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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

#151

Post by pronlover723 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #26
Robotbeat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...including the puritans, which means violence is okay but sex is a dealbreaker.

Its a sign of how messed our society is that we can depict torture but not a naked person.

Violence in media doesn't lead to violence in real life for various reasons. Most people are generally taught not to be violent to others and laws help enforce that social norm.

Sex in media does lead to more sex real life because there's no social norm or law against not having sex and sex leads to STD and unwanted pregnancies.

Hence, there is a logic to violence in media is okay and sex in media is less ok. One has no consequences, the other does.

https://www.google.com/search?q=does+sex+in+media+lead+to+se...

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

#152

Post by yalogin »

Very interesting observation and I like the way the author put it. Everything now is seen as an investment to achieve a personal satisfaction goal. Very true indeed. However the rationale we got here is to be debated. I like the theory the author puts forward but I don’t think we can narrow it down to one theory. Something that takes decades to evolve usually has multiple driving factors.

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

#153

Post by dannyw »

miserablegit wrote: post #61
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…

> The public had infinite access to the sexual equivalent of gourmet food If you think porn is "gourmet", you've not watched enough of it. Porn is the McDonalds of sex: repetitive, predictable, largely "safe" (with minimal care, you won't see what you don't want to see), and purposedly all-encompassing but still largely detached from the real thing. I'm an unabashed porn consumer and I have to tell you, I yearn for a…

Then watch something different to mainstream porn :)

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

#154

Post by ziml77 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #103
rayiner wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The math is more dismal than that. With a 1.5 birth rate (common in Europe) the population drops by more than half in three generations (about 100 years). This causes the economy to collapse—stock valuations have baked in assumptions of future generations of consumers existing. But it can get worse. South Korea has a fertility rate below 1 and Taiwan is headed that way. At that rate, the population drops by almost 90…

Poorly constructed economies predicated on ever increasing growth have no business existing. Economies will adapt (and should! it just means more economic drag to provide for seniors until the larger, older cohort has aged out and equilibrium at a lower population level has been reached).

It's disturbing to me that people think population must keep growing. If anything the world could stand to LOSE a significant portion of the population. Resources would be far less strained.

If we built our economies on the expectation of continued population growth, then that just means there was a MASSIVE lack of forethought. But that doesn't mean the solution is to start pumping out more kids. Instead we adapt how these structures work to accommodate the flat or lessened population numbers.

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

#155

Post by Robotbeat »

retrac wrote: post #145
Robotbeat wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Birthrates plummeted in the 1960s but were still vastly higher than today. Birthrates peaked in the 1950s. Current birthrates are equal to the nadir of birthrates in 1980, but they appear to still be falling (but we shall see!).

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

#156

Post by Const-me »

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…

> why is 100% sex work less exploitative than 50% sex work?

I oppose receptionist that also has sex with the boss. Exploitation has nothing to do with that.

At least in my world view, having sex at workplace is unprofessional.

First of all, spending corporate or investor's money on paying sex workers is wrong.

Even if the boss is the sole owner of the company i.e. spending their own money, boss fucking a receptionist causes unhealthy atmosphere in the company. The company gonna have hard time attracting female candidates on other positions. Employees who have families gonna have interesting conversations with their SOs.

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

#157

Post by noofen »

theonemind wrote: post #34
throwaway77767 wrote: post #11

> This cinematic trend reflects the culture around it. Even before the pandemic hit, Millennials and Zoomers were less sexually active than the generation before them. Maybe we’re too anxious about the Apocalypse; maybe we’re too broke to go out; maybe having to live with roommates or our parents makes it a little awkward to bring a partner home; maybe there are chemicals in the environment screwing up our hormones;…

There are almost 7.7 billion people on the planet already, even with less than replacement birthrates, I think we're good on human count for the next 300 years or so at a minimum so unless the birth rate really catastrophically collapses. We could lose an order of magnitude of people without endangering genetic diversity, take significant load off of the environment, and frankly, quite probably improve the human cond…

There are going to be real, significant consequences from us as a Western society collectively deciding to commit civilizational suicide. Every day I see attractive, intelligent, productive, highly empathetic couples justifying their decision to not have children because of abstract "environmental concerns" amongst other decadent reasons (all highly abstract and indicative of civilization in decline, "first world luxuries" that our ancestors would scoff at) such as not being able to "afford them" [4]. Of course, "we'll just implement UBI and good socialized healthcare," but please tell me how that will work when approximately 34% [5] of the US population are tax net-negative [6], while growing exponentially? [7]. The US is going the way of South Africa or Zimbabwe, and I do not want to be around when the food runs out and the crowd is looking for a (white) scapegoat.

