The market is already saturated with entertainment that is little more than shock value. There’s a reason that channels like GSN, RFD, MeTV, etc... have growing audiences. As some point people want their entertainment to be entertaining, not a stream of sensory overload.
If Apple goes all-in in this programming strategy, we’ll have a better idea how popular this sort of thing really is.
Adding onto this, Apple is just one more production company in a competitive field. Either their original movies and shows will stand up on their own and find an audience, or they won't, and choosing not to produce adult-oriented shows/movies won't really affect the calculus too much.
Maybe they don't produce the next Game of Thrones, but maybe they make their own in-house Pixar, or maybe they could try to do either or both and still fail as a production company.
It couldn't hurt to get a large number of apple employees using Apple products to produce animated films and other cinematic stuff.
Let their own employees tell them how they are screwing things up for their power users. Perhaps they could win back some of the market share for high end producers.
There are two paths to reduced how much shock value and sensory overload there is. Either culturally we can change and view sex and nudity as less shocking and simply part of life, or we reinforce old values by making it more taboo.
I would prefer entertainment to be more entertaining by simply viewing sex and nudity as less shocking.
That seems like a very simplistic view. Life is not boolean, and neither are human beings. Denigrating a particular point of view as "old" and using "taboo" illustrates that you've already closed your mind to alternatives.
Some of the most shocking and suspenseful films ever made had little to no nudity or violence. They did so through good writing and production. Throwing a bunch of blood or boobs on the screen is cheap and easy and attracts like-minded audiences. Making quality entertainment is hard.
Also, thinking that blood and gore and nudity never existed in entertainment before the modern age and that the "old" values were puritanical is simply false. Shock value has existed as long as there have been books printed, movies made, and photos captured. The things published today have nothing on some of the illustrated gore from the 16th century.
You're presenting this as a set of hard facts, where in reality you are just telling us about your subjective view of sexuality. That's natural, but perhaps there is a more neutral way to word your stance if that's the case.
That's not my subjective view. It is historical and well documented fact that cultures cover and keep covered body parts they deem sexual. There is lots of literature on the subject, anywhere from articles noting that the first pair of shorts in spring is a big deal, but by the end of summer people are inured to it, to testimony from people who participate in nudist colonies that people walking around nude all the time takes the sex out of nudity.
I have spoken to someone who went to nudist colonies. He told me outsiders always imagine it's all sex, all the time but it absolutely is the opposite of that. Most people aren't especially sexy when running around naked to begin with and when you normalize nudity, it further reduces the sexual element.
Just because you aren't familiar with the literature doesn't mean I'm making stuff up here.
I wish they would go a little bit further in their restraints, also not ok:
* Giganormous battles between robots, demons, superheroes, mutants or aliens in CG (puppets/masks/costume/makeup is ok).
* Two mortal enemies that need to coöperate (no you're not going to bring a new angle to this, and no it won't be funny).
* Anything including a magical database or magical computer programs that will do whatever you need right now.
* Time-travel in non-scifi movies/series (e.g. super-assassin in Jason Bourne traveling from Rome to Athens and arrives five minutes after Jason Bourne was spotted).
Maybe then we could get some movies that depend on good writing...or maybe I'm just dreaming...
I understand that this is largely a marketing strategy, and I'm fine with that.
What's always kind of hilarious is when their "no porn" strategy, again a marketing choice, is portrayed by third parties as a moral issue for Apple. I mean, if Apple actually actually cared about adult content in general, they would remove browsers from all their content, lest their users be exposed to an infinite torrent of smut and filth.
> I mean, if Apple actually actually cared about adult content in general, they would remove browsers from all their content, lest their users be exposed to an infinite torrent of smut and filth.
You say this like it’s possible. If it were, I’d bet it would ship by default in browsers.
In any case, the fact that they have a stake in content at all is a moral choice. They could allow users to install apps through any other way than Apple, but they don’t.
It’s a huge mistake to lump all of Apple’s behavior with regard to their stores into one.
They would lose so much money on third party app stores, that this is clearly a fiscal issue for them. You would need a mountain of evidence showing that Apple thinks that’s a moral issue.
