These two are a real eye opener -

Just finished DIcte - complete available on Netfix





nice to see into another culture and I DO like Denmark but what a shift in what is on screen, what is "allowable" and how it is presented.

Game of Thrones took things to a new level with nudity and being openly gay on screen has blossomed to the relief of the LGBT community.

But Denmark is whole new level from my experience....and it extends beyond the sexuality.

Both series are interesting as a look into Denmark media and by extension different mores.

Thought this is a good forum for something like this as we have a pretty wide representation of cultures from around the world.

As the media is becoming world wide for access....the cross fertilization....pardon the pun....will tend to influence content across borders.

What other programs and movies have you seen that has moved society to a different level of on screen depiction of society...maybe more as it IS rather than the proscribed bounds you are accustomed to.

Sex scenes do nothing to forward the narrative. They're like fight/action sequences. Vacuous. Porn has it's place but the storyline in such pieces is rightly viewed as being something of a joke. It's just crude sensationalism in game of thrones. 9 1/2 weeks has some merit but only because it is honest about the sexual overtones - it's basically porn. graphic and prolonged sex scenes only serve to trivialise and diminish a narrative's thrust (titter) IMO.

Keep it Real
That is changing tho...have a look at the second Danish series....

GofT is only prurient as we are less accustomed to open nudity and sexuality, sensuality on screen. Of course it's meant to entertain and tittilate to increase viewers but the bounds of doing that are moving forward and very little of that if any I'd classify as porn.
Is a barbarian chieftain fucking his nude conquest done in a tasteful way rather than a clinical one outside of artistic merit....no.
It's been done forever, just without the nudity.
This is what I'm talking about with opening the boundaries.
Would a series that features the lead fucking the principle on his desk between classes ( no nudity at all ) of a primary school be accepted in British Prime time? This is a comedic series but with dramatic and serious aspects underlaying it.

"No sex please we're British" surely had a ring of truth compared to say an Italian or French sensibility in advertising and movies.

The iconic perhaps mythical, perhaps not attitudes toward sexuality in the Nordic nations certainly is displayed with less euphemism and more open dialogue and to some degree depiction....two gay teen males ( one the lead's son ) exchanging a more than affection kiss in public for instance...both teens depicted as minors...

I was impressed by Caprica, the Battlestar Galactica spin off, which featured a married male couple, one of whom was a badass mafia assassin anti-hero, and whose sexuality was entirely irrelevant to the plot, in a world where the word "gay" doesn't exist. Presumably, it's a world in which sexual orientation is about as interesting as a preference for redheads.

Interesting, one of John Scalzi's novels the forever war postulated an earth where all were gay, heterosexual activity was looked on with the kind of distaste previously reserved for gays in some cultures and a result of elimination of live birth...all done in artificial wombs.

Macdoc wrote:Interesting, one of John Scalzi's novels the forever war postulated an earth where all were gay, heterosexual activity was looked on with the kind of distaste previously reserved for gays in some cultures and a result of elimination of live birth...all done in artificial wombs.

It's by Joe Haldeman, and yeah, it's an awesome book. The theme of the book reflects the author's experience coming home from the Vietnam war to a world he didn't really understand any more, and he took it to the extremes he could conceive of.

Seeing that stuff done on the big and small screen though, is a different matter. If they did a movie of the Forever War today, I'd still expect them to be too gutless to include that part of the story.

Yeah - I wonder how Rita would play in the Bible Belt ...???

I like what Scalzi does with social mores....

Even more so

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Vorkosigan

Lois McMaster Bujold is brilliant at postulating varying cultures in the Vorkosigan Saga

Beta is Denmark writ large....Miles is raised in a post feudal aristocracy with space travel... and there are a few other odd societies including a fully managed human genome project plus....I'd love to see Quaddies on screen....let alone Quaddy sex...