quote: Wearing it meant that anyone looking at Rorschach was interpreting him through their own subjective viewpoint; even we (as readers and viewers) do this. There's no one "reason" Rorschach is the way he is, or does the things he does, but we interpret him as if there is.
"I see .. a butterfly!"
"I see .. a parody of Objectivism!"
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I am perfectly aware of the intent of the scene and the supposed purpose of all the gratuitous violence and rampant, live nudity. I also know that it could have and should have been done without coming across like a midnight movie in the red light district in a theatre with sticky floors.
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In all fairness to the movie, kat, what you're describing is not analogous to what the scene actually showed.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: I am perfectly aware of the intent of the scene and the supposed purpose of all the gratuitous violence and rampant, live nudity. I also know that it could have and should have been done without coming across like a midnight movie in the red light district in a theatre with sticky floors.
While I agree that the violence was overdone, there were IIRC four sex scenes in the movie, including the rape one. The rest of the nudity came from a naked blue guy. I doubt that that'll arouse a lot of people. :shrug:
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quote:Well, there's Dr. Manhattan. Wise, all-powerful, eventually steps out of the spotlight so the hero he's been mentoring can do his thing. Very much the Gandalf/Dumbledore archtype.
If Gandalf or Dumbledore were able to simply point at people and vaporize them, the respective series of books would have been significantly shorter, I imagine.
quote:While I agree that the violence was overdone, there were IIRC four sex scenes in the movie, including the rape one.
All the other sex scenes pale in comparison to the "one"; in one you barely see anything and in the second they barely get their clothes off.
As I recall, the clothes didn't even come off in the rape scene, did they? He only got as far as undoing his belt.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: I am perfectly aware of the intent of the scene and the supposed purpose of all the gratuitous violence and rampant, live nudity. I also know that it could have and should have been done without coming across like a midnight movie in the red light district in a theatre with sticky floors.
That's pretty hyperbolic.
I wouldn't have preferred to see a PG-13 version of the film.
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I would have, greatly. I wish it was an option. Heck, an R without 15% of the screen time involving full frontal nudity and less of the graphic bone-crunching Saw-type violence would have been marvelous. That's what I thought it was going to be.
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quote:Originally posted by Sterling: All that is erotic is not porn.
QFT
If you don't mind, could one of you expand upon and explain this? Assume that there's someone in the room that not only doesn't believe this, but is surprised that anybody could honestly make that claim.
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For instance, the vast majority of erotic imagery in art museums around the country (edit: and around the world).
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: I would have, greatly. I wish it was an option. Heck, an R without 15% of the screen time involving full frontal nudity and less of the graphic bone-crunching Saw-type violence would have been marvelous. That's what I thought it was going to be.
This is still hyperbolic. Nowhere near 15% of the screen time contained any nudity. There were the scenes with Dr. Manhattan in 1985, which were the most frequent, one sex scene, one shot of a pornographic drawing, and one sidewalk scene with Rorschach where he's propositioned by a prostitute.
Anyway. I get that you're not comfortable with that level of violence, which I certainly agree was quite graphic, or with that level of nudity. That's fine, it's just a difference in taste and sensibilities.
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head:
quote:Originally posted by Achilles:
quote:Originally posted by Sterling: All that is erotic is not porn.
QFT
If you don't mind, could one of you expand upon and explain this? Assume that there's someone in the room that not only doesn't believe this, but is surprised that anybody could honestly make that claim.
First, things can be erotic without nudity. Heck, I've seen video footage of snails copulating that actually struck me as surprisingly sensuous. That isn't porn, that's a nature documentary.
Beyond that it depends on your definition of "porn."
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Raja -- do you agree that "all that is erotic is not porn", or just "not all that is erotic is porn".
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Oh, I misread that. I'm not sure which was meant. I fall in the latter camp.
Kat, I re-read my post above, and it parses more confrontationally than I mean it, even with my disclaimer. I'm really not trying to dispute your opinion. Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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I found the graphic violence far more disturbing than the sex scenes, but then I tend to think that American culture is bizarrely squeamish about sex anyway.
