4 ms·

I feel the same way, and I'm in my mid-40's. I always end up wondering why am I watching this stylized sexual encounter (which doesn't match almost anyone's exp

I feel the same way, and I'm in my mid-40's. I always end up wondering why am I watching this stylized sexual encounter (which doesn't match almost anyone's experience almost any time) and often with people I don't really want to watch it with (teenage and adult children). If some light foreplay shows something about the characters, that's fine, or if something actually happened during the act that was important, that's also fine, but otherwise it's just gratuitous and annoying. If I want to watch porn, I'll watch porn, I'm sure as hell not going to opt for some scene in a regular movie. Then again, maybe it's for people that refuse to watch porn for one reason or another and this is as close as they get?

amelius 3y ago
> and often with people I don't really want to watch it with (teenage and adult children) This is the true reason why violence is allowed on TV, whereas sex is always problematic and often censored. You can watch violence with just about anybody (kids, parents, etc.) and it doesn't feel awkward.
- acdha 3y ago
  You can watch it with anyone who has been desensitized. That’s a cultural choice: we train our kids to be weird about sex but okay with hardcore violence.
  - amelius 3y ago
    Are you sure it is a cultural choice? Do you know of any cultures where it is reversed?
    - acdha 3y ago
      The religious community I grew up in treated them both the same, to the point that kids would be teased in school for reacting to movie violence because they were reacting appropriately to an image of someone being killed or mutilated.
  - surgical_fire 3y ago
    Nothing to do with being disensitized. Most people can handle very violent movies while they would be extremely disturbed to see the same events in real life. It's typically made very clear to everyone that violence is wrong, and what you are watching on a movie or series is fictional violence. In other words, you are watching something that no one would like to go through. Sex is fundamentally different. As it is not only desirable in many senses, but it is also a basic human function, but at the same time it is something extremely intimate, not something you share with any random person.
    - acdha 3y ago
      > Sex is fundamentally different. As it is not only desirable in many senses, but it is also a basic human function, but at the same time it is something extremely intimate, not something you share with any random person. That’s cultural - our reactions to violence are pretty fundamental, too, with roots deep in our brains. It’s natural to feel empathy for someone being hurt, to appreciate the implications of them being hurt or killed, etc. The difference is that our culture says that’s okay to show children, so most of us are at least partially desensitized during childhood.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    There's violence, and then there's violence. Broadly speaking (many exceptions), Americans are fine with young teens watching a movie about a man using kung fu fantasy tactics to bloodlessly shoot his way through a building of bad guys, like John Wick, but don't necessarily feel the same way about something that depicts violence in a more brutal and arguably realistic way, like Saving Private Ryan. Is there a little puff of red CGI mist blood coming out of somebody's chest, or does the movie show one of the 'good guys' with half his skull blown away? These are both hardcore violence in a sense, but most people see a large qualitative difference between the two. I think it basically comes down to how likely a movie is to give people nightmares, which of course is a function of desensitization. The American public is broadly desensitized to unrealistic violence, but most aren't desensitized to realistic violence. Incidentally, Saving Private Ryan has a lopsided depiction of violence. The deaths of Americans are shown to be gruesome and agonizing, while the deaths of Germans are mostly shown to be relatively quick and clean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4FeyONCtfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4FeyONCtfc I re-watched Saving Private Ryan after watching this video and found it to be very apparent, but it wasn't apparent to me the first time I watched it.
