Quote from: S'mon;449846My understanding is that Canadian women don't actually *do* that unless they're making a political statement, they just want the *right* to do that.  Whereas if you visit a city park in Hamburg you'll often see women sunbathing topless.   And it's still pretty ubiquitous on French beaches, at least outside Islamised areas.

It crops up once in a while, but yes, it's not common because of custom, even amongst prostitutes. You mainly see it at BDSM festivals, Pride parades and other alternative sexuality celebrations.

D-503, S'mon, about nudity on British TV, I'd think Benny Hill would be a data point. Usually brief and/or sped up and/or not close up, but it was worth tuning in to late night TV. Not sure how much was after Thatcher came into office.

About the article, y'all know it's recycled from Fight On!, right? RE had been invited to contribute something so he did his usual self promotion, grandiosely pretending to champion some suppressed value of the Golden Age while pimping his latest game. It caused a huge argument on odd74 (which was suppressed) and may have marked the high tide of the infiltration of the OS by Forgers.

Quote from: Peregrin;449679But if that's all you got out of it, then I dunno, man.  *shrug*

What I got out of it was just what I said: some dude is unhappy with his gaming and looking for a scapegoat.

He can blame prudish society, of course, but that's just dumb. If his premise were correct, the most creative thing on TV would be porn. Or the creative shows would all appear on networks that allowed the use of excessive profanity and nudity. The best books would all be chock full of graphic sex and violence.

Of course, that's not the case. Spartacus, when it was all about titillation (get the pun?) was dumb. It didn't become good until it started focusing less on T&A and more on story. One of my favorite shows, Avatar: The Last Airbender, appeared on a network for children. I'm reading Wise Man's Fear, the follow up to a book that, despite not being very graphic at all, is one of the best I've read in a long while.

Peregrin, if I recall correctly, you're young and haven't been gaming for very long. You're still in that fresh phase. After three decades of gaming, however, you've saved the princess a million times. That's what I think lies at the heart of the article: the author wants gaming to be new and fresh again.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;449894Or the creative shows would all appear on networks that allowed the use of excessive profanity and nudity.

This part, at least, is actually true. HBO, bro.

Quote from: Seanchai;449894Peregrin, if I recall correctly, you're young and haven't been gaming for very long. You're still in that fresh phase. After three decades of gaming, however, you've saved the princess a million times. That's what I think lies at the heart of the article: the author wants gaming to be new and fresh again.

Seanchai

2001 with 3e...so...less than ten years, yeah.  Although I can certainly understand wanting to "go back", since high-school and my first few D&D campaigns had the "magic" going on, and it's been harder and harder to get that.

Although I just figure it would take longer than, say, getting tired of video-games, which I've been playing since I was 4 or 5 (which makes that about 18-19 years).  And I'm not tired of video-games at all, even though they're pre-packaged experiences with tons of "Fantasy Game/Sci fi X" or "JRPG 12131".  I figured RPGs and their open nature would take longer to burn out on.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;449898This part, at least, is actually true. HBO, bro.

HBO does have some great shows. As does Showtime. And so on. Of course, so does ABC Family, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, the USA Network, FX, the CW, ABC, NBC, and CBS.  

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;449949HBO does have some great shows. As does Showtime. And so on. Of course, so does ABC Family, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, the USA Network, FX, the CW, ABC, NBC, and CBS.  

Seanchai

Except that I hear about the ones on HBO while they are still on... vs. the ones on network TV that I discover years later... all six episodes that aired before they got cancelled, replaced by a show about a talking chimp.

When I was a kid I loved watching Masterpiece Theater on Sunday nights... partially because my parents hated it and partially because there was a decent chance of seeing some nudity or racy content... Poldark and I Claudius were good for that IIRC.

Quote from: Simlasa;449969Except that I hear about the ones on HBO while they are still on... vs. the ones on network TV that I discover years later...

Shrug. There are plenty of great shows on right now. If you hear about them late, that has everything to do with you and little to do with the networks and nudity.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;449975Shrug. There are plenty of great shows on right now...

What I'm getting at is that HBO aims for quality and supports/promotes it... whereas on network TV it seems more like an accident that is quickly buried once discovered. Not that there aren't exceptions to that... and no, it has nothing to do with nudity, but knowing the programming isn't constrained to being 'family friendly' leads me to think I'm more likely to find something interesting there... sometimes.

