Are we getting more prudish?

How could there be nudity on Love Boat? It was on network tv.

We're more prudish overall, but nudity and profanity are more ubiquitous than ever---sex itself is discussed more graphically, but reduced to a joke or political statement. There aren't many truly sexy movies or songs in 2024.

Next you'll tell us they've removed all the profanity and graphic sex from "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet."

Yes, we are. Just read some posts on here that shame men who enjoy sex with multiple partners or who shame men in the 1970s through the 1990s who contracted HIV.

As for the population at large, what you describe, OP, is reflective of that. There is a critique to be had of "wokeness."

Clearly.

The old-fashioned broadcast networks appear to churn out okely-dokely situation comedies,and an endless onslaught of police and fire and medical and legal dramas/procedurals and teen dramas. 'Adult situations,' sexual innuendo (beyond showing off a gym-toned body), bulges, camel-toes, moose-knuckles, the least hint of bush poking out of anywhere are very out of fashion... Everything remotely sexual has been relinquished to streaming media, as has anything of any quality (not necessarily the same circles in the Venn diagram.) Basic, broadcast TV competes for the safe crumbs. Small surprise that a bunched up dick and pair of nuts in a pair of swimming trunks by a pool in a shitty 40 year old Love Boat episode snuck the occasional teaser in, or maybe it wasn't by subterfuge at all. People show much more of their toned gym bodies in more places than they did 40 years ago, but men's shorts, for example, do their damndest to conceal dick and balls at every moment.

Forty years ago what was someone going to do if some background guy's bunched up junk offended them? Take a screen-capture? Publish it on TikTok or Instagram or Bluesky complaining about the affrontery of TV? Write a stern letter to the production studio? some media watchdog? lus if you were poolside 40 years ago, you might have seen some dick shapes and some bush popping out. Not now.

Everyone is naked all the time now it sometimes seems, and with an OnlyFans and a linktree to a hierarchy of 'my naughty sites', but the idea that people have sex or have parts not like a Barbie or Ken doll is in the majority of non-paywal contests more offensive now than then 40 years ago. Now you are expected to pay for it it seems -- even a distant crowd shot with a guy with the outline of cock in his swimtrunks.

That's sort of my point, [r2]

There wasn't nudity. It was seriously just blurring over bikini tops that, I imagine, just had some very prominent nipples under them. Nudity, I could understand, but this was a woman in a bathing suit coming out of a pool. It was apparently fine in 1978 prime time, but someone decided it was too much for audiences in 2024.

OP- No. These SHITTY cable channels censor the most innocuous words/things from old shows of the 1970's to 1990's shown on cable tv. I was watching an old Law and Order/Criminal Intent episode and they would blur out some body that Eames and Goren found- they would blur out the blood. In an episode of that show set in a Club this skanky girl was snorting cocaine with this undercover FBI guy and they blurred out the scene of her snorting cocaine. It's really infuriating that I am paying money to watch these SHITTY channels with commercials yet and they censor EVERYTHING.

Just did a little research, and it turns out the CHARGE! network is owned and operated by trump propaganda machine Sinclair Media.

Of course they would edit out anything even remotely lurid.

Digital Crotch Shot Distorter would be a great addition to my illustrious resume. Where do I apply?

"VERY DEMURE.....VERY MINDFUL"

R1 is correct

[quote]That's sort of my point, [[R2]]

Stealth nudity sometimes made it into the airwaves in the '70s and early '80s because clothing was so skimpy. An episode of "Three's Company" was altered in 2001 after a viewer alerted Nick-at-Nite that part of John Ritter's testicle was briefly visible. That could be the case with some of the "Love Boat" blurring, but not all of it from what you describe.

These syndication staples are mostly watched by nostalgic older viewers who remember the era's endless parade of nipples and bulges, which makes it even sillier. But the advertisers on antenna stations that favor this sort of content are religious charities, St. Jude's Hospital, and funeral insurance companies whose sensibilities distributors might take into consideration.

Hulu yanking the entire "Mixed Blessing" episode of "The Golden Girls" was another example of increased prudishness (and stupidity), though it was later quietly reinstated.

Think about it this way---the Kinks song "Lola" is now considered to be problematic because it asserts that "Lola" is a man at the end.

"Well, I'm not the world's most masculine man But I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man And so is Lola"

Pointing out to the woke inquisitors that it's about transvestite, not a transsexual, would just overload them with confusion; telling them that the song was a singular paean to experimentation, infatuation, and lust at a time when a lot of older married couples still slept in separate beds would make their heads explode. They really have no appreciation for the Romantic tradition of self-exploration. They use all this therapy speak they absorb through poptimisic channels, but all they know how to do is sit around and binge stream tv, reflexively post things online, and get upset when they find out that other not everyone agrees with their largely unexamined views on x,y,z.

We're over-intellectualizing the censorship that OP suggests in these examples. To be blunt, you're comparing what ran on network television in the 8 o'clock hour (widely considered to be adult viewing, as if) and how these programs have been edited for syndication, when they don't know when (or control) a program is shown. What is appropriate for adults at 8 in the evening and what is appropriate for children at 3 in the afternoon are two different standards. What is appropriate for network television hardly compares to what they'll show on premium channels like HBO.

Which leads me to point out that the networks of old (you know, the ones we're claiming are dead) had entire standards and practices departments that scrutinized [italic]everything[/italic]. Many times, programs had to be edited at the last minute because a prude in Iowa objected to some actor's body or language. Further, with regard to prudishness in the 70s and 80s, don't forget that the Parents' Television Council, the Moral Majority (which was neither), and the Parents Music Resource Center (the brainchild of Tipper Gore, Al Gore's wife at the time, harkening back to an era, perhaps the last gasp of, when Democrats were the conservative party) were forces to be reckoned with. And we're talking about an era in which the first interracial kiss (between William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols on [italic]Star Trek{/italic] (TOS) was so controversial that there were stations in the South that flat out refused to air the entire episode. And there are still stations that refuse to show such ridiculously tame content.

This is what gave rise to alternative delivery methods from cable to VCRs. People will seek out the material they want to watch regardless of society's efforts. Today we laugh when someone wants to make viewing material illegal; for instance, we apparently think that no young people in Texas know how to use a VPN to get around the state's ban on sexually explicit material.

R7 Trump would love to take us back to the 50s since that's where his head is still at.

We definitely aren’t as it pertains to sex. If I’m not mistaken there are still regulations by the FCC on what can be shown on basic cable during the day versus than at night, which is when those L&O episodes would have originally run.

R13, I'm not really responding to the OP's dilemma re: Love Boat specifically---just talking about the paradox of the self-identified "sex positive culture" of today

My theory:

Parents these days do everything with their children (same superhero movies, Disney adults, etc.). There's no such thing as adult spaces and discretion. Everything has to be palatable for children. Parents are unable to explain to children that women have nipples and men have penises.

Meanwhile, porn is thriving. So parents are somehow (I hope) finding privacy to view porn.

are those streaming platforms the edit the shows run by religious fundamentalists? do they also blur out and mute gay characters?

Well, elementary school aged kids are also viewing porn.