I am not a teen.
Not a teen here but the amount of sex that show characters have seems crazy to me and I genuinely think it affected me because I couldn’t keep up as an impressionable child. It’s ok to have lots of sex but do we have to act like that’s normal and that I should be suffering when I go more than a month without sex?
Sex is very normal though. Just to make an argument here: what if sex had been banned altogether in the media when you were an impressionable child. How would that have worked out for you?
My guess is not better.
Not better, but I am not advocating for the other extreme. I just think our media could stand to show more variety of what a healthy sex life can look like.
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
And some religious texts.
Greecy
Why is that swan leering at me…
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 want 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.
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.
Oh man, I wish I could give you more than one upvote. Thank you for this well reasoned defense of sex in movies.
I would appreciate less violence too. It feels like since GoT they have to put some gory violence and some sex scenes into everything that is targeted at an adult audience.
The point really is not about fundamental opposition. It is about being oversaturated and hence tired of it. That is why it is annoying when it doesn’t further the plot, is done cringey or well, seems like an attempt at being porn of some sort. That stuff worked in the 80s and 90s, when people still had to rent VHS. People being addicted to porn and harming themselves with their overconsumption but being in denial about it probably also adds in here.
Great points! Personally for me I can do with less gorey violence. What I’m most interested in is good action sequences.
Even in kids movies I get questions like “does the goomba die when Mario smashes it?”
Thats maybe an absurd example but I think it highlights how we see stories where characters often solve their problems with violence, even as a first choice.
Sometimes the tone is wildly off too, like watching the good guy kill multiple people and then everyone is jovial about it.
All those comic book movies are especially weird.
Slaughter their way through an army of henchmen who presumably have families and homes to go to and are nothing more than hired goons, before getting to the mastermind and mostly just giving them a firm telling off and taking them to prison.
If violence doesn’t further the plot then it shouldn’t be in there either.
Nobody is saying you can’t have sexy comedies. We’re just tired of stupid shit like the mid-life threatening event romance scene. The timer on the bomb is literally counting down and they take the time to profess their love and it’s not a comedy so I’m the asshole for laughing in the theater.
It’s been ridiculous for decades and we’re tired of it.
If violence doesn’t further the plot then it shouldn’t be in there either.
A lot of action movies would be very short. My poor kung fu movies would need to be cut down to about 15 minutes. Why can’t we sometimes just have gratuitous things for the fun of it? Not everything needs to be high art.
We’re just tired of stupid shit like the mid-life threatening event romance scene. The timer on the bomb is literally counting down and they take the time to profess their love and it’s not a comedy so I’m the asshole for laughing in the theater.
I think you’re taking out on sex/nudity/romance what you should be attributing to bad filmmaking. With good writing/acting/directing/editing that exact cliche’ scenario you describe could be done in such a way as to be genuinely funny, or touching, or sexy.
Nobody is arguing that all movies need to remove violence or sexy? Where are you even getting that from?
But no one here is arguing the problem is inherently with sex or romance…you pulled that assumption out of your ass. The entire point of this thread is that unnecessary sex or violence is a crutch of bad film making…
Nobody is arguing that all movies need to remove violence or sexy? Where are you even getting that from?
The comment I’m replying to (and quoted) literally said: “If violence doesn’t further the plot then it shouldn’t be in there either.” And plenty of people in these comments are arguing that if sexiness doesn’t further the plot it shouldn’t be there.
But no one here is arguing the problem is inherently with sex or romance
Again, the person I’m replying to was explicitly saying that forced romantic scenes suck, as if they are inherently a problem. I’m just saying I think the “forced” part is the problem, not the romance/sex/nudity. People here are denigrating sex/nudity/romance in film when what they should be mad at is bad filmmaking in general.
That is literally what everyone else is saying. You are arguing with no one.
The problem IS shitty filmmaking. The specific examples of shitty filmmaking being discussed are pointless violence and pointless sex scenes that don’t contribute to the movie in any way.
Uh no, lots of people here are arguing that all sex scenes that don’t actively move the plot forward are inherently pointless and shouldn’t be there. And I’m disagreeing.
Sex/nude scenes can positively contribute to the mood, themes, character development, world building, and other things that aren’t absolutely necessary to move a plot forward.
If the original article was titled “Teens want better implementation of sex in movies” I wouldn’t have commented. But most people aren’t complaining about “bad implementation” or “bad filmmaking” - they’re saying they don’t want sex in film at all unless ABSOLUTELY necessary, and I think that’s unfortunate.
