Genocyber, Sheltered Kids and Stupid Adults.

I have posted Genocyber a few times already in my blog/page, and I find it funny how shocking it is to the world that this aired in an over-the-air kid's show at 6pm between Sailor Moon and Saint Seiya, and any kid of any age could watch in my country. I was even called a liar because people can't conceive entertainment without massive censorship and control... well, a great writer here once said there is no sin on the south of the Equator, and to talk about it I will have to talk about growing up in the wild lands of Brazil before globalization and internet culture taking over.

Often I'm talking to foreign friends and I feel they find it kinda weird me mentioning reading stuff like Spawn when I was 8 years old or so, or having watched Akira and Genocyber even before that, like I'm trying to sound tough, "I was hardcore since I was little", but no, this was just Brazil.
  The culture shock goes both ways. I was very surprised to discover that stuff like RoboCop and Terminator are 18+ in the USA, while I always thought they were just regular movies any kid could and should watch. I remember taking my RoboCop doll to school in the first grade, and I didn't know any kid that hadn't watched those, because they were on over-the-air TV in the afternoon with Tremors, Predator and so. In my perception it was all movies for kids and teens, while movies for adults were romances and dramas with intricate plots and character development that actually required some emotional and rational maturity to enjoy - not dumb action stuff.
  I only discovered people in other countries actually cared about movie ratings when I saw a controversy about Deadpool. Some local celebrity was criticized over the internet for watching it with his kid while the movie was supposed to be 18+, it was quite shocking because with all that juvenile humor I could swear their target audience was 12yos... this controversy would be unthinkable here until the end of the 2000s and the rise of social media in the 2010s. Then I discovered how fucking stupidly dumb these fanatical ratings are, that lock a bunch of important coming-of-age themes outside of teenager's reach; movies like Ken Park, Thirteen and even fuckin' Christiane F. are barred to the audience that should be watching them - not to mention Trainspotting and Requiem for a Dream, that have done a way better job than any corny D.A.R.E. campaign. I'm very glad I watched Kids at school in fifth grade with a teacher talking about sex and drugs, and it's NC-17 in the USA, as if it's at 18 that you should be having that talk... no surprise, the most religious states are the ones with the highest teenage pregnancy and STD rates.

So back to movies: It's not just the kids that could watch anything, I never met a parent or video store clerk that cared unless they were extremely religious - you know, the kind that thinks Harry Potter is satanic. Sleepovers were a very common thing, so we'd rent some movie for the night, "Oh, the kids want to watch Hellraiser? Whatever, just don't wet the bed". The only thing that was really restricted was porn, and I mean hardcore porn because hardly anyone cared about softcore porn either. Kids having Playboy magazines wasn't such a taboo, although not something we'd show our parents, they'd just pretend not to know. There was a TV channel that would show softcore porn after midnight one day of the week and this was the talk the next day at school, "Hey, did you watch the last episode of Emmanuelle in Space?" - there was a day they showed a hentai, it was a big event and I missed it. Everyone was shocked by how bizarre it was and all I know is that, at some point, the demon tentacle monster that was raping girls gets a giant dick and destroys a building with it, and I hate having missed it haha

But how nobody cared? Well, this is Brazil, and Carnaval is really big and traditional here. São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have huge parades they spend the whole year preparing for it and it's shown live on TV. A lot of celebrities and other people that participate in those parades go completely naked, with only bodypaint over the genitals - yes, on prime time live TV, and a month before it our biggest TV channel puts a short video at every damn commercial break all day long with the Globeleza girl dancing naked, telling people to watch the Carnaval. Here is a short collection of clips from 1992 to 2002

