Roughly correlates with the rate of decrease in people 18-30 having sex. I’m not sure of the order of influence there, or if there even is one, but it’s possible the declining presence of sex in media is a result of it being less relatable for something like 30% more young people than previous generations.
What bothers me more is that violence gets a PG rating here, sex gets an X rating. How in the world is it more inappropriate for kids to see people naked than for them to watch someone hack someone else to death? The graphic violence should get a more restricted rating than on screen sex.
When your nation always needs to be at war, it’s helps to repress sexuality and normalize violence. This isn’t so much a conspiracy theory, but an observation of an emergence behavior that reinforces itself.
I think you have a good point. It’s also a important part of the handmaid’s tail. Where sex is repressed for most of society. Especially soldiers (?!).
Another part maybe is sports, American society spend so much money in teaching sport to kids at a level that is pretty high. Compared to other nations.
Wait do video games cause violence after all?
I’d like to see the chart go back a lot further tbh
I wanna see this extended back to at least 1980, which was around the peak for nudity and sex scenes in film; after porn was legalized but before internet porn.
Good! it always looks “bolted on”, awkward, and doesn’t advance the plot
Another thing ruined by Gen Z. ;)
https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/sex-on-screen-ucla-study-gen-z-teens-young-adults-1235768046/
So glad it isn’t us millennials ruining everything nowadays. Your turn, gen Z!
if you believe IASIP analysis in s14 e2 “thundergun 4 : maximum cool”; a highly respected source in media studies circles. They put it down to piracy as a prominent root cause.
I think that’s a resonably “millenial” thing, at least in terms or p2p internet piracy like napster, soulseek, piratebay, bittorrent.
if you believe IASIP analysis in s14 e2 “thundergun 4 : maximum cool”; a highly respected source in media studies circles. They put it down to piracy as a prominent root cause.
I think that’s a resonably “millenial” thing, at least in terms or p2p internet piracy like napster, soulseek, piratebay, bittorrent.
wdym ruined?
Watching with your family kinda makes it awkward with some random sex scene out of nowhere.
But the kids love seeing people being stabbed and shot and torn apart, right?
We should be more comfortable with tits and ass than guns. We’re not and that’s a problem.
We should be more comfortable with tits and ass, both sexualised and casual, but not every action flick needs a tacked on romance with two leads slobbering over each other two thirds through the movie
guns are fun toys, breasts are the work of the devil
/s
Usually if it pass the 20 seconds I reach for the keyboard to skip ahead.
I mean, who cares about smushys , I get it you are in love, lets go ahead
Ok I understand the comments here where people are saying they dislike sex scenes that don’t advance the plot. However there are certain movies where sex scenes are essential to the plot such as Boogie Nights. I can also think of examples like The Name Of The Rose where a sex scene is thematically improving the film (in my opinion).
Sex scenes in film/tv are hard to get right but I’d prefer if directors worked harder to capture/deploy them properly rather than a large facet of human experience disappearing during script interventions by producers and studios.
Boogie nights was high art.
I think we’re on the same page, but you gotta look at the data a little differently. The way I see it, if we’re cutting down on sex scenes that are unnecessary to the plot, then the number at the end is what’s left. That’s the number of scenes that do advance the plot, and the number isn’t 0.
I agree, but the downward trend is from the 00s when directors would just hamfist sex scenes into movies and shows regardless of whether they’re relevant to the plot. I like to think we’re trending back to normality where sex scenes actually serve a purpose instead of being there just for the sake of being there.
The number is going down, it is not going to zero.
So, how about out of 20 movies, 18 cut the crap, and the other two put some fuckin effort into their sex scenes.
rather than a large facet of human experience disappearing during script interventions by producers and studios.
If sex is a facet of human experience then so is video games. Why don’t movies often show people playing video games? Perhaps we should treat the lack of gaming in movies as a serious issue too. /s
I know you said /s but I’ve thought similar things. I think it’s because unless it’s two characters playing couch co-op, then it’s not really social or character building. Even eating lunch together gives the characters so much more “business” to work with.
