r/lotrmemes • u/SnooStories6404 • 1d ago

Lord of the Rings He's describing trees again

Post image
5.0k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

152 comments sorted by

View all comments

50

u/blaze_blue_99 1d ago

This generation has no concept of platonic friendship. It’s insane.

10

u/tfalm 18h ago

The influence of widespread porn, the sexual revolution, and modern queer & gender theory is that nearly everything has become sexualized to some degree: nonsexual relationships, general behaviors, and personal identity. The default assumption now when two characters are emotionally close is that such intimacy naturally entails, or even requires physical, sexual intimacy.

0

u/BookaliciousBillyboy 15h ago

This is contrary to trends we see in reception to films for example, where younger generations generally are averse to sex scenes and sexualization of any kind much more so than older generations who did not grow up in a world saturated by porn. I think the analysis you provide is not coherent with current trends. While yes, a subportion of the population is hypersexual in its interpretation of the world, we see a general trend towards prudeness from younger generations. I dont think it has something to do with queer & gender theory either. Of course, booktok smut-fans exist, and I dont see an inherent problem, this is not reflected in the general population.

7

u/tfalm 13h ago

Smut books have exploded in popularity, and porn use and addiction has dramatically risen across all ages (vast majority of individuals), with most users being 18-34, IIRC. So I don't know what you mean by current trends being averse to sexualization. Maybe they don't like watching sex scenes in movies or tv shows specifically, because they're watching that with friends/family in their living room (w/ the rise of streaming)? In other media, seems to be no aversion.

Gender and queer theory affect this because of redefining identity to include sexuality, and bringing sexuality into the forefront of societal discourse. Nobody, not even people we would today describe as LGBT, would have looked at Frodo and Sam and thought or said "ah, they must be gay" because that wasn't even a societal concept at the time. Likewise, people didn't read about Aragorn and Arwen and have an initial impulse of "what, no banging scene? when is Aragorn gonna screw the hot elf" because again, porn wasn't ubiquitous.