The foreign friends I showed this couldn't believe it, the thought of some naked lady dancing all day long on TV and any kid being able to watch it haha - and honestly, the only thought I ever had about it is that it was annoying, that damn song playing all day long.
  But it was just nudity, no spread genitals and penetrations, this was actually considered tasteful because nudity wasn't such a taboo, it was normal in art and life. From heroic nudity in Hellenistic and Roman art, to Renaissance and Liberty Leading the People, the world wasn't so fucking prude as the stupid puritan USA's dark ages culture being dictated now through Twitter's trending topics. From Ness in Earthbound needing pajamas because he was naked on his dream, the censorship of whole humorous sequences of little Goku's willy in the original Dragon Ball, to controversy over the Nevermind's album cover, who the hell looks at a naked child and think "hmmm... sex...". Kurt Cobain's compromise for censorship was a sticker over the baby's penis saying "If you're offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile.", and he was absolutely right.

ps: Remember back in 2004, when Janet Jackson had her clothes ripped accidentally and flashed a nipple on live American TV, and because of that she was blacklisted and became public enemy number one, having her career terminated? This episode seemed so ludicrous to me. All that fuss because of a nipple? Those people are sick...

I only got familiar with the USA's political discourses and trends when I got to Facebook in 2011 or so, and I was shocked by the moralism of even the so called progressives. All the parts in that discussion, well, they felt like the grown up version of the kid from the 1998 comic at the beginning of this post... so fucking sheltered from everything that they can't conceive anything different from the little bubbles they were raised in and respond to everything as either being outraged or triggered. No wonder, the culture these fuckers were raised in didn't get them to use their brains until it was too late, everything was put out of range and being called "mature". If you treat kids like they are stupid, you are raising stupid adults.
  I feel like the reaction to The Boys comics, which I talked in this post, is also caused by that. The stuff on it is so alien to the readers that they think it's "edgy", but, hell, if you didn't grow up as a stupid sheltered kid then you don't get shocked by the sex and violence and understand it's just conveying humor through the absurd and you can actually see the story, the political and social commentary, the parodies and everything else on it.

I don't think censoring and sheltering is only so explicit and direct, although creating taboos over words without context is another culture shock for me - yeah calling someone a nigger and a faggot is offensive and a jerky thing to do, but the words themselves aren't offensive, they are just fucking words, and calling it "n-word" and "f-word" - not to mention the so fucking feared "f-bomb" - sets a dangerous precedent to a neurotic moralistic culture. The Boys TV show is also a good example of sheltering: Butcher's father would be a prime example of toxic masculinity, he considered any sensitivity and attempt to show emotions a weakness, something for faggots, he was proud of being stupid and violent, and would get drunk and beat his wife and kids. Butcher was raised to be stupid and violent as well, he was a drunkard emotionally castrated bully that would pick fights at random because he hated himself, and was on fast track to become his father until he met a woman with more clit than he had balls, but they couldn't have an ignorant brute calling other people fags in the TV show, so instead that character is a Spice Girls' fan...
  Butcher calling everyone fag, poof, dyke, etc, is actually very pertinent to his character. He was raised like that, people are raised like that, they exist doesn't matter how much you try to shelter kids from it (Limp Wrist's Thick SkinFrailty
Equals fatality
Callus those fists
Sharpen your tongues
Grow it thick, kid, grow it thick

Bubbles Pop
Your allies left your block
No shields to hide behind
You’ve only got you on your side
Grow it thick, kid, grow it thick

Don’t be the world’s punching bag
A defenseless queer open for attack
Thick skin, they can’t get through
Layer upon layer, they can’t get through song comes to mind), and because he is not being directly prejudicial towards gays, lesbians, and so, he doesn't think he is being homophobic for using those slurs. Another important part of the comics is that Hughie is very annoyed by Butcher's words, but when they get into a gay club it's Hughie that gets uncomfortable, so his higher moral ground claim was, as it always is in real life, just a big hypocritical virtue signaling. This is later revisited when Hughie goes back to his home town and discovers his childhood friend is transsexual, and he is forced to face his prejudices... well, all discussions left out of the show because they can't have a "hero" saying the "f-word".
  And this veiled sheltering is way more common than you think, look for example at Hollywood adaptations of Insomnia and Open Your Eyes (Vanilla Sky), both movies have asshole main characters that USA tried to turn into tragic and sympathetic for its audience. Let the assholes be assholes, we don't have to identify with every main character. Let's rationalize and think about action and choices, about morality and ethics, instead of trying to get us emotional.

