01-02-2005, 11:50 PM
Thanks to James Dobson (of Focus on the Family fame), this town I live in is the heart of super-conservative politics. However, I am not real conservative, and there isn't a lot to do in this place without pissing some die-hard christian off (for more information, visit your local politically partisan priest and tell him you voted for John Kerry).
Back to my point, one of the activities I enjoy doing is seeing foreign and independent films. There is only one theater in Colorado Springs that is willing to show such movies, and this week, they opened two new films, Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "A Very Long Engagement," (an excellent flick, i highly recommend it), and Bill Condon's "Kinsey."
Kinsey was a scientist in Indiana in the late '40s and early '50s that did a study about sexual behavior of American men and women. By surveying thousands of participating adults, Kinsey discovered that Americans did many things that were previously unrecognized, such as masturbate, or have sexual activities with adults of the same gender. The statisics were published in best-selling books with, at the time, startling data, like a third of all heterosexual men have had homosexual experiences at least once in their life.
When this movie was released, there was a huge controversy because the movie got a "R" rating by the mpaa, even though there is explicit nudity, namely full-frontal scenes of Peter Sarsgaard.
My question is this: why is it that Americans will tolerate brutal violence in our media, produce hundreds of such movies a year, but raise hell when genitals, something EVERYBODY sees on a daily basis, are shown to us? Is it because it hits too close to home? Why is it that violence, something unnaturally pleasing, is tolerated over sex, which is quite naturally pleasing?
Please, kind folk, enlighten me.
Back to my point, one of the activities I enjoy doing is seeing foreign and independent films. There is only one theater in Colorado Springs that is willing to show such movies, and this week, they opened two new films, Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "A Very Long Engagement," (an excellent flick, i highly recommend it), and Bill Condon's "Kinsey."
Kinsey was a scientist in Indiana in the late '40s and early '50s that did a study about sexual behavior of American men and women. By surveying thousands of participating adults, Kinsey discovered that Americans did many things that were previously unrecognized, such as masturbate, or have sexual activities with adults of the same gender. The statisics were published in best-selling books with, at the time, startling data, like a third of all heterosexual men have had homosexual experiences at least once in their life.
When this movie was released, there was a huge controversy because the movie got a "R" rating by the mpaa, even though there is explicit nudity, namely full-frontal scenes of Peter Sarsgaard.
My question is this: why is it that Americans will tolerate brutal violence in our media, produce hundreds of such movies a year, but raise hell when genitals, something EVERYBODY sees on a daily basis, are shown to us? Is it because it hits too close to home? Why is it that violence, something unnaturally pleasing, is tolerated over sex, which is quite naturally pleasing?
Please, kind folk, enlighten me.