Sure. Sometimes. As a specific movie made for that. Not every single show and movie producers can cram it into.
Agreed. Too often it feels like they’re just trying to check a box or fill time.
Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I was having this exact conversation in another thread in c/movies not three days ago. The fear of sex is just astounding to me. And it being equated only to porn was more than a little troubling.
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.
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!
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.
Here is the actual study if anyone is interested.
21, century of the fantasy, watch out antique civilisations!
Hopeful, uplifting content with people “beating the odds.”
I don’t only want that by any means, but it sure would be nice to have more positive stories. Even better, more shows and movies where not every character is horribly irredeemable.
I agree with the teens. We already live in a dystopia, no need to have that in our movies and books anymore.
There’s a reason cottage core exists. And how popular bridgerton is, and that’s not because of the sex in the series, but the escapism to a world where war barely gets mentioned. And where costumed balls are all the rage.
Teens,
They want to believe in a world that isn’t terrible.
Want to have perfect friends they don’t have.
Want social media to be real life.We are in the era of make believe and roleplay and we wonder why nothing is getting done in the real world.
I have a few problems with this and first and foremost is that their study is about teens yet they surveyed ten to twentyfour year olds about it.
Secondly is that the infographic says that teens would prefer more friendships over romantic relationships but this doesn’t account for the fact that there’s been a trope for the last decade where there is always some stupid romantic relationship shoehorned into any fucking story even if it makes no sense or distracts from the main story. For all we know, teens and twenty-somethings could be tired of romance being injected into movies and TV when the story doesn’t call for it but be otherwise fine with it when it enhances a story.
Makes me want Cosmere movies even more than I already did
“Uplifting fantasy about characters that ‘beat the odds’” is like
The entire thing.
I think movie is the wrong medium for most of the Cosmere. Too short form. Mini series or anime-style might be better?
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.
Honestly never heard of it lol.
I think the Netflix Avatar the last air bender checks off a good amount of that list.
Oh God, please tell me they didn’t put a sex scene in a movie led by literal children?
Couldn’t tell you, I only watched the first couple of episodes because it covers a bunch of the first points of the list.
Guess we’ll never know
If it does not serve a purpose for the plot, then it’s not needed. Simple as that.
Character development? It might not directly impact the plot or move the story forward, but how a character relates to sex can tell us (the audience) a lot about them.
Exactly this. A lot of media is atrocious about shoehorning in things even if they are jarring and dont make sense. Token characters (race, sexuality), token ideologies (veganism, feminism, religion, etc), stereotypes, you name it.
Yeah because everyone in media needs to be straight, white, and Christian. 🙄
Representation matters.
Sure, but I get what they mean. Sometimes you have a minority character that doesn’t very much seem to interact with the plot, nor has many discernable personality trait beyond being part of a minority.
Representation matters, but it should be done in a way that makes the characters actual people, not just a tick in a checkbox.
And there is definitely a tokenism issue in Hollywood. There’s a reason why the “gay best friend” is a Hollywood stereotype.
They’re saying that characters irrelevant to the plot having diverse roles feels forced. Wouldn’t you agree diverse roles should be in meaningful roles like leads?
No, I don’t think I would agree. If I walk down the street, I’m going to see people of all types. Why should including people of all types in media be any different? Having more diversity in lead roles is preferable, yes, but I don’t see what feels “forced” about more diversity across all roles. If anything, it seems like that would be more realistic.
People downvoting as a reactionary for making them feel bad, but I agree.
Having a stereotype as a character for the sake of “representation” is not representing anything good and is not doing justice to anyone who would be more than a single note character.
I’m tired of bad writing and gimmicks to get people to have a reaction to an otherwise bad story, but that doesn’t mean I want movies with none of the topics in it, I just want it to mean something when it’s there.
Exactly.
(Natural/Organic storytelling) The Boys: Maeve, Kimiko, and Starlight, beating the shit out of Stormfront
Vs
(Forced/jarring) That scene in Avengers Endgame, where every female character from across a massive battlefield appeared next to each other. As opposed to the scene in Infinity War with Proxima Midnight which felt fairly natural.
Or even better, movies actually dedicated to telling stories about underrepresented cultures such as The Woman King
I remember seeing trailers about that, completely forgot to actually go watch it. I’ll add it to my watch list (someday I’ll start watching things on the list)
As I said here:
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 story (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.
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 porn.