So, back to not being treated like an idiot when growing up, but just for a bit of culture shock: There was a band here called Mamonas Assassinas that'd play every other weekend on popular live TV shows. They were literally a band made for kids, and they had very explicit songs making jokes about orgies (Vira-Vira) and zoophilia (Mundo Animal), among other stuff, things that were fun for you to joke about if you were six or so, but it was a bit awkward if you were still a fan at ten or twelve, because it was a band for little kids. Their song RoboCop Gay might be a bit of a mindfuck to modern politics, because it's sung by a satirical stereotypical ultra gay character to make the kids laugh, followed by an anti-homophobia chorus saying anyone can be gay and you have to accept it - even when they are ultra gay.
  But apart from little kids singing Mamonas Assassinas songs on TV, like the Vira-Vira chorus that goes like "Turn, turn and spin, spread the circle and come, in this damn orgy they already grabbed my ass, and I still haven't fucked anyone", what I truly find beautiful, more than Globeleza and Genocyber (and other stuff like Banheira do Gugu, that would have celebrities playing games and getting naked live on TV every Sunday after church), is this video of the metal punk band Ratos de Porão singing a song about alcohol abuse, drug addiction, violence, depression and suicide on a kid's show in 1991. Yep, we weren't sheltered in the least.

I was in fifth grade I had this English homework to use a Portuguese-English dictionary to translate a song of our choice and present it to the class. I picked Paranoid from Black Sabbath, which a cousin of mine had recorded on a cassette for me - thankfully all that stupid satanic panic from the USA missed us here too. The lyrics are a bit disturbing for a 10yo? Well, not something that any adult mentioned, as I said we weren't treated like idiots and I could rationalize and understand it, but anyway, I realized translating songs wasn't so hard, and even though I probably got a lot of things wrong, I started translating the songs from the CDs I had at home: Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails... stuff my older siblings had, and there were songs with some deep psychological and philosophical themes that just got me thinking about their meanings.
  My mom was really into esoteric stuff, she knew how to make all the calculations to draw astrological charts, had books about Kabbalah, would tell me how the Church altered the Bible to hide that the first woman was Lilith, and she was punished by God and sent to the dark side of the moon because she didn't want to submit to Adam for they were made from the same clay, so God created Eva from Adam... anyway, I was 12yo when I first watched Evangelion and I was like "Cool, a cartoon I can totally relate to!" and then I go on the internet today and read a bunch of grown-ass people saying stuff like "Oh, I just watched Evangelion and it fucked up my mind", "I need therapy", and I really wonder how sheltered those people were growing up, how can themes on Evangelion be so alien that it's disturbing to them. Yeah, my previous contact with esoteric stuff was a privilege on my part, but the psychological part should be everywhere in movies and music - and damn inside of us, if we stop to think for a minute, unless the parents hid everything following the MPAA ratings and Parental Advisory stickers and prevented their kids from ever trying to fucking use their brains!

I've seen people saying Evangelion is not for kids... but it's a coming-of-age show, it relates to kids reaching puberty. Sorry if you were stupid back then.
  Obviously I also saw people calling it edgy.
  Nope. You are just a sheltered normie.

UPDATE

I was randomly contacted about this text (a positive reply), and it got me thinking more about the change of times toward prudery and moralism, and the globalization of WASP-culture shame and guilt addiction through social media. I often post frames from the Watchmen movie on my page, and from time to time this follower tells the story of watching it in the cinema, where a parent and his kid sat behind him. When Dr. Manhattan showed up naked, the kid gasped, and the parent would have some explaining to do that night... it feels really weird to me that a kid old enough to be in a cinema watching Watchmen had never seen a naked man before. Then I looked online and saw forums where people discussed how to explain the bath scene from My Neighbor Totoro to their kids, and I realized that some people are so weird about nudity that they can't even shower or bathe with their own kids. These kids grow up completely alienated from nudity, and when they see it, they get shocked because they find it unnatural.
  The observable effect of creating a taboo around nudity is people who can't separate nudity from pornography and eroticism. If you grow up with nudity being something natural and part of life, it's not something that fazes you, but if it was always considered a taboo and something to be hidden, then nudity shocks and outrages you.

