Oh geeze.....now I sound like a turn of the century prohibitionist..not someone who used to skinny dip.
Maybe I should skip on over to the Menopause board for a bit.

Kate

Kate, go skinny dip with your husband but keep on your soap box about morals and values.

I'll step on the box a bit, but I'll choose violence in movies.

I have never been able to watch violence. It makes me sick to my stomach. This younger generation has seen so much on television and movies that they don't see it as horrible. I'm including my kids in this and I'm the mom who wouldn't let my kids watch the Ninja Turtles. Violence has creeped in as they've become older.

This was most apparent to me when I went to see The Passion with my 15 yeaar old son. I literally covered my eyes with one hand and clutched my stomach with the other as I slithered down in my seat peeking through my fingers to see when I could watch again.

My son watched the whole thing. It bothered him, but he watched every scene. This is a sensitive kid who has a hard time hurting a flea.

I've decided I want smilinize to write the films my grandchildren watch. I'll begin again with the grandkids.

Oh boy Dots, I would be delighted to write films for your grandkids. Or possibly great grandkids at the rate I'm going.

I love soap boxes. I jump on any little ole' box that comes along.
I too am mortified by on sreen violence. I thought the violence in The Passion was more painful (and maybe less harmful) because it focused on the "pain" of the victim rather than the "enjoyment" of the perpetrator. Most movie violence shows only the perpetator who seems to enjoy the heck out of hurting others and the pain of the victim is never even shown.??

As to sex, I'm all for it! Though not on screen and certainly not trivialized as it was in "Love Actually." In that movie, and lots of others, the sex is there to compensate for terrible writing!!
But That's the soap box I was on previously so...
smile

All this reminded me of something... now tell me that this doesn't date me ... but I remember in one of my high school classes, maybe it was psychology, some discussion about how the the Chinese government had their children trained in using firearms at an early age and something else, I don't remember what exactly it was, and I don't know now if that was just propoganda on our part, but it made sense... not that they were Chinese, it wouldn't have mattered who it was, but the anesthetizing thing.

If you watch enough of something pretty soon you become immune to the horrors it and it holds no fear, no reality, no pain. It becomes like the RoadRunner cartoons... the guy gets smashed and he's back for the next cartoon. No reality.

Kate

Kate,
A friend who was a Viet Nam veteran told me they were shown very gory movies of shooting people and blood, etc. to "harden" them to shoot people and not react when others were shot.

When I taught nurses years ago, we showed the students film of surgeries to 'harden' them to be able to assist in the surgical suite.

smile

And now our children see violence for entertainment.

When they were little I sheltered them. They are all teens now and I've chosen to let them watch what the world watches knowing my choices would be different. I pray they revert to the restrictions of their childhood when they have their own families.

I can't bear to think of the effects of seeing as much violence as is even on television on children. It affects me and I'm certainly no child.
The impact of visual images on the developing brain can profoundly change it. All that brain physiology stuff I love reading about sometimes frightens me.
Then we treat the stress that naturally occurs as a result of constantly bombarding our children with sexual and violent images with mind altering drugs.
The future of my grandchildren may be a terrifying time.

When I was growing up and even when my sons were growing up, we would see in Westerns or Suspense movies a shooting and all you saw was the person shot, grab his or her wound and there was a small amount of blood (sometimes) and they'd fall down dead. NOW you see the bullet leave the gun hit its mark and sometimes even see the trip into the body ripping and tearing the flesh and there is no limit of blood and gore. And if that weren't enough NOW we get to visit the autopsy and watch while they cut the body open displaying the organs and yuk inside. The statistics say that these movies are the cause of more and more animal abuse, alot of which is kept quiet. Todays children are being conditioned to not only murder death and torture but also loss of life as a mere TV show or movie. They aren't taught that death is FINAL It's sad and nothing like the Roadrunner.