I think parents are trying to raise their kids properly; that's the dividing line here, and the reason why sanitized movies are come out in the first place. These big companies, however, are not rooting for the parents.
Of course parents will figure ways around it, but it's troublesome that these, ahem, monkey-making guild members are making such a big fuss without offering solutions.
Of course, I'd be more sympathetic to them if they were offering solutions...
It's hard to say what those values strictly are. They were only recognized two years ago, and what it really takes is an anthropolist to do some intense field work to define that. I'm sure it will come in time.
But the fact that no one is willing to say exactly what they are does not mean those values do not exist. Enough people around the United States have noticed something: do you think they are liars, lunatics, or prophets? Or perhaps they have hit upon something that has relative truth.
Depends on what you mean by accept. If by accept you mean that we accept they are realities, then absolutely not would it make us better as a species. I think that would be a veritable sign of us going insane as a species. "Hey, look over there! It's not a cloud! It's King Kong! He's coming to kill us all!" Joking aside, if romance actually happened like it did in the movies... well, life would be sad. If one night stands were really paramount to lasting relationships, then perhaps we have been wrong for the last seven thousand years in assuming marriage is even a necessary social institution for the continuation of civilization.
If by accept you mean we understand why what is being said is just art, and it is not necessarily truth, then yes, I think that's perfectly acceptable for people to accept. But I wouldn't be so gung-ho about it and say that because of this increased wisdom, people should fill their minds with this stuff: moderation in all things.
I don't consider Jason with his chainsaw, Bruce with his explitives, Freddy with his fingers, Silent Hill with its flesh stripping, Bond with his seminating charm, Ferrell with his feral humor, or even Barnyard with its trembling udders, to be "harmless fun." I think each of those comes from a general and a specific philosophy (general is the particular movie house the film comes from, and specific is the vision of the creators), and we need to be aware of those various philosophies.
Of course, you might say I'm taking the fun out of going to the movies. Yes, you are probably right.
I'm still having fun though. It is possible.
... do you really believe that a free market is only supplied by demand? Have you ever heard of marketing theory? About *creating demand* through various strategies?... just a thought...
Actually, Leviathan was a complete surprise. I'm not sure it was anyone's fault, except for my friend's Dad, who rented it from West Coast Video. I guess then it would be West Coast Video's fault, for renting it to the guy whose kid would snag the video and watch it in his parent's bedroom unbeknownst (gosh, if my friend's mom had known, all heck would have been set loose...)
Or perhaps it was the fault of the supplier, or the manufacturer, or the courier, or the mail room clerk at the movie studio, or the manager of the sending and receiving, or the caterer who fed the manager so that he remembered to type "13" when asked to input the number of boxes to request of the manufacturer, or the mother of the caterer, or the mother of the caterer's friend who doesn't own a television and should have tried harder in convincing her friend not to allow her son to go to Hollywood to become a caterer to Hollywood business-types who sell movies to bankrupt video rental houses so that nine-year olds can rent Leviathan...
Seriously guys, how do you keep writing and, well, thinking, when the discussions get so long? It's like Star Wars in here.
So I suppose, then, the question is who is making the buck out of these sanitized movies? Because if it's not the artist (which I'm assuming it is not, because of the controversy), then it is the companies. So are they trying to start a new trend in destroying Creative Enterprise, or are they merely trying to meet a need that has been expressed?
I don't know if these organizations that develop sanitized movies are doing so just out of economic prospects. I know they must be making some sort of headway to get a ruling like the article, but are they really threatening to crash down the walls of Hollywood's elite, or are they just pushing buttons that Hollywood doesn't want pushed? Is this a philosophical argument or an economic one?
With so much capital artists have at their command for film, is it even possible to hold them accountable to significant populations that are the cause for the sanitized movie demand?
You can't say that Father Frank and Mother Mary, Aunt Annie and Uncle Uriah are really co-conspirators to break down Creative Enterprise by just wanting cleaner movies to show their kids. They are just people who don't like what they see on the big screen, still want their kids involved in the culture, but maybe don't have the time to get involved intimately in every aspect of their children's life. It's hard for people these days, with two income families, daycare, and overworked salaries.
