The Australian film professor who got me making movies said he didn't understand Americans. 'Would you rather catch your kid having sex or killing someone? Yet war movies are on the TV and the pornos are hidden on your harddrive.'
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The Australian film professor who got me making movies said he didn't understand Americans. 'Would you rather catch your kid having sex or killing someone? Yet war movies are on the TV and the pornos are hidden on your harddrive.'
Video games are another example. Going back to the first Super Mario or Donkey Kong or Space Invaders, the primary action and scoring of video games are killing, yet nudity and sex is uncommon and slapped a mandatory Mature rating.
It's also one of the many reasons why the Puritans got kicked out of England (on the Mayflower...that sailed across the Atlantic...and founded 13 colonies...hint hint). The key phrase here being "kicked out", not "we left on our own".
i guess whether or not sex is the lesser evil also depends on how its being portrayed. shit like rape, double standards, etc. can't really comment on teen pregnancy since i was a pregnant teen
One could argue that the inhibition of sex is a precursor to violence. Is there a direct connection between American puritanism and our industrial war machine?
I don't think it's appropriate for kids to see either... but I think seeing sex (consensual) is better than the violence. When I was a kid.... I was allowed to watch an R rated horror movie.... but not allowed to watch a movie that was R because of sexual content. The horror movie violence never bothered me. I think because I understood that none of it was real, and the villians didn't exist.
But I can remember one time.... a friend's grandma took us(my sis and I) to a drive in to see a movie. We saw the untouchables, which was about Al Capone. The only thing I remember about that movie... is a scene where someone goes into a person's house... and starts shooting with a machine gun. It was very graphic with a lot of blood. My mom was upset that our friend's grandma had taken us to see it. Looking back.... I don't know what grandma was thinking LOL.... to take little kids to a movie like that. But the violence in the untouchables.... had a much bigger impact than any horror movie I'd seen. I'm still like that now. I'll watch a horror movie that's gory.... and it doesn't bother me. But if it seems like something could be more true to life... then that's when violence in a movie bothers me.
I don't think it's appropriate for kids to see either... but I think seeing sex (consensual) is better than the violence. When I was a kid.... I was allowed to watch an R rated horror movie.... but not allowed to watch a movie that was R because of sexual content. The horror movie violence never bothered me. I think because I understood that none of it was real, and the villians didn't exist.
But I can remember one time.... a friend's grandma took us(my sis and I) to a drive in to see a movie. We saw the untouchables, which was about Al Capone. The only thing I remember about that movie... is a scene where someone goes into a person's house... and starts shooting with a machine gun. It was very graphic with a lot of blood. My mom was upset that our friend's grandma had taken us to see it. Looking back.... I don't know what grandma was thinking LOL.... to take little kids to a movie like that. But the violence in the untouchables.... had a much bigger impact than any horror movie I'd seen. I'm still like that now. I'll watch a horror movie that's gory.... and it doesn't bother me. But if it seems like something could be more true to life... then that's when violence in a movie bothers me.
See I disagree, I think being exposed to sex is much worse, because you haven't gone through puberty yet....so you don't understand what's going on and that makes it very foreign and frightening. I guess I am alone in thinking this, but I look at it like this: which is worse? Physical abuse or sexual? Definitely sexual, that's just so wrong....so therefore I kinda deduced that as being the more traumatizing.
There have been times I'm watching a movie just wondering HOW it got the rating it did. I think parents need to take more responsibility before letting a child watch any movie or play any game. Some children are more sensitive to these issues than others. My daughter gets worried when she sees a Borg on Star Trek because all they do is "hurt people and make the Captain a robot" I had to tell her that everyone would be ok and they would save the Captain. I let her watch the rest of the episode to show her (because she didn't believe me) and haven't let her watch an episode with the Borg since. Adults aren't setting boundries based on what their individual children need. Just because one child can handle the violence of a movie doesn't mean all chillden of the same age range will deal with it the same.
If there is mature content, adults need to take the time to discuss the content with their children. That Is what is lacking in our culture.
Should I have been allowed to watch Kids when I was 13 just because adults were in the room (My friend's older sister was 18 and watching it with us). My first reaction is a big, NO! But my friend's sister took the time to discuss the movie afterward and we learned a very valuable lesson about condom use and STD testing that day.
this might be thread jacking my own damn thread, but i just read something a few days ago that made me absolutely furious! you can show a guy having an orgasm and it will get a pg 13 rating, maybe R.but a woman having an orgasm, that's an automatic R or NC17. people who come up with ratings are obviously very fearful of women's sexuality,and sex in general. i picture them being a bunch of misogynistic old men who are probably in the closet pervs themselves. i find any culture that shuns sexuality and treats it like a big dirty secret are the most sexually strange and often perverse people IRL
If I had seen movies as a kid that had scenes with sexual force, I'd be inclined to agree. But anything I saw with sex was always consensual. I did have the feeling of WTF is that LOL, but it wasn't scary. I can still remember a late night porno I happened to catch on cable once. Of course my parents were asleep and didn't know I was watching it LOL. These people were in their bedroom having sex, and a masked man breaks into the house. The masked man pays no attention to the couple having sex, and just starts filling a pillowcase with a bunch of their stuff. The couple sees the masked man, but just go right on having sex. I still don't understand what the hell was up with that LOL.
