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Cinematic obscenity in America: A hundred years of over-baring censors
- HenryTheHorse 11y ago"Over-baring censors" - Freudian slip, headline wordplay or typo? Discuss.
- maldusiecle 11y agoBad headline wordplay. The Economist loves those, and it's too carefully-edited otherwise for it to be accidental.
- tillinghast 11y agoTerrible wordplay, if this is actually the case. The play exactly contradicts the thesis.
- HenryTheHorse 11y agoWhich was what got my attention too. The Economist is usually very particular about such choices.
- Karunamon 11y agoThe idea that there is such a thing called "obscenity law" always struck me as profoundly backwards - the idea that someone can be so bothered by a piece of media they chose to willingly consume that they can take away the right of others to do the same. This is one glaring inconsistency in the way courts have handled exclusions to freedom of speech. Normally, any abridgement requires a strict scrutiny test, and as far as I know, nobody has been able to articulate what, exactly, the legitimate and narrow government interest in regulating "obscenity" is. AFAICT, it's a vestige of the puritan roots of the country.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoI think it's a codification of a quite natural and sometimes reasonable thing. Imagine I said something completely disgusting in a HN comment. I'd have it flagkilled faster than I could say "freedom of speech". We accept that because a community needs to be curated and maintained. Now extend this sentiment to the society at large, and you have an argument for some kind of obscenity laws. That those laws may have gone too far is another issue though.
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoWith hacker news you can leave and form your own community where that sentiment can be expressed. One just needs to visit a website belonging to some fringe group to see that. But with society's laws, you can't do that. Those communities, because they are now illegal, will be hunted down and destroyed. Instead of flag killing the opinion, imagine if the one who posted it could be banned from the internet.
- gambiting 11y ago"The nudity that was once "bold" and "daring" is now commonplace: hardly a rom-com goes by without a sex scene. Sexually explicit films are released without the batting of a censorial eyelid." And yet, in one of the seasons of US Hell's Kitchen, one of the chefs is in a T-Shirt and her breasts are covered by a blurring mask. I guess it's because you could see her nipples? In a show where Ramsey calls people "fuckface"? US censorship is really really weird.
- drunken-serval 11y ago> T-Shirt and her breasts are covered by a blurring mask Perhaps there was a logo on the t-shirt? It's pretty common in reality TV shows to blur out logos.
- vezzy-fnord 11y agoI don't agree with the author's characterization. Little of the sex scenes in Hollywood films are "bold" or "daring" in the slightest. They're timid, lifeless and quite often completely pointless. They're put in there more to appease some informal filmmaking convention rather than to drive the film itself. A few are explicit, most are comical and still suffer from puritan tropes (like the infamous "his-and-hers bed sheets"). Lars von Trier is certainly controversial, too. Antichrist received quite a bit of opposition from ratings and censorship boards. Then, in the USA, even if your film isn't censored, the NC-17 is a de facto death penalty.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoActually, from my personal observation, Hollywood seems to have toned down on sex scenes significantly in the last decade or so. Actually, I can honest-to-god say that Hollywood blockbusters are now higher culture than theatre in my country is...
- sp332 11y agoSimple math - more people will turn out to see a movie rated PG-13 instead of R. So that's what the studios tend to shoot for.
- Oletros 11y agoI will never understand the taboo that is nudity in the USA society
- andyl 11y agoThink censorship is over? Express opposition to feminists/muslims/blacks/gays/multiculturism/drugs etc. and watch the fireworks. Neo-puritan morals police are stronger than ever.
- olavk 11y agoWhat does "fireworks" mean here? Actual literal censorship, or just people loudly complaining and criticising the expressed sentiment? Because that is the opposite of censorship.
- andyl 11y agoLosing your job and access to employment opportunities is a very common and very effective form of censorship.
- olavk 11y agoOK that is not really what I would call censorship. Censorship is restricting public access to some expression - not punishing the originator. Even if it might be just as bad for the freedom of speech, it is not the same thing.
- TrevorJ 11y agoIf the effect is to stifle the speech then functionally how is it different?
- olavk 11y agoQuite different actually. (Even if two things are both bad it does not mean they are the same thing!) For example you can censor a dead author, but you cannot threaten him. And you can punish someone for saying something without censoring the utterance.
- JakeAl 11y agohttps://www.aclu.org/what-censorship https://www.aclu.org/what-censorship
- sp332 11y agoStill much better than the situation in Britain. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/charlielyne/make-the-censors-watch-paint-drying https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/charlielyne/make-the-ce...