Most parents today have to have their kid enrolled in either after school day care, in the guardianship of a babysitter, or some sort of activity after school. I knew a couple kids from my previous day care counseling job; their parents would just sit them down in front of the TV and let them rot until they fell asleep (I'm not saying that is the majority; I know it an extreme example). But for those parents who do care about what their kids are seeing on TV, they want a modricrum amount of control.
The whole scenario has overlapped artistic merit, but has lapsed into social liability for many people. You can either not have a TV in the house (I know many who don't now-a-days, because they don't want to deal with the stuff on TV), you can subscribe to the culture and try to deal with it the best you can, or you can just give up and hope that the best is achieved. Maybe at dinner you could have a talk with the kids about why Samurai Jack is chopping up monsters, or why that girl on Smallville took off all her clothes for no apparent purpose. Or maybe you'll be too tired, because it'll be seven-thirty, your kids have been playing video games for an hour since they got home from school, and you're too busy just cooking them dinner, and making sure they are in bed by eight-thirty.
I remember listening to a radio broadcast in which it was a conservative talk show host glowingly adoring The Lover for it's beauty and sensual art.
I'm not convinced: I'm still conflicted in whether the "Art" was just an excuse to get a 17-year old on film taking off everything, or if it really was "just Art."
Your argument is similar to the video game controversy, which it a lot other bag of beans (namely, does watching people who do bad things influence us to do bad things?). I'm not going to get into it, at least for now.
As for your morality argument... I really don't know what to say.
Yes, we are all screwed up, but the aim is not to support that kind of behavior, but rather to try and become better as a species. So... that's why discussions like this exist, so that we can break free from our savage tendencies and become civilized, decent, loving people.
I don't see the benefit of "mutiliation, death, and the ancient art of warfare," and I can hardly see how it is a good thing or how we should have more of it. If your reasoning is if we have more of it then we wouldn't have more of the real thing, I don't think you can logically support that argument except in pseudo-theory.
There are a lot of countries where people who didn't grow up in a Judeo-Christian worldview do not believe we are born bad. That is a whole other discussion, so I won't get into now, but know that your argument is very Western foundationally.
If you honestly believe that it is possible to raise a child in America without the influence of cinema, DVDs, television, and Hollywood icons infiltrating a major part of their life, or at least teaching your children how to use and understand the medium that surrounds them, then I applaud you (I am not being sarcastic).
It's hard though - it's not like there are classes in local community centers on understanding the archetypes of Hollywood cinema or very strong and active community groups that boycott certain brands of media product. It's really not feasible to form community groups, just because the culture is so saturated with Hollywood product.
I'm not saying it is impossible, though. If you understand that our culture has this veneer coating of dionysian (yet again) values, and you know how to teach that knowledge that to your family, then by all means, I say embrace the culture so that you can perhaps change it (if you wish), or at least, bear with it and come out a little wiser about the nature of man.
If parents are just going to act like victims in this great charade, then I say let them be victims. Honestly, I believe people will never stop fighting against the system in order to get what they want. But like I've said before, I do wish that artists would take more care in their work. It's seems like they've become increasingly lazy as the years have advanced and the bucks have rolled in more than ever.
In a way, I would say that Hollywood is selling bread. For a family not to own a television or have any movies is rare, but not unheard of today, because specifically of this controversy. To say that America was not built through the efforts of the movies would be to disregard one of our most important exports, as well as cultural speciality.
It's not feasible to think that someone from Saudi Arabia could ignore the affects of Islam in their life, when it is so saturated. Obviously the example is more extreme than our relationship with Hollywood (we are not persecuted if we do not watch movies, and we don't have ID cards that have our favorite movie star on it), but there is a similarity in the infusion of the culture.
Even if you are a cultural isolationist, book stores, gas stations, magazines, newspapers, doctors' offices, hotel bedstands, highway advertisements, radio programs, even churches and community establishments (and probably more if I thought about it more) have embedded within their systems an acceptance of Hollywood, at least externally. We are encouraged to understand what is going on in that area of life, and we are held accountable, often to our friends or social group, if we are out of sync. This accountability isn't direct, but rather indirect, and if we fall out of it, we usually feel left behind.
