Repeat Offenders, and the Repeat Offended.

[Jill_Valentine]

I was having a chat with friends a few days ago, and somehow a conversation about fruit smoothies turned into a conversation about A Clockwork Orange. There may have been bad puns involved. Anyway, one of my friends spoke up - she cannot stand the film and maintains that it should be banned. She finds it personally offensive. The reason this surprised me is that she's not really the type to rail against things. She simply finds this film offensive. I got to thinking about it, and I guess what surprised me was the idea that somebody my age was offended by anything.

A combination of the anti-censorship backlash, and politically correct Hollywood means you rarely hear anybody get offended anymore. I mean, yes, you have that insane woman on Channel 4's top 100's who's offended by everything, but that's different. She's insane, and likely gets angered by the sight of toilet paper.

Political Correctness is not the same: it's motivated by a wish to protect others from offense. But when was the last time that you saw a film, or played a game, or read a book that insulted your beliefs, religion, race or sexuality? Is there anything that still offends you, personally?

 

[OneEyedXander]

I was offended by "Team America: World Poilice."

And as soon as its out on DVD I'm going to rush out and buy myself a copie. I loved that movie because I'm always watching good movies that offend other people and now finaly there is a good movie that offends me and I still liked it.

Yay me, im not pig headed.

 

[Mr. Pointy]

Nope. Nothing I've seen really offends me...if I don't like it I turn it off...some things scare me (Tony Blair, George Bush Jr, the Conservative Party, snakes, hospitals, the gory stuff in Nip/Tuck, global warming, my own mortality, the rise of reality TV etc.) but generally...nope. I thought Clockwork Orange was a brilliant book and a good film btw...

 

[phoenixrising]

Do the results of the US 2004 presidential election and George W. Bush count?

Otherwise, not much.

 

[Soulgasm]

clockwork orange is a great book...and a good movie...totally agree with points...

this is a debate that will go on to the end of time...it may shift towards extremes at times...but each side...free speech...or censorship...will have their moments...

 

[pyromaniac]

Plastic surgury offends me. I just can't stomach it.

The way people treat people who are pysically 'different' to 'normal' people, that offends me.

Other then that, not much else 😛

 

[Anchovy]

I agree with pyro, I can't stand the current plastic surgery trend. Also any hint of hatred towards those who are disabled or different makes me sick.

I also get really offended when people can't seperate military personnel from the policy that they disagree with. My b/f Jim is Marine Option NROTC and he went to a dance with me in dress uniform. We had to leave early because so many people were awful to him. One girl, who I had never met before actually asked me "How can you love a man like that?" I was like "Excuse me? you don't even know him!" And then...she SPIT on him. I'm sorry, I understand people hating war, and disagreeing deeply in their hearts with the Bush administration...but taking it out on a little Midshipman 3rd Class and his girlfriend is disgusting.

 

[doppelgänger2]

Everything offends me, from stupid people (which is like at least 90% of the people I'm aware off) to popularity contests (i.e awards or whatever). I cannot turn on the telly without being offended by either stupid reality shows, a stupid sitcom or the news. Censorship offends me, anti-pirates offend me and Bill Gates offends me.
My stupid downstair neighbours offends me with their crappy music cranked up to the max.
Oh and I'm offended by people that are offended by fat people.

 

[Faldor]

readers of the Daily Mail

 

[Frenchy Faith]

I don't see why the movie (Clockwork Orange) should be banned. If she is offended she should just not watch it? I really think this movie was stunning & greatly made.

