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While I agree with Spielberg's realization that modifying his prior work was a mistake, there's something I would like to be able to do with movies as a consume
by robomartin 4y ago
While I agree with Spielberg's realization that modifying his prior work was a mistake, there's something I would like to be able to do with movies as a consumer that I wish streaming services offered.
Hollywood seems obsessed with three things: Guns, sex and objectifying women.
While not every movie has guns, the sex and objectification is pretty much everywhere. Perfectly good movies have utterly unnecessary sex scenes that make them impossible to watch with kids. In some cases this is also uncomfortable in family gathering settings.
Two examples that come to mind (there are thousands):
Die Hard. He opens an office door, only to expose a couple having sex. Of course, the woman is fully exposed, while the guy is not.
Lucky Number Slevin. The main character walks into his apartment only to find his girlfriends on all fours on the bed having sex with a guy. Again, full sexual exploitation of the woman, of course.
The Last Kingdom (series): Once again, sex everywhere. No value whatsoever to the story. It's a great series. Unwatchable with kids and in other settings.
Battlestar Galactica (the one with James Olmos): Excellent series. Sex everywhere. No nudity that I can remember, yet scenes of oral sex and other forms of sex without showing full body nudes. Fucking unbelievably unnecessary.
Outlander (series): Might as well be labelled porn. It's a sex-fest. Humping in any way possible at any possible time and even male-to-male rape. Nothing whatsoever to add to the story, which would have been amazing without all that shit in there.
The Queens Gambit (series). Fantastic series about chess. My kids are really into chess. Fuck if we are going to watch it with them. No nudity, yet drugs and sex are featured. The character is fictitious, which means there was no need for any of it. The producers just wanted to include sex and drugs. This one can't be fixed. I am not going to watch a show with my kids that implies taking drugs can make you smarter in any way.
There are tons of movies and shows with similar problems. Movies that are excellent and yet the producers feel it is necessary to insert a stupid sex scene that adds absolutely nothing to the story and is of no value whatsoever other than to show boobs bouncing and feature women as sexual objects.
Notice I did not say anything about movies like Fifty Shades or Gray, Wall Street or Eyes Wide Shut. Those are movies where the story justifies some of what they feature. There could be an argument related to female objectification, that's about it.
I am not a puritan, by any means. I just think this is stupid, wrong, unnecessary, detrimental and destructive to women. Having a daughter changes your perspective on what's out there in popular culture. Great movies and series are being ruined all the time by inserting sex where it is unnecessary, and it is usually at the expense of women.
Getting back to the first paragraph. I wish there was a setting on streaming services to be able to watch these movies with those scenes cut out or replaced by alternative scenes shot and chosen by the creators.
In the case of Die Hard, the couple could be kissing, taking a nap, playing chess...anything. The point is they were distracted and did not react to the emergency. In the case of Slevin, the sex scene could either be completely cut out or replaced with something different.
That, to me, would be a feature very much worth having. Hollywood's obsession with sex and the objectification of women is a problem that does not seem to receive the attention it should.
- perilunar 4y ago> I am not a puritan, by any means Hate to break it to you, but you just wrote 500 words ranting about gratuitous sex in movies...
- robomartin 4y agoPerhaps a quick dictionary lookup might help you? Ignoring the religious definition, here's how it is typically interpreted: "one who practices or preaches a more rigorous or professedly purer moral code than that which prevails" My comment isn't at all about a purer moral code. It's about Hollywood's obsession with pushing more and more explicit sexual content on everyone and the objectification of women. If you think speaking-up against objectifying women is against our prevailing moral code, well, not sure what society you have around you. How about that scene in on of the Transformer's movies where they follow the actress (who used to be a Victoria's Secret model) up the stairs while wearing underwear with the camera firmly planted on her ass? Seriously? Why was that necessary? It isn't about some pure moral code. It's about using women and pushing shit on people just to do it. Like I said in my comment, if the movie is about sexual matters, absolutely no problem. A blow-job scene in Battlestar Galactica? Really?
- tekla 4y agoLiterally puritanism. Maybe women SHOULD wear hijabs to prevent them from being sexualized.
- robomartin 4y agoLiterally a ridiculous comment.