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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   26185 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 18, 2024

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Probably my favorite article on this topic is BloodKnife's everyone is beautiful and no one is horny.

And muscles—giant, pulsating, steroid-enhanced muscles—returned to screens. But the new muscle era lacks the eroticism of Eighties action cinema. Arnold Schwarzenegger showed his glutes in Terminator; Sylvester Stallone stripped for First Blood and Tango & Cash; Bloodsport shows more of Jean Claude Van Damme’s body than that of his love interest.

For the most part, though, today’s cinema hunks are nevernudes. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is strictly PG-13, as one expects from a Disney product. And even in the DC universe, there’s very little of human sexuality. Capefans’ demands for more “mature” superhero movies always mean more graphic violence, not more sex. They panicked over Dr. Manhattan’s glowing blue penis in Watchmen, and they still haven’t forgiven Joel Schumacher for putting nipples on the batsuit.

Today’s stars are action figures, not action heroes. Those perfect bodies exist only for the purpose of inflicting violence upon others. To have fun is to become weak, to let your team down, and to give the enemy a chance to win, like Thor did when he got fat in Endgame.

The short version is that our bodies are not a thing we inhabit, the medium to experience the world. Instead we objectify ourselves. Our bodies are another Attribute To Be Maximized, dissociated from any purpose. Our art merely reflects this change in orientation.

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