By Savannah McDade Posted March 3, 2010
If art emulates life then we should exemplify sex, violence, ignorance, vulgarity, drug use, and excessive plastic surgery. That is what the movies are telling us anyway.
According to the Harvard School of Public Health, researchers found that violence, sex, and profanity have radically increased in movies between 1992 and 2003.
Why such a significant increase in sex and violence? Because it sells, at least that is what movie studios seem to think.
In Skip Press’ book, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Screenwriting”, Press gives a logical reason as to why sex and violence are encouraged in screenwriting; when you watch a scary movie your senses are enhanced, (it scares you) therefore you are left with a memorable experience, the same general concept is applied with sexual content.
This is great for production companies, especially when the movie draws in teens because we all know that when teens go to a movie we generally go with huge groups of friends which has a very beneficial effect on ticket sales.
Press continues, saying that movies like “Gone with the Wind” (1939), an American classic, is a very romantic movie depicting the American Civil War, yet there are no direct references to sex and no impractical gruesome scenes.
“Gone with the Wind” is a great example of a movie that allows its audience to think rather than exploiting us with futile sexual and violent content and still it holds the spot as the number one grossing (sales) movie of all time if you adjust the ticket price for inflation (boxofficemojo.com).
Children spend an average of four hours a day watching TV. By age eighteen a U.S. youth will have seen 16,000 simulated murders and 200,000 acts of violence (American Psychiatric Association www.parentstv.org).
There is no way witnessing that much violence cannot be detrimental to a society, and while Megan Fox prancing around in cut-offs and a crop top may be lucrative, and mildly entertaining for many, does it really evoke artistic intellect?
