Comrades of the European Internet Forum,
enough is enough!
For decades, we have placed ourselves in the cultural shadows - well-behaved, conformist, as if we were the ill-educated child of the great American moral uncle, who must not be too loud, not too naked and certainly not too independent. While half-naked shoulders are censored at high school graduation ceremonies in the USA, heads are thrown around like bowling balls in TV series. All normal, all ‘entertainment’. But woe betide you if you see a nipple - then the censorship hammer screeches louder than a Trump on Truth Social.
I ask you: What has become of Europe?
We, the continent-born of the Enlightenment, the revolutions, the renaissance of nudity on canvas, in stone and on film - we have allowed a country that bottles cheese in cans, of all things, to tell us what is ‘moral’!
It’s not moral, it’s demurely stupid.
Why are depictions of violence in mass media allowed to flow freely like American fracking oil, but natural, aesthetic, tasteful nudity - which has been part of European art and culture for centuries - is algorithmically filtered out, demonetised and labelled with warnings as if it were uranium?
No more prudish double standards!
We need a cultural return to what we have to offer:
- Enlightenment instead of transfiguration.
- Pleasure instead of violence.
- Nudity as an expression of naturalness - not as a moral offence.
I call on you: Banish pixelated prudery! Let’s tear apart the corset of American moral dictatorship like a badly programmed DRM protection! Save the freedom of the breast - for Europe!
Stop aligning your films, games and series with a market that beeps ‘fuck’ five times but completely waves ‘shoot him in the face’ through.
We are not Hollywood’s post office box. We are Europe. We are culture. We are naked! - So, metaphorically. And sometimes literally. And that’s okay.
Thank you for your attention!
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Hell yeah! But actually, what?
I have no idea what I just read, but it sounded like something I should agree with
he wants to look at boobs
Haha written like a pamphlet during the Industrial Revolution. I love every part of this.
It happened that the US was the largest provider of entertainment during the last almost century. But it really stops now: their craziness become too obvious and irritating so I expect their influence will also diminish.
The quality has also dropped dramatically since the emergence of American streaming services while creating entertainment has become more accessible with freeware and open source programs. The world lost it‘s appetite for Hollywood slop.
Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your rears!
We are all ich bin ein wieners now.
Genosse spittin’ some real facts here
Ftw Europe
I mean, yeah, we have become more prudish.
I will say that beyond American religious zealotry and aversion to human bodies there’s a bit of a practical reason, too. In a user-generated media landscape if you allow NSFW without tags you end up becoming a porn site.
But hey, at least around here there’s some NSFW friendliness (and those bits have become a straight up porn site, as expected).
We could definitely bear to be less US-style prudish about nudity in broadcast media again, though. Although I will say that if you think the old school 20th century approach to sex was all enlightened and not full of grubby dudes doing outright #metoo garbage you have some rose tinted glasses going on. Still, we can NOT do that and still not build our tolerance for human bodies on US evangelical nonsense.
Counter argument:
The more places ban nudity the more chance the one site that allows it becomes a porn site.
Currently if you want to post artistic nude you pretty much need to do it on a porn site.
The opposite may also be true, if more places accepted it then the amount of nsfw content spreads out, there might be more porn sites overall but with more incentives to specialize and innovate rather then allowing almost all of it and knowing users will come regardless.
europe’s mojo has always been there
in fact i think we’re leading at the moment
I’m not your comrade, friend.
I’m not your friend, buddy!
I’m not your buddy, mate!
I’m not your mate, dude!
I’m mot your mate, you’re the mate (or is this a higher Rank, dunno about navy)
The west world is already fucked up. Forget it. I’m not from east so I can’t speak for it. But west societies are screwed at a level that you can’t even imagine. Extreme capitalism corporations, oligarcs and religious entities has the full power and the control they always desired. They control every corner of the human existence. This is not just an US issue. Being conscious is not even enough at this point, We will need to rise against everything… even governments, which are long rotten to the roots. At a point that political orientations are empty and no longer apply to what’s happening. Even political side like socialism or leftist are acting against the population and are at the service of these rulers.
A billion porn sites and rule 34 are still not enough? Do mean really require titillation in all media to survive?
That’s not their point in the slightest
This attitude is exactly the problem.
OP wrote:
- Nudity as an expression of naturalness - not as a moral offence.
Porn and rule 34 is the opposite of this.
The most fitting example I found is the argument of a certain Protestant Pastor Schweigger who visited Istanbul in the 16^th century about the moral superiority of Germans over Turks: while Turks had gender seperate baths and used towels to hide their nudity even from their own gender to avoid sexual arousal. In Germany, men and women would sit naked side by side in the bath just naturally without getting aroused.
Nudity ≠ sex
We, the continent-born of the Enlightenment, the revolutions, the renaissance of nudity on canvas, in stone and on film - we have allowed a country that bottles cheese in cans, of all things, to tell us what is ‘moral’!
No more prudish double standards!
Europe: symbolized by naked chick who gets raped by a bull.
OP: Europe is morally-constrained in aesthetics, must cast off these constraints.
It should be interesting to see where this goes…
How arrogant to think your previous centuries don’t offer a culture of violence.
I think the point was more about the double standardz on violence in censorship than it was about whether each region actually is or had been violent. As a famous US show, South Park pointed out almost 30 years ago in 1998…
“horrific deplorable violence is ok as long as nobody says any naughty words”
I’m well aware of the US attitude towards censorship. My point is about the double standard towards violence and a history of it existing in cultures. It’s hardly exclusive to the Americans, and quite European if anything. You can’t boldly declare yourself to be “culture” itself and expect to be taken seriously without actually examining those cultures.
“Horrible deplorable violence is only wrong when boors and barbarians do it, not us enlightened beings who seek only peace and nudity”.
Culture can mean different things but the way I read the original post was that the culture being talked about was specifically the arts, and the main discussion about it was clearly censorship.
So the fact that Europe has a violent and bloody history is not relevant to the point that was being made. It is also a fact I don’t think anyone in Europe would want to deny either because if we ever forget the horrors of war we are doomed to sleep walk into another.
There is only a double standard in OPs post if they were trying to pretend Europe has never been violent, but they didn’t address that, they talked about aspects of censorship.
Not just a violent and bloody history, but a culture as well, which lead to that history. As to all Europeans being unwilling to deny it, that’s hardly convincing given multiple recent decades of fueling and supplying armed conflicts, often needlessly.
You’ve clearly got an axe to grind so I’m gonna leave it here and let OP debate with you if they choose to
