20 ms·
Gen Z wants less sex in TV and movies
- vinceguidry 3y agoJust makes the stories suck all that much more when you have to shoehorn a romance into the plot.
- busterarm 3y agoIt's worse because they're shoehorning in a romance plot performatively to show off how progressive the showrunners are because every romance plot on TV now has to demonstrate a high degree of intersectionality. Representation is great but now we're over-representing and alienating the audience. Plus it feels so hacky.
- busterarm 3y agoJust want to add to this -- sometimes the sex is so gratuitous and over the top that it's distracting from the meaning and message of the show. I'm looking at you, Sense8 -- the one show where doing the above actually made sense.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y agoJust curious, were you also criticizing over-representation back when it was 99% straight white relationships? Or did that feel normal?
- busterarm 3y agoBut that hasn't been a thing since before I was alive. We've had a strong run of popular sitcoms depicting black families on all of the major TV networks since the '70s. Many times they've led the ratings. And I watched them. Maybe you didn't? Edit: Heck, "I Love Lucy" aired in the early 1950s and the show's entire plot was about an interracial marriage. And that show only started two years after commercial TV in most homes was even a thing. It was the very first sitcom to be a #1 rated show. The "bad times" scenario you're depicting is largely a fiction. What was that Jennifer Lawrence quote? “I remember when I was doing 'Hunger Games,' nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn't work — we were told girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead,”
- ungamedplayer 3y agoThe last sentence irks me a bit. Lawrence can't be that ignorant of female action star heros What dude didn't want to kick ass like Ripley in aliens. As the age old saying goes... She protec, she attack,.but most important of all she uses large mechanised exoskeleton to fight aliens.
- busterarm 3y agoShe was clearly expressing a sentiment that she felt to be true at the time, even though it isn't backed up by the data -- much like this similar scenario.
- mcpackieh 3y ago> She was clearly expressing a sentiment that she felt to be true at the time, Is that clear? She's a professional actress; if she were reading a line written by some PR hack that she didn't really believe was true, how can you be sure you could tell? Maybe she believed it, or maybe she was told to say this sort of thing to promote the movie. Since she's a professional actress, I'm inclined to believe it's the latter. She probably wasn't totally ignorant of her own industry.
- pseudalopex 3y agoOr maybe it came out wrong like she said. People commonly say ever when they mean hardly ever.
- ungamedplayer 3y agoNow that you point it out.. I think this might be the most likely case.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y agoI remember watching The Cosby Show as a kid and also a bunch of white family sitcoms. Now I see shows that don't feel so categorized or partitioned as either a black show or a white one, which feels like an improvement.
- logicalmonster 3y ago> every romance plot on TV now has to demonstrate a high degree of intersectionality It's not hard for people to begin noticing how unrealistic many stories end up becoming. It's shoddy writing and story-telling and the artificial nature takes you out of the world that's been created. > A Milestone: All Of The Walking Dead's Relationships Are Now Interracial Or LGBT https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2018/11/14/a-milestone-all-of-the-walking-deads-relationships-are-now-interracial-or-lgbt https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2018/11/14/a-milesto...
- the_only_law 3y agoA while back I decided to see a movie in theaters after a night out and it was allegedly the billionth iteration of some horror franchise (Scream I think? Maybe Halloween?). Turned out to not even really be a horror movie, but some dopey drama/romance. Waste of my money, but thankfully it wasn’t much money.
- jeffbee 3y agoIs this now worse or better? It seems like there were tons on 1970s films that had a sex subplot awkwardly crammed in. For example, the ridiculous and seemingly endless sex scene in "Three Days of the Condor", an otherwise fairly tight 1974 spy film.
- busterarm 3y agoSex themes were already an established trope in spy fiction at that point. Books, television and movies. That was a large part of the appeal of the genre. You're talking about a movie released a decade and a half after fans had been ogling Emma Peel.
- jeffbee 3y agoIt seems like there's a range of better and worse ways to do it. The contemporaneous and comparable film "The Day of the Jackal" has a seduction element that is central to the plot, so it doesn't seem shoehorned in.
- throw4847285 3y agoFor some reason, people (usually but not only men) are way more likely to see romance as shoehorned in to a plot than, say, action or violence. I think it says more about the viewer than the art in question.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoENOUGH with these idiotic labels. We have numbers that can be used to identify age groups.
