Morals and outrage in the USA

[Delta4Embassy]

Wasn't sure where to put this, but since it involves policy I picked here.

An older blog I wrote concerning what we consider morally outrageous. Since much is being made about the Duck Dynasty flap it feels like the time to post it.


It seems that what we in the United States choose to care about changes over time. In decades past, you couldn't show movies with lip kissing that lasted longer than three seconds. So to get around it, filmmakers would show many kisses one after another, or cut from one to another with shots of some innocuous object like a potted plant. And of course any depiction of sex itself was strictly forbidden. But since this was what people wanted to see, they made Biblical stories that has sex and sexuality in them, however vague or metaphorical. Or sometimes not metaphorically at all. I remember one scene in particular where a wife tells her husband, "Come into me husband..." And they begin to have sex. And since it was a Bible story the religious censors of the time I guess couldn't object to it. (As an aside, why religious people are often the ones objecting to sex is beyond me as the Bible's full of sex. Ever read the Song of Solomon?)

Then the 60s came along and for a while everything changed. I guess that's to be expected when children notice the hypocrisy around them and end up rebelling against parents and authorities so obviously full of shit. Drugs like psychedelics obviously have something to do with this period in our history. But I suspect it's far beyond just a lot of unihibited youths experimenting with new things. In reality, old things simply forgotton by the mainstream until rediscovered or rewrapped by their own contemporaries.

The Summer of Love, love-ins, commune experiments, and other non-conventional lifestyles define the late 60s for the USA. Movies too changed noticeably insofar as content. Nov 1, 1968 marked the date the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) was born and paradoxically, movies got worse from this point on. As with the more recent ratings system imposed onto music, when you give entertainment media a ratings for content, all you achieve is giving license to producers of content to be as naughty as they wanna be. Prior to a ratings system, content may not be bought up, distributed, etc. if it contains objectionable content. But if objectionable content can simply be labelled as such then there's no longer any reason to exercise self-restraint. As soon as music got their labels, all self-restraint and good taste went out the window. And but for a few exceptions, there's no downside imposed by the industry on 'mature' content. Some chains of retailers claim they wont sell 'mature' rated content, but I"m not sure how serious they are about it.

Most recently, video/computer games have gotten ratings of their own. Predictably, games have become more violent as with the notorious Grand Theft Auto series.

What we choose to care about in the US should be of tremendous concern to everyone. Not just religious fundamentalists, parents, or politicians. Because behind the troubling trend of graphic violence in movies, games, and music lies something I think is insidious. We seem to have flipped what pisses us off enough to take action. Rather than being outraged by violence, our outrage only seems to manifest around sexual issues. Sex is the nicest, most beautiful thing people can do with each other. Far better I think than ripping one another apart, shooting someone with a shotgun, or hacking off limbs and heads. Yet while Janet Jackson's famous 'wardrobe malfunction' during a Superbowl became a national if not international news item for days, we seem to have no compunction about showing movie trailers for the latest "Saw" or "Hostel" movie. But for the "Girls Gone Wild" commercials and infomercials late at night, there's no instance of any overtly sexual media getting commercial tv ad time. Ever wonder why? I have, and I have a theory.

First, we have to ask who stands to benefit from switching moral outrage from violence to sex. Obviously, the producers and distributors of any content benefit from its' release, but it's go beyond that I think. And with greater implications and deeper reasons. Some basic first-year psychology first: Fearful people are easier to control than non-fearful people. Fearful people often feel powerless over their own fate and circumstances. In order to alleviate their fear and feeling of powerlessness they'll do whatever they can to choose their own fate again. Most commonly this manifests as eating 'comfort foods' or buying things. Without fear entities which exist solely to earn profits earn less. So by deemphasizing violence and restricting it, we allow people to view or experience it and become fearful. This benefits everyone from the sellers of the content itself, to the providers of the solutions the fearful ones will then seek out to be less fearful.

