7 ms·

> The editors are not being puritanical. They're trying to illustrate to him that his writing (when read by an American) is adding context that he may not be tr

• ar_lan 4y ago
  Imagine the existence + massiveness of Hollywood and still believing Americans, as a general default, are puritanical. > For you (American?) it's the Modern interpretation while for others it might just be the American interpretation. Where does this come from? This clearly isn't accurate for the majority of America. Maybe back in the 50s - but that was also 70 years ago.
  • exq 4y ago
    Compared to what's available on TV in western Europe, Hollywood is much more reserved. They may not be puritanical, but most of the religious right in America absolutely are, and they make up a large and loud majority. Janet Jacksons tassled nipple resulted in national controversy and outrage! Laws were passed because of it. BECAUSE OF A NIPPLE! People were screeching just a few weeks ago that Disney had ~24 frames of an animated married lesbian couple kiss, as if having a kid see someone give a quick peck to their partner will turn them into a flaming homosexual or want to switch genders. We've come a long way here in usa, but we've got a ways to go.
    • birdyrooster 4y ago
      The government censors porn from the internet in a country in Western Europe. Oh wait nvm that isn’t Europe anymore.
      • anthk 4y ago
        I'm from Spain. Zillions of people saw a bare nipple in the New Year's Eve late night show back in the day. That was about 35 years ago. And no one cared.
        • whimsicalism 4y ago
          And yet you still remember it 35 years later.'
          • yellowapple 4y ago
            In all fairness, it was an exceptionally nice nipple.
        • fsckboy 4y ago
          Every time a european tells me that they don't care about nudity I always ask them to strip or have their wife/gf lift up her shirt for me. They never do. it's exhausting listening to Europeans make such a huge deal about how they don't make a big deal about sex.
          • anthk 4y ago
            We don't care on normal contexts, such as advertisements about shampoos with nude women. We have decor too.
            • fsckboy 4y ago
              but you don't show women's buttholes in advertising, so you draw a line one place; we draw the line another place. .But if you don't care about it and it's no big deal, then why is it such a big deal not to see nipples, it's like you have this need to see women's nipples or there's something wrong. In actuality, I think you have a need to act like and say that you don't think it's a big deal; but the European porn and titillation industry is quite robust, so the prurient interest is there.
    • 988747 4y ago
      Yeah, the nipple-phobia in Hollywood is really funny. Characters in Hollywood movies or TV shows somehow manage to have sexual intercourse without taking their underwear off.
      • worik 4y ago
        It is the weirdest thing how couples, having just had sex, are wearing underwear. There must be some code I do not know about. It is ubiquitous
        • 988747 4y ago
          Well, it's still better than 50s and 60s, when it seems married couples slept in separate beds (a scene from "I love Lucy"): https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/e1/f9/ace1f9037208231eebf5184b9dce84b6.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/e1/f9/ace1f9037208231eebf5...
          • oska 4y ago
            Without meaning to undermine your point, I think a greater proportion of married couples did sleep in separate beds back then. My grandparents had separate beds.
      • LouisSayers 4y ago
        Or not taking off their shoes... What's with Americans wearing shoes on the bed? we're always shocked when we see that on TV.
        • 988747 4y ago
          I think this stems from two things: 1. Americans are always on the run, living at much higher pace, ready to take off at moment's notice. 2. The US is located more to the south than Europe, so the climate is warmer and drier in most parts, so your shoes are much cleaner (no snow, no mud). Or maybe it's just a movie convention: like they want the movie character to be able to take off without wasting time on finding their shoes. Similar thing happens with how phone calls are shown in movies: there's a very short greeting, and after the conversation is over people just hang off, no pleasantries at the end, in the interest of air time.
  • birdyrooster 4y ago
    Right? We see the British with their porn filters as being puritanical.
    • trasz 4y ago
      Even though those filters are fake news.
