America gone mad
 

Sorry if I sound terse, but what the fuck is wrong with America?!!

REF: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...html?from=top5

I don't know why I'm angry, as this doesn't really affect me that much; not being American or living in America. But I still get hot under the collar when I come across such nonesense as this.

What's next? Banning Greek and Roman sculpture?


Mr Mephisto

PS - No problem showing hundreds of people getting killed on TV shows, but a pregnant woman?! Oh Dear Lord Above, save us...

Yeah, Mephisto, this country is way over the top hung up sexually. Violence is no big deal but nudity is a serious no-no, which I just don't get. This is typical of my country and government. It is a shame we cannot actually focus on the things which are important rather than this sort of BS.

As far as I'm concerned it is the proper responsibility of the FCC to decide whether nudity costumes are appropriate for General Audiences. That's the point - what is appropriate for general entire-family fare. I can imagine nudity suits being done with exquisite and anatomical precision and shoved in our faces at any time of day and on any channel. The FCC is the agency designated to look into issues like this.

I didn't watch the opening so I'm basing my opinion on the pictures you posted. I find nothing inappropriate about those pictures; I would have no problem letting my 3 year old look at them either. Americans are prudes; god forbid you see someones nude body, but if it is getting blown up/sliced up/altered/smacked around, its all for the good of entertainment. A few years ago the statue of David by Michelangelo came to a university here and a lot of people raised a stink about the nudity. It almost made me vomit. Obscene nudity (sexually explicit shown on daytime TV, etc when young kids can see it) is one thing, but being based on classic artwork? I don't get it either.
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Yeah, but who would it be hurting? You could have an all nudity suit channel, what's the big deal? This is what happens when the neocons cut art funding! This is exactly why America is the laughingstock of the rest of the world.

Well for that you are correct, but call me old fashioned but I still think it is the parents responsibility to decide what their children watch, not the FCC's. I find it ironic that t.v. is used by parents to prop their kids in front of when convenient for them when they want their "quiet time," but when something like this comes up, parental responsibility is abdicated.

Maybe if these parents spent more quality time with their kids rather than bitching about what's on t.v. they might create a more conducive social environment for them and their job as responsible parents might get a liitle easier, at least for the 99% below.

The american people lack basic common sense and are hypocritical. The end.

And whatever country you come from has people stupid enough to make generalizations like that. We are a nation of puritans, but we're not "hypocritical". Slowly and slowly we're getting rid of the old puritan traditions that you see still today (cursing, nudity on tv, etc etc), but it's even more stupid of you to make a generalization like that.

Secondly, the FCC is actually an illegal department. They inforce their morals on the media, and for instance, the time when Janet Jackson's breast was shown on TV, they force the media to pay fines for indecency. However, that all falls under free speech. You will see a pattern of the FCC of dropping complaints if the television company sues them. They do this because any judge at the appeals court level or the supreme court level knows well enough that what the FCC Is doing violates the first amendment, so it simply avoids confrontation with them. In the end, it uses scare tactics to keep television stations in line, if not anything else. It's pretty sad, because in reality I think that the real puritans in america number only in the hundreds of thousands, but the rest of america has to deal with their abnormally loud voices.

Sorry for the incoherent rant, I just woke up.

whats wrong with it???

i don't see a thing wrong with the pregnant lady... plus schools allready allow kids to see art such the nude roman pieces.... i've even seen similar ones on feild trips way back in elementry school


i gotta admit that having the penis showing on those actors like that is a little much... but there not real.. it's just molding thats ontop of the body...


are we going to require people to be over 18 before visiting art musuems?

I think Americans have lost all their brain cells. I cant see why this would be offensive in the slightest. There are thousands of pregnant women accross the nation, and the "nudity suits" are presented as art. Theres nothing aggressively sexual about them and if you're sitting at home and are offended CHANGE THE FUCKING CHANNEL!! This is why we have FREEDOM in the US, but apparently some of us Americans cant seem to handle it. If you're afraid of your children seeing "nudity" cover their eyes... or again, change the damn channel. It would be one thing if they had some naked chick getting boned in the center of the ice rink by some overly hunky adonis...but this was art. This is why everyone is so afraid of their bodies, when there is quality on TV we shun it.. but if someone is getting their ass kicked or some hot stupid teenage couple is making out, getting felt up, and behaving as if they lived in Romper Room...........we're all for it. Ive seen things in PG movies that while I dont find offensive, I could take to the extreme and say theyre at LEAST pg-13 or R. I guess its ok to see women parading around half dressed and sex just rampant on the O.C, Laguna Beach, Nip/Tuck(not that kids watch this, but its on FX which is easily accessable), South Park(its a cartoon, and Ive seen elementary school kids quoting them), and now there's Drawn Together. Yeah, lets see how long "adults only" watch this. I bet these same people werent offended when Blade Trinity came out, or Swordfish because they didnt have to see it.. guess what, you didnt have to see the Olympics either, a simple push of the button and you have a whole new program.

