A few minutes ago I read a few articles about the blocking of Boing Boing on various blogs. A software called SmartFilter puts Boing Boing into the same category as most porn sites. Now, people in some countries and employees of government agencies and companies can't view the Boing Boing content anymore. Interstingly though, very few posts (less than 0.5% according to Boing Boing) could vaguely be identified as nudity. I don't get this whole thing, what is so wrong about nudity? Does anyone remember Ashcroft getting all bent out of shape because he was supposed to give a speech in front of a half naked greek statue and wanted it covered? What is so wrong about seeing a bare ass or a set of female breasts on TV? Why is parental guidance necessary if there is a naked person to be seen? Don't we all watch naked people in the mirror? Aren't we all born naked (except for Ashcroft maybe)?
Granted I grew up in Europe and nudity is fairly common on public television so seeing the fuss here with all the warnings just seems ridiculous to me. Especially in light of all other problems that there are. Let's look at it this way, I am all for finding those sick bastards who are into or producing child pornography. But the governments can't just go and say, now you can't show naked people anymore. And who does it hurt? Who ever came up with the notion that it is wrong to show two people doing it? Granted, there is probably more tasteless stuff out there than one will ever want to know (I worked on a project for a while where we looked at the performance and effectiveness of a porn detector) and the afternoon kids timeslot is not the best forum for this. Whether some people see it that way or not, porn is some form of expressing certain things, for some it's erotica, others may find it disgusting. But it should be everyone's choice whether they want to watch this or not. And if someone sees something illegal they should report it. But in all fairness, I don't think anyone has ever died of watching a little nudity or even porn, and (in most cases) there is nothing violent about this. Yet, America is outraged if Janet Jackson's nipple is seen for two microseconds. Noone, however, cares about the fact that during any hour fo primetime TV, a kid can see numerous bloody corpses, guns, beatings, etc. For some reason that isn't worse than naked people. Priorities are very skewed, showing how to kill people, reporting live from a war, all that is fine. But seeing Janet Jackson's nipple traumatizes the nation ... I simply don't get it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment