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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   13985 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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Sexual Objectification

There is something that bothers me about watching progressive/feminist content on youtube, especially regarding the topic of objectification, and its particularly emphasized in this video, as follows:

So if something doesn't serve a purpose (nudity and sex scenes), it's clear the only purpose it serves is to scratch an itch of the artists. This is something called Chekhov's gun, which is a storytelling principle that says if a gun is shown on screen, it must be fired later in the story. And if it isn't, the filmmaker made a promise to the audience that they didn't keep.

It's absolutely the same with female nudity and violence on screen. If it serves no artistic purpose, then the sole purpose becomes the objectification of women and the normalization of violence.

You know, like that scene where Cassie (Refering to the show euphoria) turns into a giant. Absolutely unnecessary. And it's completely inconsistent with the show's genre, which has no magical elements up until that point. We already got the point that Cassie is defined by her breasts from the 15-minute montage leading up to that scene and the other 200 shots of her naked throughout the show. Like, we got it, right? We got that point.

We actually didn't need you to bend the genre of the show in order to show her boobs in a giant form. In general, the amount of unnecessary nudity and the way that the camera lingers on women's naked bodies, or bodies in general, is beyond what is needed to make the point that they're in a lurid, exploitative industry.

To rehash for someone not familiar, objectification is defined as: the act of treating a person as an object, a commodity, or a tool, rather than as a whole human being with their own agency, feelings, and rights. The most common form, (sexual) occurs when a person is reduced to a mere object of sexual desire. It often involves judging someone solely based on their physical attributes or breaking their body into separate, "consumable" parts (e.g., focusing only on legs or a torso).

The main issue here is that this idea, at least on the surface is that it seems to be fundamentally in conflict with the the sexual revolution and sex positivity of many previous & current progressive movements. Pornography, prostitution, and strip clubs all fit the objectification bill quite neatly, and the data seems to support the authors argument that "sexual objectification" leads to or plays some role in many of these harms:

Sex workers are a vulnerable group of individuals that experience sexual violence on the job, but it is difficult and limiting for workers to report their assault (Sex Workers Project, 2020). Sex workers are adults who receive money or goods in exchange for consensual sexual acts. According to research, globally, sex workers have a 45% to 75% chance of experiencing sexual violence on the job (Sex Workers Project, 2020).

I struggle to see how these individuals may square this perspective that sex work is valid, despite fitting the bill of objectification. Perhaps there is something I'm missing?

This is something called Chekhov's gun, which is a storytelling principle that says if a gun is shown on screen, it must be fired later in the story.

Note that in the original form, the principle was that 'If a gun is shown on stage, it must be fired later in the story.' Live-theatre productions usually do not have as elaborate set decoration as film or television.

it's completely inconsistent with the show's genre, which has no magical elements up until that point.

But was it portrayed as actually happening within the storyline, or was it a dream or hallucination? (I haven't seen the show.)

The movie/TV equivalent is having a shot that draws attention to the gun. But Chekhov's gun is more suited to very tight productions (visual equivalents of short stories or novellas rather than novels); something like a movie or especially a TV series will have many things which are not directly relevant to plot but go to characterization or setting. For instance a movie has a barfight, the barfight itself may be completely unimportant other than to demonstrate it's the kind of place where barfights occur. And certain genres rely in misdirecting the audience and will deliberately focus on unimportant-to-plot details to do so.

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