling session to discuss the root cause for their anti-social behaviour would not only be boring but completely unrealistic. If someone holds a gun to your head, your first instinct is fight-or-flight, not an urge to psycho-analize the underlying cause behind your aggressor’s behaviour.
Back to sex for a moment. In contrast to violence, the events leading up to sex are much more subtle and personal. The romance, the wooing, the physical attraction the mental game play is all very subtle and difficult to translate into a movie that will portray a healthy emotional and physical relationship as a direct result of common interests and physical attraction. So unless you are making a porno film (where the pretext for sex is as simple as two people in the same camera frame) the film maker would be hard pressed to deliver an attention grabbing film of two people dating and getting to know each other. Yes, there are plenty of romantic films that portray people meeting and falling in love under both funny and tragic circumstances that don’t include violence. However, the minute actual sex is introduced into the story line, there is an outcry about how the movie uses gratuitous sex too freely and unnecessarily. Perhaps it’s the Puritanical aspect of society. Perhaps it’s the religious influences. But my money is on the idea that violence appeals more to our core being than sex simply because one can identify to a threat to one’s life more immediately than to sexual game play. Also, one must keep in mind that one person’s sexual turn on is another person’s sexual turn off, while a threat to one’s life is percieved fairly equally by most if not all.