Their content stores is another beast. While adult content sells, I suspect that Apple believes they can make more money while remaining squeaky clean. This has obvious benefits when selling to parents, but it also makes Apple seem more refined and upmarket compared to an AppStore full of “hot babe” calendars and similar. This is more of a hunch than the previous argument though.
The interesting exception is their podcast offerings, where they allow for a lot of sexual content. This also bolsters my suspicions that it’s all financial, since I do not believe that Apple makes much money on podcasts, if any at all.
They could pretty easily block the 100 most popular porn sites in Safari if they cared to. This wouldn't be 100% effective, but it would do something if that were their goal.
Restricting people to the app store where they get a cut of all sales is a business choice, not a moral one. They get more money when you can only buy stuff in the way that gives them money.
Apple isn’t interested in restricting your access. They’re interested in brand association. Nobody conflates Apple’s Sari browser with adult content.
This is about Apple producing or licensing content. They don’t want their name, logo, or brand associated with certain content. It will limit their ability to ship content like Game of Thrones, but it’s not about blocking content produced by third parties.
Yes it is. Apple block stacks of content on iOS, and heavily restrict any mechanisms for people to access them otherwise.
Social networking sites for BDSM sexual minorities are banned from the app store. Sites like Comixology frequently delist books from their app because they're terrified of Apple's arbitrary and capricious censorship deleting them off the platform entirely, despite the fact they don't even accept payments via any Apple systems. They block sexual health education apps.
Apple is very interested in restricting people's access to sexual content and to sexual minorities that Tim Cook isn't a member of.
That’s a brand issue again. The App Store is hosted by Apple. They choose not to host certain content. That’s not the same as restricting access. You can fire up any number of BDSM sites in your browser.
Blocking the top 100 most porn sites would do nothing because it’s incredibly cheap to register a new domain name. My point was more that it’s silly to even consider it as a possibility.
And just because this was a business decision doesn’t mean it’s not a moral one—they’re emphatically against you using your own device to your own ends.
Blocking the top 100 most popular porn sites would make it harder for users to reach those sites. It would harm he porn sites that they were morally fighting against by rendering their valuable domain names useless for a lot of users. It's not silly just because it's not 100% effective.
If they were emphatically against you using your device to your own ends, they would do something in the browser.
I don’t think it’s a trivial difference to pointedly refuse to push and promote a genre of content, since the line you draw will lead to very different outcomes, depending on where you draw it.
Apple doesn’t restrict people’s ability to consume what they want; they simply choose not to be a distributor of things they choose not to distribute. You can watch porn on a Mac — that doesn’t mean Apple has to become an outlet for its distribution. It’s kind of a libertarian view: do what you want, that doesn’t mean they have to promote or sell it themselves.
I tried the Showtime app trial a while back. There was definitely porn in the "After Dark" section. Considering how heavy handed they've been with other apps in the past, I was a bit surprised.
Would not Apple miss out on hugely popular shows like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad if it starts filtering out shows that have violence or sex from its original programming? Apple can be successful but it won;t be hugely successful with this strategy like HBO or Netflix in my opinion.
Deadpool is part of the X-Men franchise that 20th Century Fox has movie rights to produce. They put the MARVEL logo and appropriate Disney credit in the credits, but that's as far as it goes... it isn't produced by Disney.
Really wanted to watch the show Billions, but the opening scene is literally main character’s ( Paul Giamatti) wife peeing on him right after she burns out a cigarette on him during a severe BDSM session.
It's dumb and it's there to pander to an edgy audience, but it really shouldn't be a problem. Why does that scene bother you? Isn't it just because that stuff is taboo?
That may be all there's to it, but I bet the fact that it's sexual makes all the difference. Do you think Bucephalus355 would have bothered to complain about it if the scene was of a woman puking?
A) Puking is not anywhere near as disgusting, and you could get equally disgusted by seeing someone peeing on someone else even in a nonsexual context (e.g. hazing).
B) Some people can feel elevated disgust towards portrayals of other people being sexual. In that case, the fact that it's sexual does make the difference, but it's still a disgust reaction.
