Hollywood movies are made for an international audience and don't just reflect American culture anymore. Europe has always been more sexually permissive than the US, but other places are often more sexually restrictive than both. I think that's why Hollywood movies have become more prudish. It's also why the characters and dialogue are flat. Nuance is hard to translate; explosions are not.
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
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Or just aiming for the lowest common denominator - and taking out anything that might be controversial in any of their global markets. (Take out sexuality for the American market, and take out politics for China).
A $100m+ budget doesn’t have room for risks.
Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it
#163> 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;…
https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...
Research on satisfaction differences between relationship types is illuminating
Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it
#164There 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.
Putting aside parenting choices, the two types of images (sex and violence) are not equivalent.
Sexual images produce a physiological response... you get horny.
Violent images don’t really do much, maybe revulsion. But, other than that, not much at all.
A picture of a bullet-ridden corpse will not make you want to shoot people.
A picture of a naked chick having sex, on the other hand, will elicit a desire to have sex.
Apples and oranges.
To be sure, there are many who blame the ‘violence in video games’ and the like as the cause of crime. Those people are idiots... getting a good headshot in Counter-Strike gives you the exact same kind of thrill as making a basket or a hole in one ... nobody says, “Hell yeah! Now I want to kill someone!”
But, watching porn? That’s exactly what it does... the imagery itself makes you go “Hell yeah! Now I want to fuck someone!” (Which, to most porn watchers, means fucking their hand.)
Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it
#165I think the lack of sex in Hollywood can be traced at least in part to the Chinese market. There's a lot of money in it and studios are more than happy to comply with CCP guidelines to get a share of that pie.
And sadly the next/upcoming big market, India, isn't any better than China when it comes to censorship.
Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
There was a case a few years ago where a US federal judge refused to outlaw torture in case there was a “24 type situation”. (24 was a popular tv show a few years ago in which the main character regularly tortures people for information, to protect America.)
Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it
#167> When Paul Verhoeven adapted Starship Troopers in the late 1990s, did he know he was predicting the future? The endless desert war, the ubiquity of military propaganda, a cheerful face shouting victory as more and more bodies pile up?
- Yes he did, I reckon that’s why this is such an underrated movie. American audiences largely didn’t pick up on the sarcasm.
> No one looks at each other. No one flirts. A room full of beautiful, bare bodies, and everyone is only horny for war.
- Not quite true. Rico and Flores do end up shagging
Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not american (Nor european) but I would still be extremely uncomfortable in an all-male shower let alone a unisex shower. I'm curious what you think the reasons that nudity is not as big of a deal to Europeans are.
I don’t think there’s any complicated explanation; if you are never exposed to a particular state of being (e.g. public nudity) while growing up, it will probably be uncomfortable as an adult if you only have a normal level of openness to new experiences. I don’t think fear of nudity is much different from fear of flying or fear of fear of public speaking or whatever. At least among my friend group, public nudity has…
I meant more from a cultural perspective than a purely behavioural one.
Just curious if there are some obvious cultural differences which contribute to being brought up with nudity being more normalized.
Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it
#169Earlier 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…
Not necessarily. There have been about 60 million abortions since then in the US which don’t get counted in the fertility rate.
US abortion rate is now lower than it was before Roe vs Wade and fertility rate has been dropping in tandem with the dropping abortion rate, so I don't think that explains it.
Re: Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it
#170Interesting essay. As a fan of cinema, I've noticed that there is a clinical deadness lately when it comes to representing real people. I don't agree with the conclusions of the essayist, but there's something there. Verisimilitude is gone. Real people are gone. In their place, there's a clinical, sterile plastic automaton put together by marketing departments. Even when there's nudity and sexuality, it feels like a…
I'm curious how you like The Great Beauty / La Grande Bellezza.