  • nautilius 4y ago
    Imagine observing American media, from nipplegate, to nipple-censoring, to Carlin's seven words, to censored and sanitized song lyrics in the radio and in the store, to warning labels about 'explicit lyrics', to hyperclean and sanitized Hollowood movie productions, to covered and hidden magazine covers - and still thinking the Americans, as a general default, are not puritanical. Thank you for that.
    • worik 4y ago
      You cannot put graphic sex in, but you can put in graphic violence. Priorities
    • LouisSayers 4y ago
      The things that get me are blurred bums, logos, and paintings on the wall. America is extremely polarised. On the one hand it's blurring bottoms and censoring words of drugs in songs and the other it produces the most hard core porn and gun violence...
      • manuel_w 4y ago
        One might be because of the other. I once read an article that wrote about different cultures typical curse words. It explained that the principle of cursing is to break a taboo. If you know how a culture curses, you know what's holy to them. * In North America, cursing often revolves around sexuality. * In slavic countries, cursing involves the mother. * In middle eastern countries, it involves the father. (Not sure if I remember that one correctly, though.)
    • SllX 4y ago
      Imagine painting with a broad brush an entire nation’s worth of people, one with literally several or many times more people than name a European country. We’re a country of many peoples with many values and that’s one of the reasons we fight so much. Pretty much everything you listed is a norm which evolved from a strict—and yes, sometimes puritanical view—to accommodations for different people from the heart of the Tennessee River Valley to the beaches of California. We’re not all still partying like we’re fresh off the boat and it’s 1620. As clean as a Hollywood production might look to you, the people that made that movie were probably all living rather diverse lifestyles, many of whom might make a Roman at their peak blush. The Puritanism is still there, but so is a lot more than that.
  • wongarsu 4y ago
    Hollywood might not be downright puritanical, but compared to European TV they make a much bigger deal out of upper body nudity and swearing, among other topics. There are a couple of exceptions (HBO comes to mind), but as a general rule Hollywood definitely isn't running wild (except when it comes to violence).
• Goronmon 4y ago
  And why is that? Because Americans are puritanical. I don't think "puritanical" is the right word in this case. Unless you are implying that smoking being considered unhealthy is something based on Puritan or other religious values.
  • birdyrooster 4y ago
  • olddustytrail 4y ago
    If the criterion is health, it might be better to remove references to Americans eating in front of their children?
    • spywaregorilla 4y ago
      In America we tend to assume that it's ok for children to eat food but not ok to smoke
      • worik 4y ago
        >> If the criterion is health, it might be better to remove references to Americans eating in front of their children? > In America we tend to assume that it's ok for children to eat food but not ok to smoke "Americans eating in front of their children". Does not mention food. That is the point
        • spywaregorilla 4y ago
          I tend to assume eating implies eating food. I think you've missed the intended dumb argument about overeating being an american health concern.
    • dahfizz 4y ago
      Surely you know how ridiculous that comparison is. Second hand smoke kills, second hand food does not. You need to eat to be healthy, you do not need to smoke to be healthy. Not eating in front of children is more likely to give them dietary issues than not.
• pyuser583 4y ago
  I had a roommate who moved to America from a third world country. He had heard that Americans don’t let children drink alcohol. That sounded puritanical. When he arrived in the US, and saw people drinking more alcohol in one night than they drank in a year back home (this was hyperbole). I’d drink with him. One shot of rum a night - no more, no less. Americans aren’t one shot drinkers. We drink too much. And so do many Europeans.
• pvillano 4y ago
  In the Japanese translation of Inside Out, the animation was changed to replace broccoli with green peppers. This is obviously not a literal translation. However, the change serves the point of the scene. The point of the scene is to introduce the character Disgust. In Japan, the cultural norm is that kids hate green peppers, so changing the vegetable makes it clearer that the newly introduced character is Disgust. If the point of the passage was that this character is "a good parent", then getting that point across to American audiences would depend on cultural context. If the point is to describe without judgement, then a more literal translation makes more sense.