While a valid (albeit incorrect IMO) case could be made that the type of violence in the movie is a bastardization of the original graphic novel's vision, removing the sex scenes (or showing them in sanitized form) would have been a huge betrayal of the source material. Two of the explicit goals of the book were showing (a) that the types of people likely to dress up in costume to fight crime probably get off on the fetishism of it as well and (b) that the sexual sanitization of superheroes is ridiculous. Moore's point is that blithely showing Superman punch people through walls while censoring the slightest bit of physical affection between himself and Lois Lane displays a frighteningly messed up sense of what is and isn't acceptable.
There are boobs in the graphic novel. There is blue penis in the graphic novel. The level of sexuality depicted in the graphic novel was, if anything, more shocking in 1985 than the nudity on display in the film is in 2009. A PG-13 rated "Watchmen" movie would be, at best, a soulless recreation of the book's plot points.
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Ah, I see the confusion. I predict Sterling meant something equivalent to the latter (and you can parse his statement to be equivalent -- the more common parsing would be that everything classified as erotic is not classified as porn, but you could also read it as a holistic statement about "all that is erotic", saying that set is not equivalent to the set of porn, even if they overlap).
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I also think Dr. Manhattan is in part a repudiation of the Hulk's Incredible Elastic Pants(tm).
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Where I find it is not a very important difference to me (though context is important); however, most art museums shy away from porn but embrace erotic paintings (that are also famous).
I don't think there's a clear dividing line, but that's true of many things. To some extent, I mirror the Supreme Court's attitude.
I would say that, generally, pornography is something created for the spectacle, intended to not just titillate but to be an object for the pursuit of sexual gratification. Erotic imagery tends to both be more artistic, and is generally not intended (and not used) for sexual gratification, even if it arouses. I think there are exceptions on both sides, though.
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quote:While I agree that the violence was overdone, there were IIRC four sex scenes in the movie, including the rape one.
All the other sex scenes pale in comparison to the "one"; in one you barely see anything and in the second they barely get their clothes off.
As I recall, the clothes didn't even come off in the rape scene, did they? He only got as far as undoing his belt.
Yeah, I defined "sex scenes" very loosely here. The rape scene wasn't even one per se, it was an attempted rape. The scene had more violence than sex, and showing it definitely served a purpose, it wasn't gratuitous. Although of course it was meant to be disturbing.
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quote:As for the scene's relevance to the plot, it serves the same purpose in the film as it does in the book.
Except that in the graphic novel it does go from passionate kiss to them naked after the fact. They could have gotten away with more in the comic. But they didn't, because that would have been tacky.
It's still tacky.
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Ah, I see the confusion. I predict Sterling meant something equivalent to the latter (and you can parse his statement to be equivalent -- the more common parsing would be that everything classified as erotic is not classified as porn, but you could also read it as a holistic statement about "all that is erotic", saying that set is not equivalent to the set of porn, even if they overlap).
Yes. As in "all that glitters is not gold."
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Kat, what difference do you see between the shots of a nude Doctor Manhattan and the statues of male nudes that you must inevitably have been exposed of while studing Classics?
I'm not trying to claim the the depictions of Doctor Manhattan in the nude are art of the same level as that of the sculptures I'm referring to, but I would say that in neither case is the nudity intended to be erotic*. In fact, in the case of Doctor Manhattan, you could argue that the complete lack of eroticism in his nudity is the point of it.
*Of course, explicitly, intentionally erotic sculpture did exist in the Classical world. That's not what I'm talking about, though. I'm talking about things like the Artemesian Zeus, Myron's Discobolus, myriad kouroi, the Apollo Belvedere, and that sort of thing.
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I think Dark Knight has just as many ideas to chew on as Watchmen. Some arent played off of as much, but its easily deeper than any other super hero movie not Watchmen.
There was some moral ambigiuty(the people shooting at Resse,and the fact that Gordon stopped his strike plan to get Joker to evacuate hospitals and save Reese, etc) . And Batman winning suggests that Bruce was right, and Raz was wrong. (alluding to Batman Begins) I actually prefer Begins to DK, but DK was definitly deeper.
posted
I think people may be putting words in Kat's mouth. (Or rather, Kat's words were a bit hyperbolic and its unfair to take them literally). I don't recall her mentioning Doc Manhattan at all. I assumed she just had different views on what makes a good and/or pornographic sex scene, and it's not like that's something you can argue.
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I think if one were to compare the scene in question to one from, say, your average soft-core porn sex scene, the differences would be obvious.