America come to your senses, the idiot box is not a substitute for you as a parent. Get over it, sometimes theres things not meant for all eyes.. and if its something like the Olympics Im SURE a lot of thought was put into it since it takes 7-8 years to plan the Olympics. Kiss my ass dumb parents, really.. you can say no to your child every once in a while. Who cares what Suzi down the block parents let her do.. your kid isnt Suzi, and more importantly you're not those dumb parents.

Puritan roots, deeply planted. Over 400 years and we are still under living under their influence. We start the witch trials next week!

I just can't understand how these people think. Honestly, what is the big deal? It's not like there was hardcore porn shown at the ceremony, it was a pregnant woman and a bunch of guys in bodysuits! Remove the stick from your ass, nudity is not an awful thing. (And in this case it wasn't even nudity to begin with...)

None of our good members have sticks up their ass, so it is not advisable to address opinions in this manner.

The moral values of *some* people in the States is beginning to make me sick. I can't fathom the idea of the representation of ancient Greek history being offensive. Thankgod I live in Canada is all I have to say.

I agree...just basically conservative values showing themselves. Every country has Conservative Media Organizations who like to remind people of their existence every now and then. America also has a multi-billion dollar porn industry, if that'll make you feel any better. :p

Doesn't surprise me, anyone remember Ashcroft covering the nude breast on the statue of lady justice?

Yeah, I really miss paying for pictures of a crucifix in a bottle of piss, and a bullwhip up someone's ass.

I'm sure the rest of the world thought devoting tax dollars to THOSE was a sound idea.

this is certainly very humiliating for America, but in fairness, all the FCC is doing is going through the procedure of investiagting someone's complaint. It would be unthinkable in my opinion that any action be bought in this case.

I think this i just representative of how sexually repressed certain demographics are. Americans do not have the right to not be offended. I'm not sure why so many of us think we do. I wonder how these people feel about nude depictions of adam and eve that exist in the bible?

I wasn't offended in the slightest by the ceremony, but while I find the prudish nature of some people redundant I see no reason why it should be ignored. If people were offended then fine, they have every right to voice their dissaproval and should be allowed to do so, and I see no wrong in the FCC fulfilling its obligation to investigate based on the complaints it receives.

At any rate, I find it highly unlikely that such a triviality will be judged immoral, even by the FCC.

THE FCC was supposed to be guardian to PUBLIC airwwaves, simply put the government felt if you owned a station that broadcast through airwave frequencies you bought then they had jurisdiction. The networks and channels accepted this, and gave the FCC the right to police them in order to "rent" that particular frequency.

Cable/satellite tv and now radio are able to air what they want (although it's just the premiums that allow nudity). The FCC has no jurisdiction however over ANY CABLE/SATELLITE stations yet and therefore they are able to broadcast whatever they like. This is what is killing regular broadcast and why they feel they have to get racier.

Now were these opening games aired on NBC itself or one of their cable outlets. If it's over the outlets then the FCC cannot legally fine anyone. If it's over the "air" they could but I would find it hard to believe that the FCC will garner enough support to claim that as obscene.

IF I were paranoid and believed in conspiracies..... I would say I find it funny that CBS, ABC and now NBC are all under FCC fire for something, yet Fox probably the lustiest and hottest of all is walking away scott free, with not one word about FCC investigations...... It's nice to support the king.

it is diffuclt not to read all this as symptoms of the decay of the american empire: unable to face reality, either in particular or in general, there is a segment odf hte population that retreats into religion, and from there tries to work out external symptoms to blame for their malaise--if only the culture could be purified of retrograde elements, and one of consistent protestant-fundamentalist-style mediocrity set up in its place, then obviously the world would be different.

in this way, the fcc anal probe could be seen as an index of a collective retreat into fantasies of purity and will (so could this last election...)