The total fertility rate for North America is 1.7 [1]. Meanwhile, the total fertility rate for Sub-Saharan Africa is 4.7 [2]. I know the utopian liberal vision is "we're all created equal," but it simply is not true with the scientific consensus being that IQ is 50-70% heritable [3]. The brutal fact is that some people have a higher intellectual (and productive) potential than others. Rather than look at the facts, we have continued down this path of denial and as a result millions of people are suffering needlessly [8]. The movie Idiocracy is starting to look more like a tutorial instead of a humorous warning.

"Let the children starve, maybe a few of them could become rocket scientists with the help of Affirmative Action, depending on how they fall on the bell curve. At least then we wouldn't have to give up our liberal free-market utopia. At least then we wouldn't have to admit... we're not born equal."

I'm sure you're probably appalled at the possible solutions to this, "eugenics" is the triggering word. Genuinely ask yourself, what do you think we have now? We have a global system, thanks to Western foreign aid, Universities, corporations, and Hollywood, flat-out incentivizing the least productive, least conscientious, least innovative people on the planet to continually reproduce at a higher rate than the most productive, most empathetic, most innovative people. Do you want your grandchildren to exist in a world where they're severely outnumbered by parasites?

I do not, and neither does China. While the US imports millions of low-wage workers, China's net migration rate was negative for the past 70 years [9]. They send their children to US universities to learn from the world's most fashionable and "progressive" professors, while spying on them [10]. You recommend "extending this trend [of fashionably ending our genetic lines] to demographics and countries it hasn't reached yet" while China encourages parents to have 2 children [11]. The US media loves discussing reparations [12] for slavery, while China colonizes Africa [13].

I just don't understand, how can a place so interested in growth, innovation, and future-oriented thinking be so quiet about your society committing suicide around you? Is Twitter going to save us from brain-draining our own population?

[1]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...

[2]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

[4]: https://redd.it/lzw82g

[5]: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219

[6]: https://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2020/03/19/fi...

[7]: https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-the-2020-census-will....

[8]: https://www.sos-usa.org/about-us/where-we-work/africa/hunger....

[9]: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/net-migratio....

[10]: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/28/728659124/fbi-urges-universit...

[11]: https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/china-s-two-child-policy

[12]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/business/economy/reparati...

[13]: https://thediplomat.com/2020/04/chinas-investment-in-africa-...

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

#158

Post by joe_the_user »

fractionalhare wrote: post #92
miserablegit wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The public had infinite access to the sexual equivalent of gourmet food If you think porn is "gourmet", you've not watched enough of it. Porn is the McDonalds of sex: repetitive, predictable, largely "safe" (with minimal care, you won't see what you don't want to see), and purposedly all-encompassing but still largely detached from the real thing. I'm an unabashed porn consumer and I have to tell you, I yearn for a…

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.

Porn isn't gourmet or not gourmet, it can be whatever you want it to be.

It seems like you're using something like the efficient market hypothesis without looking at the evidence.

I'm not a huge porn consumer but I've seen enough and know enough of the industry to say you're basically wrong, at least wrong as far as any "cottage industry" for porn with decent production values, acting or "sincerity" goes. The key thing is decent production value in a movie can't be created in home-grown way, it requires serious dollars. Oppositely, there are actors and there are "adult actors" and the two jobs are considered very distinct (in the way that receptionist and sex-workers are segregated and should be segregated, as mentioned on another thread).

But hey, prove me wrong. I'd love to see a counter example.

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

#159

Post by Robotbeat »

pronlover723 wrote: post #151
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a sign of how messed our society is that we can depict torture but not a naked person.

Violence in media doesn't lead to violence in real life for various reasons. Most people are generally taught not to be violent to others and laws help enforce that social norm. Sex in media does lead to more sex real life because there's no social norm or law against not having sex and sex leads to STD and unwanted pregnancies. Hence, there is a logic to violence in media is okay and sex in media is less ok. One has…

Does violence in movies lead to more support for foreign intervention, I wonder?

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

#160

Post by jjcon »

kyledrake wrote: post #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-viole…

> A bare breast is more difficult to get through the censors than a body riddled with bullets.

I see this point a lot and I think it is a good one but I have some theories on it too.

I think that violence (at least to a point) is part of our natural play instincts, think cops and robbers as a kid. We aren’t disturbed when young children mimic violence, we even see it in nature fairly ubiquitously. Animals play fight with each other. When we see violence in a movie we see it as play, not as reality.

As for why Americans are hung up on sex I’m not sure, but I think there is good reason we may see violence as less of a big deal than it would be in reality.

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