How inappropriate?

Good lord did I ruffle your feathers...

Uh...yeah. The "ass" thing. That'll do it sometimes, alright.

I mentioned your join date because I thought it was ridiculous that you are still here responding to *beep* I would have thought that would get boring after awhile.

Yeah, respectfully, why don't you let me worry about that? It's not like I've been typing continuously for that many years. I post sometimes, then go for a long time without posting. If I get something in my email inbox that's a response to something I posted, I'll respond if I have time and am so inclined, and I won't if I'm not and don't. Like, you know, pretty much anybody does. What does the length of time I've been registered with IMDB have to do with it?

I called you an "ass" and accused you of "whining" because of all the responses to the other posters bull, I thought it was ridiculous that you took the time to address them all (or at least most), you seem to care more than the OP.

Well now. There were six posts on this thread before I did my first post. Then two more before the second one. First page, 10 total posts. Two were mine. Second page, I had two of the first six before you posted. So before you came in, I had four of the first 16 in total. So I came nowhere near addressing "most." My posts were one-fourth of the total posts at the time you rang in.

As for the OP, she (I'm assuming "she" because of the "amber" in the username) posted three times. So I'd say she cared approximately as much.

Regardless, it just pisses me off to see somebody get attacked for simply asking a question about appropriate material in a film. The people going after her could just as well have done something else, but they chose to jump into the list and deliberately insult someone who, by having standards unlike theirs, had apparently infuriated them, disgusted them, inflamed their sense of contempt and snarky amoral superiority, etc. Yeah, that bugs me.

But anyway: Four to three. Ballpark.

I also called you an "ass" because of your post saying "if you, want to see depictions of children raped and dismembered, why, it's just a movie.", while I understand the point, I thought it was unnecessarily grotesque, I've seen some sick *beep* but I have never in all my time spent on tasteless garbage seen the things you describe.

Whether you've seen such horrible things depicted in the "tasteless garbage" you've seen isn't the point, again. I agree it's grotesque and awful. But if "it's just a movie, it isn't real" is the rationale, then that rationale justifies literally anything you could put on a screen. The fact that you (as I) see these things as grotesque and awful, and absolutely not depictable in a film, is exactly what breaks through the illusion that "it's only a movie" is a legitimate defense to this sort of thing. And yet, people make this idiotic argument all the time.

I mean, if just the mention of such things in a sentence can turn somebody's stomach and make you call me an "ass" for making the point at all, that's exactly the point. After all, "it's only a sentence." "It's only writing." "It's only a movie." And so forth. Pushed with a single extreme example, the logic collapses.

And believe it or not I didn't mean to come across as "snarky" or as an "ass" by by saying "With that said, I bid you good day.", I meant it as a moderately polite end to my post.

I believe it. I'm sorry it got lost in the smoke. I retract what I said about it and apologize. Seriously.

I don't see a significant difference between "talking down" and "demeaning," but I'll leave that alone. If by "demeaning" you mean that I went after the people who were calling the poor OP brain-damaged and so forth, and that I tried to make them look like the amoral twits they were, I'll accept that, happily.

Obviously trying to argue with you is pretty much pointless, as you seem to care enough to thoroughly roast me if I don't relent. I would ask you (if you don't mind), why do you bother responding to all the idiots (myself included of course) who post here? Surely it gets tiring combating every moron who posts insults, this is hardly the only thread of its type, and every one I've ever looked at is filled with random insulting comments. Do people ever back down or apologize when you rebuke them? And if not, then what is the point? From what I've seen, its about as effective as trying to combat racism in the YouTube comment sections (basically impossible).

Interesting, actually. I'll just accept up front your implied point about the probable ineffectiveness of trying to teach pigs to sing out here (frustrates you, annoys the pigs, pigs don't learn to sing no matter what). So yes, it's a losing battle, if the standard for winning is to win everybody over, or even a significant percentage over.

On the other hand, that ties to your other question, which is that I "seem to care enough" to come back at people in discussions like these. I do, if the subject is important enough. This particular subject is that important, and it's one I do get after with some regularity out here -- and yes, usually with people divided between "you're absolutely right" and "you're a puritanical/fundamentalist/moralizing idiot."

Like, for instance, recent discussions on whether it was okay to have two underage actors (boy and girl) do a kissing scene where he puts a hand on her breast. That strikes me as clearly wrong, but of course saying so out here released the Mongolian hordes. Same for when I thought it was wrong to have scenes with young children either being subjected to really heavy profanity or where the script requires them to use it themselves.

The destination of those discussions, whether other people can figure it out or not, is that it really is up to individual moral sense, and not to some articulatable principle like "it's only a movie" or "as long as the parents are okay with it, it's okay" (imagine some of the things parents have been "okay" with over the years, when it comes to their own kids). What I'm trying to get people to see is that while they think they have a principle to lean on, they really don't.

So yeah, this cluster of subjects actually is interesting and worthwhile to me: Where are the moral and ethical lines people have? Where do they try to find justification for them, or do they try to justify them at all? Is there any universal standard for any aspect of morality? How shaky are anyone's articulated principles on which they base their moral and ethical decisions? Does art, including film, owe any regard at all to what might be objectionable, or to right versus wrong, etc.?

And so forth. It's a relatively narrow area, but there are a lot of questions within the area, obviously.

It also so happens that I was in a film program at one time, wrote film reviews for publication (pre-internet, so not just slinging them out there on my own website and so forth), and more generally taught at three universities, which I mention not because there's anything particularly impressive about it (lots of people, maybe you, do things way more worthwhile than that) but only to point out a general and pre-existing interest in film, literature, art, critical thinking and rational analysis, and moral and religious aspects of culture and how they relate to those areas.

So there's a lot of longstanding interest and a lot of precooked "I've seen this kind of discussion before, and here's what it's always really about" stuff going around in there. It also so happens that I type 90+ wpm and was a writer and editor for a very long time, so getting through what would be only a page or page and a half of writing really isn't much of a task, the same way an old friend of mine who's been a mechanic for his whole life can do a brake job in about a third the rate-book alotted time. If I were slower and less used to writing, it would represent a lot more effort, which in turn probably would indicate a much more serious and significant reaction to get such a thing started. For some people, it'd be a project. For me, it's 15 minutes or so. Same as me trying to get a simple plumbing job done, versus what a real plumber could do. (This post, I'll admit, is pushing 30 minutes, but what the hell, it's a Sunday night before a holiday, and f-all on TV.)

Still, you're right to raise the question of how much good it could ever really do. I don't know. Maybe a person here or there might remember the logic of the argument and, maybe when combined with enough similar incidents, start thinking less like a reactionary twit and more with some intelligent awareness. I have no illusions at all that this could ever happen to any large number of people, of course. But maybe once in a while, who knows. Or maybe it's just fun to stir up bees that can't actually sting you, or run circles around people who are dead-slow but think they're fast. It bothers me, the cruelty of it, sometimes. But then, if I'm doing it for that, it's a legitimate thing to ask whether it's worth doing.

Also: After seeing more of your point here, and considering the relative grace of your response to my response, I think it's obvious you're not an idiot. Without moving off your position at all, you've gone back and taken the unintended insult out of it. That's rare to the point of nearly nonexistent out here, and hugely to your credit.

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