- justin_oaks 3y agoAdam Conover did a great talk about this [0]. It was entitled "Millenials Don't Exist". In it he humorously but also seriously asserts that lumping people together as generations is useless at best and harmful at worst. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoChecking it out, thanks!
- stewartjarod 3y agono sex, no drugs, no rock and roll.
- hef19898 3y ago"Everyone one is beautiful and nobody is horny" was the title of recent submission.
- FrankoDelMar 3y ago"Everyone wants to be fuck-able but no one wants to fuck" something something from putanumonit
- ryandrake 3y agohttps://bloodknife.com/everyone-beautiful-no-one-horny/ https://bloodknife.com/everyone-beautiful-no-one-horny/
- LegitShady 3y agoIf they want sex and drugs they'll go to school like everyone else.
- Grazester 3y agoThey don't even want to do that!
- amelius 3y agoI'm ok with it, but it should look realistic. But I guess that's too much to ask, even if the CGI gets more realistic every day.
- mgkimsal 3y agoThey're not the only ones.
- shams93 3y agoI'm Gen X so I think every movie sucks except Repo Man
- strangesmells02 3y agoand taxi driver
- __s 3y agoand The Thing. I always think it's an early 90s film, turns out it's early 80s
- dragonwriter 3y agoWell, if you split the difference between the 1982 one and the 2011 one, its on average a late 1990s film.
- anonzzzies 3y agoIs the secret to just watch Repo Man on repeat? I think you have a point.
- NikkiA 3y agoEh, there's room for 'Cadillac Man' in there too, throw in 'Lawnmower Man' and you've got the whole gen-X Man trilogy. Not Encino Man though, that film never existed.
- vidanay 3y agoDude...Rain Man
- ungamedplayer 3y agoDefinitely Hoffman, definitely.
- 3y ago
- OrvalWintermute 3y agoOne thing I truly appreciated about Dr. Who when David Tennant was in the role, was how awesome the storylines were, despite having no sex scenes whatsoever. While I don't think it was material for children given some of the topics it dealt with, it was definitely different from typical Hollywood stuff. I don't know if this is still the case with Dr. Who, and I could be mistaken, but I greatly appreciated that.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoI don't disagree, but I do wonder why you mentioned Dr. Who specifically.
- LegitShady 3y agodoes later Dr Who have sex scenes? I'm so confused.
- vidanay 3y agoYou should see the episode with Peter Capaldi and a Dalek.
- busterarm 3y agoEx....terminate! *suctions pillow*
- dragonwriter 3y agoDifferent eras of Dr Who (more dependent on showrunner than which actor is playing the Doctor) have different qualities of story, which was the first part of the praise, before the “despite having no sex scenes whatsoever.”
- rglullis 3y agoLooks like we made sex and porn so ubiquitous and accessible to the point that even horny teenagers don't need to look for it and can have it on-demand.
- autoexec 3y agoTeenagers just aren't that horny anymore. They're having less sex now than previous generations. It'd make sense that they're bored or sex in film when they're not even interested in sex even with each other.
- Mistletoe 3y agoI want more sex in tv and movies and less violence. There is hardly any sex and eroticism now in tv and movies (or at least the ones I see). My girlfriend and I talk about this all the time. Nudity is even rare at the box office. If you watch movies from the 1980s or so it is so apparent. I'm not Gen Z though. I'm Gen X.
- vidanay 3y agoNormalization of violence has been on-going for 50 years in movies and TV. See someone's head get blown off? PG-13. See some boobs? R. See full frontal on a woman? NC-17. See full frontal on a man? X.
- dragonwriter 3y ago“X” and “NC-17” were never ratings at the same time (“NC-17” replaced “X” in what I believe was largely an attempt to make serious films with the rating marketable, given the way “X-rated” had become a popular term for porn.) (And, yes, plenty of the films released with an NC-17 MPAA rating and not through porn channels with no MPAA rating have full frontal male nudity.)
- busterarm 3y ago"There's no sex in your violence..."
