America has produced tremendous cinema and television series over the course of its history. The American populous has an equally ravish interest in these productions, and film and TV is undoubtedly part of our culture and everyday life.
Even with this strong fascination in this media, America’s relationship with movies and television shows is rather peculiar in regards to censorship. Censorship in film and TV is not all created equal; in this blog, I will examine the differences in censoring violence versus sexuality in American movies, and also America’s censoring habits as opposed to Europe’s.
It does not take extensive research to confirm the fact that sexuality in American movies and television is censored far more than violence. This is a general statement; however, there is many analyses that back this hypothesis up.
One of the first things to note in this relationship is that several uses of the F-word are generally allowed in a PG-13 film; however, the use of this word as a verb nearly guarantees the R rating. Another intriguing normality is that the depiction of a nude male almost always garners an R rating, even though the depiction of a nude woman may only earn a PG-13 rating. Below is a link that goes more into detail of these occurrences.
It becomes interesting when one considers the fact that, unlike sexual based images, graphic violence has no real standard when it comes to movie ratings. It may be due to the difficulty of establishing any sort of regularity in images of violence; as it is hard to keep a firm count of acts of violence, especially in a war movie or TV show that depicts a battle scene.
These trends can be seen as a result of the cultures who are viewing the media. In Europe, displays of sexuality are far less taboo than in America. This can be observed throughout all areas of European life, especially in artwork which often depicts nudity (this also may be due to the fact that much of this art is rather old and from the Renaissance and earlier).
Another reason for this phenomena may just be because of America’s strange obsession of violence. As seen with the sport of football (and even MMA) today and boxing in the past, Americans seem to be drawn to danger. American pride in military and economic prowess may also contribute to the embrace of violence. In addition, action figures in comic series were beloved by many of America’s youth.
Even today, shows such as Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead are wildly popular. These shows depict a large amount of violence and routinely score high in the ratings. Also, video games such as Call of Duty have become engraved into young people’s interests even though they display obscene amounts of violence in the gameplay.
All of these factors ultimately help contribute to the censorship situation of American films and television shows; only time will tell how these trends will continue in the future.
http://stories.avvo.com/nakedlaw/bizarre/the-real-difference-between-pg-13-and-r-rated-movies.html
Those are good points — what we censor reflects our moral system and what types of activities are valued in our culture. It seems pretty clear that we accept violence and allow it in video games, TV shows, and movies as good fun, but sexuality remains morally restrained.
My passion blog this week was about the Borgias and how all scandals, but especially sex scandals, grab the attention of the American public more than respectable politics does. This is somewhat connected: sexuality is the most censored aspect of movies and TV, and when it is featured in legitimate news stories people become more interested.
This is an issue that I see come up fairly regularly on Reddit and other international forums, generally in the context of Europeans confused as to why the US is like this. I certainly agree that American censorship in movies and video games follows a strange set of guidelines. That said, I think that there is a bit of a movement to make changes regarding this contrast in violent censorship versus sensual censorship. So, as you said, only time will tell how these trends develop.