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Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it

bloodknife.com

141–150 of 699 posts

Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it

#141
Wanted to add this RE the shower scene in Starship Troopers:

"Two nude scenes were kept in the original version (the co-ed shower and a bedroom scene with Rico and Dizzy), although these were modified in the broadcast version. The cast agreed to do the co-ed shower scene only if Verhoeven agreed to direct the scene naked, which he did. Verhoeven found it strange "Americans get more upset about nudity than ultra-violence. I am constantly amazed about that. I mean, I haven't seen any sex scenes in American film that are anything other than completely boring. A bare breast is more difficult to get through the censors than a body riddled with bullets."

Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it

#142
post #130
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having an R-rating didn't mean a lack of toys. "Alien" came out in 1979 to an R-rating. Yet a friend at the time (we were both 10) received a 12" (30cm) xenomorph action figure for Christmas.

Similarly, Deadpool figures galore.

[deleted]

Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not suggesting you are doing anything morally wrong, but keep in mind that they may be faced with a situation where not only are they being pressured into this by specific people but there simply aren't good alternatives for them to make decent money. Men tend to make more money than women. If a woman has a child or children to care for, sex work or exotic dancing etc al may be her only really viable option. I wi…

There's a world of difference between the girls I'm talking about and the escorts who get booked for whole-night affairs and go to dinner with clients. Honestly I don't even know if there are any escorts like that in Romania. The few people that could afford them are relatively well known and going to dinner in an expensive restaurant would be seen by basically everybody which I assume is not desired by men of high s…

I appear to be the highest ranked woman on Hacker News. I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent any time on the leader board here (under a different handle).

A number of people on the leader board are millionaires. I have reason to believe their participation on HN is part of what makes them wealthy.

I was homeless for nearly six years and remain dirt poor and continue to get a lot of guff any time I try to talk about that, no matter the reason and no matter the framing.

I have six years of college. Etc.

While I was homeless, men sometimes offered me cash to sleep with them based solely on my looks and obvious poverty. But trying to network with business professionals on a platform that literally helps a lot of people become quite wealthy has done relatively little for my bottom line and I have been repeatedly told "Go get a real job" and this kind of crap.

You said you are paying four times your hourly wage and I imagine that $25/hour is fairly good money for Romania. It would be decent pay in the US where people are trying to advocate for a minimum wage of $15/hour.

I don't know what her cut is out of what you pay and I don't know how much of her time you are getting, but for a lot of women, that would be vastly better pay than they have any hope of making any other way and they will put up with it simply because the alternatives amount to starving to death and may be just as objectionable as sex work.

Lots of low paying jobs are unpleasant work, like cleaning toilets. Lots of low paying jobs subject you to abusive bosses and abusive customers. It's common knowledge that wait staff at restaurants are typically treated terribly.

Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it

#145
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point?

I'm not sure, frankly, but I think there's a connection. A more sexless society is also a society with a lower overall birthrate. When the pressures of urbanization and modern life mean few people choose to have children while the trends in the article and in many of these comments show that people are less likely to accidentally/serendipitously become pregnant as well combine to somewhat drastically reduce the birth…

Birth rates plummeted through the 1960s and 1970s across the Western world, while the gonorrhea rates skyrocketed, in a period specifically noted for its sexual forwardness.

Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it

#146
post #35

Is this a side effect of normalizing porn, that sexuality is more effectively partitioned? I once had a debate in an online forum about legalizing prostitution, and most participants were supportive of it. Then I asked the same group, what about legalizing partial prostitution, like a receptionist that also has sex with the boss as part of the job description. The participants all immediately switched to revulsion at…

So why is 100% sex work less exploitative than 50% sex work? Gotta say that often questions like this are often as just taken as ways to win rhetorical points and not thought about seriously by those who ask them. But there's actually a good answer. Yes, sex work is extremely exploitative in the sense that you selling a "big piece" of yourself. Which doesn't mean it should be illegal but it should segregated. Why? Ot…

Receptionist + some heavy underground construction at the boring company.

Sounds awesome.

None of those examples seem to have a problem...

Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it

#147

There are interesting ideas here. Personally, I find the War on Terror explanation a little far fetched. I think a more likely possibility is that movies started specializing. In the decades before the Internet, cinema was one place where the average person who didn't buy dirty magazines could glimpse more skin than in everyday life. Then the Internet came along. Suddenly pornography was in everyone's home. Soon it w…

I wonder if the answer isn't more mundane, money. Parents today seem to have no problem with their children seeing a movie where people are eviscerated on screen but won't let their kids see movies with sex in them. I found it funny that "Bridgerton", and "Game of Thrones" both produced with more sex, have been quite popular.

Game of Thrones has plenty of nudity, including full frontal (ermagerd!). But it doesn't have a whole lot of sex that you'd call erotic, as opposed to just being violent rape, carefully catalogued here:

https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Rape

It's telling that the closest thing to a loving, normal relationship seems to be the incestuous brother-sister saga of Cersei and Jaime.

Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it

#148

There are interesting ideas here. Personally, I find the War on Terror explanation a little far fetched. I think a more likely possibility is that movies started specializing. In the decades before the Internet, cinema was one place where the average person who didn't buy dirty magazines could glimpse more skin than in everyday life. Then the Internet came along. Suddenly pornography was in everyone's home. Soon it w…

I wonder if the answer isn't more mundane, money. Parents today seem to have no problem with their children seeing a movie where people are eviscerated on screen but won't let their kids see movies with sex in them. I found it funny that "Bridgerton", and "Game of Thrones" both produced with more sex, have been quite popular.

The paying audience for blockbusters is now global - and many movies earn more outside the U.S. than in it. As such, movie makers are probably now paying more attention to what is considered appropriate versus obscene elsewhere.

Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it

#149
post #35

Is this a side effect of normalizing porn, that sexuality is more effectively partitioned? I once had a debate in an online forum about legalizing prostitution, and most participants were supportive of it. Then I asked the same group, what about legalizing partial prostitution, like a receptionist that also has sex with the boss as part of the job description. The participants all immediately switched to revulsion at…

So why is 100% sex work less exploitative than 50% sex work? Gotta say that often questions like this are often as just taken as ways to win rhetorical points and not thought about seriously by those who ask them. But there's actually a good answer. Yes, sex work is extremely exploitative in the sense that you selling a "big piece" of yourself. Which doesn't mean it should be illegal but it should segregated. Why? Ot…

This phenomena doesn’t apply to just dangerous work. One should expect any provision in a contract to be the norm. If a contract specifies that work on Saturdays is ok, assume every Saturday that you will work. Adjust your pay requirements to reflect this. Don’t let the other party to convince you that “it’ll only be sometimes” or “just in case”. For the 50% stuff, the real answer is empower the worker and train people to sign 2 different contracts for seemingly unrelated jobs. If that screws them out of benefits, then ask for more money. At the very least, it prevents the low pay for hard labor.

Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it

#150
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point?

I'm not sure, frankly, but I think there's a connection. A more sexless society is also a society with a lower overall birthrate. When the pressures of urbanization and modern life mean few people choose to have children while the trends in the article and in many of these comments show that people are less likely to accidentally/serendipitously become pregnant as well combine to somewhat drastically reduce the birth…

Not necessarily. There have been about 60 million abortions since then in the US which don’t get counted in the fertility rate.
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