117
Was volcel a mistake?
(hexbear.net)
the study's age range was 10-24.
Article isnt even about video games
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
117 points (100.0% liked)
chapotraphouse
13498 readers
1091 users here now
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Vaush posts go in the_dunk_tank
Dunk posts in general go in the_dunk_tank, not here
Don't post low-hanging fruit here after it gets removed from the_dunk_tank
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
The going theories that I like are either that alienation and the internet have seriously messed people up, or that this is part of a recursive feedback loop with the conglomeration of media under bigger and bigger corporations. The corps want a bland product they can sell to as many people as possible. Alienated viewers, desperate for connection, watch the bland corporate product and assimilate some part of it into their self-identity.
Back when, independent productions could take more leeway on these things, risk making a movie or publishing a book that might make most people uncomfortable but would become part of the counter-culture. But now there is no independent media, and no counter-culture.
But I'm talking out of my ass, of course. I'm no culture critic or sociologist. This is just cobbled together from online discourse, could be dead wrong.
personally i have never wanted sex on screen for the sake of having sex. like, i don't really wanna get sexually aroused when i'm watching a movie or playing a game. i'm not gonna object to sex in a game or movie, but like that'd be more in the sense that sex happens in stories and i guess i like characters with chemistry getting together.
it feels like the expectation with putting sex in movies and games is, like, tittilation even if it's not outright pornography. it's fanservice. you have to have been a boomer, gen x, or early millenial to have only had access to magazines in the woods to be using media as a porn substitute. everyone can just go look at porn. for anything drawn or animated, you can literally find porn of that exact character you are looking at on the screen, right now, by opening a new tab. a lot of media is being made by people who grew up where the sexiest thing you could lay eyes on without anyone finding out was the sears catalog, for people who may have literally seen a dude's gaping asshole before they even hit puberty.
a lot haven't even hit puberty. the youngest in gen Z are 11. a good chunk more are literally living with their parents, either due to the intensifying contradicts of capitalism or because they are literally a minor. what crimes are you willing to commit to prevent your parents from walking in on you on one of this scenes, which could come up without warning or escalate much further than you were expecting?
This is exactly the point - sex scenes in films were never intended to sexually arouse, they are an artistic and dramatic display of human behaviour. The younger generation have so little experience with human intimacy as an emotional range that sex is solely associated with porn and media designed to arouse, so any reference to sex feels like an attempt to arouse and makes people self concious, which of course shouldn't do.
Its somewhat comparable to a lot of these puritannical middle aged American religious nutjobs who have really weird hang ups on their daughters etc because of their own repressed issues
In the same breath, as another commenter pointed out - of course people are going to poll to want less sex scenes if they live with their parents...
I honestly don't think it's that complicated, no. I think it's literally a drop in the efficacy of sex appeal - people seem to get the whole intimacy aspect of it just fine, and if anything Gen Z's a lot more emotioanlly intelligent regarding that sort of thing thanks to dramatically changing sexual mores where, like, consent and shit is actually valued. Most media does not use sex scenes to particularly good effect, especially video games where the limitations of 3D game engine animation have lead to very wooden scenes and often more egregiously just bad writing.
Like you're kidding yourself if you think the sex scenes in your typical Hollywood movie have any particularly deep meaning to them. Of course they've been used to draw ipeople in. "Sex sells" has been a motto for decades. There's certainly movies that do use sex scenes well, that aren't awkward payoffs to arbitrary romantic subplots, but I don't think the generalized lowering of interest in those scnees specifically comes down to gen z feeling less intimacy or whatever moralizing flaw. I think they just have higher standards lol.
while i'm sure plenty of people paused their VHS copy of return of the jedi on some shots of carrie fisher, i don't think "porn substitute" was ever the point of sexualization in media