- edgyquant 3y agoThis is objectively the opposite of the truth. There is way more soft core porn in the average tv show or movie than was even allowed in the 80s
- vidanay 3y agoYou have obviously never watched the "Porky's" genre 80s movies. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084522/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084522/
- dragonwriter 3y ago
- theonlybutlet 3y agoA controversial opinion but the one thing I really enjoyed about Rings of Power, none of that for no reason.
- kens 3y agoThis seems like a weak survey that they are trying to turn into a Social Trend. Specifically, they found that "51.5% expressed a desire for more content centered around friendships and platonic relationships." That doesn't seem strong enough to conclude anything important. After multiple layers of press releases, I think the underlying study (which is more of an infographic) is https://www.scholarsandstorytellers.com/css-teens-and-screens-2023 https://www.scholarsandstorytellers.com/css-teens-and-screen...
- the_only_law 3y ago> This seems like a weak survey that they are trying to turn into a Social Trend. I tend to lean towards this whenever I see an [insert generation] [insert social trend] article.
- presbyterian 3y agoI don’t have any real data to back this up, and idk how you’d look at this, but I’d be curious if they wanted less sex or if the real issue is the gratuity. We’ve been in a period for a while (perhaps due to streaming services not having the same regulations and standards as TV) where being serious and “real”, being a “mature comedy”, etc is in, and a shortcut to that is to show sex and use curse words, so you see a lot of TV shows especially doing that instead of making sure it fits well in the story. I feel like nearly every Netflix show I've checked out has let the F bombs fly to the degree that it sticks out to me, someone who swears like a sailor
- anonzzzies 3y agoNot only Gen Z, me too (I'm 50). I find it such a waste of time; it so rarely it adds anything outside cheap film minutes. When it does, you don't notice it (which is obviously how it should be; an integral part). Now I often just press forward to get through pointless scenes with wet dildo's etc that are not porn, but something i'm supposed to watch with the (albeit) adult family. If it would add something to the story then sure, but it's just filler.
- MrBuddyCasino 3y agoSame here (Millenial), the scenes are usually just dishonest and uncomfortable padding of runtime, adding nothing to the plot or the vibe. There must be some market research that prompts its inclusion, I can't understand why they do it.
- kbenson 3y agoI feel the same way, and I'm in my mid-40's. I always end up wondering why am I watching this stylized sexual encounter (which doesn't match almost anyone's experience almost any time) and often with people I don't really want to watch it with (teenage and adult children). If some light foreplay shows something about the characters, that's fine, or if something actually happened during the act that was important, that's also fine, but otherwise it's just gratuitous and annoying. If I want to watch porn, I'll watch porn, I'm sure as hell not going to opt for some scene in a regular movie. Then again, maybe it's for people that refuse to watch porn for one reason or another and this is as close as they get?
- amelius 3y ago> and often with people I don't really want to watch it with (teenage and adult children) This is the true reason why violence is allowed on TV, whereas sex is always problematic and often censored. You can watch violence with just about anybody (kids, parents, etc.) and it doesn't feel awkward.
- acdha 3y agoYou can watch it with anyone who has been desensitized. That’s a cultural choice: we train our kids to be weird about sex but okay with hardcore violence.
- strangesmells02 3y agoshowing gratuitous sex scenes is not developing the characters and not developing the plot. is literally just gratuitous clickbait. May have been titillating before PornHub existed, but now it's just a hassle to watch.
- crazygringo 3y agoJust to be clear: this is not a comparison with previous generations. The headline and intro led me to believe this is a dip -- e.g. that young people 5 or 10 or 20 years ago liked the amount of sex, but young people today don't. But that's not what the survey shows. All it shows is that people aged 13-24 today want less of it. It may very well be the case that this isn't anything specific to Gen Z at this age, and that this was equally the case of 13-24 year olds 20 and 30 years ago. TV and film has been pretty sexualized for a long time. There is zero evidence in this study to indicate anything new.
- busterarm 3y agoI would say though that us Millenials are complete hypocrites who binged on the absolute worst kinds of content (MTV reality/dating shows) in our teens and twenties and now want to police the hell out of everything.
- emptysongglass 3y agoNot sure that's the case. I think this is more a Gen Z thing. Most millennials I know think Gen Z is "not great" in their conservative outlook. (Don't even get me started on Gen Z fashion.) Hipsters were despised back in my day, even by hipsters themselves, but in the end I think we all had a lot more fun than Gen Z today. I wouldn't change any of it.