1. It insults the intelligence of the viewer and indicates the rest of the show will do the same
2. Humans urinating on each other combined with torture is disgusting to the vast majority of viewers, and seeing a scene like that will naturally turn off many viewers. Even Game of Thrones saved the rape?-on-top-of-a-corpse scene for after the characters had substantial development.
On a related note, at what point does "don't judge" end? What if the opening scene depicted necrophilia? How about beastiality? There's nothing wrong with being disgusted by things 99.X% of the planet is disgusted by
Kink shaming is a thing now huh? Just because you say so?
It's disgusting, depraved, sub-human, and no, shouldn't be on television ever.
Society has the right to make judgements about behaviors that are deplorable, undesirable, immoral, etc and can and should try to suppress those behaviors either through laws or even shame.
See that's the thing, there are whole worlds of fetishes out there that people can't possibly be expected to understand. (This is one) So, the sort of fire-and-brimstone moralizing that you promote has been termed 'kink-shaming' (not by me, cmon man...)
It has been a thing for a while now and existed before the label was applied to it. Back at least to Greek times where in a major break from value norms preferring heterosexual intercourse for pleasure was once considered perverse. And despite how loud and much disproportionate effort put into it kinks are hardly the greatest evil or an actual issue in many cases. You say they should but what do they even gain from it except for power, control, and more blackmail potential?
It brings to mind a pet peeve of mine how morality seems to be used to mean how judgemental one is of those who are different or having a good time. I guess because looking down on others for being different is easier way to feel like a good person than say making sacrifices, standing up to injustice in the face of a society that agrees with it, helping others, advancing science or engineering, or well anything that is capable of actually making the world a better place.
To me it's not about "don't judge", but about not treating sexual things like they're special. Notice how both of your examples of potentially over-the-line content are also of a sexual nature.
I imagine some people feel like you do (I don’t). But I also wonder how many people feel like they have to _say_ they feel like you do in order to avoid being judged harshly... which is how censorship starts to get its way.
Quite the contrary, I actually feel reluctant to voice that I feel like he does, because in the liberal circles I hang out in, I tend to get judged for feeling like he does.
If it makes you feel any better, I completely forgot about that scene until you mentioned it and watched the entire first season. By the end I could not empathize with any of the characters because they were by and large terrible people doing things I could not relate to at work and at play. Interesting entertainment can be made with all those qualities but this was not it for me.
It's not necessarily about shock value, it can be just about realism. In real life, people smoke, have sex, pick their nose, throw up, swear etc. LOTR can work without this as it's an epic fairy tale that doesn't need deep and developed characters.
But if you want to make something like Breaking bad, you're seriously artistically limited by arbitrary ratings. I don't think it's fair to reduce this "sex and violence are unnecessary".
Sex is not just shock value though, the same as toilet humour is not just poop jokes.
Here it seems it goes beyond and Apple doesn’t want disturbing content. For instance in these terms I’d expect a blackmirror style social ranking commentary to be refused if it hit too close to home.
Or to get back to sex, LGBT subjects including suicide, depression, domestic violence or realistic bullying would also be out.
Apple is a small player in entertainment industries, so I don’t care what they value, but I hope every producing company doen’t do the same.
Let's put the counter to you though - toilet humor is easy. It makes money. It's what allows so many actors and production companies to make a living, and because they're successful they can then go off and make more interesting things and take risks on higher minded ideas. If you run a production company that insists on only producing content that is extremely difficult to make successfully you're just much more likely to end up with a bad investment.
Publishing that content isn't just about choosing to back that stuff, it's about making enough stuff that you find the great writers, directors and actors to put together the more difficult stuff.
Here's the subhead from the article: The tech giant wants to make scripted shows for streaming, only without violence, politics and risqué story lines
That already exists. It's called the Hallmark Channel.
My wife likes to watch. I also occasionally watch. At Hallmark the movies are invariably rated G and often end with the romantic leads having their first kiss (after about three interrupted attempts earlier in the movie).
I wish that, in at least some subset of the Hallmark movies, the romantic lead characters would "bang it out" at some point in the film. But that never happens. Nor have I ever seen a Hallmark movie with black lead characters. Haven't seen any gay lead characters either.
