Yeah, just because boys are “expected” to seek out porn doesn’t mean they’re allowed.
Because of that, one of the first times I saw naked women on screen was when I saw Schindler’s List. Talk about mixed goddamn signals.
I watched the documentary Surfwise this weekend, about a family of 11 that lived in a 24’ camper and traveled around the country.
As you can imagine the family has few scruples. They are devout Jews, though. But in the movie the (grown) kids talk about how their parents fucked all the time and it was awful. They hated it. It was gross. They tried to hide from it but couldn’t. These are kids who rarely if ever saw TV or movies. Their parents were being all cool and open about sex with them and they formed their own independent opinion that seeing other people have sex is gross.
Anyway, IMHO kids don’t want to see sex on tv or in movies. Even if mommy and daddy tell them how lovely and beautiful sex is, it’s still gross to them.
I think kids are supposed to be grossed out by certain adult things like sex, but they can’t get grossed out if they’re never aware of it.
If you haven’t seen Amistad with a room full of adolescents, you are only imagining how that scene impacts kids that age. (And for the record, we are not talking 12-year-olds. We’re talking 16-year-olds. Big difference.)
Should I also not show Spielburg’s excellent Holocaust documentary The Final Days? There’s color film footage of naked male Hungarian camp inmates at liberation: they are literally flesh-covered skeletons who walk very gingerly because the only protection their heels have from the ground is thin skin. Their buttocks are barely recognizable as buttocks because there is zero fat there. Do you think some girls or gay boys are going to envision that scene when they “grope alone in their bedrooms”?
Does nudity, no matter the context, always equal sexual stimulation?
We are much more open about sex now and have much more sex education in the schools. We also have an all time high teenage pregnancy rate. That is the fault of the Christians who have much less influence now?
I think that for those few kids (the ones whose parents refuse to sign the slips) who have been raised to the age of 12 (or worse 16!) by parents who teach them that nudity is “dirty,”
and who have tried to keep any images of nudity hidden from them, that it is very likely that they would view any nudity as sexual stimulation, just like someone who has been staved will see shit as a source of sustenance. My point is that keeping sexuality and even nudity hidden from children until they reach 18 damages them and risks leaving them without any context in which they might appropriately process and understand the kind of images they will see in Amistad.
Of course, kids being kids, it’s far more likely that their parents have simply failed to do anything of the sort. And people being resilient, it’s likely that most of those who have been kept sheltered will somehow adapt and get through life, especially if they have the support of good teachers and other adults (which it sounds like these kids have).
But the question was why parents are so afraid of nudity that they would keep their kids from seeing Amistad, and the (partial) answer is that given the dilemma of either acknowledging that their efforts at parenting ave most likely been futile or recognizing that they have already damaged their children to the point of their possibly being unable to watch an R-rated movie without further scarring, it’s understandable that those same parents choose to punt!
I think there’s different types of violence and nudity and they make for different reactions. For instance, it is all but impossible to study war, particularly in film, and not have it involve violence, but it is violence in the context of war, and so the violence is justified based upon the justness of that war. As such, I don’t think you’ll see a lot of people objecting to war movies about WW2 because the vast majority of people consider it a just war. That said, there is also a line to be drawn between depicting the violence accurately and being gratuitous with showing lots of blood and guts and decapitated bodies and all.
But there’s also other types of violence that I think get a lot more criticism. Movies that glorify the mafia or fighting or videogames like Grand Theft Auto get a lot more flack for their violence precisely because it’s not justified. That’s where I think a lot of parents see the difference, because at least with a war movie, one can say that that violence only makes sense when protecting one’s country or fighting for ideals worth dying for, but giving the idea that killing someone over money is much more difficult to put in context.
It’s sort of similar with nudity. There are some sorts of nudity that are necessary as part of telling a story, like in Amistad and there’s nothing sexual about it at all; although I do think some people see any kind of nudity as sexual. That said, sexuality is ultimately much more accessible to the average person, it utterly pervades our culture, and it’s something that everyone struggles with at a young and impressionable age. I think that it’s easy to give poor impressions outside of appropriate context.