I guess I got slightly offended when people criticize France & French people on clichés things.. I mean, I'm quite self-depreciating about it myself, I can laugh & make fun of a lot of thing. I'm fond of the "Puppet show" we have here (les Guignols) that criticize everything... like you can say whatever about our politicians or some things but sometimes when other things are concerned, I'm like errr, poh! lol
I don't get wild nor anything, I'm just sad... then I try to explain things & that's it.
I guess everyone wants to defend their own country & their people a minimum. 😛

 

[Faldor]

I don't see why the movie (Clockwork Orange) should be banned. If she is offended she should just not watch it? I really think this movie was stunning & greatly made.

it's the only film to be banned by its own director after people started copying the crimes from the film (complete with costume)

 

[eponinethen]

I guess I got slightly offended when people criticize France & French people on clichés things.. I mean, I'm quite self-depreciating about it myself, I can laugh & make fun of a lot of thing. I'm fond of the "Puppet show" we have here (les Guignols) that criticize everything... like you can say whatever about our politicians or some things but sometimes when other things are concerned, I'm like errr, poh! lol
I don't get wild nor anything, I'm just sad... then I try to explain things & that's it.
I guess everyone wants to defend their own country & their people a minimum. 😛

Yeah it's like.. with parents.. (Like you're allowed to say bad stuff but others aren't.) I can tell people how bad it is in Sweden, and make fun of it.. and I do that a lot... But if someone else does, I can get a bit offended, lol.. (Especially when people make fun of Norrland, which is Northern Sweden, which is where I live, hehe.) I'm way silly about that.
Oh and I'm the same way about my school! Lol. Fran and Ape bug me about my school all the time, making fun of my wonderful school, lol (it's a bit different I guess), and I get seriously upset! Haha...

 

[JollyApe]

When speking about movies I'd have to put Pink Flamingoes up there. Not sure if I was really offended by it, perhaps disgusted is more correct, but I had to mention it since it might be the only movie I have ever seen that I couldn't really cope with.

Another thing that offends me are churches or perhaps not the church as much as religion. Somehow I always get all upset when I read or see or someone says something about religion. The things done in the name of God, a God, any god, offends me a great deal.

 

[Faldor]

the best come back to religius types is a simple "and what if your god told you to jump off a cliff?" :bbounce:

 

[JollyApe]

the best come back to religius types is a simple "and what if your god told you to jump off a cliff?" :bbounce:

Unfortunately most religious types tend to be positive to whatever their God might say and most of the time this God seems to want them to throw other people of the cliffs.

 

[Jill_Valentine]

And many other religious types are perfectly reasonable and willing to converse articulately and intelligently about the more problematic aspects of their faiths. Some of them are even Buffy fans. Who post on Buffy-Boards. Would it be cranky of me to point out that sweeping negative generalisations can often be... offensive? :wink:

Anyhoo. Jill likes to think of herself as extremely liberal, but there are a few things that offend me.

* Anything Ian Paisley lets out of his head. The man is a hateful bigot, and doesn't even try to blunt it.

* AICN posters. In particular, I can recall being tremendously offended by the talkback for Charlie's Angels 2, which had more venomous anti-Irish sentiment than I've ever seen in one place before. D'you know we're all illiterate terrorists? Me neither.

* This sounds very stupid, but it was the one thing I had in mind when I started the thread. The recent remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre offended me as a horror fan, and frankly, to be melodramatic, as a woman.

I consider myself something of a gorehound, but my problem with this film was how the gore was treated. Not as a plot necessity, but as pornography. For a horror film, generally speaking, your primary aim can be either relentless cruelty to your characters (Open Water) or as much gore as human physiology allows (Dawn of the Dead). You can't have both or the result is essentially a snuff film with recognisable actors. Example:

A character gets meat-hooked alive. That's nasty.

A character gets meat-hooked alive, and then tries, and agonisingly fails, to extricate himself. That's horrific.

A character gets meat-hooked alive, and then tries, and agonisingly fails, to extricate himself. His friend, who he was trying to save when Leatherface caught him, appears. She tries, and also fails horribly, to take him down. That's really horrific.

A character gets meat-hooked alive, and after all the agony of trying to take him off, begs his friend to kill him. She murders him in the most painful way imaginable to spare him any further suffering. That's obscene.

I forgot to mention, the character on the meathook has had his leg chainsawed off, and literally had salt rubbed in the wound.

