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Sexualization of minors in movies and tv shows

Ex-User (9086)

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The thing I noticed is that movies and tv series are becoming increasingly sexualized. I think it's getting worse over time. This is mainly sexualization focused on children, teens and female characters. A few examples: Dark TV series, GoT, Cuties, 13 reasons why and a million others. Somehow, bizarrely, this content is accepted by rating agencies, publishers and industry standards.

There are a few common story elements that this problem affects:

1. A romance between teens and minors will often feature nudity, soft porn shots of intercourse/foreplay or unnecessarily erotic making out. Even if the actors are barely adults, they are playing roles of minors.
2. The teen/young adult female protagonist will be portrayed as badass, influential and central to the plot, however this will be heavily undermined by her indecent, immoral or otherwise slutty actions or costume. Their slutty or exhibitionist behavior will be framed as empowering and freeing from social conventions.
3. Femme fatale heroines will often use sex appeal as their main weapon. This makes them socially and morally less powerful than the actually masculine and feminine archetypes of power that are based on skill, intelligence or other physical characteristics.


I think such content is mainly created to attract additional audience interested in soft porn, legal outlets for pedophilia and sexualized females. If a standard show would only reach its target demographic, a sexualized or pedophile-friendly show will attract more adult audience in general.

There is no show where the sexual content was needed or added a necessary layer of artism or depth, it was the opposite.

It's disturbing and immoral because it normalizes pedophilia in our global culture, creates demand for porn, pedophilia and sexualization of women it also does not give women the opportunity to play asexual roles or display other kinds of proficiency and coolness.
 

onesteptwostep

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Dunno about the pedophila part, but I feel the media/entertainment industry is going too far in their liberal exhibition of sexuality to garner profit. I haven't seen a drama show/tv show in years, but from what I'm hearing and just by watching some of the ads on youtube, it seems sexuality is being widely employed to lure people in to watching the shows. I mean, this stuff's going on for years.

I think in general it's a problem of our sexuality is viewed within our culture at large. The media and entertainment isn't the problem, it's that there isn't a central consensus on how sexuality should be honored kept special within our public way of life. In short, the media and entertainment reigns in this regard because they leave the responsibility up to the parents and the schools. But obviously the avenue in which the media/entertainment is disseminated is much more accessible, while education and guidance on these matters is something we adults or the schools have to find the time and right opportunity to properly educate and to instill (proper sexual conduct). The ratings system on such shows don't help that much either.

If a parent advocate group has enough power to challenge hollywood or the media/entertainment industry, it would be nice, but we all know that that kind of scenario would be a mammoth task.
 

Deleted member 1424

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It's simple lcd appeal. HBO proved that it's incredibly lucrative. As long as it's lucrative., you'll see it continue. Cuties is supposed to be explicitly arguing against what you describe, but, personally, it creeps me out too much to ascertain the validity of that argument. It was heavily shouted down and I doubt it made much money as a consequence though.

I really hate the gross incestuous brother/sister/nephew/aunt couples that GoT popularized. Villainous incest is hardly new of course, but it's definitely seeing a comeback. It's just tacked on awkwardly everywhere for little to no narrative purpose (looking at you Picard). I guess the straights are just bored and it's the easiest way to insert a taboo?

I've really been enjoying Raised by Wolves. It's hardly without sexual content, but this is Ridley Scott. Sex and what follows is played for utter terror, not titillation.
 

Cognisant

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Preteens and Early Teenagers = Tweens
I think tweens have a strong desire to be somebody/something which is perfectly encapsulated by Pokemon’s “I want to be the very best, like no one ever was” indeed I believe Pokemon was/is so successful because being a “pokemon master” has very few qualifiers, you don’t need to be particularly fast or strong or clever you just need to be enthusiastic about pokemon and that’s not difficult for a tween to do. Dammit I have that song stuck in my head now.

Now what Pokemon lacks is applicability to the real world, sure if you’re a tween in school and all your tween friends are watching the same show you can talk about which pokemon is your favourite and show of your trading cards and play the games against each other and because it matters to them it matters to you. But if you showed your amazing pokemon card collection to an adult they wouldn’t care or they’d remake on what a waste of money it was or at best they’d humour you but they wouldn’t be too encouraging because they don’t want you to get too caught up in such childish things.

Consequently boys grow out of “childish” things like pokemon and into more “mature” things like first person action shooters, but why are those blatant power fantasies supposedly more mature than being a pokemon master? Well it’s the same reason why if you gave a tween boy the choice between playing Doom for an hour and going to a shooting range to shoot a real gun for an hour the latter is the obvious choice, only other tweens find games impressive but everyone will agree that learning how to use a real gun is impressive (for a tween). Of course it’s not quite that simple, learning to use Excel macros would really impress adults but it’s hard to bring up in conversation, it’s hard to learn, it won’t impress a tween’s peers and it’s not fun do by yourself so although tween boys are happy to be taught more or less anything they’re not going to go out of their way to learn Excel macros when they could be playing Doom.

Now girls don’t really care about power fantasies, at least not to the extent that boys do, and that’s perfectly understandable given the backseat role female protagonists tend to take in such media (MC and Cortana) and the further suspension of disbelief required to take a female Doom Slayer seriously, it’s not that women can’t be badasses (certainly not in fiction) it just seems less plausible. But more importantly they’ve got a better power fantasy, a boy might dream about being a one man army or master swordsman but it will never happen (or even if he learns swordsmanship who gives a shit?) whereas a girl can dream about being a supermodel or Hollywood starlet and work towards that goal and even if she falls short of her goal we live in a society that bends over backwards for pretty girls.

Look at Barbie dolls, Bratz dolls, Sailor Moon, Winx Club, music videos, pretty much anything that caters to a tween female audience is sexualized to some extent, so much so that it can be difficult to tell who it’s actually being created for. Barbie doesn’t have a narrow waist long legs and big tits to appeal to boys, though I’m sure many a boy has sneaked a peak at his sister’s dolls, it’s because Barbie embodies an ideal that tween girls aspire to just as Action Man did for boys, except that (and it’s hilarious to say) Barbie is a more realistic role model than Action Man. Being desirable has clear benefits and girls aren’t stupid, they can read the massive flashing neon writing on the proverbial wall, consequently they value attractiveness (even without the slightest interest in boys much less sex) and because they value it their peers value it and thus it becomes as important to them as having a high FPS K/D ratio is to boys.

I’ve seen scathing reviews of this Cuties series and as much as I’m happy to join the torches and pitchforks crowd I think ultimately it will be for naught, because this is exactly what the target audience wants. Governments can enforce standards and regulations but media producers have been pushing the limits of what they can get away with and lobbying for more “creative freedom” for decades and will continue to do so. Perhaps with a concerted effort we could change the definition of “attractive” such that tween girls have ideals less openly salacious to aspire to but it will still be attractiveness of one form or another.

The solution to this (and everything) is transhumanism, because when everybody has an amazing body then nobody does and with all else being equal attractiveness will have to be measured by personality and wit.
 

onesteptwostep

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Transhumanism is basically experience communism though. How are people going to learn what hardship is without the limits of our biological bodies?

There's that and then the slippery slope of trying to create a sentient being from scratch.

(Though we probably arent going to be able to make true cyborgs- there's the fundamental impossibility of creating life from inanimate objects.)
 

Cognisant

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onesteptwostep

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Tehe ~
 
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