If the guild members of this Great Art in the bosom of LA will not be held accountable for their actions, people take action in order to heal what they consider to be wounds inflicted among them and their families. Perhaps stealing movies and editing the content and reselling them isn't the way to go. I have two main gripes: 1, that guild members either don't realize the power they have over society or they do and are taking advantage of a system for totally immature and irresponsible reasons, and 2, that people should be allowed to give their children entertainment without having to deal with explitives, women taking off all of their clothes indecently, and people being murdered in lots of horrible ways.
I doubt the argument is being made for Pulp Fiction. I think it's being made for other movies that have a certain amount of content that is acceptable and a certain that is not.
Do you honestly believe that Americans will allow people to totally censor movies out of public distrust of artistry? We're the founders of Playboy, Penthouse, and Random House - we obviously believe that free speech is an inherent aspect of our society. I think the idea of sanitized movies is just to protect those families who want to make life easier in teaching their children what they consider to be proper values.
And if sanitized movies ever do become mainstream, do you really believe copyright laws would allow them to steal creative property? As shown by this case, there is very little to worry about. What is to worry about is the idea that Hollywood Creatives are so stuck on going against the will of the people.
Do you really think this is "book burning" though? It's not like you can walk into a Best Buy and not find the original copy. I don't think I've ever seen a sanitized movie anywhere for sale in movie stores, or on any website. I don't think Blockbuster or Netflix carries any (I could be wrong about Netflix).
Unless the government starts to sanction only sanitized copies (like the Chinese government does), I'm not sure we have anything to worry about except some people want to be entertained, and that's it (they don't want to have to worry about things in a film they don't want to see). To me, it seems an incredibly minor issue, and a huge point of immaturity for the artists who are complaining.
I think parents are trying to raise their kids properly; that's the dividing line here, and the reason why sanitized movies are come out in the first place. These big companies, however, are not rooting for the parents.
Of course parents will figure ways around it, but it's troublesome that these, ahem, monkey-making guild members are making such a big fuss without offering solutions.
Of course, I'd be more sympathetic to them if they were offering solutions...
I can't answer your question, but I found this article to be quite interesting:
The American Enterprise: Stuck in the Middle with... Who?
It's hard to say what those values strictly are. They were only recognized two years ago, and what it really takes is an anthropolist to do some intense field work to define that. I'm sure it will come in time.
But the fact that no one is willing to say exactly what they are does not mean those values do not exist. Enough people around the United States have noticed something: do you think they are liars, lunatics, or prophets? Or perhaps they have hit upon something that has relative truth.
I think that would be a good gesture.
Depends on what you mean by accept. If by accept you mean that we accept they are realities, then absolutely not would it make us better as a species. I think that would be a veritable sign of us going insane as a species. "Hey, look over there! It's not a cloud! It's King Kong! He's coming to kill us all!" Joking aside, if romance actually happened like it did in the movies... well, life would be sad. If one night stands were really paramount to lasting relationships, then perhaps we have been wrong for the last seven thousand years in assuming marriage is even a necessary social institution for the continuation of civilization.
If by accept you mean we understand why what is being said is just art, and it is not necessarily truth, then yes, I think that's perfectly acceptable for people to accept. But I wouldn't be so gung-ho about it and say that because of this increased wisdom, people should fill their minds with this stuff: moderation in all things.
I don't consider Jason with his chainsaw, Bruce with his explitives, Freddy with his fingers, Silent Hill with its flesh stripping, Bond with his seminating charm, Ferrell with his feral humor, or even Barnyard with its trembling udders, to be "harmless fun." I think each of those comes from a general and a specific philosophy (general is the particular movie house the film comes from, and specific is the vision of the creators), and we need to be aware of those various philosophies.
Of course, you might say I'm taking the fun out of going to the movies. Yes, you are probably right.
I'm still having fun though. It is possible.
... do you really believe that a free market is only supplied by demand? Have you ever heard of marketing theory? About *creating demand* through various strategies?... just a thought...
Actually, Leviathan was a complete surprise. I'm not sure it was anyone's fault, except for my friend's Dad, who rented it from West Coast Video. I guess then it would be West Coast Video's fault, for renting it to the guy whose kid would snag the video and watch it in his parent's bedroom unbeknownst (gosh, if my friend's mom had known, all heck would have been set loose...)