The point of John Wick is the gratuitous violence. The plot of John Wick is in service to delivering gratuitous violence. The name for a movie whose plot is in service to delivering gratuitous sex is “pornography.” Tasteful, artistic nudity is one thing. Even sex, in service to the plot or purpose of the movie, is another thing. But sex just to sell the movie or check a box is not a thing: we’re now talking smut. Cheap, common, vulgar smut.
“Everyone is ugly and everyone is fucking” is just real life. If you want “Everyone is beautiful and everyone is fucking,” good news- that’s called porn already, and there’s so much of it. I like smut, and porn. Which is why I can recognize softcore in movies when I see it. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but if I wanted to watch porn I’d go home and masturbate.
I congratulate you on your personal sexual liberation. Please keep your jollies to yourself- in private- while we pitiful repressed twilight zone voyeurs awkwardly exclude sex from our public lives.
I’m not saying I want movies that have as much sex as John Wick has violence - obviously that would just be porn. My point is: why does sex have this obligation to move the plot forward when we give a pass to other gratuitous scenes (action, drama, violence, etc)?
If you want “Everyone is beautiful and everyone is fucking,” good news- that’s called porn already, and there’s so much of it.
The fact that you only equate sex/nudity to porn reveals the problem. Seems like many young people 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 war documentaries so we don’t need war movies.” They are completely different things!!
while we pitiful repressed twilight zone voyeurs awkwardly exclude sex from our public lives.
Who said it has to be part of your “public life”? I’m not saying we should all want to watch Wild Things with our parents, but not every movie needs to be a ‘family movie’ that you’d want to watch in polite company. Some movies are best watched with rowdy friends or an intimate partner - and I’m sad that those types of movies have been in decline. The younger generations seem far more prudish than I ever expected.
The fact that you only equate sex/nudity to porn reveals the problem.
I took the trouble to delineate tasteful nudity, or sex that actually serves a purpose in the plot (your fine examples of drama or fear are great suggestions, though I worry about the encroachment of porn with a “fun sex scene”) from common smut.
As for public life: the theater is a public place, my thought goes no further than that.
Thinking back now, I can even empathize with some of your feelings here. In the abu dhabi branch of the louvre, there is an ancient marble statue of a man that stands twice my height if my memory serves. Its genitals have been roughly gouged out with chisels in stark contrast to the smooth curve of skin and cloth for the entire rest of the statue. It’s nauseating and disrespectful not just to the creator’s work and vision but to human dignity. I think me seeing that statue and feeling what I felt is something comparable to how you now feel. I’m not afraid of or ashamed of the human form or human sexuality, but these things have a time and a place and a respect due that is often not granted or even considered.
So maybe im just watching the wrong movies. what not-porn movie are you watching that treats sex with the dignity and respect it deserves?
Its very simple. Sex is boring to look at. Even porn. Whats the longest you watched a porn movie? 5 minutes? 15? Let’s top it off at 30 minutes. Just to be safe.
Violence is not boring. Stuff like John Wick grabs you by the ass and puts you on a roller coaster.
Want proof? Look at gaming. How big are the dating sims? Now compare that with call of duty/etc.
So, me? Yeah, stop with the xxl steamy sex scenes in movies. Very rarely do they add anything more then an interlude. A time to get coffee. To look at your notifications. At best.
To be clear: I love sex. My sex.
In other news, the entertainment industry is run by soulless ghouls that will do anything they believe is necessary to increase revenue, including adding sex and violence that requires no language or subtlety to understand.
Not jusr sex. Most romance can be deleted from series and movies and they would not lose any plot. It is virtually always shoehorned in.
Yeah that annoys me actually more. You often already see in the beginning what kind of (predictable) romance is developing, which just distracts from the main and more interesting plot, adding some kind of annoying drama that is just not necessary.
Also not a teen, but as an asexual person I’ve been wishing for that for a while now.
Sorry but someone still has to have sex out there to give birth to more asexual people.
But what does that have to do with sex scenes in movies and tv shows?
It’s a thing that happens and kinda has to happen. there will always be a story that needs to include at least the mention of it.
What does your affliction have to do with movies and TV for others?
Firstly, it’s not an affliction, just like how being straight or being allosexual isn’t an affliction.
Secondly, rarely does a sex scene move the plot forward.
Thirdly, less is still more.
Fourthly, sex scenes still don’t help procreation one bit, now does it? So you didn’t answer my question, but I’m no longer interested in your answer. By calling me an affliction makes it perfectly clear to me that what you have to say isn’t interesting.
The kids are right.