If I had seen movies as a kid that had scenes with sexual force, I'd be inclined to agree. But anything I saw with sex was always consensual. I did have the feeling of WTF is that LOL, but it wasn't scary. I can still remember a late night porno I happened to catch on cable once. Of course my parents were asleep and didn't know I was watching it LOL. These people were in their bedroom having sex, and a masked man breaks into the house. The masked man pays no attention to the couple having sex, and just starts filling a pillowcase with a bunch of their stuff. The couple sees the masked man, but just go right on having sex. I still don't understand what the hell was up with that LOL.
I remember seeing a horror movie on tv and wondering how it got on television though it was very violent even with the edits. It gave me nightmares for days. I remember seeing PG and PG-13 movies that I thought should have been higher. On the opposite, I remember when the Blues Brothers came out and my parents were all set to take me and my brother because the movies was filmed in my area (and in fact the mall I shopped at as a child). They then found out it was rated R so they decided not to. The reason it was rated R was the language. If one takes out the language (mostly in one scene)it's a really tame movie. However Jaws which to me was scary was rated PG. That movies terrified me for days.
Hmmmmm.....I start watching films with sex and violence at the age of 3 because in my family you need to know good and evil at an early age. I did not grow up with purtianical beliefs nor with my children grow up with those beliefs. Everything was discuss in my family since I was young from sex to violence to racism to war to the occult. Everything was discuss both good and evil...so I never cringed from human nature ;) Since many people in my family was apart of the medical field and law enforcement....things where showed and discuss that other children would not see such as Holocaust photos, Lynching photos, and so forth. I was not affected by these as I felt that it was my human duty to see everything and not be shocked. This being so said things such as Gumby was banned at my grandmother's home for being too stupid for children...we watched the nature channel instead. Now we did not watch pornography either and some films were banned such as "Traces of Death" and "Faces of Death" due to their vile content. I do not say that is an good idea for everyone's child either to see the things that I have seen as an child. But as a child, my parents noticed that I was not like other children...for example, I declared myself an feminist at the age of 9 and start writing horror fiction at 11 :) Plus unlike my light-hearted and dare I say quite romantic parents...I was much more harden and jaded even at the age of 2. So I was born jaded :)
I would much rather see a loving couple transition into hard core (even if it becomes explicit but not gyno) than see something like the violence in Godfather or Platoon. I sure wish it wasn't so taboo that I feel I can't see it or talk about it except to my GF. Just a few stupid (usually) non-specific sex jokes is all we get.
I'm ok with people thinking I'm a bad parent for it but I don't censor much from my son. I won't let him watch porn but R rated movies are fine as far as I'm concerned. Frankly, I don't see how anyone can say that letting a young child watch porn (which is actually people having sex for real) is better than watching a dude in a bad sasquatch costume fake kill people. Plus, the porn will get your kids taken away from you, the horror movies generally won't.
My situation might be a little different than most though. I have a child who is 13 and has never had a nightmare in his entire life. He also loves special effects in movies. We've had some great bonding experiences watching bad horror movies and laughing at how obviously fake they are.
He's also not even slightly violent. The only time he's ever been in trouble is when he was in third grade and and a fifth grader had set up camp in the younger kids' bathroom to give swirlies. My son caught him doing it to one of the smallest kids in the class, pulled the bully off him and popped him. I was proud of him. The school was proud of him too but he did end up with detention for hitting the little jerk.
^ well i was mostly talking about little kids, ages 3 to 9. by the time my kid is a teenager, i will probably assume that he has watched porn and violent movies.
My son was watching horror movies well before the age of nine. But, like I said, I feel good about my parenting decisions.
My parents were really intense about sheltering me from violent/sexual movies when I was a kid-- I wasn't allowed to see Austin Powers until I was 14-- but I had a friend who was allowed to watch pretty much anything. I remember her watching Face Off when we were like 8. She grew up to have a LOT of emotional problems.
I don't think there's any reason to show children sexual/violent films or TV shows... adult's lives are dominated by sex and violence, and there's no reason to take away someone's childhood by introducing those two things to them early. But I think it's becoming harder and harder to shelter your kids because especially television is just OVERFLOWING with it. I mean, I just finished watching The Tudors, the showtime show-- I obsessed with anything Henry VIII/Anne Boleyn related-- and I swear, 60% of that show is just PURE sex scenes. I was expecting a historical soap opera since it is Showtime and not PBS, but still, it was just excessive to me. I love the Walking Dead to bits, but even I wish that they would take the focus off mutilating and killing zombies. I thought the first two seasons, which probably only had 30% of the violence the show has now, were much better seasons.