    - acdha 3y ago
      > The American public is broadly desensitized to unrealistic violence, but most aren't desensitized to realistic violence. I generally agree with your point but this has changed over time. For example, showing someone getting shot in combat was generally acceptable before torture or maiming since we’re more likely to say that those are never justified. Someone who grew up in a culture with public executions and punishments might have a more situational view based on whether it was “deserved”.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
    Define "desensitized". I watched plenty of movies that are violent, the only ones that get me are the ones about torture (makes me angry). However if I see some blood or my wife cuts with a knife, I have to lay down a few minutes to avoid fainting. To me, clearly there is a huge difference between tv and in person. I've never even seen a dead person (except in movies).
    - acdha 3y ago
      That’s basically what I’m referring to. Take a small child and show them the same violent movie scene, and they’ll scream and perhaps have nightmares. Over time we learn that some things are not real and most of us get over that but my point was that this is learned, not innate.
      - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
        So they are desensitized to the TV, I see what you mean now. Usually this has a bad connotation, that's why I interpreted what you said the way I did.
        acdha 3y ago
        Yeah, I was just trying to be pretty literal: you no longer get a charged reaction from it.
acdha 3y ago
> If I want to watch porn, I'll watch porn, I'm sure as hell not going to opt for some scene in a regular movie. I think you’re on the right track here. In the 90s, teenagers would watch objectively terrible TV and movies for the handful of scenes where someone hot was as close to naked as allowed. Sports Illustrated sold a ton of swimsuit issues to guys who didn’t want to be seen buying Playboy, etc. Now that anyone looking for that can get unlimited quantities of any type of erotic material they can imagine online, anyone looking for entertainment is going to skip anything which isn’t very good - no more trying to make up for bad writing and concepts by tossing in a gratuitous shower scene or having your heroine inexplicably choosing to fight in a bikini. The other thing which has been developing for a while, and really ramped up with #MeToo was the realization that a lot of the guys making decisions about what goes into movies were pretty sleazy. It’s not a new observation that there were some pretty screwed up decisions about sexualizing things like rape or other violence, but I think a lot of people decided to stop watching it even if it was in a popular film or show, not to mention some very influential Hollywood types having their careers reconsidered in light of harassment claims, and I’d bet some of that factors into the results of this survey, too.
- tomjen3 3y ago
  It wasn't guys who made fifty shades of grey the only modern franchise to compete in sales numbers with Harry Potter, so I don't buy the idea that men were those who sexualized things like rape and violence.
  - acdha 3y ago
    Slow down, I wasn’t saying all guys but referring specifically to a handful of people like Weinstein. There’s always been back and forth about sex in movies but a lot of people reconsidered how much certain things bothered them after learning that actresses were only doing them under duress or that the same guys making decisions about what was included and dismissing criticism as prudery were also harassers or rapists. There’s another big misconception here: kink isn’t rape. 50 shades had some criticism but it was generally understood that boundaries were being pushed voluntarily. That’s not perfect - there are a million essays on that - but it’s very different from criminal violence. What I was referring to was the way rape is portrayed as sexy in a way which doesn’t happen for other acts of violence in mainstream media. It’s become a lazy screenwriting trope complete with the soft lighting and prolonged focus on how attractive the victim’s body is in a way you’d never see for, say, a man getting stabbed even though both of them are having the worst days of their lives.