Lol, If someone puts a gun against my head and says guess the most lied about thing in human history, honest to god I would say, Teens lying About sex.
For some reason I question the validity of this study.
There’s lot of ‘need to touch grass’ level of discourse of sex being icky these days.
Disclaimer: Based on my infrequent visits to tumblr and related subreddits.
I have zero sources to back this up but I blame American puritanism
I think that there’s a lot of anxiety more than puritanism. There’s a lot of reasons, but one of them is certainly the growing political divide; women are trending more and more liberal, and men more and more conservative. Women don’t want to get trapped by a man that doesn’t think that she should have rights, while men seem to think that they are ‘owed’ a woman to have their babies (…and how are they going to fucking pay for those kids, when they think their wife is going to stay at home, and they have zero fucking job prospects…?).
TBH, if I was a woman, I sure as fuck would not want to risk dating men right now.
Yeah I think that anxiety is the reason people don’t want to see it.
The study also shows that they want escapism and fantasy stories that are only happy more than ever as well.
Ignoring the harsh bits is the point and the anxiety of the topic of Sex itself is I think the key factor in it being taboo because people want to ignore that which makes them uncomfortable.
Absolutely. Sex is viewed as either a prideful event to be overly open about or a dark hidden secret that only one should do.
If all we have is extremes no wonder neither side feels very interested in it. It loses the fact that it’s a thing that you just can do. It’s an action that can have lots of intent behind it and some of it is needed for procreation.
As is now it’s too surrounded by argument.
Dunno. There are better sources too look for sex. Watching a movie with your mates is just awkward.
There is porn now. Everyfuckingwhere. For free. So much porn. Niche porn. Hardcore porn. Fetish porn. You don’t have to jerk off to a lingirie catalog like we did when we were kids. Or sneak National Geographic magazines to see boobs. Sex in movies is just sad, stupid, and often unnecessary tittilation.
So what, we’re gonna remove gore and action scenes too? I’m not saying sex scenes inherently have more “value” than any other scene, I’m not even arguing they have any “value”, but there are a lot of movies out there that are 90% “unnecessary titillation” in one way, shape, or form.
So what, we’re gonna remove gore and action scenes too?
If they are unnecessary to the plot, and add nothing, then yes?
Sex scenes are fine if they’re important to the plot, and/or they add to the movie or show in a valuable way. It just turns out that ~99% of the time, these scenes are completely unnecessary.
Yeah “sex sells” only works when society is not constantly exposed to more extreme content.
It’s this.
I remember walking to the video rental store in the 90s to hire VCR tapes. We always tried to get that ones rated 18+ because there would be some boob stuff. Usually the attendant wouldn’t care.
Now, fuck. Filtering porn out of my social media feeds is a daily ordeal.
Most of the (supposed) younger generation people I interact with online seem even more prudish and conservative about sex than my very religious parents were growing up. It’s super weird to be the older person who’s ok with sexual content. I don’t really get it.
And yes, I know people will claim it’s because it’s only when it’s not done right or when it feels shoved in, but honestly from the way they talk about anything dealing with sex, it feels like that’s just an acceptable excuse and they really just don’t want the content to exist at all, even if ‘done right’. It’s like a huge chunk of the generation is asexual or something.
I’m with you, and I’m worried about it because I see this sexual puritanism as both counter to good efforts of the sexual liberation movement and frankly as a trojan horse for future conservatism to take root.
I’m of the radical acceptance, not abstaining from the topic mindset on this topic, personally.
I think a huge part of the problem that not enough people are talking about are these kids grew up in heavily corporate controlled spaces and have begun to confuse advertiser-friendliness for social acceptability, and I think that is a huge problem.
I think it has less to do with their attitude on sex, and more to do with the availability of actual porn. I’m an older millenial, and even I’m of the opinion that full on sex scenes very rarely add anything to the plot. Implied sex is often more than enough to do the required plot advancement. If I wanted the sex specifically, I’d just go watch porn.
I tended to get the impression that implied sex (such as fade to black scenes) were also not appreciated. That effectively they just didn’t want their media to include references to sex pretty much at all.
Maybe most people are reasonable about it, but online at least it feels a bit like the old Tumblr days, except now these people are super anti sex everything and want to erase all mention of it.
I always thought there should be more going to the restroom scenes.
When I watched the 24 series I really wanted it to cut to Jack Bauer at least washing his hands afterwards.
Immediately thinking of Pulp Fiction
ITT I found out that Satan was right.
