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Americans are so bought into the idea that "explicit" images are bad that they can't see another viewpoint. Its become "natural". And, as the author pointed out

• lawless123 10y ago
  Thought this the other day, was watching that Hannibal TV series. Didn't see one nipple but a few people torn to pieces. Intestines hanging out and person cut into slices and displayed in glass are ok.
  • jedberg 10y ago
    "The way to have a fully naked woman in a PG-13 movie is to fill her with bullet holes." I don't know who said it, if anyone, but it's true.
    • Houshalter 10y ago
      PG-13 is a lot more restricted than it used to be. You can't have much blood or gore or say more than one bad word. So I don't think that really supports your point.
      • jedberg 10y ago
        I believe it applied more in the past, but the point still stands. At some time in recent history, a naked woman was considered worse than a naked woman with holes from being shot, which is just wrong.
      • pessimizer 10y ago
        Prime time television isn't, though. You may only get only two "shits" a season, but never a nipple. Beheadings, rapes and disembowelings are common, though.
• briandear 10y ago
  Show nipples in Asia or the U.K. It isn't just "Americans."
  • lorenzhs 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_3
    • barrkel 10y ago
      And shortly before the internet really took off and started to standardize legal porn (meaning: harmonize to American rules), 16 and 17 year old topless girls were legal on page 3, with harder stuff elsewhere on the European continent. America effectively exported their legal standards here, mostly through credit card companies I expect. (Not saying commercializing topless schoolgirls is just fine, just that normal used to be different and it has changed due to American influence.)
      • r_smart 10y ago
        Where in America is 16 and 17 legal for appearing in pornography? There are places with age of consent laws that low, but often times there's still a band around that age that their partner has to fall into (i.e. if you're 45, 16 is still off limits). *edit: post I replied to had a typo that significantly changed the meaning. I'll leave this for the record, but it's no longer relevant.
        • barrkel 10y ago
          Sorry, an interrupted edit of my text switched before with after in my text.
        • Dylan16807 10y ago
          "you had a typo" doesn't really need to stay up, and especially not with the note that it's irrelevant coming after people have already read the text.
      • deleted 10y ago
• weberc2 10y ago
  I'm an American, and as far as I can tell, beheadings are at least as controversial as nudity. I wouldn't put much stock in the LA Times either; lots of very biased reporting. EDIT: There seems to be some confusion as to whether we're talking about actual beheadings (e.g., ISIS videos) or theatrical violence. My previous statement pertains to the former context; I don't dispute that fictitious violence in America is less controversial than in other parts of the world.
  • omginternets 10y ago
    >beheadings are at least as controversial as nudity From one internet stranger to another, and with all due respect: bullshit. We as a society positively freak out over nudity and drop our middle-school kids off to see violent movies without even thinking twice. To claim differently is to either a) appeal to an exception that does not represent the overall social norm b) be disingenuous (which I don't think is your case, to be clear) or c) not even be aware of the problem, as advanced by the parent comment. To say the American populace (again, on the aggregate level) is both desensitized to violence and hyper-sensitive to nudity is a massive understatement, one which can be directly traced to our puritanical roots. Seriously, this is like saying America doesn't have a problem with gun violence. It's so patently and obviously false that it borders on comical. (I again feel compelled to mention that I mean absolutely no disrespect. I just couldn't disagree with you more.)
    • weberc2 10y ago
      Or, you know, d) I thought we were talking about actual beheadings (e.g., ISIS promo videos) and not theatrics.
      • omginternets 10y ago
        The theatrical dimension doesn't change much. That's how strange the US is in this respect. The amount of censorship for "real" violence is virtually nonexistent, contrary to the amount of censorship applied to sex, real or otherwise. Do Americans censor "real" violence more than theatrical violence? Possibly. Do they censor "real" violence less than any form of nudity? Yes. You can show Braveheart or a video of a street mugging to a bunch of 8-10 year old kids at school but you can't show them a movie where (god forbid) a pair of tits appears on screen. At the very least, the uproar will be an order of magnitude larger for the boobs as compared to the violence. And once again, this is not the norm around the world. The US is special.
