Re:Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desex...
by Cthulhu_ on Monday March 08, 2021 @10:07AM
(#26386512)
There are some pretty good articles and videos about the subject; some random points:
Puritans, who believed that sex was sinful and suffering was noble.
The likelihood of something happening in real life. Most people will live their whole life without getting into a violent situation, which keeps it a fictional one, but almost all will be confronted with a sexual one. Violence in media will not beget violence in real life, generally speaking (if it did, given how much violence there is in video games and movies, we'd have a Problem), but sex in media will normalize it. Or that's the theory anyway.
Another one: Sex is always happy, a happy relationship, people looking pleased with themselves after the saxophone-music-pan-out smoking a cigarette (to invoke the 80's trope). Violence is almost always bad, the hero in agony, the bad guy coming to a gruesome end (falling off Nakatomi Plaza, into helicopter blades or a jet turbine, getting roundhouse kicked into defeat, etc), etc. It's a punishment, whereas sex in a film is depicted as a reward. Generally speaking.
Puritans, who believed that sex was sinful and suffering was noble.
The likelihood of something happening in real life. Most people will live their whole life without getting into a violent situation, which keeps it a fictional one, but almost all will be confronted with a sexual one. Violence in media will not beget violence in real life, generally speaking (if it did, given how much violence there is in video games and movies, we'd have a Problem), but sex in media will normalize it. Or that's the theory anyway.
Another one: Sex is always happy, a happy relationship, people looking pleased with themselves after the saxophone-music-pan-out smoking a cigarette (to invoke the 80's trope). Violence is almost always bad, the hero in agony, the bad guy coming to a gruesome end (falling off Nakatomi Plaza, into helicopter blades or a jet turbine, getting roundhouse kicked into defeat, etc), etc. It's a punishment, whereas sex in a film is depicted as a reward. Generally speaking.