Sex or Violence?

I saw a movie poster at a kiosk today, some total piece of crap with Liam Neeson—if that isn’t being too redundant. In the poster he has his arms at his sides with a pistol in his hand. This made me think that perhaps we should be as prudish about guns and violence as we are about sex.

Let’s look at the movie poster again and imagine the furor that would erupt if instead of a pistol he had his cock in his hand. The entire nation just about lost its mind when we saw Janet Jackson’s tit on TV for a nanosecond yet someone getting decapitated with a chainsaw in a movie doesn’t provoke the slightest whisper of disapproval…and we wonder why we live in such a violent society. Imagine if we had the same taboos concerning graphic depictions of violence as we do for the very natural act of sex between a man and a woman (or other logical combinations). I wonder how the film industry would react if only people 17 years or older were able to see movies in which a violent death is shown on screen.

I’m no prude nor am I a hypocrite; most of my favorite films and TV series are rather violent in nature, but then again I’m an adult. I just think that blood and gore and violence does a lot more damage to the psyche of young people than graphic depictions of sex. Which is more vulgar: someone cutting off someone else’s head with a machete or two consenting adults performing a Dallas Fuck Rodeo? I don't know what a Dallas Fuck Rodeo is so you‘ll have to use your imagination an invent your own sex act.

I’m writing this in a café and on the TV they just showed a trailer for the movie Red (rate PG-13) in which every character in the movie had a gun or a bomb. Just after this commercial there was another for some hair removal product that showed a beautiful woman in a thong bikini. The trailer for the horribly violent Bruce Willis piece of trash could be shown on American TV but not the one with the woman with the absolutely spectacular ass. There is something wrong with that. There is something wrong with us.

What harm could possibly come from having fewer slasher movies? Why do we think that it’s OK for young people to watch a movie in which someone is stuffed head first into a wood chipper but not OK for the same kids to watch a nice, wholesome oral sex competition or an orgy in a Russian college dormitory?

If we treated violence like we do sex in movies producers would think twice about making so many gratuitously violent films. We’ve even changed movie ratings so there isn’t as much of a stigma attached to an adult film as there used to be. Now instead of an X rating—something that connotes hardcore sex—we give horrifically violent movies a more gentle-sounding NC-17 rating. We've made it really easy for producers to pump out incredibly violent movies whose target audience is young adults. Just what a violent movie would have to show to earn an NC-17 rating is a little fuzzy but even a hand job will do it in the sex department.