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punkwalrus
punkwalrus
24 July 2005 @ 02:59 pm
Nude nude nude!  
The other day, I was talking with some people about the GTA: San Andreas nudity/sex hack, and two concepts I have heard time and time again were repeated like parrots at Bob Jones University:

- I don't want my kids to see naked people or sex
- Violent computer games desensitizes attitudes towards violence

One of the reasons I am *GLAD* to be dyslexic is one concept my dyslexia teacher, Mrs. Reed, taught me oh so long ago at Lewinsville Elementary: "Dyslexics have a natural talent for creativity because they will often join two things together a normal person would never think of."

I say, we desensitize people to sex and nudity. At least in the US of A, because damn, I am getting sick of puritanical people flipping out about nudes. People are naked. All the time. Sure, they are wearing clothing, but they are naked under there. Totally naked under their underwear, showing their shirts and bras raw uncut nipples. Being naked is not a sin, it's how you were born. All of us have skin, moles, warts, floppy bits, and not one of us looks like those models on billboards, I assure you, unless you have your own airbrush artist and lighting technicians following you around and touching you up as you stroll down the avenue.

I say we plaster naked people on billboards. In their full glory. Art nudes, real nudes, cartoons of nudes. We should have "nude-outs," where thousands of people show up nude to public beaches. Again and again. People should wander around nude in front of open windows. While watering the lawn. Anything where clothing doesn't add a layer of safety (like working with machinery, where floppy bits might get caught in things or splattered with hot grease). Nude nude nude. Until finally, people don't care anymore.

Why are people so hung up about nudes? Why would ratings for sex and nudity be higher than violence? What is wrong with the media?
 
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( 7 comments — Leave a comment )
[info]tynieallen on July 24th, 2005 10:27 pm (UTC)
Amen Brother
I will talk Greyhawk, Emporer, Richard Butler, and myself to show up in THongs first and then walk around in the buff.
Daecabhir, Lord of the Leaping Shadows: Sadness[info]daecabhir on July 24th, 2005 10:49 pm (UTC)
Counterpoint...
While I do agree with you in principle, unfortunately these folks have the right to their neo-puritanical views as much as you have the right to be totally open minded about nudity and the fact that it is the natural state of the human body. The problem comes along when one puts things out in public, where one is more likely to accidentally view or have to view something that offends their narrow-minded view of the world - they have a right to not be subjected to something that they find offensive, such as a public display of art that they may have to drive by every day.

This does not mean I condone censorship, because I don't. I think adults should have the right to create, view, listen to, read or otherwise ingest art in its many forms, however offensive others might find it if they were subjected to it. But you can't expect people to not react to something if it is stuck out there in public, as opposed to in a gallery with the appropriate warning that the section you are about to enter contains the depictions of nude people, wherein the person has a choice to view the potentially offensive material after they have been warned.

And as much as we may cringe at it, they have the same right to indoctrinate their children into their narrow-minded, neo-Puritanical world view that someone else has to indoctrinate their children into an open-minded and accepting world view (ok, sometimes they appear to have more of a right to do so, given the current administration). Even though they often won't acknowledge it, it is a two way street.
Art: I am the storm[info]sleepingwolf on July 25th, 2005 05:27 pm (UTC)
What right to not be offended?
It's a lovely idea, but completely untenable. You are right that we have a right to get offended, but there is nothing protecting us from all that offends.

Unless, of course, you can point me at the relevant statutes. I'd love to be able to keep people from subjecting me to their waste of still-useful items where I could see it (this includes curbside "bulk waste" pickup of still functioning items) ever again. I'd rather like never being subjected to others' ineffectual handling of dogs and raising of children when I am about in the world. There are also a number of times I've gotten my dander up about the message of the week on a church sign; they really shouldn't be subjecting me to it.
punkwalrus[info]punkwalrus on July 25th, 2005 01:27 pm (UTC)
Exactly, they get upset about an art nude, but then they thrust sex right at you in other ways. The whole human body image is so messed up in the media.
byronczimmer[info]byronczimmer on July 25th, 2005 05:07 pm (UTC)
I must have misinterpreted the link. You seemed offended by people in bathingsuits... I figured you would flip out if they were in their birthday suits.
wombat1138[info]wombat1138 on July 25th, 2005 08:12 pm (UTC)
[quote]I say we plaster naked people on billboards. In their full glory.[/quote]

While I'm all for nekkidness, that sounds a bit awkward. I mean, will this involve rotating eight-hour shifts, or do they have to stay up there with tubes running up and down from them like a David Blaine thing? The latter almost sounds easier, or otherwise every time they changed shifts, it might be like ripping them off duct tape. Depending on how sticky the plaster is.

But now I'm just being silly. After all, every good 'Murkin knows that if people were meant to be nekkid, we would've been born that way.
( 7 comments — Leave a comment )