Society
 

This is not a political post, just an observation and figured you guys would have some input. So, I always get lumped in as a right wing guy while most of my views are pretty liberal.
growing up, my Dad, who was a marine and pretty clean cut, always had a thing about the human body. He would say that you can watch tv and see someone shot and murdered yet they wouldnt show a naked human being. As if naked was "bad". He thought that was a pretty wacked view by soceity and I have to say as an adult I agree. There is nothing wrong with nudity.
Well, last night I was engrossed in WWII in HD on the history channel. hours of footage of disfigured bodies, gaping wounds and dead soliders and civilians. All in wonderful HD and color. Then we come to a clip of an Okinawan boy, maybe 4yrs old, naked....and what do they do? they blur out his johnson! WHY????? Now maybe the film was edited decades ago, but I still couldnt beleive my eyes. Would a naked boy offend someone? Would nudity corrupt the young?Dead and dying people - ok. Naked boy- BAD!
Maybe if we as a society had more respect for the beauty of the human body, we wouldnt be so quick to blow it up?
F'in crazy to me.

I saw the same thing last night Jim. Silly.
Good program on WWII though!

I'm sure it was just to conform to the FCC rules.

Blame our puritan roots.

-spence

On the upside, the kid had a hell of a large blurred spot, good for him! :D

RIJIMMY
No such thing as, was a marine.
Once a Marine always a Marine. Semper Fi to your father. :cheers:

Naked is not bad. I love the beauty of a lovely female nude body especially when spooning etc: :)

I'm sure enough people respect the beauty of the human body. In war it is not about the human body it is survival.

As far as being blurred it may have to do with FCC rules and as modern as we are today and people wanting to express themselves through nudity you do not see someone's DONG hanging out on TV with the exception if you were watching a National Geographic show about the indigenous people of the Amazon jungle.

I dont think this was expression, just a little kid. We did see peoples guts and brains hanging out on tv. No FCC rules for that? How about the starving bodies in concectration camps>?
its just odd given that we have no problem showing the reality of war, but wont show a naked child.

Perhaps it has something to with what to preserve and what to get rid of. Showing the actual horrors of war, as gruesome and offensive as it may be to human sensibility, and even because of that, is, I guess, an attempt to persuade us against perpetrating those horrors again. Covering our nakedness may, at its deepest motivation, be an attempt to preserve as "sacred" that most personal expression and identity of who we are. Rather than just another, common piece of meat, a choicer cut here and there, to be lusted at or rejected by all, and no more important, ultilmately than any other, we may wish to be unique, not to be lost in a sea of repetitive flesh that becomes too commonplace, unspecial to the seeker of beauty. Nudity in art is impersonal, an expression of beauty found in the human body. Nudity in porn is meant to arouse sexual response. The non-artistic, nonsexual photo of a naked boy is a very personal depiction of an actual, individual, human being, and evokes an empathetic response. That is we personally feel the vulnerability of his nakedness and don't view the picture as art or porn, but as an exposure of our most personal self.

Just a guess. I'm sure everyone has a personal rather than a societal opinion.

I wholeheartedly agree with you.

I think the explanation is rather simple, but the premise for it is ridiculous.
"We have to protect the children." Nudity has been directly related to sex. Children must be protected from anything that can even be vaguely related to sex, because if they see a dead person's junk or a woman's breast, then every 5th grader in the country will start having sex.

I say the premise for it is stupid because of the depth of sexual content that exists on TV but is acceptable as it leaves out nudity.

Interestingly, when National Geo or Discovery do a show on Indigenous Tribes, it's about 50/50 whether there is any blurring - and they're often fully naked.

side topic, but man, how the hell did the Europeans rebuild after WWII?
Its not like those countries are weatlthy or have an abundance of resources. Cities and towns were leveled, but today, they're beautiful. it must have been the townspeople all pitching in
Goes to show the difference in people. look at Iraq/Afghanisatan, still crap holes. You'll never be able to get those countries/people to ebrace freedom. There not ready

If we didn't freak out about nudity......we'd be the French :shocked:

I agree....it is stupid to worry about seeing someone naked...unless it Phylis Diller

Those countries have been crap holes since well before we started blowing them up.

I was enlightened to a very interesting view by a friend and have since further detailed it. Societies started in one place, regardless of a belief for/against evolution (against, it started in the Middle East; For, it started in Africa). Those people have thousands of years of a head start over us "from the West." It should be the Jetsons over there by now.

The mini-cultures with ambition, skill and (I'm guessing) higher intelligence left those areas to find new lands, expand and also created new technologies. Where as the people in the Middle East turned a fertile, diverse paradise like Mesopotamia, into a barren desert.

If they didn't have oil, the countries of the Middle East would be in the same exact position as the people of Africa - 99% poor, majority with fatal diseases, few legitimate governments and life expectancies that barely reach 30 years old.

Or a friend of Mr Macy :rotf2:

agree

When you take it all into consideration, the horrors of war should be a "wake-up" call for all to heed, so that we can learn from history.
It also seems like we, as a society, have become "numb" to the horrors of everyday life and not war.
Then when you consider that the FCC will allow untold acts of violence to be broadcast whenever a show airs, yet will censor most language and almost all nudity, you have to wonder what we are protecting our children from?
How old were you before you saw a show/movie that depicted an actual murder/killing? You know, shootings, stabbing, throat slitting, decapitations, disembowelments...etc? Now we have video games that ENCOURAGE these acts, and we have the gall to ask "Why did those kids kill their classmates / neighbors / family?"

I think that if the FCC would allow public executions of criminals, since they have no trouble with killing on TV, they may finally have a positive effect on the youth of America.
Once video games started heading down the "role-playing" path, I lost ALL interest in them because they were substituting real life for a fantasy which a lot of people get totally lost in.

That being said, give me a good old fashioned mystery, or adventure film any day of the week.