Hallmark is enjoyable. But it's a niche. Apple couldn't make enough money to move the needle by pursuing a niche like that. And how much edgier could they get if they're so worried about their brand?
Disney used to use the Touchstone Pictures distribution label for their edgier content. But that now seems to have faded out. Maybe the simplest answer is for Apple to use a different label for the risqué stuff?
There are more alternatives to "violence, politics and risque" than Hallmark. For instance Apple wants to produce a Foundation series based off Isaac Asimov's work.
Even Morman TV, which is similarly prudish, has the freedom to create exciting stories, like Extinct.
I think his point was that apple would invariably end up serving a niche audience. Referring to two other examples of niche programming only reinforces that assertion.
Sure you could fill a whole service with programs for a wide variety of niche audiences, but I don’t think it would be very profitable as none of the individual shows will ever attract the kind of audience a show that is not constrained by these kinds of broad-stroke programming choices could attract.
His point clearly wasn't just "it's targeting niches" but "it's a niche like Hallmark". You however might have a point, but as long as it's sometime I'm into, great.
This sounds like a case of Apple not learning from their own history. Previously their management actively discouraging gaming for a while because they wanted to be business machines and they worried computers were already too whimsical. It isn't an end-all as a niche but the forfeiture is pointless - especially since endearing itself to a young niche as a brand can pay premiums. They wound up left behind anyway since they aren't their customer base anyway and prefer others. IBM got the business market largely. Meanwhile Apple's target while pretty broad certainly doesn't seem concentrated on prudes and stodgy sort but the trendy if anything.
I know that slogans tend to be pretty vapid and poorly followed at best but the irony of 'think different' and that sort of mindless conformism to outdated norms is staggering.
As a new entrant in this space, I don’t see an issue with Apple being cautious and sticking to non-controversial content.
But there are several ways to tastefully include sex and nudity to add to the artistic value of the work without compromising its brand. The same goes with violence, drugs, politics, etc. The English speaking world may be fine with this. But this decision could possibly end up being an impediment to getting more creators and in turn making more money if Apple wants to get into local content beyond English and beyond that world.
Different people in cultures may have slightly different views on the well known characterization of porn as “I know it when I see it” (by Alan Novak/Justice Potter Stewart), but what matters more is whether the content fits the context (or sets the context) and is useful to carry the story along. Even people who are more conservative in their views of sex and nudity can distinctly evaluate/classify pornographic movies from non-pornographic movies.
Alternatively, Apple could succeed in places that tend to be less enthusiastic risqué content than even the US (e.g. China is one of Apple's biggest markets).
It's interesting that Apple does already sell music with explicit lyrics and R rated movies as well as television content like Game of Thrones and video games with violent content (all labeled with appropriate ratings so parents can use the provided parental controls to exclude them on children's devices).
One wonders why it wouldn't be good enough to give explicit apps an accurate rating and go on about your business, given what they already sell.
My guess is that this case was more about being wary of what sort of content they produce in house than what they sell.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 155 ms ] threadThe market is already saturated with entertainment that is little more than shock value. There’s a reason that channels like GSN, RFD, MeTV, etc... have growing audiences. As some point people want their entertainment to be entertaining, not a stream of sensory overload.
If Apple goes all-in in this programming strategy, we’ll have a better idea how popular this sort of thing really is.
Maybe they don't produce the next Game of Thrones, but maybe they make their own in-house Pixar, or maybe they could try to do either or both and still fail as a production company.
Let their own employees tell them how they are screwing things up for their power users. Perhaps they could win back some of the market share for high end producers.
It would be interesting to see if there was a mandate to use Apple gear in the render farm.
I would prefer entertainment to be more entertaining by simply viewing sex and nudity as less shocking.
Some of the most shocking and suspenseful films ever made had little to no nudity or violence. They did so through good writing and production. Throwing a bunch of blood or boobs on the screen is cheap and easy and attracts like-minded audiences. Making quality entertainment is hard.
