quote:Originally posted by Leonide: Wearing sunglasses means that you want to be a fighter pilot?
How have I not realized my dreams before?!
To it's merely indicative of how far one is willing to go. Some stop with the sunglasses, others actually become pilots.
With porn I think some people simply watch more of it, some take the stunts they learn back to the bedroom, or some go on to make a business of it.
I'm not sure anybody said porn does not alter behavior at all, but some seem to be saying that it's like sexual satisfaction. When people are having their sexual needs satisfied it often crops up in the lowest 15% of what they think is important to them, but when those needs are not satisfied it often becomes the most important aspect of their lives.
Likewise porn when it's being watched has few quantitatively (not qualitatively) speaking effects, but when it is not, it's absence is pronounced.
edit: And getting a specific pair of sunglasses featured in a movie is more indicative of something than simply owning a pair.
quote:I've watched lots of violent movies, and played violent video games, and I have no interest in murdering people, robbing stores, or becoming a one-person army to fight off aliens.
I've watched a lot of violent movies and played violent video games, and I've *definitely* been desensitized to violence. I don't go out committing random acts of violence, but I know the way I think and feel about violence has drastically changed, and I know my response if I'm ever in a violent situation will be vastly different than it would have been years ago.
I avoid any situation that has the potential for violence, but if someone ever attacks me, I will probably kill them. At least I would have no inward hesitation about doing so, in any way possible. (Outward motivations such as avoiding prosecution still matter.)
Now the question is, am I fairly unique in being affected by the media I have watched, or am I just in the minority because I'm willing to admit it?
Posts: 454 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Now the question is, am I fairly unique in being affected by the media I have watched, or am I just in the minority because I'm willing to admit it?
*shrug* I don't really filter any of the media I consume based on violence and I even find myself giggling at really over the top stuff, but when I experience real violence I still cringe. Perhaps different people make different empathic associations with portrayals of violence - I may just have some sort of internal filter that differenciates on "real/not real".
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quote: Nobody thinks watching Top Gun makes you a fighter pilot, why would watching Top Buns make you a porn star?
No, Top Gun doesn't make you want to be a pilot. It makes you want to be an actor. That's more dangerous, in my opinion. Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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"Now the question is, am I fairly unique in being affected by the media I have watched, or am I just in the minority because I'm willing to admit it?"
If watching movies and playing video games has given you the ability to kill an attacker, then you are fairly unique.
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Well, I shoot virtual Nazi zombies nearly every night...and yet I will not touch a gun in real life. I can't stand guns. My husband has a lot of older guns he's inherited from his father, and he loves them and takes them out and cleans them...they are precious to him. I don't even like to look at them.
But I'm a happy camper when I am in the Help room and hit the random weapons lottery and the MG42 comes up. I'll take that and mow down some zombies. IRL though...I don't like guns at all.
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: "Now the question is, am I fairly unique in being affected by the media I have watched, or am I just in the minority because I'm willing to admit it?"
If watching movies and playing video games has given you the ability to kill an attacker, then you are fairly unique.
I suppose it would depend on what sort of weapon they had on them wouldn't it? I mean, if they learned advanced disarmament and hand to hand combat skills from a video game, that WOULD be pretty unique, but if they had a gun and their accuracy had improved, I would think it wouldn't be that big of a surprise.
Though, I'd think it'd only be good for one shot for someone who has never fired a gun before. I've never fired a gaming gun that accurately came close to replicating actual recoil from a gun, so, the next couple shots would probably be wildly off.
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: "Now the question is, am I fairly unique in being affected by the media I have watched, or am I just in the minority because I'm willing to admit it?"
If watching movies and playing video games has given you the ability to kill an attacker, then you are fairly unique.
I suppose it would depend on what sort of weapon they had on them wouldn't it? I mean, if they learned advanced disarmament and hand to hand combat skills from a video game, that WOULD be pretty unique, but if they had a gun and their accuracy had improved, I would think it wouldn't be that big of a surprise.
Though, I'd think it'd only be good for one shot for someone who has never fired a gun before. I've never fired a gaming gun that accurately came close to replicating actual recoil from a gun, so, the next couple shots would probably be wildly off.
Not if you fired slowly and methodically. Just sayin...
I not sure violent media and pornography are comparable as they typically deal with separate activities, emotions, parts of the brain, etc. I too have played plenty of violent video games and seen many violent movies. I still tend to shy away from torture porn (as in the movie genre) but I can distinctly tell that my tolerance for violence is much higher than it was even in high school. If I think about my life as a whole I can detect a slow methodical build up of tolerance for violent and disturbing themes in the media I encounter. I've never come close physically harming somebody, but my tolerance has certainly increased. I assume that higher tolerance is still a step close to perpetuating violence, though I may go no further than simply tolerating it.
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Watching PBS Sprout all day, my tolerance for violence has decreased. That or regular tv has gotten a whole lot more violent.
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I wonder how much of that difference is innate or cultural though. Its a pretty well known meme(?) that between European and American culture that American culture is much more permissive towards violence while more puritan towards sex. So its not entirely surprising that an American may develop a higher build up of tolerance to the former rather than the latter.
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quote:Originally posted by PSI Teleport: No, Top Gun doesn't make you want to be a pilot. It makes you want to be an actor. That's more dangerous, in my opinion.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: But safer. You saw what happened to Goose.
True, but did you see what happened to Tom Cruise? I'm not sure that's any better. Posts: 1522 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: I wonder how much of that difference is innate or cultural though. Its a pretty well known meme(?) that between European and American culture that American culture is much more permissive towards violence while more puritan towards sex. So its not entirely surprising that an American may develop a higher build up of tolerance to the former rather than the latter.