In contrast to having an entertainment system filled with explicit sex and pleasure where we view strangers as potential sex partners and relationships and have no fear of "them." If the genral public doesn't feel afraid of every bump in the night (rectified btw by any of the security systems featured in primetime commercials,) or ex-boyfriend, or potential home invader who just kicked in your front door as you were walking around your home clad only in a bathtowel; then companies offering solutions earn less profit.

The most cruel, obscene, gratuitous violent images get commercial time around the clock on every channel on our tvs. Yet almost without exception, positive, happy, consensual sexual acts do not. It's a MORAL OUTARGE that the best thing people can do with other people is effectively censored and controversial, while the absolute worst and universally illegal ones are on every channel 24/7.

 

[Mojo2]

Wasn't sure where to put this, but since it involves policy I picked here.

An older blog I wrote concerning what we consider morally outrageous. Since much is being made about the Duck Dynasty flap it feels like the time to post it.


It seems that what we in the United States choose to care about changes over time. In decades past, you couldn't show movies with lip kissing that lasted longer than three seconds.

So to get around it, filmmakers would show many kisses one after another, or cut from one to another with shots of some innocuous object like a potted plant. And of course any depiction of sex itself was strictly forbidden. But since this was what people wanted to see, they made Biblical stories that has sex and sexuality in them, however vague or metaphorical. Or sometimes not metaphorically at all. I remember one scene in particular where a wife tells her husband, "Come into me husband..." And they begin to have sex.

And since it was a Bible story the religious censors of the time I guess couldn't object to it.

(As an aside, why religious people are often the ones objecting to sex is beyond me as the Bible's full of sex. Ever read the Song of Solomon?)

Then the 60s came along and for a while everything changed. I guess that's to be expected when children notice the hypocrisy around them and end up rebelling against parents and authorities so obviously full of shit.

Drugs like psychedelics obviously have something to do with this period in our history. But I suspect it's far beyond just a lot of unihibited youths experimenting with new things. In reality, old things simply forgotton by the mainstream until rediscovered or rewrapped by their own contemporaries.

The Summer of Love, love-ins, commune experiments, and other non-conventional lifestyles define the late 60s for the USA. Movies too changed noticeably insofar as content.

Nov 1, 1968 marked the date the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) was born and paradoxically, movies got worse from this point on. As with the more recent ratings system imposed onto music, when you give entertainment media a ratings for content, all you achieve is giving license to producers of content to be as naughty as they wanna be.

Prior to a ratings system, content may not be bought up, distributed, etc. if it contains objectionable content. But if objectionable content can simply be labelled as such then there's no longer any reason to exercise self-restraint. As soon as music got their labels, all self-restraint and good taste went out the window. And but for a few exceptions, there's no downside imposed by the industry on 'mature' content. Some chains of retailers claim they wont sell 'mature' rated content, but I"m not sure how serious they are about it.

Most recently, video/computer games have gotten ratings of their own. Predictably, games have become more violent as with the notorious Grand Theft Auto series.

What we choose to care about in the US should be of tremendous concern to everyone. Not just religious fundamentalists, parents, or politicians. Because behind the troubling trend of graphic violence in movies, games, and music lies something I think is insidious.

We seem to have flipped what pisses us off enough to take action. Rather than being outraged by violence, our outrage only seems to manifest around sexual issues. Sex is the nicest, most beautiful thing people can do with each other. Far better I think than ripping one another apart, shooting someone with a shotgun, or hacking off limbs and heads. Yet while Janet Jackson's famous 'wardrobe malfunction' during a Superbowl became a national if not international news item for days, we seem to have no compunction about showing movie trailers for the latest "Saw" or "Hostel" movie.

But for the "Girls Gone Wild" commercials and infomercials late at night, there's no instance of any overtly sexual media getting commercial tv ad time. Ever wonder why? I have, and I have a theory.

First, we have to ask who stands to benefit from switching moral outrage from violence to sex. Obviously, the producers and distributors of any content benefit from its' release, but it's go beyond that I think. And with greater implications and deeper reasons. Some basic first-year psychology first: Fearful people are easier to control than non-fearful people.

