Double Standards

“I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience.”

-Shelley Winters

violence

We seem okay with violence, but nudity we race to criticize and censor.

-Eva Mendes

I have a friend on the facebook who was recently sharing a lot of pictures from a page called *Clean* Funny Pics. Those pics and the page are no longer available. Not sure why.

Some of the pics I found funny, but it just seemed to me that many of them simply rely on violence or violent language for their humor. I can’t remember what they all were, but here are 2 that I do remember and found elsewhere:

wanderings.net

I didn’t find this funny. It’s actually kinda sad.

premad.tumblr.com

This one is kind of funny. It’s the one that first got my attention. It’s also kind of violent, but that‘s not what got my attention.

In the *Clean* Funny Pics version the word “screw” was blacked out. I, quite naturally I think, assumed the blacked out word was “fuck”. So, in this case, censoring the picture actually made it worse. Maybe not technically worse, as it didn’t have a “curse” word, but it made me think a “curse” word. 

It’s like in ancient Greek drama, where the violent stuff happened offstage, or in a suspense movie, where you know the bad guy or monster is there someplace but you can’t see it. To show it makes it definitive, but leaving it unseen lets the imagination perhaps go further than would ever be possible onstage.

Ah well, my point is that I often don’t find violence all that amusing. I prefer the Marx Brothers to the Three Stooges. When I was a kid I thought some of the Stooges humor was amusing, but not anymore. 

"The Naked Now"

I just started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation on the netflix yesterday. “The Naked Now” was the second (or third, if you count the first 2-part episode as 2) episode in the first season. It’s an homage, or at least a reference, to “The Naked Time” from the original series.

I feel like I’m eating my vegetables, or maybe wading through the so-so episodes before the series really starts swimming. There’s nothing forcing me to watch these earlier episodes, but I generally like watching an entire series in order.

It seems to me that all the newer Star Trek series took a while to hit their stride. I’m not sure about the original series. I watched it in syndication when I was a kid, but don’t remember much. So I tried watching it on the netflix not too long ago. I got through 2/3 of the first season, but I just couldn’t take any more of the mediocre acting and the long “dramatic reaction” shots where characters just had these odd, intense expressions on their faces while bad music played. And, of course, there’s the bad special effects. 

Anyway...“The Naked Now”...

The crew is exposed to some virus-type condition which lowers their inhibitions. They keep describing it as being like intoxication. And most everyone who is infected goes around flirting and touching and making out and presumably fucking whoever they can get their hands on.

It’s a little bothersome to me that the series suggest 300+ years in the future, we’ll still have the same repressed attitudes about sex &/or sexuality. I hope it won’t be true. That is, assuming we survive another 300+ years.

If we don’t kill ourselves off directly, by war or some sort of nuclear or other similar disaster, we’re very likely to damage the environment to the point that human life is unsustainable. We’re well on our way to that already. I think the only way to avoid it, is to let go of our “traditional” mindset concerning how we use resources and how we define our civilization, the importance we put on maintaining our accustomed lifestyle.

And on the whole war thing, maybe if all the dudes in charge would just get together in a room and strip down, maybe there’d be less posturing and all that crap, more openness. And therefore, less chance of armegeddon.

“It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.”                -Henry David Thoreau (1817-62)