That all said, I it’s easy to blame religion, and I suppose it is partially to blame, but I think the culprit is ultimately lazy parenting. In a generation raised by TV, videogames, and the internet, it’s just plain easier to turn a blind eye and hope that your kids won’t be exposed so you don’t have to explain it than try to put meaningful boundaries on something as complex as sex. Violence that we’re exposed to is generally pretty easy to categorize, but combined with the urges of an adolescent and all of the layers of potential issues surrounding sex, not just pregnancy and STDs, but also love, emotion and attachment, orientation, social repercussions… I can understand why so people people just want to put it off limits which, of course, just makes the problem worse.
I’m not a parent, but I’d still think that, though it make be more time consuming and difficult up front, that appropriate exposure and context goes a lot farther in preventing those sorts of problems. So, unless they’re issues that many kids of a certain age really just can’t handle, as opposed to just being complicated, then I think censoring probably does more harm than good.
No, the rate peaked back in the 50s.
What sort of person shows Amistad or Saving Private Ryan* to eight-year-olds??
*the movies listed in the OP, which even says they’re talking about high school kids
cite?
I always have found it to be incredibly uncomfortable to watch any sort of sex scenes with anyone I am related to, whereas violence never posed that problem. Maybe others share this sentiment.
Nonetheless the treatment of sex in material that Mikey is exposed to during his childhood years can still have an effect on how he behaves at 13.
What I find really odd, and something that is hardly ever remarked on, is that “sex and violence” are so often lumped together that the phrase itself has become a cliché.
Who on earth first thought to group sex with violence? The two could hardly be further apart and yet someone thought they should be thrown together as Stuff The Kids Mustn’t Watch!
It’s probably because of all the Christians who think both are intrinsically evil. Who in fact if anything think sex is worse.
Nah, it’s just a misunderstanding that arose when an elderly man complained about his local high school’s decision to merge the band and orchestra together. He hated sax and violins.
Sort of went downhill from there, really.
I have a very vivid imagination. As a kid, it made me extremely upset and squimish whenever something gory happened in a movie, and I was (and still am) very afraid that the actors (who I didn’t fully understand were just actors until I got older) would take the violence too far and show too much. Mostly because I knew what a cut felt like, and seeing someone get ripped in half forced me to think about how painfull it must be, and I have a fairly good idea about what it must feel like to die a violent death because I’ve thought about it so much that I’ve practically experienced it (did I mention that I have a VERY vivid imagination). My parents would sometimes cover my eyes when something violent was about to happen, but that just meant I got to hear the screams of the people and had to imagine what could possibly make a human being scream like that (there’s that imagination again). I would latter, as an adult, watch said movies, and I even got nervous when it came to a part that previously I was kept from watching, only to find that the scene was a small fraction of the horror I played through my head.
To date, I’ve seen things that would make most people turn vegetarian, and keep others from ever eating a plate of spaghetti again, and not all those things have been ‘played out’ by actors. It’s actually made me develop a very strong stomach, I have learned to compartmentalize merely so that I can eat, and so I can push the nastiness out of my head and enjoy life. Still, I have moments where my mind wonders back to some of the disgusting things that pethetic humans have dreamed up to do to other humans who are just trying to live their lives.
Sexually explicit material, however, I’ve actually sought after, even as young as ten (I was curious about females, and wanted to see what’s under the clothes). I remember searching my house from top to bottom trying to find pictures and whatnot while my parents were out. The thing that nearly messed me up the most was that neither parent ever sat me down and explained to me that my sexual urges were perfectly normal, it wasn’t until I read something online that made me realize that my parents aversion to sex was merely because they never explored their own sexuality at all (it’s a miracle that my brother and I were even born). My opinion, don’t expose kids to violence un-necessarily (unless to educate them on what not to do to other people), and make damn well sure you give them a porn magazine at least by the time they’re 13 or 14 (can’t say this would be good for girls 'cause I’m not one:) ). This strategy may reduce rape and gang wars…
sorry 'bout the long post, saw this thread and had to speak my peace, it’s a pet peeve of mine.