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kassyopeia
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8 Messages

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276 Points

Wednesday, March 24th, 2021 4:02 PM

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Suggestion: Consider blacklisting "gratuitous" in Parents Guide items.

As outlined in the "Parents Guide" submission guide,

[...] the beliefs that parents want to instill in their children can vary greatly. Please only describe the facts of relevant scenes [...]

It seems to me that whether a given occurrence of nudity, gore, et cetera is gratuitous or not is necessarily a subjective judgement rather than a more or less objective observation - and moreover a judgement which no single contributor should be considered qualified to make, in this context. Therefore, it does not belong in Parents Guide items.

Usually, issues such as this have to be left to case-by-case determinations by submission reviewers. But on this occasion, "gratuitous" is so overwhelmingly the go-to term that simply disallowing it would make a lot of headway, IMHO.

Cheers,

- kassy

Idea

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Updated 

3 years ago

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1

jeorj_euler

10.7K Messages

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225.4K Points

4 years ago

Seems like it would be more sensible to simply ask for feedback on how to revise the content of IMDb parents guides that contain the word "gratuitous" or other words like it.

6

kassyopeia

8 Messages

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276 Points

Why? Each and every time I've encountered the word, the remedy was merely to remove it. As it is an adjective, simple removal typically causes problems neither semantically nor syntactically:

Some gratuitous female nudity.

There are bound to be instances in which it is instead used as the complement of a copula construction, as in

Some of the female nudity is gratuitous.

but I reckon those will be relatively rare, based on the general patterns of English expression and the (admittedly anecdotal) evidence in this specific context.

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4 years ago

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jeorj_euler

10.7K Messages

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225.4K Points

Well, that's not the appropriate thing to do. When encountering notes prefaced in such a way, the truly sensible thing to do is to reword them so as to indicate whether the nudity is full frontal, partial frontal, full rear or partial rear, and to what extent it is recognizable/discernible, in terms of lighting and distance between the subject and the camera, along with how long the shots are. Indeed, the adjective "gratuitous" would be removed in the process, but absent the process, it seems pointless to arbitrarily remove the adjective. Perhaps, to me, it doesn't really matter at all whether or not the adjective "gratuitous" is edited out. I also understand that a contributor simply may not know the details of the scene, and thus won't be able to provide the proper details. I would just either leave it alone or try to find somebody who knows the details.

— Jeorj Euler, an IMDb regular registrant

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4 years ago

kassyopeia

8 Messages

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276 Points

Thanks for elucidating your reply. My point has nothing to do with lack of detail, or even with whether an item is factually true or false; it is strictly about sticking to claiming facts ("there is nudity") as opposed to rendering verdicts about them ("the nudity is gratuitous"). This distinction can be made without any information about or reference to the source material in question, which makes it very low-effort. And my specific suggestion is very very low-effort, which is the only reason I'm bothering to bring it up. :)

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4 years ago

jeorj_euler

10.7K Messages

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225.4K Points

It's worth pointing out that a way to vote on the severity of content for a category in any parents guide didn't always exist. So, maybe some problematic content is carried over from the retired swiki system from which all the information in the newer system was migrated.

— Jeorj Euler, an IMDb regular registrant

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4 years ago

kassyopeia

8 Messages

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276 Points

[Karen_P] Is the word unnecessary OK? Like "Unnecessary Nudity"

Is that acceptable?

My thinking is that the near-synonyms - "unnecessary", "unjustified", "superfluous", and so forth - can be as problematic, but that they don't have to be. For one thing, those can be qualified, using a prepositional phrase or some such: "unnecessary to this", "unjustified by that", "superfluous to the other". Doing so tends to make them substantially less subjective, though my secondary issue - that we're not qualified to make such a determination - may continue to apply. "Gratuitous" can't be expanded on like that, at least not idiomatically, unless I'm mistaken.

For another thing, their scope is quite a bit broader, so they can easily occur in the portion of an item that describes the context of the nudity or whatever, rather than being applied to the nudity in and of itself. Like here:

Mayuri Kurotsuchi is an unsettling supporting character. He kills some of his own followers, abuses his daughter Nemu, and causes unnecessary harm to both heroes and villains alike.

Again, for "gratuitous" to be employed like that seems to me so implausible to be not worth worrying about. Based on these considerations, my suggestion should definitely not be applied to any of these alternatives.

[jeorj_euler] It's worth pointing out that a way to vote on the severity of content for a category in any parents guide didn't always exist. So, maybe some problematic content is carried over from the retired swiki system from which all the information in the newer system was migrated.

Good point. I believe I've come across instances in titles that were themselves too recent for that to apply, but I'm not certain.

Technically, severity and gratuity gratuitousness are independent criteria, I suppose: Some mildly explicit scenes can be considered altogether gratuitous, and some extremely explicit scenes can be considered not gratuitous at all. It always comes down to what one bases one's evaluation on. Practically, I expect they correlate, though.

Anyway, my suggestion was aimed primarily at future submissions. Retroactively and systematically eliminating the string from the existing content base seems a bit drastic even to me. :P

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4 years ago

nick_burfle

189 Messages

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6K Points

3 years ago

Here's my perspective.  Each time I find in the Parents Guide not just opinion, but judgmental opinion, my blood boils a little.  We don't need other contributors telling us that the content is gratuitous, or inappropriate, or unnecessary, or that the swearing, violence, or sex is appropriate in context, or that a film is fine for kids if they're over 14, have seen movie X, and their parents watch it with them.  I've even seen -- I'm not making this up -- a couple of times where someone saw fit, in the profanity section, to lecture others via scripture: "Thou shall not take the name of the Lord in vain."  How incredibly rude!

 

I have no qualms at all about editing out these terms out.  Usually they can just be cut, sometimes very simple editing is required to retain the pertinent parts of the original contributors content.  It's not difficult.

 

There's a problem, though, with the idea of automating this.  I've seen every one of these terms used correctly when describing how the characters in the film relate to one another, along the lines of one character accusing another of inappropriate contact or unnecessary violence.  In some films, characters may be punished for blasphemy.  As for "gratuitous" in particular, in one case the director, in the main body of the film, states that he's adding gratuitous nudity to satisfy viewers who insist on an unrated version.

 

So let's continue editing these flagrant violations, but not automate it.

 

As previously suggested, I do wish IMDb would reinstate the reminder that used to appear at the top of the page, that parents' values differ and that the guide is the place for description, not opinion.

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