On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 12:39:02PM +0100, Tony Sidaway wrote:
Poor, Edmund W said:
the semi-fig-leafed scene where
Jack draws his new girlfriend, are not central to the movie. Even though they are real crowd-pleasers, the plot would not have suffered by editing the car scene so that the frantically-excited couple are merely shown getting into the car and doing some intense necking (leave something to the imagination). And the drawing scene would have worked just as well with PG-type fig-leafing instead of the tantalization of "Ohmygosh, is she really showing her wobbly bits?"
In my opinion, it would have severely dented the credibility of the director to have given in more than he did to the puritan sensibilities of the US domestic audience. Further fig-leafing would have been as distracting to most audiences as those disturbingly flat-chested female centaurs in Fantasia.
You must be referring to Fantasia 2000. I seem to recall big-breasted harpies with glowing nipples in the original Fantasia.
That aside . . . I agree that overt and visually obvious "fig-leafing" (is this a technical term?) can be more distracting and more objectionable than plain nudity. If (for plot-driven, thematic, mood-enhancing, or purely aesthetic reasons) nudity is called for, it should not be fig-leafed any more than strictly necessary to stave off censorship and, to suit my preferences, not even that much. I'm rather opposed to the gratuitous in creations within artistic realms, and more fig-leafing than occurred already in Titanic would be more gratuitous than any removal of already extant fig-leafing could have been. My preference: Make a decision. Show it or don't. Don't play silly buggers with seeing how much you can "get away with".
To drag this back on-topic: Use what images in articles best illustrate the articles. Anything that doesn't enhance the quality of the article for its informational purpose should be excluded where practical to do so, including nudity that some people might find objectionable. Where it does enhance the quality of the article, it should be included without apology. I support doing the best job we can, period, and handling strange taboos and other not strictly necessary social matters if we have time later. Maybe that's just me, though.
This doesn't equate to any kind of statement that we shouldn't accomodate those with more-restrictive sensibilities, where we can, though. I'm sure there are people out there with PHP development skills for whom a "safe search"-like functionality is important who might consider putting in the time to work on such a thing. I would support such an endeavor, though I might not put much of my own time into it.
. . . not that anyone asked.
Hmm. I wasn't going to get involved in this discussion. How did that happen?
-- Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]