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I have strong feelings about this because I miss horny comedies like American Pie, and sexy thrillers like Wild Things. I miss stuff like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Boogie Nights, Office Space, Eyes Wide Shut, True Lies. They all had sex/nudity in a way that furthered the plot, or was just plain fun. All of the criticisms I see here sadden me:
• “It doesn’t further the plot!!!”
It can absolutely be an important part of the story. See the examples above. Look at most of our ancient mythologies. On top of that I pose the question: Why does it have to further the plot?! Why does sex/nudity have to justify itself when tons of movies have gratuitous action scenes and violence that add nothing to the plot. 90% of John Wick is gratuitous violence that added nothing to the plot (but I still love it). Our culture celebrates violence and we’ll watch people get tortured to death without batting an eye - but if some tits show up on screen then suddenly everyone becomes a critic analyzing whether the story REALLY needed it or not.
• “I don’t want to watch that with my kids/parents/coworkers/etc”
I agree. So don’t. Some of my favorite movies are raunchy comedies or sexy thrillers that I would never want to watch in polite company. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist! If art were constrained by what you wanted to display in front of your kids/parents/coworkers then our artistic & cultural landscape would be a much bleaker place.
• “We have easy access to porn, I don’t need porn in my movies!”
The fact that you only equate sex/nudity to porn reveals a problem. Kids today can’t associate sex/nudity on a screen as art, or even just fun, anymore - because in their minds sex/nudity is inextricably tied to porn. The reality is sex/nudity can be fun, dramatic, scary, or funny depending on the context. It can have a place in many kinds of stories, and comparing it to porn is like saying “we have WWII documentaries so we don’t need WWII movies.” They are completely different things!!
• “It’s usually cringey & not done well.”
By that logic you could make arguments against a lot of different genres and classic story elements. I don’t like the argument that because media these days sucks at doing something they should avoid it altogether. I think they should just do better. Movies in the 80s and 90s proved it can be done.
It’s disturbing to me that we’re culturally encouraged to find fun in violence but sex needs to be cordoned off to a containment genre and excised from mainstream art. I’m not saying it needs to be in every movie - but its been obvious for a while they’re going out of their way to avoid it even in places where it would make sense or be fun. I want art to stop awkwardly excluding a major part of life. I want out of this “Everyone is beautiful and no one is horny” Twilight Zone multiverse that all our modern movies seem to take place in.
Sex is too important to be left to just porn.
Oh man, I wish I could give you more than one upvote. Thank you for this well reasoned defense of sex in movies.
Statistically, there’s a lot more violence and a lot less sex for people under the age of 30. So it just kind of reflects the experiences of young people I guess.
I remember watching the wolf of wall street on opening day with my parents when I was a teen.
Based on that experience, I agree, that was so awkward lol
So, way back in the day, when Borat was released, basically my whole household loved it. Then, Bruno was announced! Another movie from the same guy, excellent!
Wrong.
I took my mom to go see it. In theaters. I don’t think I can really put into words the awkwardness of sitting through that film.
Bud, imagine your parents taking you as a teen to see Species (1995) because we all thought it was just some sci-fi alien movie…
I absolutely despise media that relies on sex for the plot. It just ruins it for me. I’m also not a teen.
You would hate most Greek mythology
More confirmation the world is right to see us as backwards. (US study)
So many sexual hangups. Makes sense considering we were founded by Puritans escaping to the new world to be more backwards and repressed.
Sex is a part of life. A massive part of the human condition. A part to be celebrated, not mourned or minimized. That’s how we get pedophile priests and sexual education summed up in “do not do it because it does not exist and you’re dirty for asking.” It’s not Gen Zs fault though, social media is designed to emphasize the darkest possible side of everything as it gets clicks, so sex as a concept is just a vector of potential trauma to them.
If only we had the same hangups about our violence boners our media gluts us on with abandon. Sports concussions, gory explosion movies, and our most celebrated exports tools of mass murder 😎👍. People giving one another physical pleasure 😱👎.
Pandering to teenagers is how you end up with plotlines wrapping up like oh thankfully Wesley found a solution in the last five minutes
Teenagers should be touching grass, or hucking loogies at cars, go outside and dig a hole or something, log off
They have to hook and tag them early or they can’t cash in on the nostalgia later.
I’ve been saying this for so long. Don’t get me wrong, some films do make sense to have sex scenes. But there are so many that either have hardcore (for TV) sex scenes or just random full nudity that makes it nearly impossible to watch with anyone other than my partner or close friends.