Also, thinking that blood and gore and nudity never existed in entertainment before the modern age and that the "old" values were puritanical is simply false. Shock value has existed as long as there have been books printed, movies made, and photos captured. The things published today have nothing on some of the illustrated gore from the 16th century.
There are huge social, psychological and emotional components to human sexuality. The physical aspects are just one piece of the equation.
There are consequences to making it all too prosaic to have everything on display and they aren't all positive by any stretch of the imagination.
I have spoken to someone who went to nudist colonies. He told me outsiders always imagine it's all sex, all the time but it absolutely is the opposite of that. Most people aren't especially sexy when running around naked to begin with and when you normalize nudity, it further reduces the sexual element.
Just because you aren't familiar with the literature doesn't mean I'm making stuff up here.
* Giganormous battles between robots, demons, superheroes, mutants or aliens in CG (puppets/masks/costume/makeup is ok).
* Two mortal enemies that need to coöperate (no you're not going to bring a new angle to this, and no it won't be funny).
* Anything including a magical database or magical computer programs that will do whatever you need right now.
* Time-travel in non-scifi movies/series (e.g. super-assassin in Jason Bourne traveling from Rome to Athens and arrives five minutes after Jason Bourne was spotted).
Maybe then we could get some movies that depend on good writing...or maybe I'm just dreaming...
What's always kind of hilarious is when their "no porn" strategy, again a marketing choice, is portrayed by third parties as a moral issue for Apple. I mean, if Apple actually actually cared about adult content in general, they would remove browsers from all their content, lest their users be exposed to an infinite torrent of smut and filth.
You say this like it’s possible. If it were, I’d bet it would ship by default in browsers.
In any case, the fact that they have a stake in content at all is a moral choice. They could allow users to install apps through any other way than Apple, but they don’t.
They would lose so much money on third party app stores, that this is clearly a fiscal issue for them. You would need a mountain of evidence showing that Apple thinks that’s a moral issue.
Their content stores is another beast. While adult content sells, I suspect that Apple believes they can make more money while remaining squeaky clean. This has obvious benefits when selling to parents, but it also makes Apple seem more refined and upmarket compared to an AppStore full of “hot babe” calendars and similar. This is more of a hunch than the previous argument though.
The interesting exception is their podcast offerings, where they allow for a lot of sexual content. This also bolsters my suspicions that it’s all financial, since I do not believe that Apple makes much money on podcasts, if any at all.
Nowadays? No idea. Haven’t used it since 2011 or so.
Restricting people to the app store where they get a cut of all sales is a business choice, not a moral one. They get more money when you can only buy stuff in the way that gives them money.
Apple isn’t interested in restricting your access. They’re interested in brand association. Nobody conflates Apple’s Sari browser with adult content.
This is about Apple producing or licensing content. They don’t want their name, logo, or brand associated with certain content. It will limit their ability to ship content like Game of Thrones, but it’s not about blocking content produced by third parties.
Social networking sites for BDSM sexual minorities are banned from the app store. Sites like Comixology frequently delist books from their app because they're terrified of Apple's arbitrary and capricious censorship deleting them off the platform entirely, despite the fact they don't even accept payments via any Apple systems. They block sexual health education apps.
Apple is very interested in restricting people's access to sexual content and to sexual minorities that Tim Cook isn't a member of.
And just because this was a business decision doesn’t mean it’s not a moral one—they’re emphatically against you using your own device to your own ends.
If they were emphatically against you using your device to your own ends, they would do something in the browser.
I can't say I care much about their intentions. I can say that they are preventing me from using my device very effectively.
Disney isn’t going to drop their adult content when the Fox acquisition is complete.
What.
B) Some people can feel elevated disgust towards portrayals of other people being sexual. In that case, the fact that it's sexual does make the difference, but it's still a disgust reaction.
So if some of us like watching people peeing on each other should we all be sent to Gulags?
At which point is the line drawn?
1. It insults the intelligence of the viewer and indicates the rest of the show will do the same
2. Humans urinating on each other combined with torture is disgusting to the vast majority of viewers, and seeing a scene like that will naturally turn off many viewers. Even Game of Thrones saved the rape?-on-top-of-a-corpse scene for after the characters had substantial development.