I believe our old approach to nudity derived a lot from our native cultures, which were traditionally nude, and depictions of the natives in media and books were always nude because that was their rightful way and nobody batted an eye. When kids were learning about the natives and painting their faces to celebrate Dia dos Povos Indígenas (Indigenous People's Day), we'd always see pictures and drawings of natives, and they were fully naked, so nudity was not treated as weird or something to be hidden. Then there is also Carnaval, which I already talked about, with lots of artistic nudity... that doesn't mean nudity was accepted in any other context, but for natives and for art, nudity wasn't a big deal – I remember having extracurricular drawing classes when I was in second grade or so, and right after learning how to draw shadows on an apple, we went on to draw a Vitruvian Man and Woman to learn body proportions.

There was a kids' TV show here called Castelo Rá-Tim-Bum. In one episode, they told a native folklore tale, and the two native kids playing it, probably aged between 6 and 8 years old, were naked the whole time. I can only imagine the kind of uproar this would have caused in the USA, but the sad truth is that nowadays it would cause the same uproar here. I remember going naked to pools when I was a little kid, and it wasn't a rare sight to see other little kids naked in pools or on the beach. Of course the parents were always together, and if someone were to look weird at the kids, they'd be lynched. I believe the general sentiment was that kids were sexless entities, so no problem in them being naked, and no one batted an eye.

I know Brazil wasn't the only place to have this sexless view of nudity, as movies like Black Moon (Germany and France), Medea (Italy), and El Topo (Mexico) also have it. I recently watched Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Czechoslovakia), and it's a very cute and whimsical story about a girl on childhood's threshold imagining romance and adventures with heroes and villains. I could really see Hayao Miyazaki animating it, for its dreamy atmosphere reminded me a lot of Spirited Away, but the girl is naked in one scene, and when I went to log the movie on Letterboxd, I saw all the commentary about pedophilia and blah blah blah. In the movies mentioned here, as well as in those Japanese productions I mentioned before, and even cherubs in Renaissance art, nudity represents purity and innocence, but people raised on taboos see nudity and think about sex. They can't separate it from pornography. The filth is in their heads.

And what's the social media impact? Media used to be local, but now it's under global moderation and global peer pressure. You know Globeleza, the girl dancing naked on television in every commercial break near Carnaval? The last time she was naked was 2016, and they killed the character in 2022. I went to check celebrities that were naked in Carnaval, and I was particularly looking for Dercy Gonçalves, a famous Brazilian comedian who went naked for her homage when she was 84 years old, and the pictures of those celebrities were censored on the site lol. We watched it all live on TV, but now the nudity is offensive.
  All our big media gets the majority of its traffic from social media, and what used to be normal here can get you strikes, screw your reach, get you demonetized, deplatformed, etc., so we have to conform to US cultural standards and not do anything that could trigger the American Sunday after-church crowd, even in snippets from an article – and all of us are getting Pavloved by its moderation. Back in 2014 or so, there were some Evangelical freaks, backed by some politicians, complaining about an art presentation in a museum that had nude people, saying it offended the traditional Brazilian family. I posted a picture of the traditional Brazilian family, some naked natives, and it quickly reached a few hundred thousand shares, and the next hour I was banned for a month for pornography haha. My Facebook page Ȧ͓p̟̩ͯo͇͓ͥ̇ċa̝̫͆̾̇l͉̰̅ͅy̠̤͒p͔͖͒̅͌̊ṱ̟̬ͥi͉͓͎͚͑c H͛ͅe̼̬ͤa̳ͣd̩͛ had 40k followers and I lost it due to a bunch of strikes related to nudity and had to start anew, and I don't even post erotic stuff, it was just art that happened to contain nudity, and even though the Terms of Service say it's ok, in reality they censor it. What we used to consider perfectly family-friendly here is 18+ by US standards, and the social media standards are our new cultural standards. I fear kids growing up here today are going to have the same repressed views of nudity of American kids.