Are audiences so sensitive and offended by movie content now

Post Reply New Topic

The Wisecrack video I linked earlier about asking if comedy is dead went into this earlier. It is things like the purer comedy movies are not coming out so much anymore, with reasons like the big movie market is more international than it used to be, with the jokes of comedies being difficult to translate into different languages and cultures. Or that we have so much choices of comedy from things like online streaming that could meet our needs, so there is less patience for the only comedy movies, so rather than comedy being a type of movie it is a subgenre that can be part of other genre. Like a horror comedy, action comedy and so on.

So big Hollywood movies are aiming for things that sell well internationally, and a movie that goes just of language specific stuff can be hard. I probably would still point to movies like the latest Jumanji and Deadpool as examples of largely comedy movies, that they can still be made, just with things like action to boot.

Oh okay yes, they did say that in the video. I just watched it. Thanks. However, why can't comedies translate well though? Some can't but can't others? Also, why is Hollywood more concerned with pleasing the world compared to back in the 2000s, when they still made more comedies? What changed in 10 years?

I can't remember exactly where I have seen it, but I know that I saw a video that talked about how a number of really big movies have seen more success on the international market like China than in the domestic US. Off the top of my head I remember Pacific Rim, and Hansel and Gretel. As an Australian I can hardly make a complain about movies being made with international in mind, but that does not even go into what might work better across languages. As a big anime watcher, I have a big experience with comedies that don't translate well when put into another language.

But you are also right that the Me Too movement has probably pushed some social change, although I do wonder how much of a major change it has had in general in entertainment. I don't know how relevant, but I did only recently watch/binge Brooklyn 99, and I was thinking a lot of it seems like the kind of comedy that fits this time period, that it makes a lot of jokes towards characters that may be black or gay, but never simply because that is what they are, but some other trait. And I would say that it has some pretty socially aware parts of it where when needed has tackled topics like police brutality against the black community, found family for the LGBT and the patriarchy that can punish victims who report their abusers. Noted that the show includes Terry Crews who was a big figure in the Me Two movement as a male victim that would be really hard to not call masculine.

Yeah that's understandable, I agree with your points.

But I guess with sill comedy movies I feel that there is a difference between fantasy and reality, without everyone having take the actions of the characters as some sort of message? But maybe they should take it as a message?

Also, when I say movies aren't as risky today, it's just humor in comedies though. I watched Seven, and The Silence of the Lambs again recently, and you never see movies like that being made anymore, cause Hollywood just seems so afraid to make movies like that.

So it's not just things like the changing social values that are causing movies to be so lite nowadays, is it?

Screw pc , i want a Bond that slaps a womans rear if he feels like it and smokes like a chimney , Bond is a killer for goodness sake

This is all you get:

Well I'm not talking so much about rapes done for laughs in comedies or but slapping, but just overall types of stories Hollywood seems afraid to make anymore.

I just rewatched Angel Heart (1987) for example, and Hollywood doesn't make movie like that nowadays. Why is that?

I do think we're incredible sensitive, but it's only worsened by repeatedly enforcing the idea that we're supposed to be sensitive and offended. You expect too much from the capitalist empire of Hollywood. There's plenty of good content out there that isn't produced by the money machine

Yeah that's true.

Another thing I meant to point out before, when I mentioned the protagonist of Alien being a strong female character, it was pointed out how the filmmakers couldn't resist showing her in her underwear. But she had to change clothes in that scene, to put on the spacesuit and it was part of the plot. So is bad for a woman to have to change clothes in a movie, with a monster noticing, if her changing clothes bears weight on the plot?

In Rambo: First Blood Part II, Rambo is stripped shirtless, so they can torture him more. He escapes captivity, and for the a good portion of the movie, you see him shirtless. But this is part of the plot. So is it really so bad to see a character in a situation where they are not fully clothed, if it's part of the plot?

I have read through this discussion here and found it really interesting.

However, I still don't understand what exactly you mean, ironpony. I haven't seen Angel Heart but you've mentioned Seven and Silence of the Lambs as examples of films that aren't made any longer.

What exactly is it, that makes them stand out to you and that you'd like to see in modern movies?

Well it just seems that Hollywood is afraid to make a darker, grittier thriller nowadays compared to back then, cause they afraid of audiences being too sensitive or offended it seems. Or is that not the case as to why they don't make movies with darker, grittier tones like that hardly now?

I watched an interesting video recently that talked about how one could read the general villain of silence of the lambs as coded worse than the popular anti-villain of that movie because the one they are trying to catch does things like wear a woman's skin, while the anti-villain wore a man's. That the audience could be expected to like one over the other because the other was breaker gender rules, like as another element of how much queer coding has been used as shorthand for greater evil. Things people are not finding as effective anymore.

I am reminded of a recent Sherlock Holmes anime I watched recently that had some big yikes element with how it made a Jack the Ripper character be a transwoman who's psychopathy was built on having a small penis and ate their victim's wombs because they lacked one. Really made me think that a good part of Japan is missing some of this "sensitivity" that the west is at.

