Gender Discussion #105

[TheMiceInTheShed]

It's always so reassuring to hear other people feel the same way. In the 'real world' you tend to get laughed at and called a prude if you are nothing but completely sex positive 100% of the time, in every way.

I've just resorted to not really watching new stuff. I feel I am missing nothing. Like, when Bridgerton started and was so hyped up I barely made it through the first episode because it bored me stupid.

I've been looking toward shows from the ancient times that were well written and engaging and could spark discussion but did not preach. I miss telly like that.

And there is an endless abundance of old movies so I'm really into that, ditto books.

I just can't pretend I'm cool with all the filth anymore. If a scene is there because it actually advances the story or is an interesting character moment? Absolutely, give it to me. That is rare these days imho. It's just a load of weirdos trying to push things further than the last person, I cringe at the desperation so hard.

As for the music industry... look at Britney Spears. The absolute worst case scenario when it comes to what hypersexualition can do to someone.

I've been looking toward shows from the ancient times that were well written and engaging and could spark discussion but did not preach. I miss telly like that.

If a scene is there because it actually advances the story or is an interesting character moment? Absolutely, give it to me. That is rare these days imho. It's just a load of weirdos trying to push things further than the last person,

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!

Also bad language - I swear like a docker on here - IRL - not nearly so much. Only when I am really at the "swear or stab" stage of sheer incandescent rage. And at one time it was like a physical punch to the face if someone used 'the "F" word' - now I barely notice it. It's horrible.

And it's horrible not only to hear, but it's also horrible that it barely registers. I didn't used to swear at all but social language in general has gone horribly downhill and I just think it's symptomatic of a general lack of respect for others.

 

[TheMiceInTheShed]

I'm with all of you that don't enjoy modern films. I can't remember the last film I bothered going to the cinema to watch as it all seems to be just special effects with no real content now. If anything wins an Oscar or award these days I make a note to avoid it. I wish they'd bring back 'acting' and decent plots.

I can't stand being preached at either so if a show is trying to ram a message onto me particularly about trans or the environment its a turnoff.

Recently I tried to watch that show about Huw Edwards with Martin Clunes (just to find out what he did) and couldn't make it to the end because I just didn't enjoy it.

I can't remember the last film I bothered going to the cinema to watch

I can. It was "Love Actually" and I thought it was dross. I only stayed with it for Alan Rickman and it wasn't even worth it for that.

The last one I actually enjoyed was Jurassic Park - took my son and was scared stiff. He thought it was hilarious.

 

[Piff paff puff]

View attachment 3941922Just saw this on FB. Why are the Greens bring sex and fetish balls to politics? Only conclusion I can draw is that they want to normalise it and bring onces in before people truly realise what is happening.

The residents of Denton and Gorton must be a little confused seeing this after hearing the victory speech on election night a couple of weeks back

 

[emmer_moans]

I can't remember the last film I bothered going to the cinema to watch

I can. It was "Love Actually" and I thought it was dross. I only stayed with it for Alan Rickman and it wasn't even worth it for that.

The last one I actually enjoyed was Jurassic Park - took my son and was scared stiff. He thought it was hilarious.

My husband and I regularly scroll streaming platforms looking for films to watch and more often than not we give up because stuff is either really cheesy or really preachy.
The only stuff we really end up watching is mysteries.
The last cinema film I saw was Emma in March 2020, just before everything went wrong, and that's only because I am an Austenite.

I watched series 1 of Bridgerton and found it to be like a sugary fake show that was rrying so hard to be cool, and after ep 1 I actually watched it on 2x speed to get through it to see what the fuss was about (whilst multitasking doing cleaning. I decided not to bother with series 2-4).

 

[Funny_bunny]

I've been looking toward shows from the ancient times that were well written and engaging and could spark discussion but did not preach. I miss telly like that.

If a scene is there because it actually advances the story or is an interesting character moment? Absolutely, give it to me. That is rare these days imho. It's just a load of weirdos trying to push things further than the last person,

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!

Also bad language - I swear like a docker on here - IRL - not nearly so much. Only when I am really at the "swear or stab" stage of sheer incandescent rage. And at one time it was like a physical punch to the face if someone used 'the "F" word' - now I barely notice it. It's horrible.

And it's horrible not only to hear, but it's also horrible that it barely registers. I didn't used to swear at all but social language in general has gone horribly downhill and I just think it's symptomatic of a general lack of respect for others.