as for the tangental matter of funding for the arts, the reactionary position on which sob so eloquently summarized with this:

i assume that no actual experience of the images are required for you to be quite opposed to the fact of them, and to use this as a shallow pretext for attacking the idea of state funding for the arts in general.

because of course serrano and mapplethorpe are the only folk to have ever been granted money from the state, and their particular (technically extraordinary--but no matter for conservatives, really--it is all just what they are told it is from the various networks of sanctimoniousness we are plagued with in the states at present....) works are obviously the space to which any such funding leads.

most of the folk i talk to who are not based in the states and who produce artworks understand the states to be a complete nightmare for artists in general. i think they are right in that.

but what i really think drives the conservative opposition to state funding for the arts is their fear of criticism, particularly of criticism that works in registers they cannot collapse back into their fatuous, moralizing understanding of the world.

It doesn't have a lot to do with facing reality, roachboy.
It has to do with "facing" media.

I respect and support people who act against media that offends them, their sense of decorum, or their desire to have content programmed according to some segregation of channel content based on age-appropriateness or other parameters that may be defined by the public will. Agencies that are charged with maintaining and enforcing these complex matters do important and significant work.

I live in Michigan.

It's not a generalization. People in this country ARE, for the most part, stupid and hypocritical. I'm not saying people on this forum are this way, I'm talking about average joe public.

It's pretty self evident, so I don't think I need to give examples, but I will anyway.

Examples of hypocrisy: Illegal to pick up a hooker, but it's legal to pay a porn actress or pick up a gal in a bar for a one night stand. Illegal to smoke marijuana, but okay to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol. It's bad to show sex, something natural, on TV, but it's okay to show violence.

Need examples of stupidty? Just watch the news... or if you have a job where you deal with people on a daily basis, I'm sure you already know what I mean. Not *EVERYONE* is stupid, but most are pretty gullible and impressionable and will think whatever you tell them to think.

I'd LOVE to see the average IQ in this country.

I think this is all representative of a difference in culture. Globalization is bringing new ideas into regular contact with Americans, but it seems that only American greed and violence are disseminated into the world. In practice, it's all reflective of a sort of xenophobia, or at least cultures focusing only on the negatives of foreign ideas and information.
Relative to Ashcroft, etc.:
I'm not blaming the Christian Right for being against nudity, because it's a door that swings both ways. Some secularists revile anything religious, and want pornography, etc. allowed in public spaces like public libraries (where children, those who might be offended can easily view it "second-hand" [google "Loudoun County pornography" if you want to find out more]), while some religious conservatives want to stop any kind of nudity or expression of the "natural" (open to interpretation) physical form.

The governments are largely of the people, just as are the consumer markets. Vote in your elections, vote with your currency!

Context, it's all about the context.

While I don't really think it has anything to do with this thread, I'm posting one link that discusses IQ. Here it is:

http://sq.4mg.com/NationIQ.htm

If you don't like the source, try searching yourself or look up the book from which the stats derive:

IQ and the Wealth of Nations

This should not start a digression - as the thread is clearly about other matters. It's just that sometimes, posts require responses. Especially when there is no research done to back up statements that are just typed in here as if anything goes...

You totally dodge the question of why they are facing the media. Are "they" trying to get rid of violence? Or are they concerned that a marblized dick is going to destroy their world?

the few do not own the airwaves. we all do. and if it's broadcast TV, then i would be damn upset if they tried to take away my programming choices. and if it is true that a majority of citizens are at the point at which their reality is threatened by those images, then i want nothing to do with this nation. but i rather strongly suspect that it is simply a matter of a few individuals orchestrating this complaint, and who have no more right to impose their views on the public airwaves than any other crackpots.

I never "dodge" anything. I choose what I respond to.

Actually any reason that a human being would oppose media is something I am predisposed to look at with a predilection toward supporting the human being's voice in opposition to something that is programmed at him or her or the public at large.

questions of "appropriateness" and the politics that attend them rarely interest me.

i do not care about the matter of whether nudity in the form of marble statues somehow offends a constituency out there somewhere, whether and how they mobilize that constituency..nor do i care about the fcc as arbitor of these matters. like others earlier in the thread, perhaps i would find this more intersting if there was an equivalent concern about violence. or about the slide into fascism. but there isnt.

i do not understand the drive toward censorship of nudity. i do not understand or accept the assumptions concerning the "innocence" of childhood, nor about the notion of "family values" that seems to have been made as a grotesque correlate of it. what i see in this is a neurotic obsession with control, one that plays directly into the fantasies of purity and will i mentioned earlier.

