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Where Have All the Sex Scenes Gone?
- newsclues 5y agoDon’t need to catch a steamy scene from film when we have the internet full of pornography on demand.
- nkozyra 5y agoWhereas pornography is mostly prurient, sex and nudity in film has a useful effect on tone and pace in narrative.
- flatiron 5y agoAnyone know why piholes default config has this site on the deny list?
- scrollaway 5y agoGuessing the word beacon in the url? Never go full Scunthorpe etc.
- beezischillin 5y agoMy PiHole doesn’t block this site and I didn’t fiddle much with the config
- Miner49er 5y agoI would be surprised if this list is on a default config, but it seems to be on this fake news list: https://github.com/Entree3k/Pi-hole-Block-List/blob/master/Fake%20News%20List https://github.com/Entree3k/Pi-hole-Block-List/blob/master/F...
- flatiron 5y agoYes yer right I did add that. Thanks
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Alex3917 5y agoIncreasingly in Hollywood, the creative assets for movies are being produced before the scripts are even written. So e.g. for a movie that they know will have a fight scene, they just go in and capture a bunch of different sequences with different outcomes. Anyway it could be kind of weird to have the same done with sex scenes.
- splatzone 5y agoThat’s fascinating. Can you share some more information about this process, where filming happens before the script is done? It seems to be that there might be a parallel with software dev practices, ie waterfall model (write script, shoot script, edit film) and a more lean/agile model (writing, shooting and editing in whatever order it takes to build up the film)
- Alex3917 5y agoMessage #3 in this email thread: https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/8SE7gM0xRkGI2taSIFBJhw/rensa-games https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/8SE7gM0xRkGI2taSIFBJhw/rensa-g...
- sbarre 5y agoSo your reference is something else you wrote? I'd love to see some other references if have any. It's a bold claim (from the linked article) to say that: > Black Widow was fully created with motion capture ("pre-visualization") before a script was even written
- Alex3917 5y ago> So your reference is something else you wrote? I didn't write it, that's my co-founder. And plus there is a full article about it here if you just Google it: https://www.insider.com/marvel-plans-movies-action-scenes-years-before-filming-previs-visualization-2021-1 https://www.insider.com/marvel-plans-movies-action-scenes-ye... "While previs used to be used for just one or two tricky action scenes, Marvel has embraced the approach of visualizing entire movies, including quieter beats and dialogue scenes." "The first visualizations of a Marvel film will often begin before the script's fully finished." "Occasionally, rough previs might be underway even before the cinematographer or director has signed on to the project, a practice that can be controversial in Hollywood. Director Lucrecia Martel said she turned down the offer to direct the upcoming "Black Widow" movie after Marvel told her not to worry about the action sequences."
- cblconfederate 5y agoArt imitates life > What did we think would happen when we spent decades screaming about The Male Gaze and how film's treatment of women inherently objectifies them This is not true, the affinity of latest generations for postmodern asexuality is a preference, not catechism
- Kaze404 5y agoAs we know, people are increasingly having less sex in front of cameras.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fumar 5y agoYou say that with confidence. Do you have research to share?
- cblconfederate 5y agowhat, that young people are having less sex ? i think it's well documented https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/202006/why-so-many-young-people-are-having-no-sex https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/2020...
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoI thought the male gaze was more about unnecessary panning on ass/tits in a scene that has nothing to do with sex, not even to reflect the protagonist falling in love or feeling lust for the person. And honestly I always found those annoying.
- the_gipsy 5y agoDumbed down to superhero-movie plateau, PG rating for families, publishing in the PRC. Money.
- xadhominemx 5y agoWhere did you get that idea? The proportion of films rated R and also PG-13 has been steady over the past 15 years. The proportion of films rated PG has increased, but at the expense of G. https://m.the-numbers.com/market/mpaa-ratings https://m.the-numbers.com/market/mpaa-ratings
- Spooky23 5y agoThose ratings are weird - but the Chinese basically hacking the US cultural export thing is a big influence. Many movies have subtle elements that are present for the purposes of sucking up to the PRC.
