Are sex and killing scenes really necessary?

[Drusin]

until I watched some Korean dramas recently, I didn't realise how full of it our stuff is, and how totally un-necessary it is.
...
You don't actually have to see the car mow down a person or the axe split his head in two, or the man groping the woman (or other man) and stripping themselves naked showing all the parts for it to be convincing.
...
So why is it so rampant?
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I do wonder, and question whether the vast majority of US tv shows and box office hits have become incapable of producing quality material
...
and I wonder why so much trash is being made and earning so much money.

Open and shut thread bob, open and shut thread

Like you guys always say about wow



People stop watching it then they'll stop making it but apparently people like it.

[ravenmoon]

Violent deaths on screen are far more dramatic than cutting away and leaving it to your imagination. This is evident by your concern about violent scenes. There is a stronger impact from actually seeing such acts. Doesn't matter if its real or not. Similar arguments for sex, you can argue that you can see it fine and vividly in your head, and your imagination is stronger than reality, but the sense of seeing the act is usually a stronger impact than what you imagine.

Far more people tend to enjoy these scenes than those who don't. Its your personal opinion as to whether you think it has a place, but its factual that these scenes definitely have a stronger impact for actually being shown.

Yes, they are, and I think some studios and projects intentionally capitalise on this, it's un-necessary and dangerous to our society.. but this is the topic of conversation, do they really need to go that "extra" mile for such things that can be really graphic? I don't think they do... however in rare occasiosions, like historical dramas that the message is aboutt he horro of war and the cost, I think perhaps an exception can be made but only on very unique projects. I am concererned about the eeffect on wider public.. while I don't join them persay, I do think such scenes really are de-sensistiseing and causing an increase in violent and sexual conduct and behaviour which is detrimental to our society.

I never thought I'd be the one to say it, but I think they should be regulated more heavily, and I'm a young man ... Anyway, I'm also trying to understand it and interested in the arguments being made and others' thoughts.

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Movies are entertainment. Take out the sex and violence and it's just people talking.

Granted, but do we have to actually show the graphic sex in teh romance scenes? or the graphic killing in the violent ones.. this is what I'm mainly looking at.

Also cause for questioning is how frequent and numerous the violent and sex scenes are, do they need to be so many and around in so many movies.. is violence and sex the only way to tell their story or carry out their message? Watching the more regulated K-dramas (on average), I finally scene a decent enough number of shows that convey their story and message having just as accurate a presentation of life that I can at least relate to or conceive, but with a fraction of the degree of violence and sex, and none of the graphic portrayals, to the point they are now coming across as more authentic, and I now can see how pointless all those sex and killing scenes are and completely un-necessary in the vast number of cases (not all) that it is to show them.

[oplawlz]

Show don't tell is the whole premise behind watching a movie instead of reading a book.

[ravenmoon]

Open and shut thread bob, open and shut thread

Like you guys always say about wow



People stop watching it then they'll stop making it but apparently people like it.

I'm not so sure. There was a study I recall in talk that showed the introduction of live acton movie sexually exploicit scenes like tongue-kissing which were unheard of in the 50s (I think), and for nearly a decade, studio bosses kept releasing films like that despite losing money. Americans were offended at the level of sex and violence (mainly sex) been shown on TV and te movies and they responded with their wallets, but it didn't stem, the tide, the movie makers kept pushing that on them, it took around a decade for people to stop caring, about such things in movies, but by that time it was now so common, you'd have half of a generation think this was the norm, and they started going to movies their parents had snubbed for their illicit content.

So now we think it is auto required, and it is done because it sells - but there is evidence to suggest otherwise. WHat I think is that it was done at the whim of movie makers who wanted to show what they wanted and didn't care as much about maximising profit back then as they do now, they wanted their content out, as well as some people wanting to change the culture.

it's never been necessary, and some of these shows i'm watching is proving my point. I didn't know until I watched these k-shows that it was possible, didn't even enter my mind, because it's so prolific in our media, but now I see it clearly. Some of those shows have just as powerfully and meaningfully conveyed the themes, emotions and reality of the story they were telling without the need for such tools, and they've been very enjoyable, much more so on average.

It tells me that the excess is un-necessary, unjustified and detrimental both to the quality of the production and the society such scenes really pollute.

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Show don't tell is the whole premise behind watching a movie instead of reading a book.

