This is actually from 2022, but I missed it back in the day. This is quite important research imo, and very relevant lately. Link to the paper itself: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563222001637
This is actually from 2022, but I missed it back in the day. This is quite important research imo, and very relevant lately. Link to the paper itself: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563222001637
They are causing harm, but not by being sexual. By posing unrealistic standards
It really depends on the character, IMO. Like Superman or Batman or Black Widow better be at least fit as hell, because their characters are fit as hell and are supposed to be much more capable than the average person.
Not that they should be super unrealistic, either. Like Christian Bale as Batman was totally fine. He doesn’t have to be a meathead or gymnast, and neither should Black Widow. Though, with that said, it would be cool for Hollywood to hire more actually fit women than every woman being a pretty twig… Black Widow and Batman probably should have gymnast level builds if they’re to truly be realistic for the physical feats they pull off.
Though every other “normal” character? Yea, hire some chubby and “ugly” people too for crying out loud. Some shows do well with casting, but damn.
yes, sadly
I’m not sure why this is being downvoted because setting unrealistic body standards is absolutely terrible for society
It’s not the onus of a piece of fiction to be “good for society”.
Who said that was a requirement? It’s still a fact that it causes harm
You can’t declare something as a fact just because you want it to be one.
It’s embedded into your argument. If you do not consider it a requirement, then your discussion is irrelevant.
Me arguing something can be harmful for society doesn’t mean I’m arguing it has to be abolished in its entirety. I’m not sure why you think everything has to be black and white since obviously there’s room for artistic use- remember you are the only one who thought that, or perhaps it just wasn’t obvious for you. And can you explain how unrealistic body standards is not bad for society? It isn’t far fetched seeing young people compare to beauty standards they are bombarded with. It doesn’t only happen in video games but in tons of visual media.
You’re replying on a thread specifically citing a paper on how videogame sexualization was found to bring no harm to society. Either provide evidence otherwise, or settle down with the unfounded repeated claims.
You are reading waay to much into that title, man. Their claim is it doesn’t make people more misogynistic. There are still tons of reasons to care about how media conducts itself.
Or do you imagine it’s just a neutral thing that the whites-only crowd would make it impossible to be a black actor again?
I’m referring to this review from NLM looking at 49 papers to investigate the effects of gaming on women. It is possible to have multiple articles that contradict each other
I propose it’s not the fiction that’s posing unrealistic standards, but the people who can’t tell the difference between fiction and nonfiction. Fiction, is by definition, unrealistic.
Fiction can easily be realistic- You’re thinking of fantasy which is unrealistic. Fiction means it’s not a true story, not that it can’t be realistic
“can be” ⇏ “has to be”
And it’s not fiction that sets high standards, but the people watching it, that are doing so.
Now you may say that the people are setting those standards only because they are watching said stuff.
But that is just rephrasing, “the people watching fiction are incapable of having their own imagination”.
Back in school, I had a classmate that had a much greater height than others, due to steroid usage.
Now if you say that his parents did that because they watched “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure”, I’ll say it was not released yet and I have no reason to believe that they bought comic strips from another country and went ahead and made a ‘gag’ piece a basis for their standards.
If you swap the words “fiction” and “fantasy” in your post, it makes the same amount of sense.
Have you ever read historical fiction? Stories like jane eyre are not real but they’re sensible. A story can be fiction and realistic. You can write a short story based on stuff you’ve researched and seen and it’s still fiction.
Nah, fiction needs unrealistic elements. You can have realism in fiction, but fiction is defined by its deviance from fact. If a movie were completely realistic, itd be a documentary.
It is possible to have a realistic story in fiction. For example, Mad Men is a tv series that’s pretty grounded in history but the characters and everything that happens to them are the product of the writers and their research. It’s not a documentary, it’s fiction, but quite realistic.
I envision ‘realistic’ as a spectrum. If it is 100% realistic, it’s a documentary, if it’s 100% unrealistic, it’s probably a fantasy movie or something, and most works of fiction fall somewhere between.
Like, you understand this is my point, right? The plot is not real, and that’s what makes it fictional?
What you’re saying is sound and I agree the plot not being real is fiction; the only problem is you said fiction required unrealistic elements and most people see “unrealistic” as basically fantasy
See, I hear ‘fantasy’ and think of orks and fairies and shit, but I can think of many non-fantasy movies that have incredibly unrealistic aspects.
Like, idk, James Bond’s gizmos are completely unrealistic and break the laws of physics, but it’s not fantasy to me.
I’d argue James bond as a franchise is basically a hypermasculine fantasy and the gadgets are pretty much a tech fantasy within it. Breaking laws of physics is completely unrealistic, but the point I was making was that you don’t need to do any of these things- you could write a story about how you went to the gym and broke a treadmill (even though you didn’t) and it would be fiction. The bar to fiction is not that high.
This can’t be your honest take…
What’s wrong with it?
Well, it’s inaccurate. Fiction does not require unrealistic elements. There’s just scads of fiction out there—across multiple genres—that’s set in a real time and place, and doesn’t involve anything fantastical.
If it is entirely realistic it is no longer fiction. Ergo, fiction needs some degree of unreality. I don’t see how that’s controversial, haha.
The issue is the many people who complain when a game or other media have women that look like actual women. Calling them men because they don’t look like the perfectly sexualized women in media that they’re used to.
Yes they can’t tell the difference, but they’re still doing real harm.
Banning sexualization is not the solution, but the prevalence of it in media to the point it is expected and people get angry when it’s gone is a problem as well.
Yeah, I really think it’s a type of media illiteracy, and it’s much larger than just sexualization.
Like, I grew up in the church, and remember when they adopted the Left Behind novels into church canon as prophecy. It’s the same kind of not being able to tell fact from fiction, and my parent’s church encouraged it because they were a bunch of con artists.
Yea that’s all churches. Even the good ones with preachers/etc that try to help. They could have the community without the brainwashing, but then there wouldn’t be devout fools opening their wallets every week!
You said sexualised movies, I thought you meant movies in which human actors are jacked, sometimes to an unhealthy extent. That’s also the problem with a lot of actresses and also influencers, who are after plastic surgeries, in the perfect light, with a lot of makeup on, posing unrealistic standards for impressionable kids
Somebody else said that, not me. But regardless, it’s still a problem with people not being able to recognize fact from fiction. Makeup is not the problem, the problem are people who expect you to to look like that without makeup. Boob jobs are not the problem, the problem are people who think there’s something wrong with you if you’ve not had one.
If they replaced everything with mocap tomorrow so actors didn’t have to look the part any more, the problem would still be that people look at Marvel and think it’s an accurate depiction of reality.
Then the problem surely is media literacy?
I’d say a touch of bigotry, too. Some people genuinely do not like ugly people to the point of it being a freaking mental disorder…
Like I said in another comment