Drag was making a point about how not everyone likes sex, and calling it a “facet of human experience” is a little grandiose from that point of view. Drag used the video game equivalence to illustrate that point to heterosexual non-gamers. Drag likes to fuck dragons, but drag respects asexuals and thinks about how allonormaty affects them. It’s asexual awareness week.
This makes no sense to me. What else would be worthy of being called grandiosely a facet of human experience if not sex? Sex has it’s olace among the importan experiences of human life - it’s how human life starts. It’s an important driving force, it influences people’s life, decisions, relationships, even lack of sex and the resulting frustration influences human behaviour. Asexuality is actually very interesting for the same reason - it’s a lack of something that most people experience. I wpuldn’t mind more films woth openly asexual characters. Falling in love is depicted very often even though there are aromantic people who don’t experience it.
What else would be worthy of being called grandiosely a facet of human experience if not sex?
Death. The reaper man comes for us all.
Yeah, sure, I didn’t want to say there are no other facetes, just that sex is one of the important ones. I wasn’t really askin :) The death and birth are kinda key, right?
Also breathing, eating, and pooping. There are millions more who do those things than who do sex.
Something about How To Plan An Orgy In A Small Town?
I wonder how much of this correlates with the rise of intimacy coordinators. I’m sure there are productions that think it’s not worth the investment so they just scrap the scene and have it take place off camera etc.
And perhaps a rise in actors not wanting to have their stuff on the internet forever now (even more so with the rise of AI training)
I wonder how much of this is because Disney owns everything.
I wonder how this would trend if we cut out comic book movies from the stat.
Disney isn’t above making R-rated cinema
https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Category:R-rated_films
Both Deadpool & Wolverine and Alien: Romulus were Disney flix.
No one hung dong in either
I think it correlates more strongly to the prevalence of pornography. Mainstream movie scenes look fake and contrived, because they are. As unrealistic as pornography is, that is actually a dick, and it is actually going in a vagina.
When your mainstream movie sex scene is going to be compared (unfavorably) to a scene of two people actually fucking, why bother even shooting it?
I think this only happens because sex is as fake as most other emotions in today’s movies.
I also hate how everything is glossy, even character faces. Even fear, blood and shit are glossy.
FFS, old Hollywood with exceptionally cute actors on main roles still would have a bit of that noble mess around, chaotic here and there and in conversations. Good 3d artists know that you need some chaos in everything distinguishable in your scenes or they will look fake.
It’s rather that fake-looking sex scenes in movies don’t feel like art, they feel like porn without satisfaction. So nobody bothers.
While fixing that culture would require changing the environment around film making. You know, the one forming the demand for bore and glossiness.
I noticed this as well. I don’t really care either way, just that it was noticeable. The other part I noticed is that if there is nudity, I feel like it’s a way higher percentage that it’s a male. I’m not going to lie if I had to choose I would rather see the other sex, but I understand we had way too long of a time with it being a one-way street.
Good. I watch movies to be absorbed by the story, not to see tits.
I’m definitely not opposed to tits in any situation.
Fast Forward has been a thing since like…the 80s
Or I could… y’know… watch/do something else that doesn’t have this crap to begin with.
Let me just go harass the theater workers to do that.
Because the world shifted to the right a bunch more regarding sexual content… fucking websites now want you to show your ID in some states to view porn.
I think acclaimed director Paul Verhoeven put it best when he called our country a land full of gleefully violent prudes when people freaked out about his use of sexuality, nudity and people being comfortable naked around members of the opposite sex.
When nudity/sexuality is shown artistically or actually has some depth or place in the story being told, I enjoy it, but 90% of that hollywood shit is hot garbage and I think a lot of folks feel the same.
90% of that hollywood shit is hot garbage and I think a lot of folks feel the same.
And who HASN’T been in a situation, watching TV or movie with parents or other polite company, when a sex scene comes on (completely unnecessary to the plot), making everyone uncomfortable. I’d like to think that audience surveys have been taken into account to make Hollywood stop including sex scenes.