No my tolerance for sex certainly increased as I aged as well. Also I'm not a big fan of equating "puritanical" in regards to sex as being synonymous with "prudish." The puritans believed married couples should have sex and lots of it, and not just to make babies. But that too is neither here nor there.
I can certainly recognize that the amount of sex I have been exposed to growing up is probably less than violence, but tolerance for both has certainly increased.
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Yeah, but isn't that what you would expect?
One is exposed to more violence than sex in American culture, so one develops more tolerance to the former. Its also natural that both tolerances would increase simply because you get more exposed to just about everything as you grow age.
The question is whether an alternate-universe-you growing up in Europe would really develop the same tolerances independent of culture or whether it is culturally independent.
As a side-note I used the word "puritan" with this article in mind:
quote: "When you get mad, you look for words that attack what represses you," said Louise Lamarre, a Montreal cinematographer who must tread lightly around the language, depending on whether her films are in French or English. "In America, you are so Puritan that the swearing is mostly about sex. Here, since we were repressed so long by the church, people use religious terms."
posted
Well Mucus, all I can say is that to date I am involved in a lot more sex than violent behavior.
I guess my point is that while violent may not cause violent behavior in all cases, I think it's pretty sound that it does increase tolerance. Tolerance is certainly required before somebody would be willing to be violent I should think.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: I wonder how much of that difference is innate or cultural though. Its a pretty well known meme(?) that between European and American culture that American culture is much more permissive towards violence while more puritan towards sex. So its not entirely surprising that an American may develop a higher build up of tolerance to the former rather than the latter.
I am an American and sex doesn't bother me at all (though I haven't seen anything beyond R-rated movies), but violence strongly affects me. I would much rather see naked people then bloody people.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Well Mucus, all I can say is that to date I am involved in a lot more sex than violent behavior.
How would I put this delicately. While you may have been exposed to a lot more direct sex than direct violent behaviour, I rather suspect you've been exposed to a lot more indirect violence than indirect sex (or direct for that matter) at least as measured by a metric like time. For example video games or to relate it back to OSC, xenocide.
quote: I guess my point is that while violent may not cause violent behavior in all cases, I think it's pretty sound that it does increase tolerance. Tolerance is certainly required before somebody would be willing to be violent I should think.
I think thats generally true.
quote:Originally posted by scholarette: I am an American and sex doesn't bother me at all (though I haven't seen anything beyond R-rated movies), but violence strongly affects me. I would much rather see naked people then bloody people.
Well, the generalizations are just that, generalizations. There will always be exceptions.
That said, if you haven't seen anything beyond R-rated movies your samples may be very skewed toward violence because of how the American rating systems work. And just to note that I'm not pulling this out of nowhere:
quote: On the sex and violence issue, the ratings people might say — and since they never explain their rationale, we have to guess at it — that kids are programmed from their earliest days to believe that sex is for real, where as violence is pretend. It's the difference between watching a video game in the basement and making an untimely visit to your parents' bedroom. For most American children, sex education begins just before puberty, but violence they can get from infancy in Tom and Jerry pain-fests on the Cartoon Network. Whatever the MPAA's argument, their raters must believe that kiss-kiss is more toxic than bang-bang, since four times as many films are rated NC17 for sex as for violence.
But I wonder: are American kids so different from Europeans? In Europe, scenes of sexuality that would be proscribed in the U.S. often get a pass. Leos Carax's 1999 Pola X contained a love scene with a somberly lighted but unmistakable view of an erect penis, yet it received a U in France, the equivalent of our G. (The film had a limited, unrated release in the States.) Y tu mama tambien, Alfonso Cuaron's Mexican comedy-drama about two teenage boys and the slightly older woman they take on a jaunt, could be seen by 12-year-olds in France but was forbidden to under-18s by the MPAA.
Conversely, foreign ratings boards are tougher on the most extravagant forms of movie violence, to which the MPAA board is so famously indulgent. In Britain, Germany, Ireland, Finland, Hong Kong, the Philippines and most of Canada, someone under 18 couldn't see, say, Saw, the grisly horror film that was rated R in the U.S. There are dozen of similar examples. The foreign boards obviously think they're protecting kids from traumatic images. But if you were to ask Hollywood distributors not to show splatter movies to kids, they'd probably squawk, "But that's our main audience!"
quote:The foreign boards obviously think they're protecting kids from traumatic images. But if you were to ask Hollywood distributors not to show splatter movies to kids, they'd probably squawk, "But that's our main audience!"
Actually, they'd nod sagely and say that of course they want to cooperate in protecting children from inappropriate images, and that's why they cooperate fully with the MPAA ratings system and encourage parents to use ratings and their own judgment before allowing anyone under 17 to view these movies.
Not until kids actually stopped watching the movies would they squawk. Even then I doubt they'd admit to targeting that audience; they'd probably focus on adjusting the product to meet the demand.
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: Only CT can start a 7 page mayfly that lasts for months. I love it.
And my first thought on rereading it is, "Gee, that title may not have been such a great choice, all things considered."
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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Relating to the U.S. and puritanism, I think it was Robin Williams who pointed out that the U.S. was founded by people who were too uptight to be British. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Jenny Gardener: On the other hand, am I the only one who thinks porn is just funny?
Well, not all of it. Some of it is pretty bad and boring. Sometimes the over-the-top-ness is too much for me to enjoy it. Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
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