Violence and Sexuality in Society

So here's a post originally written 6/21/13. Dated? Sure. Relevant? I'm fairly confident.
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If I may begin with a story:

On a recent date night, I sat quietly in the movie theater waiting for the film to start.  We conversed in hushed tones through the pre-show music, lights still only half-dimmed as we slowly realized that seated in front of us was family of four, mother, father, and two children including a pajama-clad daughter of no more than eight.  We shared a brief, confused look, accompanied with a shrug that parents would bring their children to a nine o'clock showing of an R-rated film, whose previews themselves were rife with violence.  Of course, it wasn't our family, these weren't our children, and to each his own we mutually concluded.  As the theater darkened and the movie began, we enjoyed our popcorn while the action-for-actions-sake entertained us.  Now, perhaps the gratuitous violence, very detailed and graphic dismemberment and death of fairy-tale-land dwelling people and creatures, and pervasive language only stood out because of the peripheral awareness of a third-ish-grader in our midst.  After all, we've been desensitized to violence throughout our short lives already, from video games to TV, from to movies to the news, so what difference would this additional depiction make?  But I think the violence itself wasn't the primary issue: after the on-screen deaths of more than a dozen protagonists and antagonists alike, one of our heroes is confronted with a woman shedding her cloak and seductively entering the healing waters at the base of a waterfall - revealing to the audience a side glance of her breast*.  Throughout the film, throughout the gruesome decapitations, throughout the killing, throughout the indiscriminate, wanton acts of violence against both combatants and civilians, throughout more than few instances demonstrating the diversity of swearing in the English language, the father sitting in front of us barely even looked at his daughter.  Until the pond scene of course.  Sensing that such a view may corrupt his daughter's frail and blossoming worldview, he reached over and covered her eyes from the evils of nudity, removing it only after he was sure the scene was over and returned to his apathetic movie-viewing shortly thereafter for the remainder of the film.

So where does this disconnect come from?  Why is it that violence has become so commonplace in our society that its representation isn't granted a second thought?  "Violence is everywhere, kids see it all the time so it's not an issue," as one person argued when I initially brought this up.  But that doesn't actually answer the question, does it?  If we allowed nudity to be as prevalent as violence, wouldn't that make it less of an issue as well?  Arguing that something is everywhere because it's everywhere isn't quite what I would call a logical justification.

And I'm not pretending to know what's best for kids.  I hold no advanced degree in childhood development, psychology, or even have any kids of my own.  I'm neither in a position to nor trying to tell people how to raise their kids.  I'm simply posing one opinion in the hopes that it generates some thinking.

Anyway, disclaimer out of the way, an inspiration for this avenue of thinking was a piece from actor William H. Macy:

"The actor finds it absurd that movies filled with gunshots, gore, and murder can be classified as PG, while films featuring sex and nudity are quarantined behind R ratings. 'We're so accepting of violence - ugly, ugly, ugly violence - and we let our children watch it...and yet we're allergic to sex. I don't known much but I know this: Violence is bad and sex is good. Even the bad sex I've had was pretty good. Violence is always bad - there are no exceptions.' Yet...violence is accepted or even celebrated, while sex is often treated as something shameful. 'They say that young kids, especially boys, are thinking about it every four seconds...Our normal ways of suppressing it does not work. You have priests molesting children. You've got husbands and wives torturing each other because we can't talk about anything [to do with sex]...with the amount of crap we've all had laid on our shoulders about our sexuality, it's a wonder we can function at all.'"

                                           Quoted from The Week, vol. 8(603), February 8, 2013; pg. 10 

Are these distorted values we inundate our kids with in fact twisting our very societal values?  I am not a proponent of the belief that violent video games and movies have caused people to lash out violently, as some blame-avoiding lobbyists would have us believe, but I do think that this culture of violence is a factor when looking systemically at society itself.

*A quick note: Just in writing the word "breast", I felt mildly uncomfortable, even though "graphic dismemberment" held barely a fleeting second thought...