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…
Marvel movies are also made to export to a global audience looking for family-friendly entertainment. I'm sure some countries' censors would balk at sexual content as much as they would disagreeable political content.
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
#512Seriously? Selective sampling and click bait. Two recent programs come to mind and I'm sure this list is not exhaustive. "The boys" and "Orville". Both chock full of "heroes" who in-between being heroes are preoccupied with banging each other, getting drunk, eating or failing themselves. The last episode of "The Boys" ends with Homelander jerking off while perched on a ledge over the city and raging at the unfairness…
I haven't seen the Orville but from the way you describe it it fits exactly into the authors description. Modern sexuality as a pathology and disease that gets in the way of 'healthy living'.
Actual eroticism is almost completely absent from modern fiction.
Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it
#513Is 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…
Others have explained why certain jobs are "segregated", and how sex work could plausibly fit into that category. But even if it does not, there's nothing we can learn about sex work from the reactions described above. Isn't it strange how most programmers think that specialist barista work is not demeaning, but would quit on the spot if they were instructed to serve morning coffee to the management? Oh wait, it's no…
If a company advertised for a part time programmer, part time barista, how would people react? They might think it was funny, and they probably wouldn't apply, but they wouldn't think that the very existence of such a position was unacceptable.
Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it
#514Is 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 an anecdote from my student life. One of my colleagues told me how all the girls in the class (including her) are going out of their mind for the chubby, average looking teaching assistant and how he's "very sexy". He wasn't even particularly nerdy, nor well-dressed, humorous or well-spoken (since those might be quirky or well-regarded behaviours that can be considered "sexy" too): to me, he was decidedly ave…
Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it
#515"The skateboarder with his Walkman, the intellectual working on his wordprocessor, the Bronx breakdancer whirling frantically in the Roxy, the jogger and the body-builder: everywhere, whether in regard to the body or the mental faculties, you find the same blank solitude, the same narcissistic refraction. This omnipresent cult of the body is extraordinary. It is the only object on which everyone is made to concentrate, not as a source of pleasure, but as an object of frantic concern, in the obsessive fear of failure or substandard performance, a sign and an anticipation of death, that death to which no one can any longer give a meaning, but which everyone knows has at all times to be prevented. The body is cherished in the perverse certainty of its uselessness, in the total certainty of its non-resurrection. Now, pleasure is an effect of the resurrection of the body, by which it exceeds that hormonal, vascular and dietetic equilibrium in which we seek to imprison it, that exorcism by fitness and hygiene. So the body has to be made to forget pleasure as present grace, to forget its possible metamorphosis into other forms of appearance and become dedicated to the Utopian preservation of a youth that is, in any case, already lost. For the body which doubts its own existence is already half-dead, and the current semi-yogic, semi-ecstatic cult of the body is a morbid preoccupation. The care taken of the body while it is alive prefigures the way it will be made up in the funeral home, where it will be given a smile that is really ‘into’ death.
This ‘into’ is the key to everything. The point is not to be nor even to have a body, but to be into your own body. Into your sexuality, into your own desire. Into your own functions, as if they were energy differentials or video screens. The hedonism of the ‘into’: the body is a scenario and the curious hygienist threnody devoted to it runs through the innumerable fitness centres, bodybuilding gyms, stimulation and simulation studios that stretch from Venice to Tupanga Canyon, bearing witness to a collective asexual obsession"
Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it
#516Fuck 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…
Scarcity increases value. We often artificially enforce the scarcity of things in order to preserve its value. That's the reason why patents, IP and copyrights exists, for example. "Marriage" and "fidelity" are a means of artificially enforcing scarcity on sex, in order to increase the value and likelihood of partners bonding for life, which in turn improves the child-rearing situation for society, as single parents…
I don't subscribe to monogamy or closed relationships. Regularlly, I'm with 3 bi/pan females who would all eagerly have my children whenever I wanted. They sleep around primarily with women, as do I. It's way more enjoyable than the "waiting until marriage"-types and virgins who I actively avoid because they're dull.
Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it
#517Fuck 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…
Rocky Horror Picture Show was remade in 2016 and premiered on Fox.
Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it
#518I think the article is spot on. We live in a sanitized, sexless culture that glorifies self-optimisation without purpose. Baudrillard however already recognised this a while ago in America (1989) "The skateboarder with his Walkman, the intellectual working on his wordprocessor, the Bronx breakdancer whirling frantically in the Roxy, the jogger and the body-builder: everywhere, whether in regard to the body or the men…
Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it
#519Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it
#520Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scarcity increases value. We often artificially enforce the scarcity of things in order to preserve its value. That's the reason why patents, IP and copyrights exists, for example. "Marriage" and "fidelity" are a means of artificially enforcing scarcity on sex, in order to increase the value and likelihood of partners bonding for life, which in turn improves the child-rearing situation for society, as single parents…
Not universally-true. Contrived scarcity is bullshit and reduces enjoyment for me. I don't subscribe to monogamy or closed relationships. Regularlly, I'm with 3 bi/pan females who would all eagerly have my children whenever I wanted. They sleep around primarily with women, as do I. It's way more enjoyable than the "waiting until marriage"-types and virgins who I actively avoid because they're dull.
Civilization cannot exist without promoted monogamy.
Q. Do you believe polygamy in the Middle East hurts women or men more?
A. Men. Young, poor, men. You have tens of thousands of young, poor men with zero prospects of having a mate. That translates into a thousand suicide bombers. To a man that desperate, that 60-odd virgin fantasy starts to hold far more meaning.