Like if I recommend a film or show to someone and completely forget that it had sex or even just nudity in it, it usually wasn’t important to the story. On the other hand, it may have made sense to include in the film but it was so terribly done that I promptly blocked it out.
The other issue is that it has become increasingly difficult to find any shows that either don’t include sex scenes, or don’t have ridiculous levels of violence, or whatever else is difficult for me to deal with when I just want something easy to watch that’s not a kid’s movie (although kid’s movies have their own set of issues).
Streaming services don’t even make it easy to find something to watch - they show you the same stuff over and over, or they pretend that everything is in English when they include so many other languages in the selections. If I am unable to pay attention to the captions then I would prefer to have something in English without trying a bunch of different shows first. I mean I guess this is partly (mainly?) my fault since I’ve failed to learn another language despite years of studying. But I think it just irritates me that they lie about it more than anything.
Idk I am off topic now and this has turned into a really long comment that probably doesn’t say anything that hasn’t already been said in this thread.
Maybe find less prudish friends? There’s nothing wrong with bodies.
Nah, it’s useless filler meant to bring in a brain-dead sex deprived audience. Fuck it
I can understand that now that we have access to easy-direct–instant-proper porn that sex scenes are less appealing to the majority of people.
When I was a kid they would definitely include a sex scene just so that people looking to jerk off would be willing to watch or buy.
Yeah but, sex scenes in movies and sex in porn are hardly even the same thing. They’re so wildly different, I don’t see how one could be a replacement for the other.
True, but they can still get you (especially during Puberty) horny.
I think thats what these kids are actually complaining about. They’re used to getting turned on and immediately being able to satisfy themselves on their phones. But during a movie they’ve got to wait another hour before they can releave themselves and that’s frustrating for them.
Ahh… that’s an angle I hadn’t thought of…
When porn was less accessible they could definitely be in the realm. Now it’s more often bad soft core or HBO style taking up too much of an episode without moving the plot.
Growing up my friend had a special VHS tape he’d rent movies and record the sex scenes to. He was pretty sheltered and just didn’t have access to much else.
Not to pick on you or anything, but I just can’t understand this perspective.
Like, imagine wanting less action in your Marvel movies because you can just youtube real fights in Denny’s restaurants.
I guess it depends on the effects action could have on you.
If you’re the type to get really pumped and hyped at action, something you do enjoy but maybe not all the time, then inserting it into a movie that you wanted to give you some other emotion would take away from the overall experience because it’s hard to get out of the juiced up state of mind.
So if sex scenes make you horny, and maybe you’re conditioned to get immediate relief from that feeling because of porn, then I can see why that could hinder your enjoyment of the overall movie.
If I want to watch sex in a movie, I’ll watch a porno in my basement sex dungeon. If I want to watch something with family and friends without that weird awkward moment when SEX starts happening, I’ll watch a movie without a pointless sex scene in it.
I’m just glad you didn’t call it a “playroom”.
I also like to think of it as my Fappy Funtime Playroom
Oh okay, I don’t like that.
So I’ve noticed that there are a lot of streaming movies and TV shows that match a lot of these patterns:
- IP is announced. Adaptation of extremely popular series with existing fanbase
- IP is billed as “adult” with “mature themes”
- Producer/Director goes on a podcast and compares IP to “Game of Thrones” a few weeks before release. Said comparison treats GoT as an ideal to aspire to instead of a cautionary tale.
- Producer/Director also insults existing fanbase for some reason
- IP is previewed to critics, gets amazing reviews
- IP comes out, and gets high streaming numbers day one
- Writing ends up being terrible
- Plot ends up being surface level, with all the subtly of the original adaptation cut out. This somehow is true now matter how basic the source material may seem
- Acting is terrible. There is at least one race swapped character, who they also butcher from a writing perspective
- VFX is terrible, and expensive scenes are cut out
- Costumes are terrible to the point where everything looks like shitty cosplay
- There’s a few violent scenes that are extremely gratuitous. VFX and writing are so bad that it’s comical instead of jarring
- There are a few random sex scenes thrown in. The sex scenes detract from the pacing of the story, and are blatantly thrown in so producers can brag about them
- Sex scenes tend to focus on the female form. If men are involved, they all are hairless and look like boy band members
- If it is a gay sex scene, it blatantly written by women and for women with an extremely limited knowledge of men as a whole
- In a few days, the Internet erupts with needlessly vitriolic discourse about said IP.
- A year post release, the show is essentially forgotten.
In that context it’s no surprise younger people don’t like sex scenes. It’s basically a canary for a low quality show and extreme toxicity.
Are you taking about Uglies? I feel like you described Uglies. I liked the adaptation, but a lot of critics didn’t.