But these discussions of trends in movies is a good topic, where I think that you get a lot of people that think the 90s had a bit of a problem with movies that were edgy for their own sake. And I would like to say that there were a lot of what could be called exploitation movies around the 80s and 90s. They are not really movies I have a huge interest in watching myself, but I do really like this one YouTube channel that I subscribe to called GoodBadFlicks. You would think the channel might just be making fun of so bad they are good movies, but in general I like the channel because it feels like it has a lot of passion about those sort of movies that can't be made anymore, B movies that could be a bit controversial and or silly.

But also on topic of finding certain movies today, I could probably go onto Netflix right now and find a bunch of relatively new thrillers or similar movies now. Or tv shows, I would imagine that The Evil Dead could be along the lines of the sort of movies you can't do anymore, but I super enjoyed Ash vs Evil Dead for carrying on that spirit of being gratuitous.

Aside from all the foregoing, Hollywood has also completely run out of new stories to tell.  All they can do now is re-hash popular old stories and hope no one else notices.  Here is one case in point...

Story Synopsis:  Star Wars: A New Hope  Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

 Luke Skywalker  Harry Potter is an orphan living with his uncle and aunt in the remote wilderness of  Tatooine  suburbia.

He is rescued from  aliens  muggles by wise, bearded  Ben Kenobi  Hagrid, who turns out to ba a  Jedi Knight  Wizard.

 Ben  Hagrid reveals to  Luke  Harry that  Luke's  Harry's father was also a  Jedi knight  wizard, and was the best  pilot  quidditch player he had ever seen.

 Luke  Harry is also instructed in how to use  the Jedi light-sabre  a magic wand as he too trains to become a  Jedi  wizard.

 Luke  Harry has many adventures  in the galaxy  at Hogwart's, and makes new friends such as  Han Solo  Ronald Weasely and  Princess Leia  Hermoine Grainger.

In the course of these adventures, he distinguishes himself as a top  X-wing pilot  Quidditch seeker in the  Battle of the Death Star  Quidditch tournament, making the  direct hit  catch that secures  the Rebels'  Gryffindor's victory against the forces of  evil  Slytherin.

 Luke  Harry also sees off the threat of  Darth Vader  Valdemort, whom we know murdered  Luke's uncle and aunt  Harry's parents.

In the finale,  Luke  Harry and his new friends  receive medals of Valour  win the House Cup.

All of this set to an orchestral score composed by John Williams.

Enough said?

@ Fnord

I really hope you are being sarcastic, because the Harry Potter movie is not a rehash of stealing plot of Star Wars, rather than a series of books that spaned several novels and was part of a world wide sensation before the movies existed.

Also, you may not want to look up something called the Hero's journey if you are seeing common narrative tropes as evidence of a lack of creativity, the sort of thing that goes back to ancient mythology.



In literacy you can fit Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter and so many other stories into the framework. Probably even Shrek. It is not a cliché or evidence of a lack of creativity, but more along the lines of a trope, and tropes are not necessarily clichés.

No, I am not being sarcastic.  Perhaps it was not a conscious act of plagiarism, but the similarities themselves are too numerous to deny.  In any case, Hollywood was playing it safe by going with a magic-fantasy story that mimicked the arc and characterizations of a previously-established science-fantasy story.

Yes, I already know about the Hero's Journey -- it is, after all, the most common trope in action-adventure stories -- which both Star Wars and Harry Potter were built upon.

All of which serves to prove that -- as far as Hollywood is concerned -- there are no new stories to tell.  Sons of Anarchy is just Hamlet with motorcycles.  Batman is just Zorro in a more contemporary setting, and Zorro is just the Scarlet Pimpernel in Spain-controlled California instead of revolutionary France.  The Hunger Games is a less-interesting version of The Running Man, which is itself just a darker take on the sort of world we see in Battle Royale, all of which trace back to even earlier stories like The Most Dangerous Game.

Every story you know of has already been told, and chances are good it was told back when togas were still considered the most fashionable form of dress.  For most of us, this realization creates a weird, existential moment.

Me?  I just laugh at the gullibility of the average movie-goer.

It has been used for thousands of years, it is hardly a new phenomena. It would be like saying that movies have lost creativity because they give the main character a dog. You could likely easily tie a similar thing to Star Wars itself to an earlier story, especially since Star Wars was so heavily influenced by old Samurai movies.

People have been saying that there are no new ideas for a millennia, and yet people still see the earlier stories in life as new and different while complaining that others are just derivative copies. That or they find the new things strange and confusing.

Early cinema horror movie Nosferatu was just a rip off of Dracula that they could not get the rights to. Movies with cowboys got copied so much that they birthed the Wester genre, start to get tired, and then you have new media like Red Dead Redemption explore it in new and interesting ways. What we now see as classical music was once seen what we would now see pop music as, where the composers were rock stars of the time and tried to do weird and strange things, but now people see them as holy untouchable gems that have a right way to be performed and high society likes it performed on the same old instruments unchanged.

William Shakespear's work was at the time seen as common people drivel that worked in dick jokes and other petty jabs at aristocracy that would probably be called low brow humour now, but the same aristocracy watch it now in fancy venues and see it as the height of classy. He also took a whole bunch from at the time well known myths and stories.

The differences now is that we have a huge saturation of people doing their own spins and evolving storytelling faster than ever in a very connected way.