I mentioned on Twitter a few hours ago that I can’t rely on movie ratings anymore, because I don’t really mind violence in movies, but I want to avoid sexual content. The response was, “that doesn’t seem backwards to you?”
Hmm.
There were two parts to the question; I answered the first half by linking to the post I wrote in January about how I think movie rati樂威壯
ngs aren’t granular enough. However, I didn’t answer the second half of his question: doesn’t it seem backward that I mind sex but not violence? After all, as he pointed out elsewhere in that twitter conversation:
Most of my sexual memories are fond ones. None of my violent memories are. That should be the ideal.
I almost replied with “well it’s because of my religion”, but the more I thought about it the less I liked that answer. I don’t know if it’s because I felt like it dismissed the question, or because I felt like it wasn’t a real reason (or not enough of a reason). I ended up writing the following post as a way to explore my own thoughts on the subject, and figure how to articulate why I feel the way I do.
I want to mention up front that I don’t think anyone else is wrong for feeling different than me; I’m just exploring my own mind here.
Thanks for your insights! I think you touched on what the difference is to me: what feelings do the images evoke? Sexual scenes are often meant to arouse the viewer, which can likely lead to inappropriate sexual desires. Violent scenes, for someone with issues of wanting to kill people, may evoke stronger desires to do that. For me, that’s not really an issue. For young developing minds it can be an issue if they become more interested in violence and form a skewed perception of its acceptability. In the case of our children, my concern is that the violent scenes would scare them, and force me to be up in the night dealing with their nightmares. I guess its kind of the same for me, when movies have violent images so graphic that they will haunt my dreams, that’s how I know where to draw the line.
Thanks for posting this. This comes far closer than any other explanation of my dislike of sex in film then others that I have read. I too, enjoy the story as a primary goal of movies, shows or books. Scenes that conflict with sacred emotions and feelings are a distraction to those stories.