I am not a teen.
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 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.
• “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 war documentaries so we don’t need war 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 porn.
Oh man, I wish I could give you more than one upvote. Thank you for this well reasoned defense of sex in movies.
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.
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 don’t think that’s an inherent problem with sex/nudity/romance, the problem is just 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.
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.
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.
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.
To be fair game of thrones turned out to be a scam. At the time we thought there was plot reasons for literally everything.
I can’t even get 15 minutes through episode one now before the plot utterly collapses and I have to stop.
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.
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.
Watching softcore porn with your friends and family is kind of undesirable.
Well yeah, I think this is universal. No one wants to watch a sex scene with their parents
I watched GoT largely with my parents. It shouldn’t be that big of a deal. That said, does it add anything? I can watch as much porn as a I want whenever I want.
But can you watch it with your parents??
Fair point I guess. If you want to watch porn with your parents, for some reason, but feel like that’s too far, I guess sex scenes is the best you can do.
The issue isn’t sex itself. It’s putting a sex scene in most movies meant for adult audiences. Imagine if there had to be a shootout or extended martial arts fight in every romance movie or Hollywood just wouldn’t fund it.
Use it where it makes sense, and leave it in the tool box when it doesn’t.
It’s fucking crazy to me that this is a hot take these days. I just want movies to be good. Throwing unnecessary sex scenes into a movie to drive ratings up usually does not achieve that.
Edit: And by unnecessary, I don’t even mean just not plot relevant. Only that they should add to, not detract from, the characterization, tone, or plot/story. Fucking loved Challengers (check it out, it’s great) and that had a sex scene like every 5 minutes. I just wanna watch some good fucking movies. If I wanted to watch good fucking-movies, I’d just find those online.
I saw… killing joke? Whatever movie was made off of that. The Batman Batgirl Makeout was completely unnecessary and more than a bit disturbing.
I thought they added romance to action movies for the female viewers. Lack of creativity turned romance into mostly sex.
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.
If it does not serve a purpose for the plot, then it’s not needed. Simple as that.
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.
I always watch through the entire porn movie. For the story.
Sometimes there’s a bit to much sexy times so if they could tone it down a bit that’d be pretty nice.
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.
Edit: and famous celebrities for no apparent reason. Surprise! Your favorite character from the book this movie is based on is now played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
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)
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.
Sherlock sorta did it. I don’t think those two ever got together?
Edit: I did very much mean Elementary
I think you meant Elementary, but good point! I forgot about that show!
Not only did they not get together, Watson made it clear that ain’t gonna ever happen within the first two or three episodes.
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 Erba.
I want to believe.
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.
Twilight really fucked up the romance genre, huh? Lol
Actual no holds barred sex of every sort you wish to see, as often as you wish to see it, a click away on the interwebz, the titillation found by past generations in R rated movies and late night Television, no longer computes, and is wholly unnecessary
Yea that was my thought too. When I was a teen we had one PC and it was in a shared room. Had to rely on the TV for jerk off material. These days everyone has the whole internet in their pocket. TV is for watching good stories, they can skip the sex scenes.
As I said here:
The fact that you only equate sex/nudity to porn reveals a problem. 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!!
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.
Sex is too important to be left to porn.
Writing a story and having to make my characters not want to have sex because of the existence of an unrelated industry outside the context of their universe.
Striking out any gambling references in my stories because of the rise of online gambling.
Then I realize I’ve stupidly written scenes where my characters eat, having forgotten like a stupid hack how many restaurants there are in the real world.
Dude, there’s a difference between romance and full-on extended sex scenes. Fade to black and get on with the plot.
The sex scenes that most mainstream dramas have traditionally had are brief and not explicit.
And also not necessary. You don’t need to see two people fucking to know they’re in love. I assume you don’t need to see your friends fucking to understand that they met someone they’re really into.
Nothing is strictly necessary, you can tell instead of show any aspect of a relationship. But if drama is going to show a representative cross section of what human relationships are like, sex will be a part of that like romance and friendship aspects are.
It’s not about how no drama should show sex. It’s about how it is regularly getting shoehorned in at the expense of story, character development or run time.
And they don’t show a representative cross-section. Almost all sex in mainstream films is heteronormative and done by beautiful people. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between.
When we see a proportionally accurate representation of queer sex screens on our scenes, I’ll concede that they’re at least showing a broad representation, even if it does ignore all sorts of sexual kinks that would also need to be represented.
What if it’s not about love? Sex can be about many things and for the sake of the story.
Saying it only happens as the result of a perfect romance story is puritan and not beneficial to demystifying sex as an act that humans do.
And yet generally they’re romance scenes and not scenes involving lust or rape.
I am not the one saying it. Hollywood is.
No you are speaking from a specific point.
Poor things had lots of sex, not about love or romance.
Teeth, is rape.
Even Pretty Woman has a sex scene that is about the lust of the main character with no kissing to show it.
There are plenty of examples to prove you wrong as much as you have examples of your point.You are the one saying it cause you are making a broad statement from your perspective ignoring all that doesn’t fit into it. It doesnt make you right to selectively pick your examples because it’s the ones you think of and have a problem with you try to apply to the rest of it.