- xadhominemx 5y agoThat’s definitely true - and many of the elements are not even subtle at all. But I don’t think that explains the sex scenes, as those could be easily cut for Chinese releases.
- gfosco 5y agoThey've moved to TV shows... Hard to watch any (American) Netflix series without an unnecessary sex scene every 6-8 minutes.
- 28736947 5y agoWe really are living in the New Puritan age. “Unnecessary sex scenes”? I’ve never needed a reason to see people having sex. When did everyone get so repressed?
- Koshkin 5y agoIn art, there’s always been a difference between the significance of “having sex” and that of “having breakfast.”
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoI don't see too much nudity in Netflix shows. Which ones specifically are you thinking about? There are definitely plenty of "bra-on" sex scenes that cut away early in the act, but I don't think that's what the author is talking of.
- gfosco 5y agoI didn't mention nudity, so yeah I'm including non-nude scenes where that's obviously what's going on and it's not adding anything useful to the story.
- newby 5y agoUh, bra-on scenes - I hate them, not because I need to see the boobies so much, but because of the intense feeling of fakeness that takes me out of the movie to seeing just two actors pretending something. I hate the bra-on scenes almost as much as I hate the cliché scene where the two in bed are breathing so heavily (to show you they just finished having sex you did not see in the movie) as if they had just finished olympic 400m final.
- nicolas_t 5y ago
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoI was watching The Beastmaster on Prime and commented this to my girlfriend as we watched it. It’s a great movie from the 80s that of course has some sex and nudity. Hollywood is completely terrified of sex and nudity now. It alters people’s brains in ways we don’t understand I think. We still hold what we see on the silver screen as a cultural reference point. There’s nothing dirty or wrong about the human body or sex but if you never see it on the big screen you might start thinking that way.
- Waterluvian 5y agoI had suspected it was the opposite: sex is boring now that it’s more normalized than ever. Once you get a series of BDSM-themed books and a movie that are socially accepted in regular discourse, a sex scene in a movie is just less risqué.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoI see it as two different things pulling on the human mind in opposite directions, you can find all manner of porn if you try on the internet, yet you never see the "normal" people do it or be nude in a movie anymore. I think this can cause some issues. Even the 50 Shades sex scenes in the movies were bizarrely tame and Puritan. Like if a pre-teen imagined what sex was like but had never really actually done the deed.
- mellavora 5y agoFortunately we still have lots of violence, death, and torture. Because those are totally ok and normal things to be thinking about. Ug! Sex and love. that stuff is just too dangerous to let into the public imagination.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rajin444 5y agoI don't think it's repressed because it's dangerous or immoral. Constant casual sex devalues a monogamous relationship. Many in our culture still place a lot of value on a monogamous relationship, so you see it reflected in media. I'm not religious and do not care at all about how other's live their lives. But I see value in a monogamous relationship, and see attitudes toward casual sex as a decent indicator in helping me select a partner with the same values. This is not a moral judgement by any means. This is also not saying a monogamous relationship is better or worse.
- smnrchrds 5y agoRelated article: "Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny: Modern action and superhero films fetishize the body, even as they desexualize it." Link: https://bloodknife.com/everyone-beautiful-no-one-horny/ https://bloodknife.com/everyone-beautiful-no-one-horny/ Discussion (674 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26381377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26381377
- inamiyar 5y agoA far more interesting article with less focus on discounting feminist concepts out of hand
- MontyCarloHall 5y agoThis article is just a bunch of anecdata. Has the proportion of theatrical releases containing sex scenes indeed declined in recent years? What about streaming releases? Neither of these questions is quantitatively answered. The “evidence” that sex scenes have become taboo because they embody the “male gaze” and are therefore problematic comes from some un-cited hypothetical tweet. Assuming this tweet is even real, is it actually reflective of the majority opinion, or just a Twitter echochamber? Again, the author does not even attempt to answer this question.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Jedd 5y agoIt's an opinion piece in the culture section of the Free Beacon - what kind of article were you expecting (beyond 'bunch of anecdata'). FWIW I found it a hugely entertaining, and spectacularly well written piece. As to your concern about the un-cited hypothetical tweet, a) on my reading of the article it was very much NOT ascribing much evidence to this phenomenon, and b) your favourite search engine will quickly reveal your answers if you ask for 'Laura Mulvey male gaze'.