I think the Netflix Avatar the last air bender checks off a good amount of that list.
The number of sex scenes are down since 2000 of the movies coming out of Hollywood. But if you’re willing to read subtitles, there’s still a lot of horny videos coming out of Western Europe.
For me, make the sex relevant to the plot and make the sex they have congruent with the characters.
I have noticed over the years sex scenes usually add no value to the movie. If the sex scene was removed completely it wouldn’t change the story at all.
Yeah, while I do enjoy seeing occasional boobs (which most of the time aren’t even showed), if I want to watch sex, I’ll just put on some porn.
IMO, The Room is one of the few movies where the sex scenes added anything. And even then, they didn’t add anything to the plot, they added to the meta plot, which was the story of a guy with a passionate vision but lacking the talent to pull off that vision, which IMO Wiseau does have talent doing, since he’s been able to recreate that same feeling in other content, making me think he’s playing a character (Tommy Wiseau the producer) he wants the audience to laugh at.
It’s the stupid toxic “romance” that I want rid of. It gets so boring and tedious to watch. If it’s important to the story, then fine. But otherwise can we just normalize friendship between opposite gendered people without the need for bad relationship drama, jealousy, and normalizing the idea that when someone says no, they’re actually just “playing hard to get”.
can we just normalize friendship between opposite gendered people
Great idea. I would love a prominent TV show to have main characters of the opposite sex that are good friends and a romance is never shoehorned into it at any point.
Warehouse 13 got sooooo close.
Stargate SG1 did it as well or evem better than WH13 in my opinion. Sure Jack and Sam have some sort of romance but Teal’C, Sam, and Daniel are great friends. Atlantis did it even better with Ronon and Teyla.
Yeah, but not all the characters on any show were hooking up with each other outside of soap opera stuff. There was still an idea that two of them will end up falling in love. Why does that need to be part of the show at all? Let them all have partners outside of work.
Romance sells. Will they won’t they sells. Sex appeal sells.
It might seem cheap to you, but people do want and enjoy that kind of content.
Don’t you think people also might and want shows that don’t have those things? I really don’t think a single show where there is a mixed gender cast and no one ever ends up in bed with anyone else is going too far.
I’m sure some exist, but you’re an exception in not wanting that at all; most people want sex appeal and some romance.
Sex is an intrinsic part of being human and influences a lot of our decisions, it’s only natural for it to be in our media.
This is what I said:
Great idea. I would love a prominent TV show to have main characters of the opposite sex that are good friends and a romance is never shoehorned into it at any point.
A prominent TV show.
As in one. Singular.
So I’m not sure where you have gotten it into your head that I want no romance at all in media.
If you haven’t seen it. Ted Lasso is a great one for this.
I’ve had that show recommended to me before and I keep avoiding it because the subject matter doesn’t interest me, but I keep being told to watch it despite that, so it is on my long list.
I’m not sure what you think the subject matter is, but I was completely caught off guard. The main character is ostensibly in a “fish out of water” story, and that certainly creates a humorous backdrop. But the show is really all about mental health and wellbeing. People supporting each other while they learn to love themselves, deal with anxiety, trauma, and prejudice… It’s immensely beautiful, uproariously funny, and I will happily be the next person to recommend you watch it.
It’s the sports part that held absolutely no interest to me because I think sports are really, really boring. But I’m told I’ll like it anyway, and you seem to back that up.
There are plenty of shows “about” subjects that you really don’t need to have any interest in to enjoy, because the show is actually about the characters. Like Succession, is any knowledge about or passion for corporate takeovers necessary? In Ted Lasso, the sport is there to motivate the characters, and is only very occasionally on screen.
Honestly, Law & Order is good for this imo. Especially Benson and Stabler from SVU, and some of Criminal Intent with Vincent D’Onofrio and Kathryn Erna.
I want to believe.
Twilight really fucked up the romance genre, huh? Lol
“Social media is the most authentic?”
GenZ is fucked. Although not literally
It makes sense. Sex scenes were interesting when we didn’t have on-hand porn streaming because it was something you didn’t see often. Nudity and sex are now so readily available that they aren’t exciting. As someone else said, just infer it.
It doesn’t make sense.
Is it more interesting to see your girlfriend or boyfriend naked or in a sensual situation or porn? How about just someone you know?
Extending this logic, it is more interesting to see someone you know in se(x/n)ual scenes from an acting perspective. Meaning, while it’s may not help the plot of every movie, I would say having these elements added by your favorite actor gives some pupil dilating special sauce that horny longdong and bouncy jangletits hardcore adventure does not provide.