amelius 3y ago

> and often with people I don't really want to watch it with (teenage and adult children) This is the true reason why violence is allowed on TV, whereas sex is always problematic and often censored. You can watch violence with just about anybody (kids, parents, etc.) and it doesn't feel awkward.

acdha 3y ago
You can watch it with anyone who has been desensitized. That’s a cultural choice: we train our kids to be weird about sex but okay with hardcore violence.
- amelius 3y ago
  Are you sure it is a cultural choice? Do you know of any cultures where it is reversed?
  - acdha 3y ago
    The religious community I grew up in treated them both the same, to the point that kids would be teased in school for reacting to movie violence because they were reacting appropriately to an image of someone being killed or mutilated.
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  Nothing to do with being disensitized. Most people can handle very violent movies while they would be extremely disturbed to see the same events in real life. It's typically made very clear to everyone that violence is wrong, and what you are watching on a movie or series is fictional violence. In other words, you are watching something that no one would like to go through. Sex is fundamentally different. As it is not only desirable in many senses, but it is also a basic human function, but at the same time it is something extremely intimate, not something you share with any random person.
  - acdha 3y ago
    > Sex is fundamentally different. As it is not only desirable in many senses, but it is also a basic human function, but at the same time it is something extremely intimate, not something you share with any random person. That’s cultural - our reactions to violence are pretty fundamental, too, with roots deep in our brains. It’s natural to feel empathy for someone being hurt, to appreciate the implications of them being hurt or killed, etc. The difference is that our culture says that’s okay to show children, so most of us are at least partially desensitized during childhood.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  There's violence, and then there's violence. Broadly speaking (many exceptions), Americans are fine with young teens watching a movie about a man using kung fu fantasy tactics to bloodlessly shoot his way through a building of bad guys, like John Wick, but don't necessarily feel the same way about something that depicts violence in a more brutal and arguably realistic way, like Saving Private Ryan. Is there a little puff of red CGI mist blood coming out of somebody's chest, or does the movie show one of the 'good guys' with half his skull blown away? These are both hardcore violence in a sense, but most people see a large qualitative difference between the two. I think it basically comes down to how likely a movie is to give people nightmares, which of course is a function of desensitization. The American public is broadly desensitized to unrealistic violence, but most aren't desensitized to realistic violence. Incidentally, Saving Private Ryan has a lopsided depiction of violence. The deaths of Americans are shown to be gruesome and agonizing, while the deaths of Germans are mostly shown to be relatively quick and clean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4FeyONCtfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4FeyONCtfc I re-watched Saving Private Ryan after watching this video and found it to be very apparent, but it wasn't apparent to me the first time I watched it.
  - acdha 3y ago
    > The American public is broadly desensitized to unrealistic violence, but most aren't desensitized to realistic violence. I generally agree with your point but this has changed over time. For example, showing someone getting shot in combat was generally acceptable before torture or maiming since we’re more likely to say that those are never justified. Someone who grew up in a culture with public executions and punishments might have a more situational view based on whether it was “deserved”.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
  Define "desensitized". I watched plenty of movies that are violent, the only ones that get me are the ones about torture (makes me angry). However if I see some blood or my wife cuts with a knife, I have to lay down a few minutes to avoid fainting. To me, clearly there is a huge difference between tv and in person. I've never even seen a dead person (except in movies).
  - acdha 3y ago
    That’s basically what I’m referring to. Take a small child and show them the same violent movie scene, and they’ll scream and perhaps have nightmares. Over time we learn that some things are not real and most of us get over that but my point was that this is learned, not innate.
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
      So they are desensitized to the TV, I see what you mean now. Usually this has a bad connotation, that's why I interpreted what you said the way I did.
      - acdha 3y ago
        Yeah, I was just trying to be pretty literal: you no longer get a charged reaction from it.

acdha 3y ago

> If I want to watch porn, I'll watch porn, I'm sure as hell not going to opt for some scene in a regular movie. I think you’re on the right track here. In the 90s, teenagers would watch objectively terrible TV and movies for the handful of scenes where someone hot was as close to naked as allowed. Sports Illustrated sold a ton of swimsuit issues to guys who didn’t want to be seen buying Playboy, etc. Now that anyone looking for that can get unlimited quantities of any type of erotic material they can imagine online, anyone looking for entertainment is going to skip anything which isn’t very good - no more trying to make up for bad writing and concepts by tossing in a gratuitous shower scene or having your heroine inexplicably choosing to fight in a bikini. The other thing which has been developing for a while, and really ramped up with #MeToo was the realization that a lot of the guys making decisions about what goes into movies were pretty sleazy. It’s not a new observation that there were some pretty screwed up decisions about sexualizing things like rape or other violence, but I think a lot of people decided to stop watching it even if it was in a popular film or show, not to mention some very influential Hollywood types having their careers reconsidered in light of harassment claims, and I’d bet some of that factors into the results of this survey, too.

tomjen3 3y ago
It wasn't guys who made fifty shades of grey the only modern franchise to compete in sales numbers with Harry Potter, so I don't buy the idea that men were those who sexualized things like rape and violence.
- acdha 3y ago
  Slow down, I wasn’t saying all guys but referring specifically to a handful of people like Weinstein. There’s always been back and forth about sex in movies but a lot of people reconsidered how much certain things bothered them after learning that actresses were only doing them under duress or that the same guys making decisions about what was included and dismissing criticism as prudery were also harassers or rapists. There’s another big misconception here: kink isn’t rape. 50 shades had some criticism but it was generally understood that boundaries were being pushed voluntarily. That’s not perfect - there are a million essays on that - but it’s very different from criminal violence. What I was referring to was the way rape is portrayed as sexy in a way which doesn’t happen for other acts of violence in mainstream media. It’s become a lazy screenwriting trope complete with the soft lighting and prolonged focus on how attractive the victim’s body is in a way you’d never see for, say, a man getting stabbed even though both of them are having the worst days of their lives.