It’s only uncomfortable if you make it uncomfortable, but if you’re all adults it doesn’t have to be. Maybe it helps to grow up in a less puritanical country than the US though.
Drag was a teenager when drag saw Oblivion with drag’s dad. The underwater sex scene was not fun.
You deserve it for typing like that
Everyone fucks. I don’t need to see the details about that aspect of most characters’ lives in order to understand the story being told about that character. I love sex scenes. I hate sex scenes that are gratuitous and don’t enhance my understanding of story or character. If it’s not needed for one of those things, it doesn’t belong in the story. (and that’s true for any kind of scene, not just sex scenes)
If the purpose of the sex scene is “you get to see this actress mostly naked” and no other purpose - then yeah, that feels cheap and gratuitous. Make a movie where her sex life matters if you want to show me that.
That’s why I only watch shows like sex/life with my in laws the sex is crucial to the plot.
Only on-screen violence now though. If you dare protect yourself physically, you’ll go to prison and everyone will scorn you.
The disappearance of the sex scene in American cinema, the suppression of the body under the moral imperative of commodities in neoliberal capitalism, and Verhoeven as antagonizer.
Bro, you gotta stop reading shit like this. It’s bad for your brain. Not everything is capitalistic plot to suppress your whatever.
Why wouldn’t you be able to see it as “the viewers didn’t enjoy our cringe sex scenes, so we got rid of them, cuz we sure as hell couldn’t put real sex scenes into movies”. And no, not because of purity. But because even good porn is cringe and fake.
So maybe it’s really a decomcratic decision and it’s only possible because through capitalism there’s monetary pressure on the film industry to do the things people want.
Whichever it is, you gotta stop reading BS that starts with a conclusion in the first sentence, and no matter the subject it’s the same conclusion: capitalism oppressing the working class. You’d make Lenin cringe.
Yeah, I’m not discussing the article further after checking your post history.
Just one little tidbit of information for you: The sentences at the start on a rather lenghty article, usually set in a different typeset, is called “synopsis”. I know I know, I was like “wooaaah” when I learned that >30 years ago.
You realize there is more than the US in the world right…? You’re really proving stereotypes by saying “the world” and then giving only US states as an example. A lot of the world haven’t shifted to the right. It’s pretty certain this graph was based on mostly American stuff anyway, so both the image, this whole post and you are all doing the classic 'Murican thing of thinking US specific things apply to the whole world.
Sorry - meant just “the world of media.” Obviously a majority of films marketed internationally seem to be from the US, but yeah it’s mostly a US issue. We’re violent sexually repressed religious prudes.
The world didn’t do shit.
It was as normal in Europe to be naked and talk about sex as it is now. Actually, it probably got even a bit more normal.
Your stupid Hollywood is somehow watched by everyone around the world while it’s produced to cater to your dumb average American. And they’re religious and prudent. And that has been the case since forever. Which is why having naked breasts in your cinema is something wild.
In the meantime french movies would casually have people full naked every second movie.
Am I really on a movies community?
–
Now, your dumb Hollywood realized their cringe sex scenes aren’t appreciated by about anyone, and so they cut them out. Big deal.
Definitely not the world shifting, and not even your moronic populace. Proportion of religious prudes is still dropping even in the dumbfuckistan. And yet no more sex in the movies. Go figure.
You use strong words for my taste, although I would agree that Americans are much more prudent than Europeans. But the graph we’re discussing here shows a decline in sex depiction in the movies. It shows there are less sex scenes than there used to be. The decline cannot be explained by the differences between the USA and Europe.
The movie that made me want to avoid all sex scenes in movies was Watchmen. Between the completely unnecessary scene and the song that played but just tainted the whole movie.
Except for the music, the scenes were pretty much straight from the book:
I didn’t have any issues with the Dr Manhattan scene. It was the Nightowl one with Hallelujah playing that felt so cringe.
I totally agree. That was a weird fucking scene.
I saw unnecessary violence in a movie and now I never want to see violence again.
It wasn’t just unnecessary it was bad. Did you see it?
No
Sex scenes are goofy af