[echelon]

Twitter and Reddit have shown that the population doesn't care if porn is mixed in with everything else. It's fine, it's fun, and it's harmless.

The American WASP prudishness needs to die. We love our violence in film and drama. We should love our sexuality too.

Game of Thrones was better for it.

[afavour]

You’ve also explained why it won’t come back, though: the internet.

I remember taxicab confessions being compelling because it was a rare example of people talking openly about adult things. These days that’s everywhere online.

[echelon]

Both Netflix and HBO are showing full frontal nudity. Male and female. And the shows that do are incredibly popular.

Worrying about it is a generational thing.

[funstuff007]

> the population doesn't care if porn is mixed in with everything else

Good luck bringing that up at the water cooler at work.

[pstuart]

Game of Thrones got a little too "rapey" for many (myself included).

[PrufferFrish]

It especially sucked because none of those major rape scenes were in the books. They were added by the show runners. Drago didn't rape Daenerys; he seduced her. Ramsey Bolton never raped Sansa (and also never married her, that was a different character entirely, cut from the show). Jaime never raped Cercei.

[searealist]

Not everyone has made their sexual fetish their identity and wants to see porn all over the place.

edit: The parent comment originally advocated putting hardcore porn into all content, but was edited.

[wkat4242]

TV shows are about human life and sexuality is as much part of life as anything. A lot more than violence. I do also wish this wasn't such a taboo.

But the US is far from the only country that's so sensitive about it. Pornography in China is forbidden, in India is very iffy. In Islamic countries it can be extremely illegal.

Even in the Netherlands where I'm from movies have become a lot more prudish since the 70s/80s.

[searealist]

The parent comment wants to incorporate hardcore porn into all content. People watch hardcore porn to become turned on. Having hardcore porn in all content leads to either being turned on to the detriment of the rest of the movie or becoming desensitized to the detriment of their real world sex life.

You treat "It's part of human life therefore it should be on screen" as an axiom. But it's worth stepping back and considering other viewpoints.

[wkat4242]

I don't think the parent was suggesting putting hardcore porn in general content. They were just referring to a time with less strict morals and mentioned some mainstream entertainment titles of the era.

I was just using pornography to illustrate the even stricter morals outside the western world. But like the parent comment I'd also wish we'd loosen up a bit.

[searealist]

The parent comment originally advocated putting hardcore porn into all content, but was edited.

[echelon]

> The parent comment originally advocated putting hardcore porn into all content, but was edited.

That's a mischaracterization if I've ever seen one. My comment was originally written as this:

> Twitter and Reddit have shown that the population doesn't care if porn is mixed in with everything else. [Including hardcore porn.] It's fine, it's fun, and it's harmless.

I originally stated that Twitter and Reddit include hardcore porn as well. My intention was to demonstrate that nobody gives a fuck that that these websites depict humans having sex (because they don't). Reddit nor Twitter makes any attempt to scrub sexual content because that would be suicide. Tumblr is an excellent example of how prudishness sucks the life out of the things it latches onto.

These are major platforms people use at work and school and include as a normal part of day to day conversation. Journalists and academics use these platforms. Brands use them. Nobody gives a damn that they feature nudity or porn, or even (gasp) nude bodies moving in pleasurable ways.

HBO and Netflix already show boobs, penises, and vaginas. Recently, Netflix's "Sex/Life" showed a CG enhanced 10-inch prosthetic penis that blew up on social media [1]. Again, nobody cares. (Actually, they do care -- they love it, and they love to talk about it. My wife and all of her friends were talking about it all week.) It's a natural and normal part of human interest and entertainment.

The point of my comment was to show only a small percentage of the country gets wound up about this. People were thrilled that Game of Thrones was edgy and racy and sexy. That it wasn't just more violence.

It's time for those of us that aren't offended by basic human anatomy to move on from the prudishness and push our art forward. We're limited and held back when we can't invoke that dimension of humanity.

In any case, I edited my comment after I saw yours. You latched onto a three word sentence ("Including hardcore porn") and spun a wholly different argument. I didn't want the thread to get derailed further, and this simple observation didn't contribute at all to the substance of my argument.

"Hardcore", for the uninformed, does not equal "fetish". It's just intercourse.

Let me make my argument simple: it's okay for social media and films to show boobs, penises, and vaginas. Very few people care, and it's not going to kill anybody.

[1] https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/sex-life-shower-scene-going-...

[fleddr]

In the 80s/90s, on Dutch TV we'd have daytime deodorant commercials on public channels featuring naked women applying the product.

Wasn't even considered sexual content, and in no way shielded from kids either. The context isn't sexual, and it's a perfectly normal body part.

The sexualization of the human body is nothing but a cultural invention.

[bogomipz]

I'm curious why and when did those go away exactly on Dutch TV?

[fleddr]

I only have speculative answers on offer...

Somehow the sexual revolution of the 60s/70s running out of steam, and a correction taking place. A growing influence of American culture as well as Muslim immigrants, both more conservative. And perhaps feminism changing course.

[bogomipz]

Interesting. I think those are all very plausible and yet oddly we also now live in a hyper-sexualized mainstream advertising culture in the West.

[majormajor]

"WASP prudishness" doesn't explain why there's less "purely sexual" TV and film content now than in the 90s.

[echelon]

There was a ton of nudity in 80's movies.

The internet stole the show and actors started pushing back against it because it was still culturally taboo. Only now are we starting to see a big reversion and normalization of nudity in the arts.

Netflix and HBO are dialing up on nudity and sex. Millennials and Gen Z like it, and they have the metrics to show for it.

https://sea.mashable.com/culture/17369/heres-why-youve-been-...

[majormajor]

80s, 90s, not sure we need to make a big difference there.

Since then I think what you're seeing is more of a fracturing than an overall increase or decrease in prudishness.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/t... This talks about the small-screen stuff (and indie film) and dicks like you link out; but also points out the shift in mainstream cinema.

There's no more dicks or even breasts in tentpole blockbusters or the increasingly-adult-embraced "kids" films than there used to be. Even your R-rated stuff tends to have less of the sort of "coincidental" not-central-to-the-plot sex scenes than you would've seen a few decades ago. But what's left blockbuster film has found a place in "prestige TV" and by being moved less front-and-center, take-the-family-to-the-theater, it's been able to be amplified since entertainment as a whole is more fractured and it's less one-size-fits-all.

[stcroixx]

I assume this is to sanitize the big blockbusters for the Chinese market.