That's not to say I don't love a good horror movie-- I'm actually a bit obsessed with them. But, the effect that a horror movie has on me as an adult is totally different than the effect it has on a child. To this day I would say that the scariest movie I ever saw is the Sixth Sense. I watched it the year it came out at a friend's house (my mom would have flipped if she knew) so I was about ten. And the only reason it scared me so much was because I was WAY too young and those images totally traumatized me for years.
The thing is tho, when I look back on my childhood I really wish that my parents had been much more open with talking to me about sex and violence. I totally agree with their decision to be very selective about what films/TV shows I could watch, but their decision to totally shelter me from sex, especially, totally backfired in the long run.
^ i know, i really wish that my parents had been more open with me about sex while i was still young enough to have questions about it. it was always " welp violence happens in this world, so go ahead and get used to it" but sex was too embarrassing and crude for them to talk about ?? .
and i also don't see rape and sex as the same. rape is an act of violence.
( im not trying to knock anybody's parenting style, just trying to gain some insight and ask opinions)
If you'e referring to me, I don't feel like you're knocking my parenting style at all, just to put that out there. Like I said, my son is a little different, he's autistic and very logical. Nothing in movies has ever scared him because he knows it's not real. (I wish I was like that, I still get nightmares from horror movies, even though I love them. LOL)
I think it has to be determined on a kid to kid basis and it can be used as a learning experience. Just recently we were watching the movie V/H/S and there's a scene where a girl passes out and the guy gets all bummed out because he can't have sex with her even though they were going hot and heavy just a minute before. That sparked a great discussion about date rape and how you can't have sex with an unconscious person because they can't consent and if you do, that's rape. I don't make him cover his eyes for sex scenes either. If it's tame enough for an R rating, I'll let him watch it. Sex is a natural part of life.
But if horror movies scared my son or gave him nightmares, I wouldn't let him watch them. Honestly though, he gets way more disturbed by the news because he knows that stuff is real.
It is a mystery. Some of the most peaceful countries also don't censor anything at all on tv. Sweden, for example.
Violence never bothered me as a young kid, sex did. And seeing violence didn't make me violent.
When I was 8 I walked in on my parents and thought my dad was hurting my mom, but I knew he wasn't *really* hurting her.. Hard to describe the thought. They knew I had seen them for a second and my mom never came to my room to explain anything. I remember being so traumatized and disgusted, I cried.
Then like a year later I heard her talking on the phone about sex to my aunt and again, traumatized. We got the sex talk and everything, but I felt extremely uncomfortable and like, violated hearing it. So I agree that different children are sensitive to different things.
The child's maturity level also matters. I feel that when I have a kid I'll know what to show and what not to, hopefully.
* I was allowed to watch mild violence, but absolutely no nudity. Then around double digit years, a lot more violence and a little nudity. Maybe that's why I was so weird about sex.
I know this isn't a logical approach, but for me it depends on the context of the violence. If it's fantastical zombie gore, then I'm okay with my daughter watching with me-as it is rather easy for me to explain to her that zombies aren't real, and I'm capable of discussing any zombie-related questions.
If it's violence that depicts a real-world scenario, a la serial killer/war/historic/gang/etc/ then it's a no-go in my book.
Personally, I think sex scenes are inappropriate for my daughter at this age. But, perhaps this is because *I* am uncomfortable with sex, and am definitely not ready to have that discussion with her yet.
My kids are young, no neither option is acceptable. Period. There is enough kids-oriented content available nowadays that there is absolutely no reason why young children need to see that stuff on tv.
As they get older, I'll be honest in saying that I'll probably be a little more tolerant of tv/movie exposure to violence than to sex. After all, I'm not particularly worried about my 12 or 13 year old daughter becoming an ax murderer because she saw one in a horror movie, but I can't say the same about exposure to sexual content. And anyone who thinks that exposure to sexual content doesn't have an impact upon a hormonal kid is deluded IMHO.
Obviously I cannot control everything that they see and hear, nor am I nutty enough to try. Everything is so sexualized nowadays that a certain level of exposure is inevitable. But I can limit their exposures to some degree by limiting the types of content that they can watch and otherwise decrease the real world risks through other common sense parenting steps (not letting them be out alone with boys until certain ages, tight curfews, etc.).
Idk. I sure don't have all of the answers, but I know that exposing hormonal young kids to tv/movie sex is not a recipe for self control. I cannot remember half of the gore filled movies I watched as a kid, but to this day I could tell you about every salacious moment of Risky Business, which is the first time I ever saw sex in a movie as a teenager. ;)