- ghusto 3y ago> I think we all had a lot more fun than Gen Z today That's an understatement. Any time I start to go down the hate-spiral on some stupid shit I see a gen-zedder doing, I remember how neurotic and miserable they are, and feel sorry for them again. It also helps to remember this is exactly how adults felt about the things we did in the 80s and 90s :P
- kelipso 3y agoLike Gen Z doesn't want to police the hell out of everything too. I think culture has just shifted.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- glimshe 3y agoI want to keep it this way. I like seeing beautiful women on the show, so as long as it's not every minute, it adds to my enjoyment.
- jc___ 3y ago[dead]
- RajT88 3y agoThis is why my wife watches Korean dramas - less sex, more shipping! She has literally said that making American adaptations would make it much more sex focused, and ruin the premise of these shows.
- Roark66 3y agoExactly. I'm not sure how it is in others regions, but here in Central Europe Netflix has lots of good Korean and Japanese TV dramas. It is funny how some of them have a great first season, then they get lots of money following their success, after which they try to emulate Holywood and make pretty bad season 2 (it is "too American" as my wife says - you know the whole plot after first 5 minutes, and there definitely have to be certain obligatory copy/pasted plot themes, like previously mentioned sex scenes etc). Of course, it's not just Holywood and American dramas that have bad elements. I find many Japanese dramas focus to much on the "internal conflict" in their characters. But overall both Japanese and Korean productions are light years ahead. I don't remember last time I saw a good American drama.
- RajT88 3y ago> I'm not sure how it is in others regions, but here in Central Europe Netflix has lots of good Korean and Japanese TV dramas. It's like that everywhere to varying degrees. Early on, a bunch of weird Korean films dropped on Netflix (2009ish), and then disappeared for a while. They started trickling back a few years later. A few years ago, a glut of Korean and Japanese dramas started dropping as their global popularity increased. You are still going to find more Korean and Japanese stuff if you're viewing Netflix in (say) the Philippines, but there's a lot everywhere. A lot of it has to do with licensing, and where they can get licenses to stream. As an experiment - try streaming Netflix connected to VPN endpoints in different countries. Sometimes you get the same stuff with different names! Example is a Japanese show called in the US, "Atelier". In Japan, it shows up as "Underwear" (lol).
- bitshiftfaced 3y agoI can't help but find it interesting that the country with the lowest birthrate has a reputation for having less sex in its media. I wonder if we'd find a relationship in general between some metric of sex on TV with the country's birthrate. But I'm sure I'm not the first one to think of this conspiracy theory.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pdntspa 3y agoWhy must I be entering middle age when the pendulum is swinging towards prudery? This headline feels part of a larger trend towards boorish sobriety. I'm gonna be 70 before we get free love again :(
- happytoexplain 3y agoI'm sympathetic to this concern and I sometimes battle it myself - but I do object to the romanticism of "free love". In my opinion - and in the opinion of some brilliant, loving people I know who lived it first-hand - free love was a failed experiment of idealism. It was a great experiment that we are better for having undertaken, but unmistakably and fundamentally incompatible with human psychology when applied on any kind of appreciable scale. Luckily, prudery is far from the only alternative.
- pdntspa 3y agoThere are pockets of it still floating around and continuing in development... the ENM/polyamory communities provide a good framework for going about it in a manageable way. "The Ethical Slut" by Easton and Hardy is a very good book. I wish more people would be willing to challenge this part of themselves. It really opens up entirely new possibilities for sex and love. Plus, the emotional development that it forces on you is a huge green flag for dating in general.
- surgical_fire 3y agoI am the opposite. I am no prude, but so many things seem to revolve about sex in modern times. There is so much more in the universe. Maybe I am too satisfied with my partner. The thought of being single, having to date again, and handle people and their insecurities once more is tiresome to day the least.
- whatindaheck 3y agoAgreed. A bit younger but I feel this way too. I group up incredibly religious/politically conserative (think Jesus Camp on Netflix). Between my immediate family and changes in how the general population has begun to view excessive sex/cursing/violence/etc. I’ve never really experienced a current era of, well, excessiveness. I love 70s movies for that reason. Utterly unrestrained. It’s not inherently better or worse. But I’ve never experienced a less-prude era while alive. To be clear. I don’t think wanting less sex is inherently prude though. Sometimes it’s a cheap way to “improve” writing without actually paying for talent.
