My one and only question when I read this was…

…have you seen Brokeback Mountain? =P

I don’t know about that.

Watching violence in a movie or tv doesn’t make me wish I was in the middle of it or participating in any way. It doesn’t give me the urge to go out and start killing random people on the street.

However, The more sexual content in a movie or tv show, the more the natural man inside me wishes he could participate.

I think if you are evaluating it from that standpoint, one could argue that that the PG-13, sexually charged show is “Worse”.

Who knows, there may be people out there that get the same arrousal from violence. I’d specualte they are in the minority.

Have you really thought about what you are saying? As I understand your comment, you are saying you feel watching R rated violent movies is more ethical than PG-13 movies that portray morally questionable characters or sexual content.

I’m not sure the real impact of either such movie, (and by way of disclosure I’ve watched plenty of both varieties) but I think there is something to be said for rating graphic violence as “worse for you” than sexual/morally questionable content.

You’ve yet to explain how that differs from a movie critic (who could be your brother or friend at work) viewing the same movie and providing to you insights as to its content.

Actually, I did provide at least one reason. See #8. But here’s one more reason. There’s a difference between using the information from a review to avoid watching a film at all, and another thing to directly pay someone to watch the content for you, so you can watch part of the film while avoiding the content you just paid the person to watch and delete.

Imagine someone standing before god at the final judgment, they are asked to explain their viewing of certain films. They reply, “Oh, but I didn’t watch that part.” It seems a little ridiculous to me.

Re #5, not all the companies that sanitize movies are violating copyright. ClearPlay uses a different technology to edit movies that does not violate copyright protection. CleanFlix just happens to be the example Kim chose to use while I used a more generic term to refer to the entire industry. Please educate yourself before slinging unsubstantiated accusations about what I’m advocating.

Kim:

Your argument about “financially supporting Hollywood” is about as legitimate as arguments against uninating in the ocean. They might sound well and good but really don’t make a difference in other people’s behavior or the overall environment. I’ve working on the decision side (finance) of the entertainment industry so I have experience in how decisions are made there. Movies are made with a particular target-audience already in mind. Those on the fringes of that audience are not factored into the equation when a decision on any particular production are made because hitting the desired target already carries high risk (we used discount factors in the 30-50% range). Suppose you want to make a movie targeted specifically at Mormons and you know that if you hit your target you will make money with a particular project. Why would you risk alienating your primary target by including content intended to appeal to evangelicals or Jews or Catholics or excluding content that may offend those same groups but appeal to Mormons? You wouldn’t do that so you stick with your Mormon target and if some evangelicals, Jews, or Catholics see the movie as well then that’s just gravy. What the movie sanitizing industry does is remove the objectionable material and makes the movie more palatable for a very small, incremental number of consumers. Our goal should be to reduce the size of the target market so the movies never get made which is not accomplished through our own individual purchasing decisions. We reduce the size of the target market through converting others to our value system. So why condemn the likes of CleanFlix or those that patronize them?

In addition, your first argument against CleanFlix is not financial but rather a moral hazard objection about requiring a CleanFlix editor to view objectionable content so that you don’t have to do so. You’ve yet to explain how that differs from a movie critic (who could be your brother or friend at work) viewing the same movie and providing to you insights as to its content.