Yes it normally is, but doesn't mean it is necessary to show graphic deaths and full on sex as it happens in the story. Can you imagine blood spraying out every time you character kills a toon, and seeing the effects based on the method? or your flirts/kils having your character strip and have wild sex there and then on your screen?

Right now it isn't necessary at all to the video game.. but per chnace it becomes a common thing in the next decade, would we then be making this argument tooo, books are telling, games are for showing?

[Powerogue]

Remove sex and violence would erase the mcu from existence outside a handful of movies.

Really? Marvel? They had always come off as relatively tame to me. A swear thrown in here or there, but not anything overly gruesome.

I guess Deadpool. Honestly his baby legs grossed me out more than any of the gore.

[qwerty123456]

Everyone has sexual and violent thoughts. Witnessing it in a film or video game allows someone a release without actually releasing the beast.

[corruptdevil]

Yes, they are, and I think some studios and projects intentionally capitalise on this, it's un-necessary and dangerous to our society.. but this is the topic of conversation, do they really need to go that "extra" mile for such things that can be really graphic? I don't think they do... however in rare occasiosions, like historical dramas that the message is aboutt he horro of war and the cost, I think perhaps an exception can be made but only on very unique projects. I am concererned about the eeffect on wider public.. while I don't join them persay, I do think such scenes really are de-sensistiseing and causing an increase in violent and sexual conduct and behaviour which is detrimental to our society.

I never thought I'd be the one to say it, but I think they should be regulated more heavily, and I'm a young man ... Anyway, I'm also trying to understand it and interested in the arguments being made and others' thoughts.

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Granted, but do we have to actually show the graphic sex in teh romance scenes? or the graphic killing in the violent ones.. this is what I'm mainly looking at.

Also cause for questioning is how frequent and numerous the violent and sex scenes are, do they need to be so many and around in so many movies.. is violence and sex the only way to tell their story or carry out their message? Watching the more regulated K-dramas (on average), I finally scene a decent enough number of shows that convey their story and message having just as accurate a presentation of life that I can at least relate to or conceive, but with a fraction of the degree of violence and sex, and none of the graphic portrayals, to the point they are now coming across as more authentic, and I now can see how pointless all those sex and killing scenes are and completely un-necessary in the vast number of cases (not all) that it is to show them.

You ask if its worth going the extra mile. But look at south park. They always went the extra mile and pushed the boundaries of what we thought was acceptable. Sure its a crude show, but without the crude content, it wouldn't have been as successful as it has been. You may not like it, and you're probably in the minority, but the answer to your question is more about business sense than moral values or teaching lessons. As long as there's a dollar to be made companies will always push the boundaries to draw a bigger crowd.

The entire horror genre is proof of fact that as humans, we seek out the macabre. Some of us like it more than others.

Your concern on media effecting the wider public is the same concerned argument thats been asked with every type of new media thats ever been introduced, books included. The problem is you think that people have a hard time disassociating entertainment media from reality, when in fact most average humans have no problem doing that. We know its fake, but as other people have put it, its the hormonal rollercoasters we seek that drive our interests in these areas. The people you need to worry about are not the wider public, its people who have issues with association and mental stability who cannot remove themselves from what they see.

You're projecting your worries onto people you shouldn't be worrying about. Pirates of the Caribbean didn't influence people to go out on wooden ships and plunder aztec gold, why would Hannibal Lecter influence people to go out and feed peoples brains to themselves after dosing them up on drugs? Or build giant death traps for sinners like Jigsaw?

The greater public is not the issue, its people who are vulnerable mentally, which is a far far far smaller number. Humans are violent by nature, what we do is not usually by influence of the media we take in for entertainment.

Edit: The Purge hasn't influenced large swathes of people to go out on killing sprees once a year to settle disputes and grudges.

P.S. Comparing a korean drama to an entirety of american media isn't a great example. If anything other countries are worse than the US. Try watching Train to Busan, or Pandora. Both excellent movies, both very different from each other. Ones a zombie film, the other is a dramatic movie about a nuclear reactor going critical, both have fairly graphic scenes. American entertainment media is where it is today because it was the first, but that only influenced other countries to catch up and sometimes surpass what american media has done. There's just more american media to consume.