- MontyCarloHall 5y agoI expect opinion pieces opining on objectively verifiable facts to support their statements with objective evidence. This piece simply asserts with zero evidence that sex scenes are less frequent in recent movies, and then speculates at great length why this might be. But because the piece has done nothing to prove its initial assertion (i.e. sex scenes are less frequent), any further discussion predicated on this assertion being true is inherently meaningless.
- graycat 5y agoI read the article and didn't have your reaction! Or, I long since, for years, often had your reaction and finally for nearly all media gave up! Soooo, instead of your reaction I just backed off and decided to regard any and all statements in such media content as, call it, "conjectures that some people want to pass out guessing that maybe some other people will agree". That is, we get a lot of conjectures! I can like getting some of the conjectures since commonly they are not ones I would think of -- so, maybe there is some value there, e.g., not that the conjectures make any real sense but, say, just that they are maybe (another conjecture!) that some people would entertain in which case we might get some insight into some people! See, if strain enough, bend over backwards and twist self out of shape, discard nearly all sense of rationalism and critical thinking, can find a glimmer of value!! Then the article mentioned Anya Taylor-Joy: Never heard of her, so did a fast Google search and got caught up. Yup, of the several pictures of her one of them to my eyes did have "almost-alien beauty"; that picture, if only from some lighting, seemed to have the part of her nose between her eyes unusually wide. Besides, have to give a little value for the rough, guesstimate conjecture: "(Congrats: You're caught up on the last 30 years or so of the theatrical exhibition business.)" Maybe some such thing is true, maybe! Net: It's easy to read such media criticism -- just set aside all rationality directly on the content and look, instead, at the content as maybe some insight into what some people might believe! That is, we should have some good insight into what nonsense some people might believe, that is, we might be learning about the people, not the nonsense! It's not difficult; you can do it, too!
- rst 5y agoOne answer to this is "Bridgerton"; see also Game of Thrones. Sex certainly hasn't vanished frim media in general, or even HBO.
- bleachedsleet 5y agoGoT is explicitly mentioned and is used to make the author’s point.
- d3nj4l 5y agoThere's actually one really interesting point in here: Zoomers are incredibly "puritanical" and anti-sex. It seems extremely weird that one of the most liberal generations ever is so sex negative.
- sgent 5y agoI don't buy this. A gen-X friend returned to college to change careers, and if anything sex and sexuality are much more present than when he was at the same school 20+ years ago.
- theyx 5y agoAny data to back up the claim about zoomers? I am a zoomer and none of the people around my age I know are anti-sex. If anything, we are all for (safe) sex without the constraints of social pressure/puritan morality.
- d3nj4l 5y agoIt’s a twitter thing, which probably points to sec negative zoom era being more vocal perhaps.
- MontyCarloHall 5y agoTwitter is not a meaningful barometer of mainstream societal beliefs. Based on Twitter, you’d think that tankies (i.e. unironic supporters of and apologists for communist regimes) are a mainstream political force.
- orwin 5y ago> There's actually one really interesting point in here: Zoomers are incredibly "puritanical" and anti-sex. It might depend on the country. I find them way more liberals than my generation. I mean, maybe there is more backroom in nightclub now than 10 years ago (or less?), but i've witnessed more public sex people in 2017-2019 than i ever did before. We might need data on this. Also, i have the impression that my generation restarted the "menage a trois" that i thought disapeared in the late 70s, but that might be because i became close to a LGBTQ+ community in my mid-20s that was way less impressed by sex than i was.