But you're right, I don't watch much current TV... so I hardly ever know what's on till word of mouth gets around... and then I watch the shows on Netflix.

Well, an interesting experiment may be coming up that'll test out the notion of moral constaints on a medium.

In Japan there's a very vocal senator who is trying to censor and "clean up" the anime and manga industries.  See, while there are manga and anime produced for every age group, from children to businessmen, a large chunk of anime and manga (much more manga than anime, tho) aimed at 20-30 year-olds is explicit in nature.  This goes from T&A in explicit fantasy series to just plain old porn.  In fact, a lot of production companies do shady work on the side to make more money.

Underneath the professional layer there's a thriving "doujin" scene -- fan-made PC games, manga, and anime.  There's a huge (and I mean, huge huge) convention every year called Comiket where people premier these materials.  Again, not all of it is explicit in nature, but most of the fan/indie stuff is, a lot of times explicit material relating to already existing series that are not explicit (say, porn for FLCL, Evangelion, or whatever).  Even by the standards of our porn industry, a lot of this shit is weird.

Now, while I'm personally not into the kinky stuff that's out there, I have found that most "normal" or "mainstream" anime that airs on TV in Japan is still far more willing to push boundaries to get across certain themes or messages (if a series is good and not just fanservice), and they're also far more willing to cater to niches because "This shit is cool, let's just fucking do it."  Well, that, and they can get away with more adult content on prime-time than we can due to cultural differences.

So, while not all anime is fucked up, while not all of it is groundbreaking, and while not all creators seek to create something shocking, there's a lot more experimentation going on because these people generally don't have the government or censorship boards looking over their shoulder.  They can air a show on normal hours where a child is turned into a homunculus and subsequently turned into a pile of ash and blood.  And I think part of that is because where all of these creators come from they have free reign to do pretty-much whatever as an indie artist until they get good enough to work for a legit company.

Quote from: Simlasa;449981What I'm getting at is that HBO aims for quality and supports/promotes it... whereas on network TV it seems more like an accident that is quickly buried once discovered.

Does HBO aim for quality and supports/promotes it because they're free from moral constraints?

Seanchai

Well, I can totally understand if someone prefers HBO to other channels.  Tastes differ, after all.  Someone might love teen comedies, and someone else might like gory horror films, and another might like erotic material.  That seems perfectly reasonable to me.  I do start to question it when someone says that gory horror films have objectively more creativity and quality than teen comedies.  

I'm not familiar with television production in Japan, but I have seen nothing to suggest that films/shows with nudity are any more artistically free than those without.  My best friend from high school is a writer-director of independent films, and when he makes an explicit film, the executives are usually breathing down his neck with demands for who to cast, how many sex scenes, how they should be shot, and so forth.  There are venues that are more artistically free than others, but they have nothing to do with how much titties are shown.  

Third, there are no censorship boards in tabletop RPG publishing.  From what I've seen, overwhelmingly if there is negative response to an explicit RPG, it is from segments of the fans.  i.e. We don't have much sexual material because fans seem to not want sexual material, not because it is being censored out of the books and kept away from demanding customers.

The boobies are just symbolic...
Going from what I've heard/seen/read... creative folks in general, given the choice, would rather work in an environment with fewer constraints of any kind. Give a writer his choice and, given the same budget and pay, my guess he'd rather develop a program for HBO than ABC.
That doesn't mean they all want to write porn.

Quote from: Simlasa;450064Going from what I've heard/seen/read... creative folks in general, given the choice, would rather work in an environment with fewer constraints of any kind.

I've heard that. I've also heard creatives say that limitations stimulate creativity, forcing them to look for solutions, implementations, etc., the would otherwise would not have considered. From what I gather, there isn't one standard answer, just individual preferences.

I'm sure a writer would rather work for HBO, too - the pay has to be better. As you know, HBO is a premium channel. Broadcast TV is free.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;450066I've heard that. I've also heard creatives say that limitations stimulate creativity

That's true, but I don't know any artists that purposefully go looking for projects with lots of constraints on content. They'd much prefer to assign their own... such as with the Dogme 95 Collective.

I've no clue about the relative pay between HBO and network TV.