Fearful people often feel powerless over their own fate and circumstances. In order to alleviate their fear and feeling of powerlessness they'll do whatever they can to choose their own fate again. Most commonly this manifests as eating 'comfort foods' or buying things. Without fear entities which exist solely to earn profits earn less.

So by deemphasizing violence and restricting it, we allow people to view or experience it and become fearful. This benefits everyone from the sellers of the content itself, to the providers of the solutions the fearful ones will then seek out to be less fearful.

In contrast to having an entertainment system filled with explicit sex and pleasure where we view strangers as potential sex partners and relationships and have no fear of "them." If the genral public doesn't feel afraid of every bump in the night (rectified btw by any of the security systems featured in primetime commercials,) or ex-boyfriend, or potential home invader who just kicked in your front door as you were walking around your home clad only in a bathtowel; then companies offering solutions earn less profit.

The most cruel, obscene, gratuitous violent images get commercial time around the clock on every channel on our tvs. Yet almost without exception, positive, happy, consensual sexual acts do not. It's a MORAL OUTARGE that the best thing people can do with other people is effectively censored and controversial, while the absolute worst and universally illegal ones are on every channel 24/7.

When lines and paragraphs are too close together it makes the page look visually dense and intimidating. People refrain from wanting to read what is there.

By adding space to the post, separating the paragraphs and making more "white space" in the piece it opens the page up and invites people to want to read it.

just a helpful tip.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

You're right. Was easier to read in the Notepad file.

 

[midcan5]

Interesting, oddly while I agree on a certain level I mostly disagree. I don't think there is any conscious or conspired plan to put violence above sex, even though TV and the movies may give that impression. Funny thing is I too often wonder about all these CSI type shows too, and wonder if they don't contribute to a more paranoid society. But then I think we grew up with the 'untouchables,' 'Gunsmoke,' Wyatt Earp,' and space aliens were always coming to get us. Sex was missing then too, but paranoid fear of nuclear annihilation was a constant threat. On Sundays we'd pray for the conversion of Russia.

America's attitude towards sex is still puritanical even though music videos push all buttons. Actually when I think about it more, maybe sex is equal today to violence, I am thinking of all the shows like 'two and half men' which treat sex so causally teenage boys are running to the bedroom as their life just ain't that open. I'd need more time to think on this.

This goes out on a limb but if I were to say the one thing that makes today a bit different in terms of fear, it would be fear and hatred of the other. And that fear is both created and maintained. Check the thread in Philosophy on why people hate liberals. Or the characterizations of our president, or the lack of sympathy for the needy, or on and on. Off to dinner with neighbors, may stop back later.

 

[midcan5]

The OP question must have been too difficult as it didn't get the usual 'no, you are,' replies. My post above requires work. Here's an interesting quote from a book I am reading, should be required reading for all politicians even if uneven at times, and a bit off topic, it touches on the background issue that government doesn't work anymore or at least doesn't work for the people. We have become a dog eat dog society that thinks this is the way things should be. Fear grows from the inability to believe that order exists and it then requires a scapegoat for why.

"There has always been corruption in public affairs. But never - not even in the worst decades of the eighteenth century - was it legalized in such logical detail that corruption could spread quite openly throughout the entire system. In all probability one of the principal reasons for this new development has been the gradual loss of the elected assemblies' real power to the executive, the bureaucracy and the judiciary, With the assemblies denied the ability to serve the public interest properly, it was only a matter of time before they would find other interests to serve. For that matter, it was only a question of time before the great organized interests outside the democratic process noticed that the parliaments were profoundly idle, humiliated and discontent. Their meeting could not have been more natural.

[..]

In fairness. the requirement that lobbyists register in Washington may have seemed at first to be a way of limiting the influence of organized interests outside the democratic process noticed that the parliaments were profoundly idle, humiliated and discontent. Their meeting could not have been more natural.

