Embarrassed about watching Hentai? (Page 1)
Embarrassed about watching Hentai??
Hmmm.... Let's think about that for a few minutes. Most people don't even know what "hentai" means. And for those people, let me define it for you. It's stylistic cartoon porn. And those who watch it, or frankly any kind of porn, this question is posed to you.
Have you ever thought of the question "Why?" you watch it...well, besides the obvious, that is?
For most people, the REAL question "why?" doesn't pop up in their heads. The first thing that probably popped into your head When reading that subject line, were the voices. You know them, the ones that scream: "Sinner!" "Bad, bad, bad girl." "Pervert!" And you probably scream back at them with: "Don't judge me!"; or, you can use that shield of excuses paraphrasing John 8:7 "Yea without sin, cast the first stone". Which is a good case.
OR
You can balance your actions with the actions of others: "Well, you like slasher movies!" And slasher/horror films mostly involve murder. Shouldn't watching "murder" be a darker issue than watching "porn"?
OR
There's a Fourth Way to combat this embarrassing issue, which is not what you might initial think.
But first, let's talk about "The Balance" because that is linked to the Fourth Combat Way
The balancing scale of judgment between Slash and Porn .
Use your hands. Slash. Porn. Slash. Porn.
I mean, we all know these names: Chucky, Freddy Kuegar, Michael Myers, Hannibal Lecter, PinHead, Jigsaw, Norman Bates. I mean, who hasn't?
And who haven't heard of most of the films on this list:
Se7en (1999)
Saw (2004)
Psycho (1960)
Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Halloween (1978)
Friday the 13th (1980)
A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)
Scream (1996)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Carrie (1976)
The Shining (1980)
The Exorcist (1973)
Hellraiser (1987)
Pumpkinhead (1988)
Phantasm (1979)
Candyman (1992)
Angel Heart (1987)
Cube (1997)
The Shining (1980)
Child's Play (1988)
The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
Yet, these types of movies don't bring about that little bit of "guilt" inside ourselves. It doesn't bring any "guilt" at all. And why doesn't it? I mean, we're watching someone hurt, murder and kill someone else; and we're watching it in "extreme and graphic" images.
Porn, on the other hand is "extreme and graphic" sexual images. It explicitly presents nudity or sexual acts, and the characters aren't hurting anyone....unless you bring in rape. And "rape" isn't "sex". It's a violent act of it's own. Yet, majority of hentai doesn't portray the "rape scenes" as something that's destroying someone's life. These scenes are similar to that scene in the classic film Gone with the Wind, when Rhett Butler tells Scarlett O’Hara
"It's not that easy Scarlett. You turned me out while you chased Ashley Wilkes. Dreamed of Ashley Wilkes. This is one night you're not turning me out."
He then carries Scarlett, kicking and punching, up the stairs. She's fighting because, supposingly, she doesn't want to have sex with him. Then it "fades to black". The next scene shows Scarlett waking up the next morning, in her cute long night gown, stretching with a quite satisfied smile on her face, looking so very content. One can only "imagine" what Mr. Butler did to her.
In hentai, a scene like that is explicitly displayed. There is no imagination here. No "fade to black". Some scenes show a mutual pleasurable interaction, an agreement to enter this sexual joining, while other scenes are like Gone with the Wind, and the look on the character's faces are one of enjoyment, not pain, hurt and agony. Though afterwards, there may be tears, but it's usually because they felt guilty because they enjoyed it.
And so there's that thin line, where most women says it's dangerous, to portray that women enjoy being raped. It's violence and these films are giving off the wrong message.
Hmmm...not sure. Don't you think that "moral people" KNOW WHEN THEY'RE HURTING SOMEONE? They would stop before anything got really out of hand. You can visibly tell if what you're doing isn't what that person wants. Yet, slasher movies out right hurt someone, and you can say that that's a "thin line" because those films are portraying that people should enjoy killing someone else. So, isn't that a wrong message too?
Fantasy is Imagination, especially when it's extravagant and unrestrained. Films are fanciful, unreal images. They're not real. And even porn, with "real people" doing a "real act" isn't "real" because they're actors and portraying (make-believing) events. These films aren't real.
But let's not talk about just "porn", how about these movies:
 |
Blue Lagoon (1980) |
These films aren't "quite" explicit, but it's the same concept. Some of them are even down right controversial. But hentai, being that it's cartoon, is definitely displaying that it's not real. Right? It's just a cartoon.
Unlike the two lists above, not many know these films:
Urotsukidoji (1986)
La Blue Girl (1993)
New Angel (1991)
Adventure Kid (1993)
Immoral Sisters or Blackmail (2002)
Night Shift Nurses (1999)
Viper GTS (2002)
Advancer Tina 1996)
Mezzo Forte (1998)
Cool Devices (1995)
Those are hentai. Not much of a list huh? These are the most popular films. This should probably tilt the scale on how slash and violence seem to be more popular than this type of entertainment. This animation, a type of cartoon, just by their format alone, should also cause slash to be even heavier on the justice scale since animation is portraying: "Don't take this too seriously." In fact, they should be laughable. Some people even laugh at slash films.
But why is slash and sex entertaining? Why do we watch it? Why do we laugh?
Robert A. Heinlein's book Stranger in a Strange Land, had an interesting definition about why people laugh:
"They laugh because it hurts so much… because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting."The book goes on to say that the goodness is in the laughing. And that laughing is an act of "bravery...and a sharing...against pain and sorrow and defeat."
There's a quote from the film, The Prophecy 3: The Ascent. The actor, Christopher Walken, portrays the angel Gabriel, the most exalted angel in heaven, who has been cursed to being a human, a Being that he has utter disdain for--he HATES humanity. While being human, he came to an understanding about what it is to be human. One of these understandings, which he tells the angel Zophiel, is his description of sex being a form of death.
"Fried food could kill me. A Mugger could kill me.... You've been with a woman, Zophiel? It's like dying. You moan. Cry out. You get to a spot that has you begging for release. Once...I was an Angel of Death... Now...I die every day when I have the cash."
A funny line. Quite funny. Because it's true. And it hurts.
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