I know I’m in a tiny, tiny minority here, but here goes. I hate the “c” word with a passion. I can’t even type it I despise it so much, and I hate the way it’s creeping into every day use. I feel the same way as you used to about the “f” word, which I must admit, I mutter away to myself a lot.
I’ve never been huge on telly, I’ve got the attention span of a gnat, but there was some good dramas in the past that hooked you in. I don’t think I’ve watched any since maybe the first couple of series of “Happy Valley” or ”Line of Duty”. I don’t think I’m missing much.

 

[Regina Fellangi]

I know I’m in a tiny, tiny minority here, but here goes. I hate the “c” word with a passion. I can’t even type it I despise it so much, and I hate the way it’s creeping into every day use. I feel the same way as you used to about the “f” word, which I must admit, I mutter away to myself a lot.
I’ve never been huge on telly, I’ve got the attention span of a gnat, but there was some good dramas in the past that hooked you in. I don’t think I’ve watched any since maybe the first couple of series of “Happy Valley” or ”Line of Duty”. I don’t think I’m missing much.

I love detective dramas, I am also an avid reader of detective stories. My absolute favourite tv series of all time is Morse. It simply hasn’t been bettered. I loved the follow up Endeavour as well. For want of à better word both were “classy” Great plots, great acting, thoughtful, fabulous music. In fact I might have to start watching from the beginning again as a palate cleanser from modern tv.

 

[DoraMaar]

 

[moldwarp]

It's always so reassuring to hear other people feel the same way. In the 'real world' you tend to get laughed at and called a prude if you are nothing but completely sex positive 100% of the time, in every way.

I've just resorted to not really watching new stuff. I feel I am missing nothing. Like, when Bridgerton started and was so hyped up I barely made it through the first episode because it bored me stupid.

I've been looking toward shows from the ancient times that were well written and engaging and could spark discussion but did not preach. I miss telly like that.

And there is an endless abundance of old movies so I'm really into that, ditto books.

I just can't pretend I'm cool with all the filth anymore. If a scene is there because it actually advances the story or is an interesting character moment? Absolutely, give it to me. That is rare these days imho. It's just a load of weirdos trying to push things further than the last person, I cringe at the desperation so hard.

As for the music industry... look at Britney Spears. The absolute worst case scenario when it comes to what hypersexualition can do to someone.

It's not even about being a prude per se, I mean if you want sex, gore, conspiracy and mayhem you can just....go read a book about the Angevins or the Borgias. Or, ya know. the Canterbury Tales.

For me, it's that hypersexualisation and the forcible imposition of hyper Progressive views have come to be a substitute for the much more difficult, but ultimately more rewarding, business of creating a plot, coming up with interesting characters who develop naturally, etc.

It's like, Joseph Campbell and his theories of the Universal Narratives ('Hero with a Thousand Faces', 1949, bleeping life changing book). People are entertained by plots and characters which engage them on a deep level. Things like skin colour, ethnicity, culture are surface only. That's not what we really engage with when we love a story. I don't need to be a mediaeval Scottish nobleman to feel deeply with MacBeth's guilt and despair when Banquo's ghost appears. I don't need to be an Achaean warrior to feel my heart beat faster when I read Achilles' timeless meditation on the price of glory. What engages me is the deep skein of common humanity.

Modern film and content makers have got it all wrong. They think, as long as they gender switch, race switch and throw in lots of sex, violence and Progressivist views, they don't have to bother coming up with cohesive plots, themes and meanings. The Snow White remake is a great example of this. The Snow White myth is about the pain of passing from the easy fantasies of childhood into the joys but also the responsibilities of female adulthood, and how to make that journey unscathed. It doesn't need to be given a feminist makeover, because it's themes are waaayyyy older and more culturally universal than the last century or so of western feminist theory. The creators of the remake were too stupid to understand why humans need stories and how they resonate across time and place. And so they made a crappy remake which felt fundamentally light and unsatisfying, because it was.

And that's the problem with modern Hollywood and entertainment more generally. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

 

[Miss Ophelia]

I love it here my people thought I was the only one maybe we need to shout louder so them at the back can hear I also like old tv last watch A family at War, granted don’t watch much tv, tv wasn’t on whilst ohh was in hospital I enjoyed the silence well apart from children and adults screeching outside when I am sure there was no need but that seems to be the way, when I was a child if we screamed at adult was there to see what was the matter not join in but that’s another soap box.

