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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

#581

Post by medntech »

tilolebo wrote: post #579
bojan wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's how it works. People you perceive as "naturally thin" probably simply: * are used to not snacking between meals * eat when they are hungry, and stop when they are not * do not drink (excessively) * are more-than-average active Calories add up extremely quickly and it's very easy not to notice if you don't pay attention. Say you have one Mars bar per day, as a snack - that makes a difference of 10…

You really believe all bodies react the same to calories intake?

I don't see where they are arguing that. Are you referring to absorption and/or metabolic dysfunction?

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

#582

Post by WhompingWindows »

wolfram74 wrote: post #575
anthonypasq wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think its also worth noting that actors really exaggerate how hard is it to look good on camera and it ends up discouraging people from improving their diet and exercise. you dont need a nutritionist, and a personal trainer, and to treat it like a full time jobs and get paid for it to look good. you need to clean up your diet and do resistance training at least 3 times a week for an hour, and be consistent.

Combine that with how a cleaned up diet typically either costs more time or more money and working ~60 hours a week on minimum wage, yeah, that is pretty hard for a lot of people.

I heard on a genetics podcast recently that your weight is 70% genetically determined. Every family carries in its genome the similar ingredients for weight: how much do you eat, what foods do you like, how efficient is your body at gathering and storing energy, how much do you naturally like exercise, etc. That 30% is obviously important and most people could make huge gains there, simply by eating less.

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

#583

Post by alamortsubite »

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.

I remember "Airplane!" took a hilarious crack at this phenomenon.

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

#584

Post by timje1 »

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…

The author misses the driving force behind most of this - Chinese censorship and the money behind the Chinese market. If you're making a modern blockbuster you'll double your take if you make sure it plays well in China - which you primarily do by making it sexless, ensuring that any gay representation is minor enough to be cut, etc.

https://pen.org/report/made-in-hollywood-censored-by-beijing...

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

#585

Post by ggggtez »

smusamashah wrote: post #569
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…

How do people separate emotions from sex (i.e. changing/leaving partners). How do people do it without (emotional) bonding with the other person? I always thought the act itself is strongly emotional, isn't it? Will it be correct to say that cost of sexual freedom is emotional detachment from it?

You don't have to think of sex as this deep emotional bond between two people. In one sense, you've been tricked into believing that that is the only way.

So one solution is to accept that sex can be just that: just sex. It can be something that you and a friend do, maybe regularly, maybe only once in a while. Like playing Tennis. You may be happy that you have a friend who you can play Tennis with. But you don't have to fall in love with your Tennis partner and share every other part of your life with them. This solution you can call "Compartmentalizing".

The thing is, even if you had a Tennis partner who said "I don't want to play Tennis with you any more", you'd probably still feel hurt. Having emotional bonds is not limited to just sexual partners, but to anyone that you spend time with. That level of hurt is probably proportional to how often you played Tennis together, and your expectations on how long you expected that relationship to last.

The other method is to not separate emotions from sex, but to just get better at accepting loss and death of relationships as a natural course of life that must be reckoned with. This solution you can call "Acceptance of Grief".

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

#586

Post by ggggtez »

rbanffy wrote: post #576
coldtea wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will it be correct to say that cost of sexual freedom is emotional detachment from it? Yes, that's what several generations had to discover.

Either that or you learn to love everyone equally. I still think polyamory is O(n!) though.

I don't think that being a loving person requires you to be polyamorous.

I think you can be sexually open and loving to one partner at a time, but accept that each individual partner may have an unknown time limit.

This understanding that your relationships won't necessarily last forever doesn't require you to give up on emotions, nor to cheapen sex.

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

#587

Post by fuzzer37 »

tilolebo wrote: post #579
bojan wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's how it works. People you perceive as "naturally thin" probably simply: * are used to not snacking between meals * eat when they are hungry, and stop when they are not * do not drink (excessively) * are more-than-average active Calories add up extremely quickly and it's very easy not to notice if you don't pay attention. Say you have one Mars bar per day, as a snack - that makes a difference of 10…

You really believe all bodies react the same to calories intake?

Yes, (calories absorbed - calories burned) will always be true.

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

#588

Post by hntrader »

I don't really care if there's sex in films, but I just find it so extremely boring.

I've seen it all before 100 times and it does nothing to advance the story (compared to implying that sex just happened), it's not creative, it's not original, it's not interesting, it's not dramatic, it's not funny, and I fast-forward it to avoid wasting 2 minutes of my life.

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

#589

Post by lotsofpulp »

aasasd wrote: post #488
lotsofpulp wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And then the ripped look was kinda table stakes. Everyone had to mirror that alpha male SEAL physique and eventually people forgot why, and it became a self reinforcing cycle for the next 10-15 years. You might be in a bubble. Outside of a few US cities and outdoorsy areas, when I look around, almost nobody looks like they are going to raid a tunnel system in Afghanistan. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/cdc-amer…

> https://www.businessinsider.com.au/cdc-american-obesity-rate... It says right there in the original post that the BMI definition shifted downwards, and discusses exactly these articles like you linked. Have you ever looked at the BMI? 100 kg at ~183 cm is classified as ‘obese’, whereas if you have barely any muscle 100 kg won't even be enough for a proper beer belly—in my experience. But search the web for ‘obesity…

The person I was responding to was saying over the past 15 years, being fit and muscular became the norm, and my link was intended to show data where 9 years ago, a third of US 20 to 39 aged people were obese.

And if you’ve traveled around the US, you can simply see there is practically zero risk of classifying a material number of people as obese when they are actually just muscular and healthy. Or you can look at accompanying data for heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension.

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

#590

Post by fumar »

ikurei wrote: post #432
TomSwirly wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Studios need to reach the widest audience possible to make the most money, so it's a safer bet. As opposed to... what time in the past where this was not true?

I'd guess this was always true, but to a lesser extent. Movies today are super expensive, and at least the movies discussed here are considered failures if they don't reach a huge ammount of people. The risk was still there before, but may be not to this extent.

That is the game the studios have been playing. Larger investments, higher risk, but more calculated same-ness with high appeal to the 4 quadrants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-quadrant_movie

Netflix has turned this model upside down and releases films on its platform that are designed to target specific audience groups.

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