- intalentive 3y agoBring back obscenity laws
- iterateoften 3y agoOn Netflix (probably other platforms too, but definitely on the latest Netflix shows) just about every episode about high school students is about sex. Shows like “Sex Education” beat kids over the head that sex is almost a requirement and there are some definite Weinstein vibes about how obsessed older producers and directors seem so insistent on having minors talk about anal and other sexual topics under the guise of “wow we are so progressive, look how open and free these 15 year olds talk about sex” I think it’s great to have open communication but at a certain point it seems like perverted old men getting off to making young actors and actresses obsess over sex and tell other other young people that is the behavior to follow.
- busterarm 3y agoEven the animated shows like Big Mouth...
- mainpassathome 3y agobig mouth is definitely not a gen Z show
- busterarm 3y agoNetflix states that the target demo for the show is 16+. That's firmly zoomers.
- Clamchop 3y agoSex Education explores sex positivity, which includes consent, respect, and just not having any. It also deals with the subject of sex crimes and reporting sex crimes. Anathema to Wenstein types. But you say it's "definite". Assuming adults are watching in general for the purpose of being titillated by teen sexuality or, worse, that its producers have the ulterior motive of "grooming" teens en masse is cynical as shit.
- foxyv 3y agoI wouldn't mind the sex in TV and Movies if it wasn't so BAD. Then they wedge it into the plot with zero relationship to the story. It's like "Oh we're learning magic? Oh two fit people are having vanilla sex... More learning magic okay I guess?" In addition, the number of blatant rape scenes are just so depressing.
- nico 3y agoI’d prefer less violence. It’s crazy that showing one breast will immediately make something pg13, but showing guns, people dying and all sorts of violence is considered appropriate for all ages
- mcpackieh 3y agoThere's no real consistency in any of it. Sometimes breasts are PG-13 (Titanic) but usually any breasts are an automatic R (most other modern movies, except for those with sufficient "art cred"). In movies from the 1980s or earlier, breasts could be in a PG movie (Airplane, Logan's Run.) The PG-13 rating was created in response to violence in PG movies (somebody getting their heart ripped out in Temple of Doom), not nudity.
- gosub100 3y agoor worse, showing people getting shot/stabbed and keep going like they only stepped on a lego. That contributes to people having cavalier attitudes towards guns, instead of deadly weapons that can make you turn limp before you even hit the ground.
- lamontcg 3y agoThat's actually somewhat accurate, shoot someone with a single 9mm and there's a good chance they'll keep coming like they only stepped on a lego. Depends on if you hit something vital or not, but a whole lot of the human body isn't that immediately vital. But really this is why guns are only for killing people and why you'd empty the magazine if you do it. You can't rely on crippling someone by shooting their leg like in a video game (or sometimes in the movies).
- gosub100 3y ago> there's a good chance I don't see "good chance" on my scientific calculator, or wolfram alpha, or any of my math textbooks. Care to enlighten me on its definition? I have seen hundreds of videos (in the seedy corners of the net) of people being shot, and I can't recall a single one where the victim kept approaching after being fired upon.
- h2odragon 3y agoSex in movies and TV is so banal and boring and pointless. No one has wanted to watch that since they first got to explore it in the 70s, because they tapped out the possibilities then. Go watch "Barbarella" and "Flesh Gordon" and tell me there's a less cringe, more worthy depiction of sex in a video form made since then. It always been morality play crap. the fevered imaginings of what personal intimacy should be, sourced from celibates, perverts, and anybody besides normal people with normal doubts.
- good8675309 3y agoNever adds anything to the story and makes watching shows and movies as a family extremely difficult. It's not even edgy anymore, who are they trying to appeal to? Probably because Hollywood is ran by Harvey Weinstein creeps and they like it. We got sick of it and simply use VidAngel to filter it out, some of the best tech that's come out to solve this issue. Fully configurable with filtering of both audio and closed captions.
- CafeRacer 3y agoMaybe gen z thinks they want less sex in TV and movies, and in reality they (and not only) want a better screenwriting?
- charcircuit 3y ago>When there's media with too much sex, me and my friends often feel uncomfortable Exactly. It is disgusting.