 

[TheMiceInTheShed]

I know I’m in a tiny, tiny minority here, but here goes. I hate the “c” word with a passion. I can’t even type it I despise it so much, and I hate the way it’s creeping into every day use. I feel the same way as you used to about the “f” word, which I must admit, I mutter away to myself a lot.
I’ve never been huge on telly, I’ve got the attention span of a gnat, but there was some good dramas in the past that hooked you in. I don’t think I’ve watched any since maybe the first couple of series of “Happy Valley” or ”Line of Duty”. I don’t think I’m missing much.

I hate the “c” word with a passion. I can’t even type it I despise it so much,

Ditto - though once or twice I've found myself typing it in a strangely spelled form - but at one time I couldn't even bring myself to think it. It is the foulest, ugliest, most disgusting word in any language IMO. But nowadays it is, like the "F" word, everywhere. It seems in by osmosis and (probably to protect itself!) the brain ceases even to register a lot of the time. People even use this vile language around very small children - and of course, they pick it up.

At one time I would have said something to teenagers, or even adult men, who were swearing horribly in public, but there is so much casual violence in our societies today that I am very reluctant to risk a punch, or even a horrible outpouring of verbal aggression. I'm a coward in my old age.

 

[Peter Out]

One of the reasons for including sex scenes in TV/film is that "everybody does it". The same could be said for going to the loo, but we thankfully don't need to see that!
Although if things keep going the way they are, we'll soon be getting that as well. (I understand that there are men who enjoy that - Lord Boothby types).
Another agreement on older television and cinema here.

 

[Vanelope]

I looked up wealthiest authors

1 JKR
2 James Patterson
3 Danielle Steel

All that horrific thing - popular. Anything by that encourages reading rather than AI YouTube skip is fine by me. I despair about how to get my kids into reading because they like it rather than me forcing them to. (Also two women which I did like)

 

[Funny_bunny]

I love detective dramas, I am also an avid reader of detective stories. My absolute favourite tv series of all time is Morse. It simply hasn’t been bettered. I loved the follow up Endeavour as well. For want of à better word both were “classy” Great plots, great acting, thoughtful, fabulous music. In fact I might have to start watching from the beginning again as a palate cleanser from modern tv.

Agreed. Morse was unmissable back in the day. The dramas of that period will never be bettered. Everything is dumbed down now

 

[Scotch Mist]

It's not even about being a prude per se, I mean if you want sex, gore, conspiracy and mayhem you can just....go read a book about the Angevins or the Borgias. Or, ya know. the Canterbury Tales.

For me, it's that hypersexualisation and the forcible imposition of hyper Progressive views have come to be a substitute for the much more difficult, but ultimately more rewarding, business of creating a plot, coming up with interesting characters who develop naturally, etc.

It's like, Joseph Campbell and his theories of the Universal Narratives ('Hero with a Thousand Faces', 1949, bleeping life changing book). People are entertained by plots and characters which engage them on a deep level. Things like skin colour, ethnicity, culture are surface only. That's not what we really engage with when we love a story. I don't need to be a mediaeval Scottish nobleman to feel deeply with MacBeth's guilt and despair when Banquo's ghost appears. I don't need to be an Achaean warrior to feel my heart beat faster when I read Achilles' timeless meditation on the price of glory. What engages me is the deep skein of common humanity.

Modern film and content makers have got it all wrong. They think, as long as they gender switch, race switch and throw in lots of sex, violence and Progressivist views, they don't have to bother coming up with cohesive plots, themes and meanings. The Snow White remake is a great example of this. The Snow White myth is about the pain of passing from the easy fantasies of childhood into the joys but also the responsibilities of female adulthood, and how to make that journey unscathed. It doesn't need to be given a feminist makeover, because it's themes are waaayyyy older and more culturally universal than the last century or so of western feminist theory. The creators of the remake were too stupid to understand why humans need stories and how they resonate across time and place. And so they made a crappy remake which felt fundamentally light and unsatisfying, because it was.

And that's the problem with modern Hollywood and entertainment more generally. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

Totally agree with what you say here.