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: I think people may be putting words in Kat's mouth. (Or rather, Kat's words were a bit hyperbolic and its unfair to take them literally). I don't recall her mentioning Doc Manhattan at all. I assumed she just had different views on what makes a good and/or pornographic sex scene, and it's not like that's something you can argue.
I can't vouch for other people, but if by "people" you mean me, I can say that no, I'm certainly not. Note that I asked her for clarification on what differences she sees between the only instances of full frontal nudity, which she directly complains about, and other depictions of full frontal nudity in art that are similarly non-erotic.
It's pretty clear that she's talking about Doctor Manhattan when she complains about full frontal nudity in the movie, because he is the only character who is shown from the front fully nude in the movie.
[Edited for better wording]
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quote:Originally posted by Sterling: All that is erotic is not porn.
QFT
If you don't mind, could one of you expand upon and explain this? Assume that there's someone in the room that not only doesn't believe this, but is surprised that anybody could honestly make that claim.
Come on people, let's not get hyper literal. The statement in question was meant to be a play on "all that glitters is not gold", which does not mean that if something glitters it can't be gold, but rather that not everything that glitters is gold. Thus, not everything erotic is porn, and that statement really shouldn't need defending.
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quote:Originally posted by Leonide: I think if one were to compare the scene in question to one from, say, your average soft-core porn sex scene, the differences would be obvious.
Yeah... Instead of doing it inside a flamethrowing hovercraft, they'd be doing it in a gymnasium or in a kitchen.
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OK, I know you've all moved on, but I just read Schlussel's review.
quote:At the same time, the Soviets are about to nuke America. It's 1985 and Nixon is President. We've won in Vietnam. Oh, and Henry Kissinger has a Russian accent. And Ronald Reagan is thinking of running for President in 1988. Wow, isn't that cool that they got it wrong on purpose? I'm so amazed at this "high-brow art" of deliberately getting dates and timelines wrong, you know, just to be "artistic," and get the drooling of the critics. That is sooooo genius. Like way totally cool.
Maybe if I make a movie about how Eisenhower was President in 1972, we "lost" World War II, and Bin Laden was gonna bomb the World Trade Center then, I'll be cool, too. . . so long as it's "dark" and I include a bunch of rape, torture, explicit sex scenes, and extremely graphic killings, and oh, write a "graphic novel" a/k/a comic book about it, first.
Please, no one ever let this woman review the Ender's Game movie.
quote:Oh, they think they're SOOOO clever, with their "Formic invasion" and the "molecular disruption device." I just bet they all just LOVE talking about how awesome they are because they thought of training military commanders in an orbiting "school." Maybe if I wrote a movie where we "land" on Mars, and make that planet more "Earth-like", then I will be the great author, just as long as I make sure the movie is about how cool it is to murder children!
quote:Thus, not everything erotic is porn, and that statement really shouldn't need defending.
That is exactly the statement that I was requesting an explanation for. While it may not need any defending, since it hasn't been attacked by anybody, it certainly does need explaining for full understanding.
The issue about what exactly the phrase meant was just a side issue that came up after my initial request.
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: OK, I know you've all moved on, but I just read Schlussel's review.
quote:At the same time, the Soviets are about to nuke America. It's 1985 and Nixon is President. We've won in Vietnam. Oh, and Henry Kissinger has a Russian accent. And Ronald Reagan is thinking of running for President in 1988. Wow, isn't that cool that they got it wrong on purpose? I'm so amazed at this "high-brow art" of deliberately getting dates and timelines wrong, you know, just to be "artistic," and get the drooling of the critics. That is sooooo genius. Like way totally cool.
Maybe if I make a movie about how Eisenhower was President in 1972, we "lost" World War II, and Bin Laden was gonna bomb the World Trade Center then, I'll be cool, too. . . so long as it's "dark" and I include a bunch of rape, torture, explicit sex scenes, and extremely graphic killings, and oh, write a "graphic novel" a/k/a comic book about it, first.
Please, no one ever let this woman review the Ender's Game movie.
quote:Oh, they think they're SOOOO clever, with their "Formic invasion" and the "molecular disruption device." I just bet they all just LOVE talking about how awesome they are because they thought of training military commanders in an orbiting "school." Maybe if I wrote a movie where we "land" on Mars, and make that planet more "Earth-like", then I will be the great author, just as long as I make sure the movie is about how cool it is to murder children!
Or Homecoming, if there ever is a movie.
