Complaints: PDA or Non-PDA Does Not Equal Ethics (Either Way)

Years ago, I knew a women with two kids under five. Her husband was a supremely nice guy who looked like a pirate or Loid from Spy X Family, only the husband was dark-haired. She was extraordinarily easy in her own skin--very relaxed--not at all prim and proper. 

And she disliked Personal Displays of Affection. 

She reminded me of Frasier who complains when he is expected to hug non-family members at work, just because it is their birthday. (See below.)

She was also a very straightforward person, so she would say, like Kitty in Elementary, "I'm still not a hugger..."

I'm saying this not because I'm a big hugger (or not) and not because I'm adverse to PDA in fiction. I'm saying it because I get highly annoyed when reviewers determine the moral worth of a piece based on PDA. PDA turns into (yet) another marker of something or other rather than a personal idiosyncrasy/choice.

I discuss elsewhere why I don't consider PDA or the disclosure of body parts to automatically be immoral. Here, I'm going to address the other side of the equation, reviewers who complain because characters don't kiss or don't kiss enough or kiss only when the screen fades to black. 

I don't mind a reviewer who says outright (and some do), "I love to watch people make out. It's great! Give me more!"

I dislike reviews which whine because the lack of kissing is repressed or homophobic or whatever.   

I read erotica and watch what Asian television deems "R" (by American standards, it is fairly PG). Again, I have no trouble with body parts. 

I also believe that particular pieces call for particular approaches. 

Filmed versions of Jane Austen have some excuse for PDA since Austen was quite deliberately letting behavior rest between the lines. But I don't hold the non-PDA versions against them. For one, Jane Austen was well-aware of sex scandals. She kept them "off-screen" in her books because they didn't interest her, not because she couldn't write about them. A movie that does the same matches her tone and focus. 

And two, writers who can't create sexual tension without resorting to lots of PDA aren't very good writers (or, to be fair, don't have very good actors). 

Tone and focus matter. Some reviewers criticize Yuri On Ice! for not showing the kiss "on camera." I consider these reviewers have entirely missed the point. One, the sexual tension between Yuri and Victor is so strong and so obvious...do viewers really need some kind of checklist? Not exactly "read between the bolded lines" aficionados, are they? 

Two, the show isn't primarily about the intimate relationship. It's about the relationship and ice-skating and ambition and other skaters. 

Such reviewers will applaud an anime that shows men kissing "for the first time"! And from an "art as social purpose" standpoint (which standpoint I personally detest--there are other venues for people who want to turn everything into a lecture), they can make a case. But if the anime with the kissing people is badly written and drawn (it isn't--it's Cherry Magic and is quite good...but...), then the anime doesn't get a pass.

Likewise, it shouldn't get criticized for NOT having PDA. 

The work should be judged for its entire self: tone, theme, plot, characters...that stuff, that literature and film stuff. 

Art still matters for art's sake.