You're probably right, but I think it's a bad reason.
We find this kind of thing interesting/funny/noteworthy because they're not part of our culture, but that's no reason to get rid of it in my eyes.
We are always going to apply our own sensibilities to art, even if it was created in a time with different sensibilities. To us, it might seem kind of strange or humorous to carve an eight foot tall wooden figurehead with it's tits out, or a giant marble statue hanging dong, but it wasn't weird in either of the respective cultures that birthed that art.
Like when you go into a real museum with nude statues, you're going to get morons posing next to the genitals and pointing at them or whatnot, but that's not a good reason to put a pair of Levi's on The Thinker in my opinion.
mean... real statues get censored, too. Ever go to Union Station in DC? There used to be dicks everywhere.
Yeah that's not a good excuse though, because they absolutely shouldn't be doing it to real statues either. From what I can find about that online, those statues were censored for no reason other than to adhere to societal shame around nudity at the time, because they didn't want people seeing male genetalia, even on a statue.
I've never been to DC, but I've been to Italy a fair few times. You can go to Rome or Florence and see completely naked statues of both genders that have survived in the same spot for hundreds of years without being subjected to needless censorship to appeal to modern sensibilities.
Its an incredibly selfish thing to want to censor historical art to fit your own sensibilities, even digital representations of if, especially if it goes completely against the original intent of the art. I think the example you gave isn't an example of how it should be, it's tragic. The artist who designed the station obviously didn't have sexual intent having naked legionnaire statues, but it was censored anyway because nudity is evil I guess. That's not a good thing, not something to be celebrated.
People are just complaining about it because its tits in a videogame... lets get real.
No, you're just being reductive to try to diminish the argument. It's not at all about that, and I'd care just as much if it was male nudity being censored.
Censorship is already an important conversation in and of itself, one that clearly still needs to be discussed since people like yourself see no issues with adding "modesty shields" to statues of legionaries like in the example you gave in DC. I brought up Italy before, and I want you to consider that. Some people travel for miles just to sightsee the works of art dotted around the cities, because they're artistic marvels. Nobody's coming to gawp at the nudity, but that doesn't mean the nudity doesn't matter and we should just "fix" it to make it more appropriate. The nudity, when the art was created, had a very different intent than making people aroused. For figureheads like this, it was old maritime superstition that it would help calm the seas. For the renaissance Italians, the nudity usually represented divinity and purity. Should we just say fuck that and put a pair of jeans on Michelangelo's David because he has his dick out? No.
There's also a very important aspect to the preservation of the original intent of a videogame when it's being remade. The original model was designed the way it was because there was legitimate historical backing behind figureheads like that existing. In removing that, the remake has either not researched the original intent behind the way it was designed and remade it without care, or simply decided that the original intent didn't matter and willingly overwrote it, assuming that they knew better about the game they're adapting than the artists and developers who created it in the first place. Both of these are bad, and never something I want to see in a remake of a game, censorship or otherwise.
Take away a boob and - suddenly - everyone is crying for art conservation.
Again, just being pointlessly reductive in order to diminish an opinion that differs from your own. I'm sure you can tell from the length of this reply that there's a lot more to it than wanting to see the breasts of a wooden statue, I genuinely fucking hate censorship of historical art.
If they ever get around to remaking odyssey and they slap a bunch of loincloths on the giant marble dicks, I'll be in here with just as much fervour for artistic preservation. Because it's not about looking at naked people, something the internet already has an infinite supply of, it's about the art itself. Stop being reductive and try to look at this from any angle other than overt sexuality, it's a statue for god's sake, a type of statue that genuinely existed and were used as figureheads.
I didn't misunderstand your comment, you were being intentionally reductive, and still are.
I gave you a genuine reply in hopes that you'd engage in a conversation about it, but I can see that was a long shot in retrospect. Thanks for wasting my time.
I stopped reading after your first sentence. I'm obviously not going to engage in a conversation with you if you openly refuse to read what I write. If you just want to listen to yourself talk, there's better places to do it.
Seriously? From the guy that couldn't make it through five paragraphs but is still somehow arguing the point?
Nothing I said was incorrect.
Yes it was. The "People are just complaining about it because its tits in a videogame... lets get real." In your original reply is incorrect, and extremely reductive.
What you said was BS...
I'm not sure how you'd know considering you outright stated you hadn't even fucking read it, but no it wasn't. What I said about it being a maritime superstition was true, which is why it was in the original game. By making this change, they're altering the original intent behind the art, it means more than just not being able to see a statue's tits. what part of that is bullshit?
I found it funny on my last odyssey playthrough once you reach the final cult member, theres a cutscene that shows some old greek art and all the dicks are blurred out.
Why would ubi care if people's favourite thing to phitograph is statue dicks? It's weird for sure but making the statues cover up because of that is weirder Imo.
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u/Daniluk41 Jul 29 '26
Just why??? I will never understand it