- Digit-Al 5y agoIt seems odd that this article did not touch on the role of actors in the situation. There have been a few female actors who have come out to say they felt pressured to act in nude / sex scenes against their will. Because of this actors now have tend to have more opportunity to refuse to do sex scenes if they don't want to. This surely must play a role as well.
- theyx 5y agoExactly. We live in a society with severe social stigma around sexual content/nudity. Even in the 21st century, or more liberal places like Europe, nakedness or sex are not to be shown as “daily human things” like cooking, for example. As such, actors and especially actresses are of course averse to it. Not only because they grew up in our society, but because it often leads to the fetishization of their image. Do you want to be recognized for the acting you worked hard to learn, or for the 2 minutes of almost-explicit sex with a random person, being watched on-stage by several middle-aged men? One of this options celebrates your talents and hardwork, while the other puts you on the spot in an uncomfortable position with potential negative repercussions for your career.
- DanielBMarkham 5y agoThe overseas market, specifically China, probably plays a much bigger role in self-censoring cinema than most people are comfortable admitting. Nobody wants good cinema, movies that dig into and challenge the human condition. They want money. In the last 20-30 years, we have seen the strip-mall-ization of the movie theater. Every city has at least one, they all look the same, and drop in at any time and you'll see the same kinds of movies: cool-looking, easy, bowlderized, with paint-by-the-numbers plots. I love real cinema. For all intents and purposes it's gone now. We need a new art form to take its place. A big part of the problem with any commercial art form is the plethora of folks who love to be reductionist in one way or another. Leads in TV shows from the 1950s forward wanted to know and control how many lines they spoke. John Wayne famously gave the advice to another actor that if you're leaving a scene, first move in the opposite direction and then leave the way you're supposed to. Gives you a bit more screen time. (Apologies that I cannot source that offhand) Once everything becomes reductionist, it's then much easier to argue about some oversimplified version of the art than the contents of the art itself. Were there enough tall people in that film? Did that essay have the right amount of third-grade level adjectives? Is the playwright using a meter for the supporting roles? If so, what is it? We can go on and on about such things because they are easier to measure, require almost no understanding of the art form itself, and lead to all sorts of debates. Sometimes I think the number one rule of modern media is "I don't care what you're arguing about, just argue about something!" If we placed the story first, and only created anything in an art form to support and enhance that story, we'd get all sorts of interesting and self-challenging art, depending on which artist is telling the story. Whatever trivial reductionist thing you'd like to experience, there'd be art that let you experience it. But if we try to create and tell stories through art by way of committee and marketing research, it's just going to be more and more bland populist pablum. The saddest part of all of this is not that businesses are acting in their best interests. The saddest part is what it says about the average consumer. I love modern theater even though it's a completely new art, but I try very hard not to do the "reverse math" and figure out just what the creators think of me. Otherwise I'd get pretty pissed.
- moogly 5y agoOn the China thing: Why don't we let the ones who want to censor movies just do it on their own instead of precensoring them? This used to happen a lot. Is it really that expensive to cut out a few shots or use compositing to obscure things? I believe it's still done for so-called in-flight entertainment.
- elzbardico 5y agoMaybe I am strange, but while I am a heavily sexual person IRL, I never quite got the point of those long sex scenes in movies. On the contrary, always found it gratuitous and slightly annoying.
- insickness 5y agoSex scenes annoy me too. It may be that I've seen too much porn with real sex which makes movie sex scenes feel too simulated.
- sexscenes 5y agoI always assumed that sex scenes were there to help couples have sex especially when they are older. We are in our 40s, it takes a lot to get in mood for sex. We don't watch porn or actually look for ways to get in the mood. We plan to have sex after date nights but those are rare with young kids in the house. Over last few years, most of sex happened when we were watching a "real" movie with a good sex scene/s. I understand why superhero movie should not have sex scenes but we need more adult movies with a good stories. There is demand for it. My wife's book club even recommends steamy movies to watch with your partner, unfortunately, some of those are really cheesy like 365 Days.
