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Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it

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

#341

Post by bongoman37 »

spc476 wrote: post #102
milchek wrote: post #27

This was a fun read, especially as someone who grew up with those 80s and 90s movies. That said, and as the author touches on, the action/super hero of today is a PG-13 one. Studios need to reach the widest audience possible to make the most money, so it's a safer bet. Sure, back in the day studios had the same imperative, but the licensed toy game was still young, so they didn't realise that maybe if they made Die H…

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.

A more general rating can also cause people to lose interest. The original Star Wars would have had a G rating, Lucas added a severed hand scene to move it to PG rating making it seem more acceptable to adult audiences.

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

#342

Post by [deleted] »

tootie wrote: post #288
milchek wrote: post #27

This was a fun read, especially as someone who grew up with those 80s and 90s movies. That said, and as the author touches on, the action/super hero of today is a PG-13 one. Studios need to reach the widest audience possible to make the most money, so it's a safer bet. Sure, back in the day studios had the same imperative, but the licensed toy game was still young, so they didn't realise that maybe if they made Die H…

I feel like a lot of 80s movies just a generic sex scene or topless woman inserted as a matter of course. Because it was expected whether or not it was remotely relevant to anything.

[deleted]

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

#343

Post by aksss »

viraptor wrote: post #243
brushfoot wrote: post #16

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…

> Sexual desire became something you could very easily take care of, to your exact specifications, in private. That's a very shallow view. It as much takes care of your sexual desires as fries takes care of your daily nutrition. It's great if you have no real food available and can be a fun snack if you're still hungry.

McDonalds is popular the world over. I wouldn’t take GP to task over their observation. The observation may imply a shallow society, and whether fries or sex, there’s obviously a massive global market for cheap and easy, so something in that observation is pretty accurate. If everything is biological competition, I think society just hasn’t found a way to compete effectively with massively broad and easy access to porn.

I mean, look at some of the posts here about people being disillusioned by the work, expense, and time it takes to even meet eligible people, much less hook up. Maybe the answer is in more meat-space social organizations - all those social (non-government) institutions like church, fraternal organizations, sports leagues, served to build social networks and now all of that is mostly gone for young people. So it’s meeting at work (increasingly taboo), chance encounters, bars maybe (and also often useless or horrible outcomes), or online shopping. Understandably difficult circumstances. What new drivers could compel different preferences?

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

#344

Post by lstodd »

bigiain wrote: post #283
secfirstmd wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just from my own observation recently it's also the case with French, German and Israeli TV. Much more nuanced, realistic etc.

And Russian cinema. Or at least all the Russian cinema that makes it to Australia and I get to see...

I guess the crap gets filtered out.

But I'm curious - what exactly gets to Australia from Russia nowadays?

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

#345

Post by throwaway8581 »

airhead969 wrote: post #325

Fuck all that mass-media social programming propaganda. Murder and violence are "okay," while sex and sexuality are "bad." I'll walk around naked, look at women, and hookup whenever I damn well please. Sex is awesome, bodies are beautiful, and no shame is necessary for either. Films that cannot be made in modern America: - Laura, les ombres de l'été (1979) - Lolita (either) - Pretty Baby (1978) - Caligula (1979) - Ro…

Sex is not harmless. While it is one of the great human joys, it is also the source of some of our deepest despairs, intractable conflicts, and personal tragedies. This free-for-all free love ethic that you celebrate, which erased almost all of the previous social restrictions on sex, inevitably created the discontent that boiled over into the #metoo phenomenon. It is also fueling the growing incel phenomenon.

It is not just out of backward thinking that every single human society has seen it fit to strictly control sex. The last half century, where your attitude largely reigned in Western Europe and almost the same extent in America, is an extreme aberration and it is ending rapidly before our eyes.

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

#346

Post by leveleer323 »

hirundo wrote: 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…

This is no brainer. If a job description involves having sex, then people who don't want to have sex will be forced to do so which violates basic human right. On the other hand having sex with boss or any one with consent should not be prohibited legally.

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

#347

Post by efraim »

leveleer323 wrote: post #340
airhead969 wrote: post #325

Fuck all that mass-media social programming propaganda. Murder and violence are "okay," while sex and sexuality are "bad." I'll walk around naked, look at women, and hookup whenever I damn well please. Sex is awesome, bodies are beautiful, and no shame is necessary for either. Films that cannot be made in modern America: - Laura, les ombres de l'été (1979) - Lolita (either) - Pretty Baby (1978) - Caligula (1979) - Ro…

I agree with the gist of the post expect walking around naked. I don't know if its a right thing to be naked around children. I am too biased to be brought up growing with clothes on, haven't thought or heard the argument of the other side.

What are your concerns about being naked around children?

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

#348

Post by matt-attack »

leveleer323 wrote: post #340
airhead969 wrote: post #325

Fuck all that mass-media social programming propaganda. Murder and violence are "okay," while sex and sexuality are "bad." I'll walk around naked, look at women, and hookup whenever I damn well please. Sex is awesome, bodies are beautiful, and no shame is necessary for either. Films that cannot be made in modern America: - Laura, les ombres de l'été (1979) - Lolita (either) - Pretty Baby (1978) - Caligula (1979) - Ro…

I agree with the gist of the post expect walking around naked. I don't know if its a right thing to be naked around children. I am too biased to be brought up growing with clothes on, haven't thought or heard the argument of the other side.

I can assure you that kids raised around parents who are naked constantly is perfectly normal and healthy. I was raised in the 70s and my parents were constantly naked. We all sat in the backyard hot tub naked. Not a thought was given to it.

I now do the same to my kids. The key is to do it from day one, so there is never that first memory of “when did you first see your parents naked”. There is no first because it’s been always. There is no shock because it’s perfectly normal.

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

#349

Post by lstamour »

aksss wrote: post #291
throway98752343 wrote: post #246

> [Julia] was a bold-looking girl, of about twenty-seven, with thick hair, a freckled face, and swift, athletic movements. A narrow scarlet sash, emblem of the Junior Anti-Sex League, was wound several times round the waist of her overalls, just tightly enough to bring out the shapeliness of her hips. Winston had disliked her from the very first moment of seeing her. > Better than before, moreover, he realized why it…

That guy knew what was up. Does all of this just flow out of the technology that turns high population societies into behaving like low population communities? The lack of privacy, the moralizing.. combined with a too-far removed central authority? Is that the dynamic that Orwell was able to see?

It’s worth pointing out that Orwell wasn’t so much predicting a future as commenting on current trends. For instance https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4412199/ or https://www.jstor.org/stable/27673024

My point is not that the above articles are definitive but to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same, etc.

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

#350

Post by lstodd »

astrange wrote: post #189
fractionalhare wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet there's a cottage industry of porn that specializes in serving you that kind of experience. Even if it's just packaged from existing movies and more "softcore" or something. Porn isn't gourmet or not gourmet, it can be whatever you want it to be. And if there's enough demand (and it's legal), people will make specialized porn to serve it.

The Western porn market is a monopoly (the same company owns Pornhub and approximately every studio.) If you want something different, you'd have to train your tastes until you can handle something foreign like JAV[1], or scrounge indies like random onlyfans accounts. [1] which are all really boring, seriously they're like four hours long and nothing happens, and that's besides the completely different set of morals…

Cookie-cutter western porn is also boring as silicone. And pornhub is shit except for the brief moment when it had gun videos.

Eastern-european is much better, imo.

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