[oplawlz]

Yes it normally is, but doesn't mean it is necessary to show graphic deaths and full on sex as it happens in the story. Can you imagine blood spraying out every time you character kills a toon, and seeing the effects based on the method? or your flirts/kils having your character strip and have wild sex there and then on your screen?

Right now it isn't necessary at all to the video game.. but per chnace it becomes a common thing in the next decade, would we then be making this argument tooo, books are telling, games are for showing?

Let's flip the argument a bit - if your audience enjoys watching those things, why not show them? In video games as in movies. We have age ratings for a reason.

[RippedLife]

art reflects real life. sex and violence are part of real life.

unless you are a gamer ofc so figures that question would come up here l m a o

[corruptdevil]

Also people who think we should regulate our media more. We are where we are now, because we fought against regulation. American entertainment media has not always been so loose and accepting of what we consume, our society has changed to be more relaxed on the content we allow. To say we need to be more restrictive is to reverse direction of what we've already done. Regulations changed, because we as a society changed.

[ParanoiD84]

People enjoy sex and people enjoy violence so.

[Cerilis]

I'm with you. I mean, I'm mostly okay with (consensual) sex scenes, if it's not overdone, but I can't stand the violence and stuff.

I'm also mostly avoiding newer productions because it appears to be everywhere nowadays. Feels a bit like we are moving back to Roman times, plebs need their daily games and gore.

[Amarys]

Violence is.. whatever. But I agree. I don't like sex scenes in movies as I usually watch them with other people and then it's just embarrassing and cringey.

[mojojojo202]

Really? Marvel? They had always come off as relatively tame to me. A swear thrown in here or there, but not anything overly gruesome.

I guess Deadpool. Honestly his baby legs grossed me out more than any of the gore.

Marvel movies are generally pretty violent, what they are not is gory or in anyway explicit. You could make the argument that violence like that in comic book films is significantly more dangerous as it is sanitised and completely unlike violence in the real world where people get hurt, things get messy and people DO NOT GET UP. THEY DIE.



As for the question at hand. Sex and Violence can be neccesary partsof story telling, both in a literal and metaphorical sense. Are they always used like that? No. Are they regularly shoved into films where they really do not drive the narrative of the film? Yes. Are they shoved into films because movie producers think (particularly) men cant pay attention for more than half an hour without seeing someone eother die or get fucked? Probably, Yeh.

[CrawlFromThePit]

Most of my entertainment experience has had them, even before I saw either of these two acts live, I had seen them on screen. Now, I love films that mkae things believable and realistic - especially my once favourite genre Sci-fi/fantasy whos make-belief elements require a lot oeffort from writeres and adapters to make the rest of their world as believable and real so taht we can actually relate to what's goin on in those very unreal environments.

However, I have noticed that films and dramas un-necessarily add killing, death and sex scenes that are just too much, and until I watched some Korean dramas recently, I didn't realise how full of it our stuff is, and how totally un-necessary it is.

You don't actually have to see the car mow down a person or the axe split his head in two, or the man groping the woman (or other man) and stripping themselves naked showing all the parts for it to be convincing. Having watched some really decent shows and films, I got a powerful sense of belivablility and authenticity from the script and the acting as well as the plot and I can safely say that showing me the person dying gruesomely or sex would not have added any value.

So why is it so rampant? To behonest I feel a lot of shows do it for cheap dramatisation, the worse the script is the more cheesy everything is, can't write a compelling plot so you add shock factor with sex scenes and gruesome scenes. There are a few movies and tv shows (like those on HBO otherwise dubbed Hell's box office by a few) who actually tend to have well written shows where you feel the sex or violence as a natural part of the story and shown because the camera is showing everything. Whiles I don't feel it is necessary even there, it certainly doesn't feel like a cheap trick.

I do wonder, and question whether the vast majority of US tv shows and box office hits have become incapable of producing quality material - and I wonder why so much trash is being made and earning so much money. There is quality stuff over here, don't get me wrong, but half of the time it doesn't do half as well and peopl don't talk about it as much.. so I wonder if movie makers have their marketing and studio statistics showign that films with violent death and sex scenes earn more money, and because of that, they just throw in more whether it's good or not.

Ofc, some films are nkown for that Tarrantino is famous for daring to show it all in gruesome measure.. his films strike me as a person totally f***ed up on acid - the shock factor in me changed from wow to eew, but most guys like his work.. In his case though, the films ARE about gruesome violence and sex, rather than a normal story thorwing sex and violence into it to sell more.