- staticman2 5y agoIt's so easy to see female breasts online that you won't get horny men to go out of their way to see your mediocre film because it features breasts. Given those facts you are possibly better off pretending like you are an artist with integrity and not someone trying to rope people in with gratuitous nudity. That said, HBO shows have lots of sex so I suspect the premise of the article is generally false.
- stared 5y agoIt saddens me that we live in a culture in which movies showing violence (including torture and murder) are acceptable, whereas ones showing consensual, non-pornographic intercourse - aren’t. You might argue that on Netflix every second movie have a lot of sex scenes. Yes, must mostly with partial or implied nudity (think of all of these scenes with sex with bra on, waking up clothed, or L-shaped sheets). At the same time there is no issue with explicit blood, gore, cut-off limbs, etc.
- ravenstine 5y agoAnd when we do show sex, it's in ways where it's always "complicated". Sex, according to the mainstream, must involve some sort of transgressive participation. You must be committing adultery, or be "in the closet", or committing incest, or doing it with total disregard for responsibilities, or doing it in inappropriate circumstances, or by committing rape. Unless you're watching a deliberately romantic film, I don't know how anyone can get a positive impression of sex or even associate sex with love by watching what's on streaming services.
- Koshkin 5y agoWould you find interesting a movie in which people shoot at cardboard figures instead of each other?
- ravenstine 5y agoTo suggest that films must feature graphic violence is like saying that comedy can't be funny unless it involves swearing.
- Joeboy 5y agoNo, but drama does require drama. People having a nice time together is not dramatic.
- Zababa 5y agoThat's a different point. People don't show "normal" sex in movies for the same reasons they don't show people eating, going to the toilet and that sort of stuff.
- giorgioz 5y agoSomehow we created a society where violence is acceptable to watch but sex is not. It's okay to watch a human being realistically murder another one YET a penis appearing on screen or a penis entering a vagina/rectum is somehow a mind-blowing event we can only handle in small and censored amounts. Mostly new life come out of sex while mostly death comes out of violence.
- gfosco 5y agoThe violence often relates to the plot, and drives the story forward. The sex scenes generally add nothing.
- giorgioz 5y agoMovies are supposed to be SHOW DON'T TELL. Sex for many people is the culmination of love and many other feelings. You are depriving the audience the view of one of the most fundamental events of human life.
- Zababa 5y ago> It's okay to watch a human being realistically murder another one Is it? Most movies are unrealistic with their plots. I wouldn't call most action movies "a human being realistically murder another one", they are stories, not real, so the violence is okay because it's not real. > Mostly new life come out of sex while mostly death comes out of violence. I think that's an oversimplification. You can use violence to protect people.
- giorgioz 5y agoWell is fairly normal to see someone being shot in a movie. That is a realistic way to die. An unrealistic way to die to me is someone saying the Avada Kedavra curse in Harry Potter. Even action movies for kids are relatively realistic in the way someone dies. Just to put things in perspective, think about the amount of blood you see in movies versus the amount of semen seen in movies. But let's skip movies for kids. Let's talk about adult movies: No Country for Old Men Rated R 17+: the villain strangles a policeman from behind. That scene is as realistic as they come. It haunts my dreams. > You can use violence to protect people. You can also avoid a fight by de-escalating or just walk-away which is the best option in real life but is barely portraited in movies.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoThe article touches on this, but in the past three decades movie making has been "optimized" to the point that there has been a great deal of "convergence" of the movie formula down to just a couple major themes. Either you have general audience, big budget, Marvel-type movies, or you have designated Oscar-type fare, which as of late means something extremely depressing that says how bad humans are. "Horny sex" just doesn't fit in either of those two categories. Not too sad, though, because I feel like the exact opposite has happened with TV, where the rise of streaming services has ushered in a "Cambrian Explosion" of sorts with all types of varied topics and interesting content.