My current pet peeve is reworking classics like making a Jane Austen adaptation full of sex, modern dialogue and everyone contrite about the slave trade, or Agatha Christie with the plot changed to add in some extra story the screen writer has come up with because they think they can improve on the original

Nobody has made an 'improved' version of any classic novel this century. They're too busy thinking they can do better than the original. All they do is force modern values and sensibilities into the plot which makes it seem jarring and less historically accurate. Sadly a lot of younger people are probably unaware that they are being manipulated by this.

I dread to think what Henry VIII will be doing with a trans woman in the Tudor court but no doubt it will be lapped up by those desperate to prove that it was the norm 500 years ago

 

[Tangerine Dream]

It's not even about being a prude per se, I mean if you want sex, gore, conspiracy and mayhem you can just....go read a book about the Angevins or the Borgias. Or, ya know. the Canterbury Tales.

For me, it's that hypersexualisation and the forcible imposition of hyper Progressive views have come to be a substitute for the much more difficult, but ultimately more rewarding, business of creating a plot, coming up with interesting characters who develop naturally, etc.

It's like, Joseph Campbell and his theories of the Universal Narratives ('Hero with a Thousand Faces', 1949, bleeping life changing book). People are entertained by plots and characters which engage them on a deep level. Things like skin colour, ethnicity, culture are surface only. That's not what we really engage with when we love a story. I don't need to be a mediaeval Scottish nobleman to feel deeply with MacBeth's guilt and despair when Banquo's ghost appears. I don't need to be an Achaean warrior to feel my heart beat faster when I read Achilles' timeless meditation on the price of glory. What engages me is the deep skein of common humanity.

Modern film and content makers have got it all wrong. They think, as long as they gender switch, race switch and throw in lots of sex, violence and Progressivist views, they don't have to bother coming up with cohesive plots, themes and meanings. The Snow White remake is a great example of this. The Snow White myth is about the pain of passing from the easy fantasies of childhood into the joys but also the responsibilities of female adulthood, and how to make that journey unscathed. It doesn't need to be given a feminist makeover, because it's themes are waaayyyy older and more culturally universal than the last century or so of western feminist theory. The creators of the remake were too stupid to understand why humans need stories and how they resonate across time and place. And so they made a crappy remake which felt fundamentally light and unsatisfying, because it was.

And that's the problem with modern Hollywood and entertainment more generally. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

So well said, I am loving this dicussion.

It's also put me in mind of how I just saw a clip for the new James Gunn Supergirl movie. It looks awful. I am never going to say that the Supergirl from the 80s is good because it wasn't, it's cringy and embarrassing with some truly horrendous acting and even worse dialouge one thing it got right was the balancing of being a very powerful (literally) and emotionally strong woman while also not being a cynical, quippy mess who likes to hate on and emasculate men. It's made me so weary that the new movie is going the route it's chosen. It's like feminity and grace are a big no no now, every woman in fiction has to be Strong Female Character who just sneers at everything as inferior in the way you know the writers behind the script do.

It's like there can only be one type of strong woman and it's so tedious to me.

I feel like good role models, even fictional ones, are vanishingly rare.

 

[Tangerine Dream]

One of the reasons for including sex scenes in TV/film is that "everybody does it". The same could be said for going to the loo, but we thankfully don't need to see that!
Although if things keep going the way they are, we'll soon be getting that as well. (I understand that there are men who enjoy that - Lord Boothby types).
Another agreement on older television and cinema here.

They have scenes of people pissing, shitting, graphic vomiting.... all sorts. I couldn't watch much of Game of Thrones because I guess I'm a prissy princess but apparently in the currently very popular Knight of the Seven Kingdoms we get treated to a defecation scene. Lovely.

I just think it's ridiculous because you can show what life was like in a dark setting like medieval style fantasy and we can perfectly guess for ourselves the more unappealing details.

I wonder why people in real life are getting more and more gross in public, hmm.

 

[Vanelope]

On the unnecessary sex in tv, which is v cringe and not titillating at all, I feel the same way about gratuitous violence. The really bloody gruesome stuff that is now fine in a 15 rated movie. People being shot, bang fall down fine but the beatings and the stabbings and dismemberings all make me shudder. I don’t watch horror films but it’s now in normal action movies that I used to enjoy. Die Hard and even Predator are totally different to the modern action films. Mainly due to the ability of special effects to look more realistic I suppose but it stops me watching a lot of modern output.

 

[moldwarp]

So well said, I am loving this dicussion.

