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!

  • Genius@lemmy.zip
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    4 days ago

    The closest thing I can remember seeing in the last few years to that is in The Boys when A-Train liquefies Huey’s girlfriend. But I think giving us a sense of Huey’s shock and trauma is absolutely necessary in that scene, because it establishes why he doesn’t just take the settlement money and move on with his life. We need to believe this event has profoundly affected him and made it impossible for him to ignore the problems with superheroes.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      3 days ago

      Really? Just since I posted this, I saw Mikey Madison getting shot into a lit stove and catching on fire.

      • Genius@lemmy.zip
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        3 days ago

        I guess if you seek out slasher flicks… I like science fiction and cartoons

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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          2 days ago

          I actually have no idea what it was in originally - it was just a clip shown in the intro to Saturday Night Live. Which goes to show how normalised that sort of thing is.

          • Genius@lemmy.zip
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            2 days ago

            Oh, it was slapstick. So, would you call Charles Chaplin senselessly violent?