- jason0597 5y ago>Not too sad, though, because I feel like the exact opposite has happened with TV, where the rise of streaming services has ushered in a "Cambrian Explosion" of sorts with all types of varied topics and interesting content. Can we even call it TV anymore? It's all streamed to our laptops our tablets
- Koshkin 5y agoWell, it’s still “tele” and “vision”… (Most laptop ads now focus on using computers as essentially TV sets.)
- unclenoriega 5y agoIf we can rewind a Blu-ray, carbon copy someone on an email, and roll up a power window, I imagine we can stream our TV to our tablets just fine.
- jpindar 5y agoSure, now TV stands for TV-style Video.
- reshie 5y agoand most tv's are computers now as well.
- newby 5y ago
- goto11 5y agoThere are plenty of sex scenes on cable/streaming though. It is just the big Hollywood blockbusters which need to play it safe by alienating as few demographics as possible.
- Koshkin 5y agoThey have not gone anywhere, not by any measure. You just need to go to the right place in the store. Mainstream (i.e. non-indie) movies are packaged food - they come with a long list of nutrition facts and warnings. This is industry, not art, we are talking about here.
- powersnail 5y agoAren't there plenty of sex scenes in TV shows these days? So much that I frequently want to fast-forward. So much that I wonder if "sex" has become the ultimate plot device. Strangers? One-night stand, and they are best buddies ever. Angry at each other? Rage sex, and all the animosity gone. Not thinking clearly? Sex with your partner calms you down. Thinking clearly? Sex with a seductive villain dazzles your mind. Seems kinda lazy to me. > Why bother showing men and women connecting emotionally and sexually when you can rake in billions by having Steve Rogers and Tony Stark punch aliens—or, occasionally, each other? I don't understand sentences like these. That's like saying "why bother eating oranges when you can eat an apple?" It frames the comparison in a way that suggest erotic movies are more bothersome to produce, which doesn't make sense. Superhero movies are more successful due to many reasons: big budget, proven formulaic plots, fan base, etc. but definitely not because they are less bothersome to produce.
- Jedd 5y ago> Aren't there plenty of sex scenes in TV shows these days? Very probably. TFA does not include the string 'TV' or 'television', but has 16 occurrences of 'movie', so perhaps you're arguing against a point that's not being asserted. > I don't understand sentences like these. And that's okay. As TFA points out, China (and elsewhere) are significant markets with specific and (to western culture) peculiar requirements in terms of being culturally palatable. The question is cogent, concise, and valid -- if you're a movie maker (motivated by money/fame/whatever) why would you try to contend with complex and difficult material if you could instead, as they author asks, more easily rake in billions by having two asexual fictional character punch aliens. > Superhero movies are more successful due to many reasons: big budget, proven formulaic plots, fan base, etc. but definitely not because they are less bothersome to produce. It's not so much bothersomeness that's the key criteria, but I'd suggest that big budgets don't guarantee a film's success anymore than a proven formulae (there's only 7 after all) or a large fan base (plenty of fan bases are both enormous and enormously unsatisfied). Read some of the literature on why Marvel has been so popular in the China market for some context here -- for example this piece (but there's an abundance) : https://variety.com/2019/film/news/avengers-endgame-marvel-universe-china-box-office-1203197686/ https://variety.com/2019/film/news/avengers-endgame-marvel-u...
- Bud 5y agoRight-wingers complaining about there not being enough "sex" scenes in entertainment are so pathetic. The fact is there are are MORE sex scenes now than there ever were in the 80s and 90s, it's just that they've migrated more to streaming TV series that are too sophisticated for right-wingers to be viewing them en masse. Not to mention, of course, that there's also about 100x the availability of porn now, and Washington Free Beacon readers are no doubt consuming a lot of that, just like almost all of us are. So really, this piece doesn't pass the laugh test, just like most right-wing social commentary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Free_Beacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Free_Beacon
- Ancapistani 5y ago> they've migrated more to streaming TV series that are too sophisticated for right-wingers to be viewing them en masse. A quick overview didn’t turn it up, but I recall a recent study that showed that people who self-identified as “right wing”, when asked to describe the beliefs of the “left wing”, were significantly more accurate than their “left wing” peers asked to describe “right wing” beliefs. Your comment strikes me as exactly this sort of fallacy. It seems that you have built up a caricature that you believe to be true.
