Comment by _gabe_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _gabe_ | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Because I choose not to watch something that implies it may be sexualizing young girls? So by this logic if you see a trailer for a movie that's highlighting the dangers of child pornography, but from the trailer it seems to be showing and possibly promoting child pornography, and I choose not to watch that because I don't want to unwittingly view a film that promotes child pornography, I have now unreasonably cast judgment on this film? I don't think that it's unfair for me to criticize a film if the way they promote it seems to insinuate it's a film about ethically horrendous and illegal material.

The producers created the trailer to promote the film. If the trailer looks like it's promoting ethically perverse material, I have every right to cast my judgment at that point and say this film is not for me.

I'm not going to sit through a film that seemingly promotes itself as the sexualization of young girls because someone told me that it has a good message at the end. And that's fine. And it's fine for people to cancel a subscription because of that presumption. I'd rather be safe than sorry when it comes to stuff like this.

The marketing material for the movie was absolute dog water. I agree with your position there, but wish you'd take other sources and allow them to add color to your reaction to something you have only a single perspective on. Perhaps they could in form you that your reaction, based on bad information, is inaccurate. Perhaps you could use that realization as an opportunity to view the film yourself and come to your own conclusion based on the new information that your initial reaction was heavily biased based on an inaccurate portrayal of the material.

I'm genuinely curious then. Is the IMDB parents guide enough of an outside perspective for me to determine whether or not I want to watch a film? I'll frequently look it up to see if the film contains any material that I don't want to see, and I'll avoid the film if I get a bad perception from the parents guide. After reading the parents guide about this film it has only reinforced what I originally thought from the trailer.

I'm fine with watching a documentary that highlights the evils of the sexualization of young girls, but I'm not going to watch:

> Frequent scenes of 11-year-old girls dancing lewdly where the camera pans in and zooms in on the children's buttocks and midsections (both still in skin-tight clothes) Close up shots of the girls dancing with their leg spread above their head while camera focus on crotch area. These views are fairly frequent.

And much more content like that just to get to the conclusion that the sexualization of young girls is evil.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9196192/parentalguide/nudity

There is a common saying in English that I'm sure you have heard of: "Don't judge a book by its cover". You keep doubling down on the cover even when knowledgeable people who have watched the movie tell you that you are mistaken.

So much hatred and misery in the world could be avoided if we figured out how to resist this impulse to judge from surface-level impressions.

Argument would have been more compelling if it had begun "Oh I see your point, so I just sat down and watched the whole movie and after that I still think..."

Yes, it is unreasonable to cast judgment on something you have no knowledge of. You may cast judgment on the trailer if you like, since you've seen that, but not the film, which you haven't seen. I don't find this complicated, having seen many trailers that don't accurately portray the films they're advertising, just as I've seen many books that shouldn't be judged by their covers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com