- whalesalad 3y agosex is human. we're moving in the wrong direction.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- smegsicle 3y agoand consent is a social construct
- jncfhnb 3y agoTop Gun is the emblematic dumb romance subplot. I feel like mostly everyone who watches this movie today for the first time feels similarly negative about it. But I also know a bunch of older folks who are insistent that it was an amazing romance. I’m not clear when and how this perspective changed. I can’t think of a single cinematic romance that I really cared about (although I’m sure there are a few examples?). But I also hate the annoying hypervirgins you get in stuff like anime where it’s just kind of annoying that characters can’t just release their palpable and constant sexual tension and start acting like someone who is normal and confident. At the end of the, I feel like anyone in film whose whole character thing is trying to figure out love ends up being a really annoying and unrealistic character.
- denton-scratch 3y agoI liked the "romance" in Top Gun; but that was a long time ago. Nowadays I can't stand anything remotely connected with Tom Cruise.
- hulitu 3y ago> Top Gun is the emblematic dumb romance subplot. I feel like mostly everyone who watches this movie today for the first time feels similarly negative about it. You should really see Hot Shots. It has one of the best sex scenes i have ever seen.
- jabroni_salad 3y agoPersonally my feelings on this lately have been 'shit or get off the pot'. You can put romance, drama, and even sex in your TV show but please just get somewhere with it. If I start getting CW flash/arrow vibes I am turning it off. I can just read abandoned web serials for that if it's what I want.
- im3w1l 3y agoSo one thing I was thinking about is that maybe this reflects a change in how movies are watched and who they are watching them with. A sex scene may be a welcome addition if you are watching it with a date or partner, and less welcome if you watch it yourself or with family.
- incahoots 3y agoAs a millennial, I can agree with them on this. The second Matrix movie would've been as good if not better than the first, if it weren't for the weird Zion sex scene between Neo & Trinity. Those type of scenes don't further the plot, but rather push out the engagement of the film from a viewers perspective.
- mikhael28 3y agoDawg, in a world controlled by machines, an act of love by human beings is an act of resistance. They weren't using rubbers man, having kids itself is an act of resistance. In Zion. I don't think you really vibed with the Matrix if you just thought it was some kung-fu, cypherpunk fever dream. It's about the war between humans and machines, and in that context, the sex scene was necesssary.
- logicalmonster 3y agoThe rave sex scene is frequently critiqued when the Matrix movies are discussed. I don't think a lot of the criticism of the Matrix's sex scene was actually about Neo and Trinity having sex, but about how it was shot and edited and how uncomfortably long the entire scene lasted.
- mikhael28 3y agoThat's fair, I haven't watched the movie in a couple years, but thinking back it's a bit on the longer side. I don't remember thinking it was uncomfortable or uncomfortably long, but I guess I'm in the minority.
- throw4847285 3y agoThis seems like a manufactured moral panic. I don't think we're entering a new age of prudery. Even if the survey is reflective of a broader change, taste in media ebbs and flows. I highly recommend listening to You Must Remember This, Karina Longworth's movie history podcast. Specifically, the most recent two seasons have been about sex in movies in the 80s and 90s. She does a lot to ground changes in depictions of sex in movies in their political and cultural moment. The episodes vary in quality, but the best have been enlightening. I think she's sympathetic to the narrative that "Gen Z is prude" because she's a big fan of nuanced depictions of sex in movies, and sees a decline. And yet, listening to the podcast you can't help but see these trends as somewhat cyclical, which is why I'm not worried.
- kbenson 3y ago> I don't think we're entering a new age of prudery. It's possible it's actually the opposite. They don't note the people surveyed as feeling morally repulsed, just that's it's somewhat awkward. It's possible that a wider acceptance and availability of porn means that less people feel the need for pseudo-porn in their mainstream movies. I'm not Gen-Z (far from it) but I also find these scenes feel out of place and gratuitous in movies unless they add to the story in some way. I can easily find something far more arousing if I want, so why am I forced to deal with some scene that doesn't really add much to the story most times?