Or perhaps it was the fault of the supplier, or the manufacturer, or the courier, or the mail room clerk at the movie studio, or the manager of the sending and receiving, or the caterer who fed the manager so that he remembered to type "13" when asked to input the number of boxes to request of the manufacturer, or the mother of the caterer, or the mother of the caterer's friend who doesn't own a television and should have tried harder in convincing her friend not to allow her son to go to Hollywood to become a caterer to Hollywood business-types who sell movies to bankrupt video rental houses so that nine-year olds can rent Leviathan...
Seriously guys, how do you keep writing and, well, thinking, when the discussions get so long? It's like Star Wars in here.
So I suppose, then, the question is who is making the buck out of these sanitized movies? Because if it's not the artist (which I'm assuming it is not, because of the controversy), then it is the companies. So are they trying to start a new trend in destroying Creative Enterprise, or are they merely trying to meet a need that has been expressed?
I don't know if these organizations that develop sanitized movies are doing so just out of economic prospects. I know they must be making some sort of headway to get a ruling like the article, but are they really threatening to crash down the walls of Hollywood's elite, or are they just pushing buttons that Hollywood doesn't want pushed? Is this a philosophical argument or an economic one?
With so much capital artists have at their command for film, is it even possible to hold them accountable to significant populations that are the cause for the sanitized movie demand?
You can't say that Father Frank and Mother Mary, Aunt Annie and Uncle Uriah are really co-conspirators to break down Creative Enterprise by just wanting cleaner movies to show their kids. They are just people who don't like what they see on the big screen, still want their kids involved in the culture, but maybe don't have the time to get involved intimately in every aspect of their children's life. It's hard for people these days, with two income families, daycare, and overworked salaries.
Most parents today have to have their kid enrolled in either after school day care, in the guardianship of a babysitter, or some sort of activity after school. I knew a couple kids from my previous day care counseling job; their parents would just sit them down in front of the TV and let them rot until they fell asleep (I'm not saying that is the majority; I know it an extreme example). But for those parents who do care about what their kids are seeing on TV, they want a modricrum amount of control.
The whole scenario has overlapped artistic merit, but has lapsed into social liability for many people. You can either not have a TV in the house (I know many who don't now-a-days, because they don't want to deal with the stuff on TV), you can subscribe to the culture and try to deal with it the best you can, or you can just give up and hope that the best is achieved. Maybe at dinner you could have a talk with the kids about why Samurai Jack is chopping up monsters, or why that girl on Smallville took off all her clothes for no apparent purpose. Or maybe you'll be too tired, because it'll be seven-thirty, your kids have been playing video games for an hour since they got home from school, and you're too busy just cooking them dinner, and making sure they are in bed by eight-thirty.
Or you could not have kids.
Either scenario is worrysome.
Dionysian pluralists, dionysian pluralism, dionicean pluralisps, diocesian floralists...
Yes, yes, what you said. I'm confusing myself with my pedantic invalid sophistry.
BTW, it says "Grant."
Oh, Jane March (in reference to Color of Night).
I remember listening to a radio broadcast in which it was a conservative talk show host glowingly adoring The Lover for it's beauty and sensual art.
I'm not convinced: I'm still conflicted in whether the "Art" was just an excuse to get a 17-year old on film taking off everything, or if it really was "just Art."
Aw, I'm sorry. When you explain yourself, I don't think you are an idiot. You're quite smart!
"...which it a lot other bag of beans..."
Haha...
(which is a whole other bag of beans)
Yeah, I don't know how. Don't ask.
Your argument is similar to the video game controversy, which it a lot other bag of beans (namely, does watching people who do bad things influence us to do bad things?). I'm not going to get into it, at least for now.
As for your morality argument... I really don't know what to say.
Yes, we are all screwed up, but the aim is not to support that kind of behavior, but rather to try and become better as a species. So... that's why discussions like this exist, so that we can break free from our savage tendencies and become civilized, decent, loving people.
