I remember she was getting banged in one scene, which the narrator commented something like "sex - Amelia tried it, meh". Maybe the scene was cut entirely.

Duh, you are correct, there was a sex scene. Maybe the most harmless sex scene ever created in cinema history, but there was one and I forgot about it.

Wasn't there another scene where the proprietor of the coffee shop had an orgasm and was screaming? And also some sex talk I remember. R might have been too much but I don't think pg13 would be unreasonable.

Yes, also nipples.

Wasn't there a montage of orgasms as well?

The one with Amélie was certainly very harmless, the other ones were a bit more spicy. Yet this shows the difference in thinking between America and Europe.

Warning, NOT SAFE FOR WORK:

For context here's the sex scenes in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6wqunhUVWo

(I checked the guidelines, it doesn't mention anything adult related. Hence that should be okay here.)

Judge for yourself.

For added fun, check out how much Germany censors violence in the movies. They sometimes cut out whole action scenes from action movies.

I think both of these are wrong. For Germans violence seems to be a bigger issue than sex, while for Americans sex is a bigger taboo than violence.

Both of these are completely misguided (IMO) moral policing and disempowering of the population. Both say: people are not capable of making a sound moral choice on their own, they must be protected from seeing things that could negatively influence their character.

That being said, if I were to pick between these two bad policies, I personally think sex is a vastly less morally objectionable topic. On one hand you have an activity that (between consenting people) is pleasurable and is essential in propagating the species, while the other is generally undesirable to everyone involved.

Problem is, American media doesn’t just show violence, it glorifies violence, whereas perfectly normal behaviors are being censored out.

This of course has a rather obvious explanation, but HN prohibits mentioning it for political reasons.

I think you have the causality backwards. In both cases, the publishers are trying to maximize profit.

A movie full of violence won't sell as well in Germany. It isn't want Germans want to go see. Vice versa for Americans and sex.

Culture dictates what kind of media is desirable, not the other way around.

I don't dispute the cultural aspect, in fact that's a center point of my post. But Germany does have (to the best of my knowledge) a special rating board that even used to enforce censorship in games. E.g. games sold in Germany had to have blood removed.

Again, the cultural aspect is core to the entire thing, but nevertheless the overarching theme is that both countries apply a sort of self censorship.

America has ratings and similar censorship for games too. They also have strong cultural/economic taboos that work on top of it. They censor different things and different topics tho.

Every country has something that rates or censors entertainment for popular consumption. Some are overbearing or carry criminal offenses (Iran, Russia) and some are more off economic (store wont sell your game).

> Both say: people are not capable of making a sound moral choice on their own, they must be protected from seeing things that could negatively influence their character.

Germany became strongly anti-violence after WWII cause the normalization of violence in that period and level of it was extraordinary high in Germany.