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quote:Thus, not everything erotic is porn, and that statement really shouldn't need defending.
That is exactly the statement that I was requesting an explanation for. While it may not need any defending, since it hasn't been attacked by anybody, it certainly does need explaining for full understanding.
The issue about what exactly the phrase meant was just a side issue that came up after my initial request.
I don't even understand why it needs explaining, to tell the truth. I've simply always understood "Erotic" and "pornographic" to mean different things. A dictionary can probably explain that difference better than I can, if an explanation really is wanted.
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quote:Yeah... Instead of doing it inside a flamethrowing hovercraft, they'd be doing it in a gymnasium or in a kitchen.
I think someone sitting down to watch the Watchman scene with hopes that it will deliver the same as a soft core porn would be severely disappointed.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: Someone sitting down in hopes it would deliver the same level of violence as The Dark Knight was also very disappointed.
Don't the two movies have different ratings?
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I thought they did. What was the superhero movie people were all excited about because it was the highest-grossing rated-R movie?
I tell you what, though, if Watchmen was a sample, I'm going back to the No-Rated-R movies stance. The good movies I'll miss aren't worth taking the chance they'll be like Watchmen, if that's the new standard for a R rating.
I mean, the movie has the same rating as The Matrix. That's crazy.
ETA: Oh, 300. Which I liked. Even keeping it to the (fantasy) violence and nudity levels of 300 would have been okay.
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I've seen "Burn after Reading", "Body of Lies", "Appaloosa", "In Bruges", "Revolutionary Road" and probably many other R rated movies lately, and none of them had the extreme violence that was in "Watchmen". I doubt that it'll become the standard anytime soon. Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Here, The Dark Knight was 14A whereas Watchmen was 18A -- the same rating as the movies in the Saw franchise.
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Fantasy setting, fantasy staging (choreography), fantasy fighting (swords don't do that) vs. miter saw in a modern prison.
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I'm interested in the idea that something about the fantasy "nature" of the movie makes the violence okay, or somehow more acceptable, because it's fantastical. IIRC, 300 wasn't beyond believability, it just stretched it a bit and implied powers/forces beyong your normal mortal person's. By that logic, Watchmen is fantasy as well -- a man exploded into his consituent atoms reactualizes himself, etc...but also the fighting. No one as slight as Malin Akerman could kick a man's leg into bending the other way, or anyone as "out of shape" as Nite Owl/Patrick Wilson could inflict the level of damage he does. Do realistic elements in an alternate universe make it non-fantasy? I mean, Sparta really existed, right? Actually, Watchmen is more fantastical than 300 because it's not "incredibly, painfully Loosely based on actual events".
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: Noemon: Context, expectations, and, well, the difference between static and live. And, for me, being in English.
I can understand that.
For what it's worth, I'd say that this movie was easily the most violent I've seen in a long time, and I'd guess that most of the movies I see are rated R. The actual sex scenes were fairly tame compared to what I've often seen in movies that I'd guess were rated R, but there was certainly much more non-sexual male nudity than I've seen in most movies.
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quote:I tell you what, though, if Watchmen was a sample, I'm going back to the No-Rated-R movies stance. The good movies I'll miss aren't worth taking the chance they'll be like Watchmen, if that's the new standard for a R rating.
You could always read up on the content before seeing the R-rated movies. The level of nudity and violence in this film is pretty well-documented and there are sites out there that provide very detailed inventories of potentially objectionable content, down to the number of people that are smoking or being disrespectful to their parents.
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If I had kat's concerns, I'd be reluctant to go that route because I'd be concerned about spoilers. What would probably be ideal would be a friend who knew my tastes well, and who would be willing to vet R rated movies for me.
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quote:Originally posted by Noemon: If I had kat's concerns, I'd be reluctant to go that route because I'd be concerned about spoilers. What would probably be ideal would be a friend who knew my tastes well, and who would be willing to vet R rated movies for me.
The one site that I used to frequently refer to for screening out inappropriate stuff for my kids, screenit.com, was pretty good at breaking things down separate from the plot summary so you could get a good sense of the content without actually getting many spoilers.
We don't watch as many movies with the kids these days, so I'm not up on what's currently available. I think screenit.com went to a subscription model.
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Interesting. I'd never used a service like that, but was assuming that they probably summarized the plots in the course of their analysis. Sounds like something like that would be useful for a person with kat's concerns.
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