• r_smart 10y ago
  America has something like 330 million people in it. I assure you, there are a lot of us who see the basic logic around this and think we should stop worrying about the occasional nipple. In this particular instance though, it's worse than your complaint. We're talking about censoring an iconic image captured from an important time in our history. I'd be willing to bet that even among the anti-nipple people, this image gets a pass, hands down. Clearly there are some who object, but the vast majority of people understand the message in this image isn't 'enjoy looking at a naked young girl'. *edit: spelling typo
  • fit2rule 10y ago
    >I assure you, there are a lot of us who see the basic logic around this and think we should stop worrying about the occasional nipple. I think the basic problem here is not that there aren't Americans who don't have a problem with seeing a bit of nipple, but that a majority of Americans don't seem to understand that if you censor this kind of thing from people, it makes them a lot more reactive to it when they do in fact encounter it - that is to say, by removing from society any acceptance of sex as a positive thing, American society has become far more malleable and reactive to sex - and thus can be sold more things using sex - than it should be. Sex wouldn't be a billion-dollar industry if nobody was bothered by seeing it now and then. The same position, by the way, can be taken with regard to the way Americans view their wars. The average American has no clue what it actually means to let their military-industrial complex run rampant across the globe - because they don't see the images, the video, the very real facts of the matter, on the ground. And thus, those who profit from such acts, profit.
    • r_smart 10y ago
      So far as I know, sex is used to sell the world over. Growing up, I remember there was a fascination with racy European commercials. Depictions of sex are more normalized there, so the ads just get sexier. Sorta like violence in the US. >with regard to the way Americans view their wars It's been a long time, but as I recall, the second invasion of Iraq was the most protested war in the history of our country -- before it even started. While we don't see the full brutal detail, we understand perfectly well what it means. I'd also add that the American military serves as a proxy not just for American interests, but Western interests. We just get to bear the cost and reputation hit for these things. I don't know where you're writing from obviously, but don't be surprised if your own nation / govt has been complicit in, and benefited from American intervention.
• tomjen3 10y ago
  There really isn't a problem with seeing beheadings either. I was obsessed with seeing just how evil IS were (spoiler: nazi level) so for a time I watched all the videos the press talked about. Some of them did make me feel bad, but none of them harmed me.
  • raarts 10y ago
    You should state how old you were at the time.
• ascendantlogic 10y ago
  American here. As always there can be a middle ground. I 100% agree that the female body (or male body for that matter) is not the end of civilization but there's still a line to be drawn with regards to what children see. You never see the human body depicted in media as simply the vessel we exist in. It's always sexualized almost always with the aim of selling a product. My kids don't need to be seeing that until they're a certain age. By the same token, violence is a part of human nature and we shouldn't go around acting like everyone is holding hands singing kumbaya but again, kids probably shouldn't be exposed to ridiculous levels of that at an early age.
  • belorn 10y ago
    To take Sweden as a historical example, it used to be quite common that Swedish movies had nudity in them. Sweden has a lot of lakes and shores, and the capital is built on top of cluster of islands, so swimming nude during the summer was a very common scene in movies made before 2000 (sometimes with children among the adults), as would comedian pieces with people running in the street naked. The neck spirit was also a fairly common figure, used in similar style as ghosts or faeries. In each case, the human body depicted was just that of people (or made up people). Violence was however very limited and the state censor was active in protecting children from it. A famous case was that of darkwin duck that got removed mid season. Swedish media blamed movie violence for increase gang violence in cities, with examples like "kids learn how to jump kick other children in the head". Then American movies and tv shows over took both the market and mind share. With that, those aspect of Swedish movies went away, and much of the culture with it. Violence censoring went away, and much of media started to self-censor against nudity.
    • lmickh 10y ago
      Did your gang violence increase? Just curious.
      • belorn 10y ago
        It did. I remember that there were plenty of studies, however, the collective conclusive has always been negative on the correlation. I even recently saw a museum event on the subject, which draw some strong parallels between current debate about violent video games and the old debate about violent movies. Personally, I believe there is enough evidence that show that children and young adults that is under major stress and unhealthy social environment will sometimes lash out at society, and they will pick what ever method that is socially unaccepted to do so. Society as such can effect that, but censorship generally has the opposite of the desired effect.
• deleted 10y ago
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• hasenj 10y ago
  What cultures, outside Europe, think it's ok to display sexualized body parts? Even in an advanced/industrialized nation like Japan, typical women don't even show cleavage, because it's considered indecent. Typical TV dramas hardly show kissing scenes.
  • rhino369 10y ago
    And even in Europe their views aren't that much different. It's not like they are showing porn on primetime tv. They just view breasts differently.
  • Inthenameofmine 10y ago
    And then again, in Japan sexualization of teens is completely normal. The world is a big and diverse place with different values.