Just have the screen go black at a sex scene.
“Pause here, go watch your favourite porn vid and come back. That’s what just happened.”
A choose your own adventure!
My issue is that it’s almost always gratuitous now. I so rarely see a sex scene in a TV show or movie and think that it could have easily been skipped, but they felt the need to show an actress’ breasts and have her simulate an orgasm.
I don’t get titillated by it. I have porn if I need that.
I didn’t get past the first episode of Game of Thrones because I found all the sex and nudity too gratuitous for my tastes.
I don’t think I’m a prude. I have no problem with sex scenes and nudity in films where they make sense. Basic Instinct wouldn’t make sense without them. Last Tango in Paris wouldn’t make sense without them. They’re both movies worth watching.
You should suffer through it. The series is pretty primo. Books are good too, but season one is less time investment than book one and they run pretty parallel. Book two and season two… Different story.
I think, at least in the GoT example, sexual situations can be used to communicate a lot about the attitudes and culture around sex and nudity in the universe of the show or movie. It’s much more interesting than somebody saying, “Hey, person who already knows this: it’s considered normal for men to use brothels, isn’t it?”
It’s much less interesting and necessary for something set in the “current” world, since the audience doesn’t need as much education in the social mores. However, it can make the work have better instructive longevity if it’s an accurate depiction of the time, since people fifty years in the future can watch and understand what was different.
But I do agree that overall there has been a lot of gratuitous nudity and sex, just the same with violence, etc.
You didn’t think it made sense in game of thrones?
It’s olden days in a hostile world. All there is to do is have sex and die. What felt inaccurate to life about that?
In the one episode I saw? No. It seemed almost entirely gratuitous. I don’t need to watch a prostitute sucking off Peter Dinklage to know he’s having sex with a bunch of prostitutes what with him already being in bed with them.
I often find sex scenes to be gratuitous and unnecessary, but I would never let sex prevent me from watching an amazing TV show or movie. I think that’s just foolish.
When there are countless other good things to watch that don’t involve those? Why spend my time on the ones that do just because they’re also considered to be good? I won’t enjoy them as much, so obviously they won’t be as good for me as they are for others.
I could be missing all kinds of amazing things to watch for all kinds of reasons. So could you. There’s only 24 hours in a day. You have to pick and choose.
Just a trivial and silly way to limit your exposure to different types of film/TV.
A sex scene might make me take a point off of my score for a movie, but I’ve seen far too many flat out incredible movies/shows with unnecessary sex scenes to know just how much I’d be missing if I removed such a large chunk of content from the pool right off the bat like that.
No thanks. I will watch something without regard for its sexual content, because I’m an adult. And then, if it turned out to have a gratuitous sex scene, that will factor into my opinion of the thing.
The thing about gratuitous and unnecessary sex scenes is, by definition, they are unnecessary. So if you really care that much, why not just fast forward through them? You would miss nothing (otherwise it wouldn’t have been unnecessary).
I recently watched “Jeanne Dielman…” after seeing it top the BFI Top 100 list. That movie has quite a bit of sex, but it was well worth the watch, and it would be a shame to have prevented myself from even having that opportunity because it contains sex.
It wasn’t a sex scene in the case of the first episode of GoT.
I don’t have a problem with a sex scene. Especially if it serves the plot.
I literally said so at the beginning of this comment chain:
I have no problem with sex scenes and nudity in films where they make sense. Basic Instinct wouldn’t make sense without them. Last Tango in Paris wouldn’t make sense without them. They’re both movies worth watching.
Yeah I understand that and agree that most sex scenes are unnecessary. And I am talking about movies and TV shows that are considered some of the greatest media ever created, that might happen to have unnecessary sex in it. I’m not going to arbitrarily limit myself and miss out on watching that stuff because there might be 90 seconds (of a 2+ hour film) of unnecessary sex. Again, because I’m an adult.
Using your example, you are missing out on one of the best stories ever told on television (until the last season at least), because the first episode of the show had sex in it that you found to be unnecessary (and btw, while most of the sex in that show is unnecessary, there is at least one or two *very important" sex scenes in season 1 that one might not recognize as being important… Yet).
As someone who read the books, I was able to tell which sex scenes were important, and which weren’t, but not all of it is unnecessary.
I understand your position, I just think it’s silly (and kind of sad).
Sex, going to the bathroom, and puking.
All 3 can be easily inferred without actually showing it.
Counterpoint: showing the sex and the puking in graphic detail in Team America were both important parts of the movie.
Also in Guesthouse Paradiso. It was vital to show how problematic it could be to eat radioactive fish.