Do you characters take big stinky poops? Because that’s a real thing too. Do they pop pimples on their body or on their partners? The list goes on. There’s an audience for everything, but it’s pretty obvious sex isn’t as much of a driver for movies anymore.
Sex is an important part of one’s life, bowel movements aren’t. (Hopefully)
Bowel movements are a vastly more important part of one’s life.
In what respect? I feel confident in saying many if not most people take some pleasure in a good poop. Perhaps not as much as having sex but the point remains in a critical part of life.
I’m not a teen (far from it), but I’m with the kids on this one. The vast majority of sex scenes in movies are awful. They’re awkward and totally unrealistic. It completely takes you out of the movie. Most sex scenes are not engrossing or engaging, they don’t immerse you in the story, they push you out of it.
Most every sex scene feels like it was made by someone who’s never had sex. Every angle is the right angle, every thrust is ecstasy, it’s nonsense. It’s like someone who thinks the covers of romance novels are depictions of real life.
There are a lot of intimate moments that can be portrayed convincingly enough on film, but sex is rarely one of them. And it’s just not necessary. Let the audience infer, let us use our imaginations.
C’mon, didn’t you wanna see Oppenheimer reach criticality?
Soft coreHard coreDemon core
There’s a really good BBC miniseries about Oppenheimer made back in the 80s with Sam Waterston in the lead role.
On the one hand, it doesn’t have mind-blowing special effects.
On the other hand, there’s no sex scenes in a show about the scientist who helped make the atom bomb because why would watch a TV show about him and hope to see him fucking?
I wouldn’t even want sex scenes in a Feynman movie and he was fucking every woman who was willing. It’s just not a necessary thing to tell his story. You can show he was a horndog and not show him fucking.
Anyway, here’s the miniseries.
I have a friend who’s dated a bit but has never really had a boyfriend. I think she gives up too soon because she expects a Hallmark movie where everything’s perfect and every kiss is magical.
I don’t know if that’s necessarily a bad thing, I kind of wish my standards had been higher when I was younger. I dated a lot of people longer than I should have, thinking that that was as good as it got. The fact that she is going on dates is a good thing- it means she’s at least getting an idea of how she fits with different types of people and she’s socially active.
Obviously she might overdo it, but as long as she’s content alone as well, she’s not really hurting herself. I guess it’s a function of how regretful a person she is and her age.
She’s 30 and has a physical disability that is obvious when she walks and requires her to use a wheelchair for longer distances. That makes dating difficult, so i hate to see her give up on people just because there’s no magic on the first couple of dates.
As I said here:
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 past 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 porn.
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.
I’m not saying no character should ever be allowed to be horny, or sexual in any way. My point isn’t that we should pretend that human sexuality doesn’t exist, I just don’t think it’s always necessary to see it simulated (usually poorly) on screen.
I’m sorry, but this take feels out of touch. Every shot in a movie is at the right angle. Of course they’re unrealistic. Movies are unrealistic. Sure, some try to take a more gritty, grounded approach but in general art is trying to capture the highest and lowest points of life. Obviously it’s going to be unrealistic.
One point to disagree on: less teens than ever are having sex, and with no actual experience, their imaginations are based on porn. No wonder they’re terrified of it, if their first impression is what comes up when you Google “boy girl have sex”.
Too many parents are not open with their kids about sex. I made sure my daughter understood that there’s nothing shameful about watching porn or masturbating, but she should not expect actual sex to be like what she sees in porn and she will enjoy it a lot more if she won’t have those sort of expectations.
It’s not enough to just tell kids where babies come from. You need to tell them all sorts of things that they really need to know about sex because otherwise they’ll learn bullshit from the internet and other kids. Tell them about the things I mentioned and also about things like contraception and consent and even about kinks and why you shouldn’t feel shame or be worried if your kink involves consent all around.
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…
My mom did something similar and dragged 13 year old me and my two younger brothers to go see Saturday Night Fever in theaters because the commercials had dancing and music, so she thought it was a musical.
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 😱👎.
This would make sense if I could watch an adult show without a cringey sex scene shoehorned in for no apparent reason other than to show how macho the main man is.
We’re not prudes, we just want good stories.
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
Why is that swan leering at me…
And some religious texts.
Greecy
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.
I didn’t have anything specific in mind, but a lot of this matches up based on the one episode I watched. There weren’t any sex scenes though.
The Air Nomad genocide happens within the first ten minutes, while Aang is on a walk or something. It’s billed as this super metal moment that shows you this isn’t for kids. However it looks so fucking cheap and is written so badly. I just sat there rolling my eyes.
To be fair, the online discourse part also didn’t match up. The show got good but not great reviews. Avatar is a lot more popular that most adaptations, especially among millennial bloggers who do these reviews. While there were the usual 9/10s, there were also a ton of reviews written by people who grew up watching the show that were just like “yeah this is disappointing in every way. I guess it’s okay if you didn’t watch the original show, idk you do you 5/10”. Because of the diversity of the original IP, there was no culture war BS either.
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
Oh the series is fine. I thought you were talking about the movie they just did.
Honestly never heard of it lol.
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.
If there’s a 1 minute sex scene in a 90 minute movie, you’re guaranteed to have your parents walk in during that one sex scene.