- Bud 5y agoFeel free to actually test my knowledge of right-wing beliefs at your leisure. But until you have done so, kindly stick to the topic instead of incorrectly speculating about what I supposedly "believe".
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- SkeuomorphicBee 5y agoI'll give the dissenting opinion: not every story needs to be a love story, unless the movie is about sex it shouldn't have a sex scene. It was infuriating how "love story" and "sex scene" were mandatory tick boxes on every single movie in the 80s and 90s, regardless of if the plot called for it or not.
- Koshkin 5y agoWhat looks eerie to me is that watching TV series becomes more and more like simply watching others people live their lives: them having sex; sleeping; talking while in bed; having breakfast; brushing their teeth; sitting on a toilet… (And, these days, all of that without letting the phones out of their hands, of course.)
- jillesvangurp 5y agoMovies in general have been in decline for a while and theaters have of course not had a lot of business in the last two years. But even before Covid, a lot of the business was changing and it has more to do with economics than with morals. A few things stand out: - DVD sales and rentals are no longer a thing. In the top days of rental videos, and straight to video movies, Sex was a key way to compensate for otherwise mediocre production; that and outrageous action. Preferably both. Also DVD sales were the bulk of movie revenue. So even the stuff that was shown in the cinema was actually optimized for that. With all that gone, it's just a lot less attractive and necessary to spend money on spicing up movies a little as that used to be mostly about beefing up rental and dvd sales. - A lot of that stuff has now moved to streaming. There are now award winning movies that go straight to Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc. And of course streaming services still provide access to plenty of on screen sex. Sex sells and when half your audience is male and the other half has their own needs on this front, basically you get specialized material for both groups. Netflix uses a data driven approach to figuring out what to serve. Apparently, sex sells ... monthly subscriptions. - We've had the whole me-too movement and a large amount of scandals around abuse of actresses in the movie industry in recent years. So, naturally the cost and risk of on screen sex has gone up a quite a bit. There are ways around this of course.
- Zababa 5y ago> And that's too bad. Sexiness and tawdriness are both fundamental parts of the human experience and should be celebrated and explored on the biggest screen possible. There shouldn't be any shame in watching onscreen shamelessness. I don't think that's true. At least, not the "sexiness and tawdriness" that was shown in most of the "old" movies. The article seem to argue that movies were better when they showed sex on screen, but I don't think that's true either. I think what happened is that we shifted from one warped perception of sex to another. Considering how culture and history tend to work, that's probably a cyclical movement and we may get more sex on the screen at some point in the next ~50 years.
- monkeyodeath 5y agoIt's a good idea to target your product to the sensibilities of your consumer. American Millenials and Gen Z are having less sex than the generations before them. They've also grown up with frequent mass school shootings and the "tactical", "everyday carry", amateur-soldier, military worship culture that really got rolling after 9/11. No wonder sex scenes squick them out -- it's a world that's distant, unfamiliar, and uncomfortable for them. Violence, though? Pile it on. Now you're speaking their language.
- dragonelite 5y agoDoes sex scene even sell a movie these days, the internet is saturated with porn. When I grew up as 90s kiddy porn was hard to get by no one had acceptable internet. Porn tv channels were all scrambled to pretty much white noise with sometimes a glimpse of a boob and a nipple. We would get excited if a movie had like a nip slip in early puberty. After like 2004 almost everybody had decent internet and access to porn. Only exciting thing was maybe a leaked celeb sex tape. I cannot imaging gen x or z even getting excited about a nip slip or boobs in a movie.
- Koshkin 5y agoSex is what sells, so maybe by limiting the supply they just want to prevent it from becoming a cheap commodity?
- simonblack 5y agoIt always makes me laugh that dead bodies are a common vision on US media, but a nipple is something that makes people throw up their hands in horror.