The conversion or return of parliaments to lobbying centres has more to do with an elaborate void seeking a new role than with the venality of individual men. Now they have that new role and, with it, a new importance. At the same time they have abandoned all pretension of practical democratic leadership and left government in the hands of rational structure and of the executive branch.

In fairness. the requirement that lobbyists register in Washington may have seemed at first to be a way of limiting the influence of organized financial interests over the people's representatives. In reality it formalized the role of business inside the democratic process, And since there is always a temptation to make more money than legally permitted, this massive regularization of criminality has simply pushed the illegal activities closer to the heart of government structures. The savings and loan scandal is a prime example of this. [add the recent financial meltdown]

Of course, popular mythology has it that influence peddling is at its worst in the United States. But then nations have always comforted themselves by giving foreign origins to venereal diseases. The same is true for political corruption. The Canadian government, in its rush to become a mirror image of its southern neighbour, has now followed the disastrous American path of formalizing the lobbyist's role. The British, thanks to their abhorrence of formal structures, have been able to do the same thing without any question of principle being asked. Year by year the number of company directorships and consultancy contracts picked up by Sitting British MPs, including ex-cabinet ministers. continues to grow, Only the most stringent adherence to hypocrisy allows people to avoid pointing out the obvious - that putting an MP on your board or giving him a contract is buying yourself a lobbyist in Westminster. 19 The difference between this and the old British "rotten borough" system is that MPs used to be bought before their election. Now they are usually not purchased until their market value can be established. In France the single administrative elite has occupied the three seats of power - bureaucratic, political and business. There is therefore no need for one elite to lobby the other. They are. like the Holy Trinity. alternately. and at their own bidding. three separate bodies or three in one, indivisible.

Indeed. civil servants throughout the West have now caught on to the financial possibilities inherent in their public role. As with the politicians, this often begins with small kindnesses from lobbyists -lunches, dinners, a case of wine at Christmas. invitations to the country on weekends or to shoot game in season. But in general the real plum comes with retirement, which is increasingly taken early so that the newly private citizen can lobby. The senior British civil servant, for example, now counts on getting directorships and even a chairmanship of a private corporation when he retires. As Anthony Sampson has put it, by his "mid fifties he will be searching anxiously for directorships with which to round off- or to crown - his career." How can this not be having an effect on his commitment to the public good during precisely those final years when he is in senior-enough positions to have an effect on policy? Can the secretary of cabinet or the permanent secretary at the treasury be consciously or unconsciously thinking only of the public's interests when he is already surreptitiously job hunting in private industry?

In short, public servants are cashing in on their years of employment by the state. It would seem, in fact, that their obsessions with modernization and efficiency have brought them voluntarily to the same view of public service to which many elected representatives have been indirectly driven by the emasculation of the assemblies.

But these are merely signs of the confusion within the system. Corruption of the public system follows quite naturally from the maze of private-industry fads which have been sweeping Western governments for the last three decades. Privatization, no-hiring, efficiency devices. In themselves these and others have been sometimes marginally helpful, sometimes marginally harmful. But the general introduction of industry standards into the public domain has had a disastrous effect on an already confused situation.

The imposition of short-term profit methods in an area which is only indirectly and in the long run profit-oriented could not possibly have worked. Expecting business methods and market forces to do the job of government, when business and the market fought desperately against every humane and social accomplishment of government over the last two centuries, makes no sense at all. The public interest and the profit motive may be made to cooperate through wise political leadership, but they are not interchangeable. They are nevertheless being treated as if they were. What this implies is that the public does not believe that the governmental structures work. But then the politicians and the public servants don't believe it either." John Ralston Saul pp 264/265 'Voltaire's Bastards'
.

 

[bitterlyclingin]

Mark Steyn on our current Age Of Intolerance, including some jokes of old that can no longer be told like Bob Hope's "I just came back to California, where they just made homosexuality legal. I'd better get out before they make it compulsary"

Dean Martin, busy refilling his tumbler, to Frank Sinatra "How do you make a fruit cordial?"