Gore or mutilation or whatever isn't a problem in most horror films. Hell, it's necessary to most horror films. But this film has a mean streak a mile wide. I dunno was it trying to outdo the original in terms of absolute cruelty, or if the writers really are sadists, but the impression I walked away with was that the repeated indignities of the kids involved were intended to be the entertainment moreso than their struggle to survive. It didn't help that for the last third of the film, there must have been a co-writer employed purely to find ways to get Biel wet. The whole film felt like voyeurism, like My Little Eye, without the self-aware social commentary. Hard to watch. In that much, I suppose, it succeeded, but honest to God, this is the most fundamentally unpleasant thing I've ever sat through, and it bothers me that it was made at all.

 

[Patran]

And many other religious types are perfectly reasonable and willing to converse articulately and intelligently about the more problematic aspects of their faiths. Some of them are even Buffy fans. Who post on Buffy-Boards. Would it be cranky of me to point out that sweeping negative generalisations can often be... offensive? :wink:

Anyhoo. Jill likes to think of herself as extremely liberal, but there are a few things that offend me.

* Anything Ian Paisley lets out of his head. The man is a hateful bigot, and doesn't even try to blunt it.

.

Yes, well, he's just one part of the two headed monster. The other head belongs to Sinn Fein. Just ask the McCartney sisters.

 

[Jill_Valentine]

Fair point, but they're loathsome for different reasons. Sinn Fein put a nice suit and smiley respectability on an organisation that murders people for a fairytale cause. But because they're so blatantly a facade, there's still some stigma to what they represent. Paisley is venomous, but he gets away with what he says, he makes no apology for it, and that makes it socially acceptable for his followers to spew the same bile.

He uses deliberately provocative language in volatile circumstances, and as far as I'm concerned, he's directly responsible for the violence that results. Referring to Catholics as vermin is the one I'm thinking of, off the top of my head, but for instance... in the aftermath of the Northern Bank Raid, he came out roaring about how it was the damned republicans again. Fair enough - it probably was - but by ranting away before there was any proof he put even the most rational Nationalist on the defensive, and he made it easier for the IRA to claim prejudice when the security forces came to the same conclusion later on.

Anyway, back to The Nature of Offense. There was a repeat of the show about about banned music videos on a while back. It was an interesting reminder of how stupid a lot of complaints are. The stand out, shining example of stupid complaints, the one that shall live on for generations as the stupidest complaint ever, was the uproar about the Prodigy's Smack my Bitch Up video. Now, you can make a fairly good case for the video being socially irresponsible, or setting a horrible example, or just being generally unpleasant to watch, but arguing that it encourages guys to hit girls is jut missing the whole bloody punchline of the video. So... do people whinge about it because they don't like the Prodigy, or do they whinge about it because they're too damn pigheaded to actually watch the damn thing?

 

[Patran]

Fair point on Paisley. It's a real pity that the electorate on both sides of the nationalist/loyalist divide seems to have swallowed the extremists views, and the political situation in NI could get far worse after tommorows elections.

So... do people whinge about it because they don't like the Prodigy, or do they whinge about it because they're too damn pigheaded to actually watch the damn thing?

Almost certainly because they are too damn pigheaded to watch it. I've lost count of the amount of times I've read in the papers of someone or some organisation condemning a book or film. When asked if they have seen the book/film they say no. How can you make a reasoned critique of anything without having first seen it? If you want to criticize something, you have to see it for your self and then make your mind up, not follow the crowd like sheep.

 

[Anchovy]

Almost certainly because they are too damn pigheaded to watch it. I've lost count of the amount of times I've read in the papers of someone or some organisation condemning a book or film. When asked if they have seen the book/film they say no. How can you make a reasoned critique of anything without having first seen it? If you want to criticize something, you have to see it for your self and then make your mind up, not follow the crowd like sheep.

Exactly. This is why I can't stand the critics of the Harry Potter books. My friend's mother still won't let her read them (the girls' 18, but still lives at home) becauseof the whole "they promote witchcraft" thing. But she has never even read one chapter of the books. Ignorance is no excuse for...well, ignorance.