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!
I assume that you haven’t watched any American TV shows for the past couple of decades. Nudity and gratuitous sex scenes are a staple of the American entertainment industry.
But note that that's about nudity and sex being the same, and the sex is pornographic (that is, the intent in showing it is to arouse the viewer). The OP is about non-sexual nudity. In fact, OP doesn't mention sex at all, but I feel like it's reasonable to extend the argument to non-pornographic depictions of sex.
That's also true. Actually, I think they're (edit: sex and violence) both intended as pornographic in their own way.
I think, there is a strong difference between pornography and artistic nudity and those should not be viewed as the same.
From Wikipedia on Nude (Art):
Ah, to be clear, gratuitous sex and gratuitous violence are both pornographic in their own way. Sorry, my bad.
Funny, I was under the opposite impression: nudity has almost disappeared from US shows.
Eh. Violence is still way more prominent. If feels like the whole point of the first 5 minutes of every cable show is presenting in vivid on-screen detail a new and unheard of way a person can be horribly hurt. Nudity is unusual and worth remembering, though.