It's also put me in mind of how I just saw a clip for the new James Gunn Supergirl movie. It looks awful. I am never going to say that the Supergirl from the 80s is good because it wasn't, it's cringy and embarrassing with some truly horrendous acting and even worse dialouge one thing it got right was the balancing of being a very powerful (literally) and emotionally strong woman while also not being a cynical, quippy mess who likes to hate on and emasculate men. It's made me so weary that the new movie is going the route it's chosen. It's like feminity and grace are a big no no now, every woman in fiction has to be Strong Female Character who just sneers at everything as inferior in the way you know the writers behind the script do.

It's like there can only be one type of strong woman and it's so tedious to me.

I feel like good role models, even fictional ones, are vanishingly rare.

Yeah, I've never really understood the modern obsession with emasculating male characters, because, throughout ALL of the Western literary canon, masculinity has NEVER been presented as a straightforwardly 'power, hegemony, use force' thing?

To take the Homeric epics purely because I was talking about them yesterday and they are after all the cornerstones of the Western mind - in the Iliad the masculine warrior ideal is constantly questioned and picked holes in, the whole plot turns on Achilles almost pretty much abandoning it completely for a peacful life because he doesn't think a glorious death is worth the price of the pain it brings. And his main antagonist Hector is also constantly shown torn between his responsibilities to the Trojans, his responsibility to be a fearsome warrior, and his fundamental desires to stay with his wife and baby son (represented by the extraordinary scene where he laughs with his wife and plays with his baby, but then has to don his helmet to go kill some Greeks and the sight of it terrifies his child). Like, masculinity is CONSTANTLY explored in really extraordinary ways given that this was a poem composed in the 8th century BC at the latest?

Likewise The Odyssey, the entire bleeping plot is DRIVEN by strong, cunning, resourceful female characters such as Athene, Helene, Penelope, Kirke and Kalypso - so much so that Samuel Butler was convinced it was composed by a woman. And Odysseus explicitly has to reject all the trappings of kingship and warrior identity and become symbolically emasculated (the wound on his thigh) before he can return to Ithaca and take up his place on the throne - and even then he can't do so without Penelope's authorisation and help.

Like, I don't know where this modern obsession with toxic masculinity comes from because it just does not exist in the Western literary canon, and that is blindingly obvious to anyone whose reading goes beyond the bleeping York Notes or AI summaries.

 

[JAR21]

One of the reasons for including sex scenes in TV/film is that "everybody does it". The same could be said for going to the loo, but we thankfully don't need to see that!
Although if things keep going the way they are, we'll soon be getting that as well. (I understand that there are men who enjoy that - Lord Boothby types).
Another agreement on older television and cinema here.

There are films/programmes where they show blokes going for a wee. It's disgusting. I know we all do it, but we don't need to see it.

I mainly watch sport on TV, or things like Race across the world, 24 hours in A&E etc.

 

[catsandsoup]

Totally agree with what you say here.

My current pet peeve is reworking classics like making a Jane Austen adaptation full of sex, modern dialogue and everyone contrite about the slave trade, or Agatha Christie with the plot changed to add in some extra story the screen writer has come up with because they think they can improve on the original

Nobody has made an 'improved' version of any classic novel this century. They're too busy thinking they can do better than the original. All they do is force modern values and sensibilities into the plot which makes it seem jarring and less historically accurate. Sadly a lot of younger people are probably unaware that they are being manipulated by this.

I dread to think what Henry VIII will be doing with a trans woman in the Tudor court but no doubt it will be lapped up by those desperate to prove that it was the norm 500 years ago

To my mind, its insulting to the people then. We know women and some minorities weren't allowed to progress, so when you make say, a Poor Things, where the lead is just like 'I'll go to medical school in Victorian London', and everyone is just like 'Awesome, no woman ever thought of that before, we've no issue, though!' It suggests that the reason there was little progression then wasn't that were was measurable oppression, its just no one wanted it enough.
Same as a lot of the US films about civil rights like Hidden Figures or The Help, where the mean white ladies in the 60s are the power and enforcers behind racism while most of the white dudes (who were predominantly still in charge of law, education, etc.) look on baffled like 'What are you gals cat fighting about?'
Generally, films and books have gotten so lazy on this, lots of therapy speak that didn't exist 30 years ago, modern approaches in period set books. (I read Joe Hill, Stephen King's son's novel, King's Sorrow, bloody awful BTW, parts were set in the 90s but it was all 'I'm your emotional support system!' and 'Trans women are women!')