as for the public airwaves and the fcc more generally--in general i agree with martinguerre's last post.
the right's abhorrence of the notion of the public seems to figure in this as well...better for them to allow the rise of media empires like clear channel and confuse privatized airwaves with a kind of public holding that the right can accept. nothing to do with the quality of broadcasting, nothing to do with the content--everything to do with perversions particular to conservative ideology, with reducing the possibility of broadcasters being held to account for meaningful conflict they increasingly should encounter with notions of a pluralistic public, a gradual erasure of the space for a politics of broadcast media.

instead, what you get handed to you as "meaningful" poltical questions is pure diversion: trivial, idiotic matters like what mr mephsto cited at the start of this thread.

as for the question of "facing reality" as over against "facing the media" i think maybe there was confusion about the register i was talking on...what i tried to point to operates a a level prior to the actual conflict the thread is considering.

For clarity, I'll repeat the position on this sort of thing that I've taken many times here in this forum. I am in agreement with publically legislated and monitored standards of "appropriateness" as regards what content appears on what channel, medium, and platform. I do not see a discussion of appropriateness to be the same thing as a discussion of censorship as I have no problem with content being available on restricted-access media and channels.

I've indicated this above and I've stated it elsewhere here.

American laws and regulations regarding this topic are completely stupid and outdated in my opinion. Damn I wish we would loosen up a little. Is the naked body really that offensive to some people? I don't get it...

i more or less assumed that was your position, art.
i did not assume you were arging for censorship.

i find this kind of regulation goofy...i guess where our views part ways is that i do not assume that they (these kinds of regulation) can be understood on their own terms--that is why i link them to wider problems/processes/ideologies. it seems a gap in premises that can lead us to talk by each other.

No. The human body when used by those who would exploit people of all ages via the power of unrestricted media broadcasting has the potential to wreak havoc on some members of society - especially people's children. It's not surprising parents, for example, would expect some regulation on unrestricted programming.

i am confused: who are you referring to here?

I'm referring to pornography, for example - and more broadly sexuality as exploited by commercial interests.

There was a rhetorical question regarding nudity and its offensiveness, etc. Actually there are many such comments here.

There is also - besides the understandable statements of opinion - a generalized sense of how incredible it is that anyone would think differently on these subjects. I'm taking a bit of time to state some of the reasons why good people may take various positions on the subjects addressed here.

Nice summation. If programming is allowed with no restrictions on content that offends, what's to prevent the "Anti-Semitic Channel," or the N-word flying around on free cable TV?

As so often happens with assumptions, you have come to an inaccurate conclusion.

Care to back up that inaccurate generalization?

Perhaps you would share your elevated consciousness with us, and explain how so much art has survived for thousands of years without public funding.

Actually this is not entirely true. It turns out that the FCC has just as much control over cable television as it does over network television, it just chooses not to exercise this power as much. Why? Well the FCC only responds to complaints made over specific broadcasts. Most people who have cable understand that if you don’t like a specific program you have 1million other channels to choose from. Technically, however, the FCC could regulate cable television just as much as they do the networks (same goes for Satellite Radio). Scared yet?

http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~colleen-oconnor/

http://www.fcc.gov/mb/facts/csgen.html

Gawd this is getting old. How do you justify trying to define an entire populace based on the actions of a lunatic fringe?

99.8% of the complaints filed with the FCC are from one, miniscule religious organization that most people don't even care about.
LINK

And you want to define an entire nation by these people?

And of course, the obvious aspects to this are being entirely ignored:

1) We have a free enough society that these people can spout whatever they want without fear of retribution. Yet, most everyone here wants to quell the freedoms that don't match their own beliefs.

2) The FCC has to respond to the complaint; it doesn't mean they will find in favor of it. Imagine if the FCC ignored any complaints?

In other words, there is nothing to see here, move along folks. If the FCC finds in favor of the complaint, then we have something to discuss. Should we debate every stupid, lunatic complaint made in this country?

No.

We should be proud in the fact that we live in a place where even the idiots have free speach.

Should we define all Irish people based on their lunatic fringe? Nope.

Should we define all Austrailians based on their lunatic fringe? Nope.

Why are we trying to define Americans by the lunatic fringe(s) that we have?

Or....are we just running out of thread ideas in the Politics Forum?