Comrades of the European Internet Forum,
enough is enough!
For decades, we have placed ourselves in the cultural shadows - well-behaved, conformist, as if we were the ill-educated child of the great American moral uncle, who must not be too loud, not too naked and certainly not too independent. While half-naked shoulders are censored at high school graduation ceremonies in the USA, heads are thrown around like bowling balls in TV series. All normal, all ‘entertainment’. But woe betide you if you see a nipple - then the censorship hammer screeches louder than a Trump on Truth Social.
I ask you: What has become of Europe?
We, the continent-born of the Enlightenment, the revolutions, the renaissance of nudity on canvas, in stone and on film - we have allowed a country that bottles cheese in cans, of all things, to tell us what is ‘moral’!
It’s not moral, it’s demurely stupid.
Why are depictions of violence in mass media allowed to flow freely like American fracking oil, but natural, aesthetic, tasteful nudity - which has been part of European art and culture for centuries - is algorithmically filtered out, demonetised and labelled with warnings as if it were uranium?
No more prudish double standards!
We need a cultural return to what we have to offer:
- Enlightenment instead of transfiguration.
- Pleasure instead of violence.
- Nudity as an expression of naturalness - not as a moral offence.
I call on you: Banish pixelated prudery! Let’s tear apart the corset of American moral dictatorship like a badly programmed DRM protection! Save the freedom of the breast - for Europe!
Stop aligning your films, games and series with a market that beeps ‘fuck’ five times but completely waves ‘shoot him in the face’ through.
We are not Hollywood’s post office box. We are Europe. We are culture. We are naked! - So, metaphorically. And sometimes literally. And that’s okay.
Thank you for your attention!
How arrogant to think your previous centuries don’t offer a culture of violence.
I think the point was more about the double standardz on violence in censorship than it was about whether each region actually is or had been violent. As a famous US show, South Park pointed out almost 30 years ago in 1998…
“horrific deplorable violence is ok as long as nobody says any naughty words”
I’m well aware of the US attitude towards censorship. My point is about the double standard towards violence and a history of it existing in cultures. It’s hardly exclusive to the Americans, and quite European if anything. You can’t boldly declare yourself to be “culture” itself and expect to be taken seriously without actually examining those cultures.
“Horrible deplorable violence is only wrong when boors and barbarians do it, not us enlightened beings who seek only peace and nudity”.
Culture can mean different things but the way I read the original post was that the culture being talked about was specifically the arts, and the main discussion about it was clearly censorship.
So the fact that Europe has a violent and bloody history is not relevant to the point that was being made. It is also a fact I don’t think anyone in Europe would want to deny either because if we ever forget the horrors of war we are doomed to sleep walk into another.
There is only a double standard in OPs post if they were trying to pretend Europe has never been violent, but they didn’t address that, they talked about aspects of censorship.
Not just a violent and bloody history, but a culture as well, which lead to that history. As to all Europeans being unwilling to deny it, that’s hardly convincing given multiple recent decades of fueling and supplying armed conflicts, often needlessly.
You’ve clearly got an axe to grind so I’m gonna leave it here and let OP debate with you if they choose to
You’ve chosen an indefensible position, that’s all. Try to learn from it, and you can do better next time.
Oh how shameful of me to question a European. You are Europe. You are culture.