[bksvol-discuss] Re: "Adult" books
- From: "Sarah Van Oosterwijck" <curiousentity@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 13:59:30 -0600
Patti,
I am another person who feels the same way. I really like to be
informed about the type of content a book or movie has so I can decide
to skip it if I believe it will be offensive to me. Informed choice is
such a popular concept and catch phrase, I think deciding what to
entertain oneself with should be another application of the concept.
I think if everyone didn't find swearing, sex, and violence so
acceptable and sometimes even desirable, authors would focus more on
fascinating plot and character development. I'm not saying anyone that
uses that stuff necessarily has a problem making the book interesting
otherwise, just that it isn't necessary to the story in most cases, so
why should the majority of books and movies contain it. There is also a
big difference between acknowledging that sex is part of most people's
lives and describing it in explicit detail. Most books also need some
sort of conflict in them, and sometimes it is a physical one, but I
don't want to hear details about how someone was beat to a pulp, and I
sure don't want the entire population to become desensitized to it,
because that can really mess people up, especially kids.
Have you ever considered using your screen reader's pronunciation
dictionary to eliminate swearwords? Unfortunately I still come across
unexpected combinations once in a while, and sometimes a scanno makes
one get through mutilated but still recognizably a swearword. :-) Now
if only screen readers could be smart enough to change pronunciation
based on context, so that the words could be replaced with a non-profane
equivalent when necessary to understanding the sentence, but just
skipped when superfluous. That would help in a myriad other situations
as well.
Sarah Van Oosterwijck
http://home.earthlink.net/~netentity
----- Original Message -----
From: "Patti Johnson" <razz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2005 12:22 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] "Adult" books
> I know I will be in the minority on this, but why is it we need to
have
> Adult ratings for books and/or movies? Because our society thinks it
is
> just fine to spew out foul language, authors think there is nothing
wrong
> with describing love scenes in the most explicit detail. Why? Two
things I
> heard when I was younger have never left me. One was from my history
> teacher in the 8th grade. He said if a person has to swear, that
means they
> have a very limited vocabulary. Amen. And, as a young adult I went
to hear
> Paul Harvey speak and he asked why do we guard our children from such
> things, bad language, violence, explicit sex, yet we think it is okay
as
> adults to digest all this? Why is it okay? I guess I wish for an
> idealistic existence which will never happen, but I sure don't
appreciate
> any of that in my life, I will not read books that have this type of
content
> in them, nor will I watch a movie with such a rating that I know it is
full
> of what I know will be offensive. Yes, it's a free country, I do know
that
> but I just don't know why it has to be deemed acceptable that we hear
and
> see unnecessary stuff like this; there has to be other ways to express
> ourselves. Okay, I'll hush now. Just had to express my opinion.
Back
> under my desk I go.
> Patti
>
> You can't bounce the bounce if you can't pronounce the bounce. --From
The
> Tigger Movie
>
>
>
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