To continue my discussion on male and female nudity, which I hadn't planned to do, I found this really great article on CNN.com that says a lot of what I was trying to say in my last entry. Strange stuff, nudity, but stranger is people's reaction to it. Elayne (now how can you take yourself seriously with a name like "Elayne") Rapping says here that the current attitudes toward male and female nudity have been "a constant in Western culture for centuries." I think in the Renaissance artists were pretty enamoured with the male body, but then at some point (around Rubens) the female body began to be popular as well. I don't know where Rapping is getting all these ideas of fully clothed men. There aren't many, really. Film is the main place where there seems to be more female than male nudity. I think this probably is because female nudity is more aesthetically pleasing than male nudity when it is photographed. Realism has never seemed to go in much for nudity until the photograph (okay, I'm kind of BSing here, feel free to correct me). I know there is probably some kind of sexism here, but I don't think that's the main issue.
Another thing this article points out that I really agree with is the fact that "Americans are much more comfortable with extreme violence in their movies than any sexuality." The probable fact that most American parents prefer their children to watch violence over sex is really rather shocking. For most of my life, at least as long as I've been thinking about this, I've unknowingly held to the attitude that Bertolucci expresses here that "after all, an orgasm is better than a bomb." Okay, sure, nudity doesn't have to be everywhere, but I think Americans need to be less prudish here, because their prudishness, at this point, is only helping everyone to feel more perverted about something that should be healthy and good. And, I know the subject is getting old, but I just want to say that a country that has to make such a big deal over a woman's breast on national television really needs to lighten up.
Posted by linnea at February 20, 2004 9:35 AMI think describing America as prudish is rather funny. The average age of initial sexual activity has been falling for years. We can't stop talking about sex for a minute, and that makes us prudish?
I think the difference in attitudes towards the portrayal of sex in America and Europe has more to do with notions of public and private life, a notion most completely developed only in America. It may be true that as you say, "an orgasm is better than a bomb," but an orgasm is a private experience (sometimes really private) while bombs and violence of almost every sort are inherently public. But for the sorts that aren't - domestic violence for example - our culture demonstrates remarkably little tolerance for their portrayal. You can get away with just about any kind of sexual activity you want as long as you keep it to yourself. There are a few people out there who oppose the p0rn0gr@phy industry as such, but the vast majority of Americans are more than content to simply not talk about it and forbid p0rn0gr@phers from being overt. The big stink about p0rn on the internet isn't so much that it's there but that it's accessible, especially to kids.
Another reason Americans are much more comfortable with physical force than Europeans is that we're better at it. The European's experience with physical violence in the past century or two has not been entirely positive. Today, they are simply not capable of projecting significant amounts of physical pressure anywhere outside their own countries. Sure, Britain and France may mount the occasional expeditionary force to some Third World hellhole, but they couldn't have taken down Saddam if they'd wanted to. Only we could do that. Which naturally makes Americans far more at ease with the idea of doing so.
Posted by: ryan at March 7, 2004 9:30 AMI call Americans "prudish" because they have all sorts of left-over Victorian ideas of what is and isn't acceptable and even those who bring things like nudity out into the public are doing so with the idea that it is unacceptable. They are prudish in their mindset, not necessarily in what they do. They have all sorts of ideas about what is forbidden and this comes out in the perverted way they portray nudity and sex, like a little kid feeling really rebellious for doing something pretty silly just because he's been told he can't do it.
Posted by: linnea at March 19, 2004 12:27 AMAnti-Aging Pages is a definite guide to supplements that have been proposed to slow and or reverse human aging.
Posted by: anti-aging at October 3, 2005 3:33 PMantiaging | hgh | human growth hormone | hgh spray | anti aging
Posted by: anti aging at October 5, 2005 5:21 PM