- StevenWaterman 3y agoExactly. Sex on TV used to be edgy and scandalous, but now it's just banal. If it's not scandalous, not edgy, not meaningful to the story, and not even erotic, why would I want to watch it? This is like being shocked that people report wanting less shoehorned-in product placement on TV
- johntdaly 3y agoI would pretty much remove any sex that doesn’t drive the story in some way and keep it short. You are correct that sex doesn’t hit like it used to hit. I would argue the same for violence and special effects. We’ve seen it all and we’ve seen a lot of it. What we haven’t seen a lot of in some time is good story telling that doesn’t rely on gimmicks.
- babelthuap 3y ago[dead]
- RC_ITR 3y agoThe problem with a UCLA-sponsored survey of teens is always going to be response bias. For example: >Very few adolescents prefer aspirational content. The majority favor original content over IP-based content. Also, the majority prefer binge releases over weekly releases. A quick search of the top Youtubers shows that Gen Z in fact loves aspirational content, they just don't like the image that comes into their head when they hear the term. A quick scan of the box office shows that they also love IP-based content, unless all the viewers of Spiderman, Barbie, Mario, Guardians of the Galaxy, Fast X, and The Little Mermaid were over 25 (Hell, even Oppenheimer was technically IP-based). I believe the binge watching thing though.
- autoexec 3y ago> A quick scan of the box office shows that they also love IP-based content I think that says a lot more about what the industry is pushing than it does about what people want to watch.
- RC_ITR 3y agoThere are plenty on non-IP based movies, targeted at Gen-Z/Alpha, and made by large studios that have underperformed this year. Elemental and Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken immediately come to mind.
- autoexec 3y agoRuby Gillman had very little marketing and had to compete with spider-man and Elemental (which also wasn't well marketed, and lost a lot of sales to spider-man). At this point the Pixar name itself should be enough to get kids into theaters, though I'll admit when I first saw the designs for Elemental I was underwhelmed. I'm kind of tired of brightly colored blob characters from Pixar. We waited until Elemental hit Disney+ and it was better than I expected.
- RC_ITR 3y ago>had to compete with spider-man Yes, a much more popular IP-based movie. I understand it's frustrating to accept that the viewing public prefers IP over original movies, but it's just true. Studio movies as audiences expect them (and increasingly TV) are just too big and expensive to be the medium in which we workshop new ideas. You'll often get new ideas from blank-check directors, animation, or indie films, but that's it. Now, keep in mind, looking back at some of the greatest movies of all time, good movies were always IP-based, it was just less noticeable: Godfather (book) Gone With the Wind (book) Lawrence of Arabia (book) Wizard of OZ (book) The Graduate (book) West Side Story (Musical) 2001 (An expansion of an existing Arthur Clark Story) I could go on, but you get the point.
- mikrl 3y agoLots of books too. I couldn’t finish Atlas Shrugged (page 1000/1200 before I abandoned it) for multiple reasons, but the god awful sex scenes were probably at the top. Or otherwise good novels with a solitary graphic sex scene, where the author’s talents are clearly not in writing smut. Sometimes just hinting at it is enough and doesn’t jar you out of the story.
- SamuelAdams 3y ago> Sometimes just hinting at it is enough and doesn’t jar you out of the story. Agreed. A good example of this is the sex scene in To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Paolini. The whole scene is maybe one or two sentences.
- jjgreen 3y agoI raise you, ... Tony Blair https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/15/tony-blair-bad-sex-award https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/15/tony-blair-bad...
- josefresco 3y agoMore interesting to me: Mr. Beast was rated by adolescents (ages 10-24) as the "most authentic media". Source: https://www.scholarsandstorytellers.com/css-teens-and-screens-2023 https://www.scholarsandstorytellers.com/css-teens-and-screen...
- mcpackieh 3y agoNow this is a grim statistic.
- anon25783 3y agoWe do?
- cranium 3y agoIn general, it's just plain boring. The only information conveyed to us, the unfortunate viewers, is: "oh look, they are intimate now". If there's nothing else, please cut short once we understand they are going to have sex. I also believe sex scenes could be really great at showing subtle personality traits or relationship between characters, a good example of "show, don't tell". But it's awfully under-exploited and often ends up as a cheap filler...
- juancn 3y agoJust Gen Z? Sex that doesn't add to the plot detracts from the plot. Older generations had a hard time getting porn, so sex sold in stories, but with porn and erotica wildly available, a good, interesting story is much more compelling.
