I believe the current lot has become more obscene simply because they dont have the vocabulary to express themselves...

If you ever paid attention, you’ll find that the people who use the f-word and other cuss words often in the course of their conversations are often people who fare poorly in academics, especially languages...

as for permissiveness, with the invasion of satellite TV in virtually every home in every corner of the world, its not at all surprising to see boundaries being pushed in the courtesy and mannerism departments... but that still doesn’t justify obscenity and the promotion of it...

i stand with political correctness except when it is imposed in opposition to the right to expression...

Yes, Asmita, obscenity has become ubiquitous because language has become homogenized. In the process, people who are now at a loss for particularly precise words fall into the trap of using the oft-repeated and oft-heard jargons of easy language.

This is the mentality of ”for lack of a better word...”.

I am not one to judge if it’s alarming, but obscenity has become part of popular culture.

Maybe, this is one of the ways for the species to degenerate.

What was obscene earlier seems to be very acceptable now days...so I guess it keeps changing

Nishi, obscenity has also become relative. What is obscene to one may not even affect the other.

Maybe, what is alarming is an obscene collective consciousness.

Hmm I think openness and less taboo really allows for the limits and borders to obscenity to be broken. Sex used to be an offensive topic to talk about openly, but now when you walk down the hallways of college dorms, you hear ”hey stacy, did you buy your birth control pills yet, could you pick some up for me?”

Bradley, you’re right to imply that less taboo will lead to freer demarcations and parameters of what are usually regarded as obscene.

But what is above and beyond this concern is the question of who does that. Of who unshackles those chains. And what right do they have to do the unshackling.

Many would want to pose as moral arbiters.

The worst part is that obscenity isnt really well-defined !

Obscenity sells...so its being overused by all kinds of media. Again it is a matter of TRPs, clicks, sales figures of magazines...

Now, that’s the scary part of this obscenity thing, Madhuri. It is used as a tool to promote something else. Earlier I said that obscenity has now become part and parcel of popular culture. And pop culture is precisely what marketing and marketing communications get to learn like the back of their hand.

Grace,
The society is becoming shallow. If we consider what becomes popular culture as a marker of trends then we really are in a sorry state.
Soon we’ll be inflicted with other kind of AIDS - Acquired Intelligence Deficiency Syndrome!!

Right, Madhuri. Popular culture isn’t really the most civilized of benchmarks. Unfortunately, it’s what we breath everyday.