I conclude that cheap drama is one makers throw in un-necessarily violent and sexually explicit scenes to raise the amount of viewers.. sometimes keeping it just low enough to pass whatever rating they want to achieve for their targetted demographic or viewing time slot.

It really doesn't have anything to do with sex or violence. I get your point though, you're talking about bad cinema that seems to rely on shock factor to hook people in, it's true there is some (a lot) of that, but with the right context these scenes can be vital for the story. Tyrion Lannister would be boring as hell if all he did was say that he enjoys whores but we never see him with any. The orgy scene in sense8 was a work of art. The rape followed by vengence killing in Queen of the South was fucking awesome. There's plenty of examples out there, so I really don't think a scene being "too much" is a problem. I think the real issue is when it's out of place, when it serves no purpose, this could apply to a simply kiss between characters who should not be kissing, or a disproportionate wound caused by a simple punch that wouldn't do more than a bruise.

What your post tells me is that you seem to have built a narrative for yourself around the idea that any form of violence or nudity is instantly a low quality product, and I can only disagree with that. I'm obviously not in the camp of "the more the better", but I consider these scenes the same way I consider any other scenes, they all have their time and place in the right context. Your perspective of "too much" is not the same as anyone else and your judgment is not the line that determines what makes a quality product. Everyone will have different standards about that. Naked people could be too much for you, but for some people the "too much" line will be at close up penetration, in the same sense that seeing people having sex with all their clothes on is quite silly.

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Also I always figured America as the place where you can show people being shot in the face on TV, but not titties.

I doubt this is just America, but yeah in general violence is a lot more accepted than sex, which is completely backward thinking when you really think about it. Sex is about love, pleasure, and creating life, but it's considered worse than destroying people lol. What a fucking crazy society/culture we live in.

[Spiffums]

Yes, they are, and I think some studios and projects intentionally capitalise on this, it's un-necessary and dangerous to our society.. but this is the topic of conversation, do they really need to go that "extra" mile for such things that can be really graphic? I don't think they do... however in rare occasiosions, like historical dramas that the message is aboutt he horro of war and the cost, I think perhaps an exception can be made but only on very unique projects. I am concererned about the eeffect on wider public.. while I don't join them persay, I do think such scenes really are de-sensistiseing and causing an increase in violent and sexual conduct and behaviour which is detrimental to our society.

I never thought I'd be the one to say it, but I think they should be regulated more heavily, and I'm a young man ... Anyway, I'm also trying to understand it and interested in the arguments being made and others' thoughts.

- - - Updated - - -


Granted, but do we have to actually show the graphic sex in teh romance scenes? or the graphic killing in the violent ones.. this is what I'm mainly looking at.

Also cause for questioning is how frequent and numerous the violent and sex scenes are, do they need to be so many and around in so many movies.. is violence and sex the only way to tell their story or carry out their message? Watching the more regulated K-dramas (on average), I finally scene a decent enough number of shows that convey their story and message having just as accurate a presentation of life that I can at least relate to or conceive, but with a fraction of the degree of violence and sex, and none of the graphic portrayals, to the point they are now coming across as more authentic, and I now can see how pointless all those sex and killing scenes are and completely un-necessary in the vast number of cases (not all) that it is to show them.

Haven't really seen any graphic sex in main stream movies because that would be more XXX. And the graphic killing is what makes the violent ones violent. Honestly imagine StarWars without the killing.....would you watch it?

[OokOok]

Netflix has this section on it, it's called the "Kids" section, that's where you want to watch your movies/shows. Problem solved end thread.

[Easo]

Spmetimes no, sometimes yes.

I absolutely have nothing to add to this comment.
OP, yes AND no is the literal answer to your question.

[Shadowferal]

12 Angry Men was a great movie.
But I wouldn't have spent money to see it.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Somewhat agreed. I feel that the abundance of turbo violence, gratuitous gore, and sex scenes is indicative of the West trying to convince itself that it is producing "adult" or "mature" entertainment. Personally, I find it immature and a huge turn off.

The Dark Knight was able to tell a "dark" story without showing a single drop of blood. Sure, Nolan could've shown gratuitous gore and turbo violence, but he had class.