Sinatra "I dunno? How DO you make a fruit cordial?"

Martin "Be nice to him!"

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/366896/age-intolerance-mark-steyn#!

 

[Katzndogz]

Interesting, oddly while I agree on a certain level I mostly disagree. I don't think there is any conscious or conspired plan to put violence above sex, even though TV and the movies may give that impression. Funny thing is I too often wonder about all these CSI type shows too, and wonder if they don't contribute to a more paranoid society. But then I think we grew up with the 'untouchables,' 'Gunsmoke,' Wyatt Earp,' and space aliens were always coming to get us. Sex was missing then too, but paranoid fear of nuclear annihilation was a constant threat. On Sundays we'd pray for the conversion of Russia.

All that prayer must have worked because Russia is more Godly and more Christian than the US today.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

Interesting, oddly while I agree on a certain level I mostly disagree. I don't think there is any conscious or conspired plan to put violence above sex, even though TV and the movies may give that impression. Funny thing is I too often wonder about all these CSI type shows too, and wonder if they don't contribute to a more paranoid society. But then I think we grew up with the 'untouchables,' 'Gunsmoke,' Wyatt Earp,' and space aliens were always coming to get us. Sex was missing then too, but paranoid fear of nuclear annihilation was a constant threat. On Sundays we'd pray for the conversion of Russia.

America's attitude towards sex is still puritanical even though music videos push all buttons. Actually when I think about it more, maybe sex is equal today to violence, I am thinking of all the shows like 'two and half men' which treat sex so causally teenage boys are running to the bedroom as their life just ain't that open. I'd need more time to think on this.

This goes out on a limb but if I were to say the one thing that makes today a bit different in terms of fear, it would be fear and hatred of the other. And that fear is both created and maintained. Check the thread in Philosophy on why people hate liberals. Or the characterizations of our president, or the lack of sympathy for the needy, or on and on. Off to dinner with neighbors, may stop back later.

Something to ponder in addition is how in generations past when wars came about we had massive public outrage over it. Vietnam say. We also has the sexual revolution then and people learning to view the other as potential bed-buddies. But now that sexuality is even more repressed than in the 50s despite all the titilation we see in media, wars are a never-ending fact of American life. Part of it's better communications as with the internet and cable tv, but also the dynamic has changed.

Other countries have the same violent videogames we do, but not the same problems with violence and war-mongering governments. Japan for example, even more violence in their entertainment, yet not the same manifestations of that violence. Why? Because they don't suppress sexual expression or enjoyment.

 

[bodecea]

Interesting, oddly while I agree on a certain level I mostly disagree. I don't think there is any conscious or conspired plan to put violence above sex, even though TV and the movies may give that impression. Funny thing is I too often wonder about all these CSI type shows too, and wonder if they don't contribute to a more paranoid society. But then I think we grew up with the 'untouchables,' 'Gunsmoke,' Wyatt Earp,' and space aliens were always coming to get us. Sex was missing then too, but paranoid fear of nuclear annihilation was a constant threat. On Sundays we'd pray for the conversion of Russia.

All that prayer must have worked because Russia is more Godly and more Christian than the US today.

Thus the RW admiration for Russia.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

How about an example from last night. Cartoon Network was showing "Shrek." In the beginning when Shrek and Donkey are recuseing Fiona from the dragon, after getting Fiona out of the tower and headed out Shrek turns from the exit to look for Donkey. Fiona says like "the exit's this way" and Shrek replies (in the original,) "Well I have to save my ass." A very funny line and in the usage, completely non-profane. Yet Cartoon Network blanked it out. Ruining the joke. Looking at the on-screen info I noted they had rated it tv-y7. Ok, wanna remove some PG stuff to make it more g-rated that's cool. But then as I continued watching I couldn't help but ntoice they didn't remove any of the fight scenes. So apparently fighting with weapons is suitable for small children, but the proper usage of the word 'ass' is not. This is what I'm talking about how we allow violence, but suppress everything else.