- happytoexplain 3y agoI'm 38 and I agree, but I don't think it's that attitudes are changing. I think writing has just been on a general slow downhill slide for a long time, and badly written sexuality just naturally stands out more (it's more "cringey"). Part of bad writing is the mis-use or over-use of sex - if the cause of the trend is an increase in bad writing, then it doesn't mean we intrinsically dislike sex scenes now more than before.
- cogman10 3y agoTitle doesn't seem great. The article is more saying that they don't want to see romantic relationships. And, I have to say, I agree. Romance in Hollywood is often super lazy and boring to watch. One particular example, I think of the many faults of the hobbit series, one of the worst was the shoehorned in love triangle. It's bad writing.
- theonlybutlet 3y agoWhat would be great would be the return of comedy, but I suspect Gen Z aren't into that either.
- samdunham 3y agoGen Z also seems to want to "ship" every platonic relationship they are exposed to in media. I'm hearing them say one thing, and watching them do another.
- teaneedz 3y agoAlso less cursing please! Every streamed original or movie seems to be in some kind of competition for f-bombs and comes across as so forced and unnecessary.
- gosub100 3y agoI was trying to start working out at the gym and to fight boredom I brought my tablet with me to watch an old show (Northern Exposure). I was on the elliptical watching an episode and up pops a sex scene, and I could see one guy maybe giving me a weird look, but I was uncomfortable watching it because if someone looked at the wrong time it may appear that I was watching porn, and could get me kicked out of the gym (for watching a 30 year old network TV show!)
- y-c-o-m-b 3y agoIf I want to see sex, I'll just go watch porn (which is also mentioned at the bottom of the article). Whenever my wife and I start watching a new show, if it's riddled with sex scenes beyond the first couple of episodes, we stop watching and find something else. In 99.9% of cases, the sex scenes are useless filler, signaling lack of creativity. I don't particularly mind if they build up characters towards the beginning of a sex scene, but once they initiate it, maybe show the first few seconds then please move on. I don't need to see 2+ minutes of people fucking or having wild orgies.
- thegeekpirate 3y agoI rewatched Black Mirror not too long ago, and it must be one of the worst offenders. Almost every episode had at least one sex scene!
- o0banky0o 3y agoI can't lie, I love sex scenes in movies, they're usually pleasant.
- inasio 3y agoI've been looking for cool anime shows to recommend to my kids, but some of the classic ones are hard to watch these days (e.g. One Piece, Gurren Lagann), based on how they depict the female characters
- Ingaz 3y ago"Akagi" - no female characters at all. No sarcasm intended - it's a great anime. I showed to my son when he was 11-12 years old
- nunez 3y agoWell, yeah. When everyone knows that the sex on TV and movies is mostly fake, porn (i.e. "realer", but still fake, sex) is unbelievably easy to access, it's no surprise that demand for it that distracts from otherwise strong stories would drop. Love interests in plots that revolve entirely around sex are mostly annoying in general. Most times, they feel like a crutch to lean on when there's really nothing there. (my beefs: they never ever EEEEEEVER show the cleanup afterwards, and nobody is gonna do it in a supply closet, and even if they somehow did, the chances of always finding the _perfect_ spot to do it in are low, while the chances of you getting fired on the spot are unbelievably high)
- tomjen3 3y agoHonestly I tend to agree. Growing up and into my adulthood most of what I saw had the actors so covered up it looked fake and broke some suspension of disbelief. Now it seems like they are doing everything they can to show of as much nudity as possible, even when it makes no sense and starts to break my suspension of disbelief.
- karaterobot 3y ago> Nearly 40% said they particularly want to see more non-romantic relationships or asexual characters on screen. The majority of respondents said they felt that romance in media is overused. (The study in its entirety included youth aged 10-24, but questions relating specifically to sex and romance on screen were only asked of a subset aged 13-24.) I don't know what the full study says, just what is in this article. It bothers me a little bit that the headline is that Gen Z wants less sex, but the supporting evidence just says they want more platonic and asexual relationships on screen. The two are not mutual exclusive.
- anuraaga 3y agoAgree and suspect most didn't read a word of the article (porn has nothing to do with this). If only HN could ever return to actually being Hacker News, rather than yet another sensation platform.