I don't see the benefit of "mutiliation, death, and the ancient art of warfare," and I can hardly see how it is a good thing or how we should have more of it. If your reasoning is if we have more of it then we wouldn't have more of the real thing, I don't think you can logically support that argument except in pseudo-theory.
There are a lot of countries where people who didn't grow up in a Judeo-Christian worldview do not believe we are born bad. That is a whole other discussion, so I won't get into now, but know that your argument is very Western foundationally.
If you honestly believe that it is possible to raise a child in America without the influence of cinema, DVDs, television, and Hollywood icons infiltrating a major part of their life, or at least teaching your children how to use and understand the medium that surrounds them, then I applaud you (I am not being sarcastic).
It's hard though - it's not like there are classes in local community centers on understanding the archetypes of Hollywood cinema or very strong and active community groups that boycott certain brands of media product. It's really not feasible to form community groups, just because the culture is so saturated with Hollywood product.
I'm not saying it is impossible, though. If you understand that our culture has this veneer coating of dionysian (yet again) values, and you know how to teach that knowledge that to your family, then by all means, I say embrace the culture so that you can perhaps change it (if you wish), or at least, bear with it and come out a little wiser about the nature of man.
If parents are just going to act like victims in this great charade, then I say let them be victims. Honestly, I believe people will never stop fighting against the system in order to get what they want. But like I've said before, I do wish that artists would take more care in their work. It's seems like they've become increasingly lazy as the years have advanced and the bucks have rolled in more than ever.
In a way, I would say that Hollywood is selling bread. For a family not to own a television or have any movies is rare, but not unheard of today, because specifically of this controversy. To say that America was not built through the efforts of the movies would be to disregard one of our most important exports, as well as cultural speciality.
It's not feasible to think that someone from Saudi Arabia could ignore the affects of Islam in their life, when it is so saturated. Obviously the example is more extreme than our relationship with Hollywood (we are not persecuted if we do not watch movies, and we don't have ID cards that have our favorite movie star on it), but there is a similarity in the infusion of the culture.
Even if you are a cultural isolationist, book stores, gas stations, magazines, newspapers, doctors' offices, hotel bedstands, highway advertisements, radio programs, even churches and community establishments (and probably more if I thought about it more) have embedded within their systems an acceptance of Hollywood, at least externally. We are encouraged to understand what is going on in that area of life, and we are held accountable, often to our friends or social group, if we are out of sync. This accountability isn't direct, but rather indirect, and if we fall out of it, we usually feel left behind.
If the guild members of this Great Art in the bosom of LA will not be held accountable for their actions, people take action in order to heal what they consider to be wounds inflicted among them and their families. Perhaps stealing movies and editing the content and reselling them isn't the way to go. I have two main gripes: 1, that guild members either don't realize the power they have over society or they do and are taking advantage of a system for totally immature and irresponsible reasons, and 2, that people should be allowed to give their children entertainment without having to deal with explitives, women taking off all of their clothes indecently, and people being murdered in lots of horrible ways.
I'm trying to be reasonable.
I doubt the argument is being made for Pulp Fiction. I think it's being made for other movies that have a certain amount of content that is acceptable and a certain that is not.
Do you honestly believe that Americans will allow people to totally censor movies out of public distrust of artistry? We're the founders of Playboy, Penthouse, and Random House - we obviously believe that free speech is an inherent aspect of our society. I think the idea of sanitized movies is just to protect those families who want to make life easier in teaching their children what they consider to be proper values.
And if sanitized movies ever do become mainstream, do you really believe copyright laws would allow them to steal creative property? As shown by this case, there is very little to worry about. What is to worry about is the idea that Hollywood Creatives are so stuck on going against the will of the people.
Do you really think this is "book burning" though? It's not like you can walk into a Best Buy and not find the original copy. I don't think I've ever seen a sanitized movie anywhere for sale in movie stores, or on any website. I don't think Blockbuster or Netflix carries any (I could be wrong about Netflix).
Unless the government starts to sanction only sanitized copies (like the Chinese government does), I'm not sure we have anything to worry about except some people want to be entertained, and that's it (they don't want to have to worry about things in a film they don't want to see). To me, it seems an incredibly minor issue, and a huge point of immaturity for the artists who are complaining.