On a related note, at what point does "don't judge" end? What if the opening scene depicted necrophilia? How about beastiality? There's nothing wrong with being disgusted by things 99.X% of the planet is disgusted by
Or consider that the intent of that scene was to inspire disgust in the viewer. Does it tie into character development somehow?
Also, don't kink-shame...
It's disgusting, depraved, sub-human, and no, shouldn't be on television ever.
Society has the right to make judgements about behaviors that are deplorable, undesirable, immoral, etc and can and should try to suppress those behaviors either through laws or even shame.
It brings to mind a pet peeve of mine how morality seems to be used to mean how judgemental one is of those who are different or having a good time. I guess because looking down on others for being different is easier way to feel like a good person than say making sacrifices, standing up to injustice in the face of a society that agrees with it, helping others, advancing science or engineering, or well anything that is capable of actually making the world a better place.
Well, sure. Could you explain why you think BDSM is deplorable, undesirable, or immoral?
Volenti non fit injuria. Necrophilia is ok, beastiality not so. Easy.
(Not that I'd like to see either, just saying which would make me search for torches and pitchforks.)
In comedy toilet humor is easy.
In Movies, it seems shock value is the equivalent. It’s much harder to tell a great story.
There are many popular titles that don’t include shocking levels of violence or sex. Just take a look at Star Wars or lord of the rings
But if you want to make something like Breaking bad, you're seriously artistically limited by arbitrary ratings. I don't think it's fair to reduce this "sex and violence are unnecessary".
Here it seems it goes beyond and Apple doesn’t want disturbing content. For instance in these terms I’d expect a blackmirror style social ranking commentary to be refused if it hit too close to home.
Or to get back to sex, LGBT subjects including suicide, depression, domestic violence or realistic bullying would also be out.
Apple is a small player in entertainment industries, so I don’t care what they value, but I hope every producing company doen’t do the same.
Publishing that content isn't just about choosing to back that stuff, it's about making enough stuff that you find the great writers, directors and actors to put together the more difficult stuff.
That already exists. It's called the Hallmark Channel.
My wife likes to watch. I also occasionally watch. At Hallmark the movies are invariably rated G and often end with the romantic leads having their first kiss (after about three interrupted attempts earlier in the movie).
I wish that, in at least some subset of the Hallmark movies, the romantic lead characters would "bang it out" at some point in the film. But that never happens. Nor have I ever seen a Hallmark movie with black lead characters. Haven't seen any gay lead characters either.
Hallmark is enjoyable. But it's a niche. Apple couldn't make enough money to move the needle by pursuing a niche like that. And how much edgier could they get if they're so worried about their brand?
Disney used to use the Touchstone Pictures distribution label for their edgier content. But that now seems to have faded out. Maybe the simplest answer is for Apple to use a different label for the risqué stuff?
Even Morman TV, which is similarly prudish, has the freedom to create exciting stories, like Extinct.
Sure you could fill a whole service with programs for a wide variety of niche audiences, but I don’t think it would be very profitable as none of the individual shows will ever attract the kind of audience a show that is not constrained by these kinds of broad-stroke programming choices could attract.
I know that slogans tend to be pretty vapid and poorly followed at best but the irony of 'think different' and that sort of mindless conformism to outdated norms is staggering.
But there are several ways to tastefully include sex and nudity to add to the artistic value of the work without compromising its brand. The same goes with violence, drugs, politics, etc. The English speaking world may be fine with this. But this decision could possibly end up being an impediment to getting more creators and in turn making more money if Apple wants to get into local content beyond English and beyond that world.
Different people in cultures may have slightly different views on the well known characterization of porn as “I know it when I see it” (by Alan Novak/Justice Potter Stewart), but what matters more is whether the content fits the context (or sets the context) and is useful to carry the story along. Even people who are more conservative in their views of sex and nudity can distinctly evaluate/classify pornographic movies from non-pornographic movies.
One wonders why it wouldn't be good enough to give explicit apps an accurate rating and go on about your business, given what they already sell.
My guess is that this case was more about being wary of what sort of content they produce in house than what they sell.