Lots of people in here talking about how sex scenes suck, and they’re right. But I think we should also consider this: decades of focus on abstinence education and evolving parental and institutional surveillance has been successful at making young people have less sex. And now the olds, having achieved their mission, are confused about why the kids are having less sex and making less babies and the media they are creating and consuming is reflecting that.
I dont think the abstinence stuff is having sn effect, or is as prevalent as you think. Maybe in America, but the rest of the western world don’t really fuck with it I think>nk?
This is a good point! And in fairness, I didn’t actually read the article so I don’t know for sure it’s talking about the whole of western societies. It is the la times though, so that would lead me to believe it’s US-centric.
Regardless, I think you’re totally right. In America we’re continually getting hammered with the idea that having sex before marriage is abhorrent and anyone who does it should be punished for it with STDs or babies.
Germany keeps good statistics on it, the tl;dr is early loss of virginity peaked around the turn of the millennium, and has been steadily going down since then. The sexual revolution never got questioned in Germany once it was through (sadly, you can’t annoy reverends by kissing in front of their church, any more), no “abstinence only” sex “education” to be found anywhere. The by far overwhelming reason kids cited is “didn’t yet find the right one”, only exception being girls with immigrant background, there it’s “am still too young”, though that number is falling towards “didn’t yet find the right one”.
Not on that page but when being given a couple of choices saying “which of these things would be a calamity for you right now, and how bad” something like 99% of girls respond with “pregnancy would be the worst”. Teen abortion rates are still very low (at least for a country not caught up in Catholic morals) but that’s due to low pregnancy rates in the first place combined with extensive support thrown at teen couples.
The younger generation is having less sex despite abstinence only education, not because of it. We have multiple studies showing “abstinence only” education is one of the worst ways to prevent teen pregnancy, yet religious conservatives continue to push for this because they would rather control women than lower teen pregnancy.
You may still be right but this actually doesn’t prove what you’re saying. Abstinence only education having more pregnancies can’t be used alone to indicate if underlying rates of sexual encounters is higher or lower without also knowing other information like rates of condom useage. It can still be the case that rates are lower, but the encounters that are happening are less informed and more risky.
I can tell you haven’t researched this at all, because that’s one of the first data dimensions controlled for. Random first google result www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5690810/
That has nothing to do with less children. It’s a known thing in biology that animals are fully aware of critical mass and adjust their mating for the conditions.
Every single industrialized country has reduced birth rates because of child mortality, financial stability, and many other reasons that go with it.
There is no one that didn’t have a kid because of a movie. That’s just ludicrous.
I’m surprised that Margot Robbie gag account on lemmy hasn’t rung in on this post. Or are they back to obsessing about android phones again? WAKE UP, BOT!
Nick Cage reached a level of Hollywood success that few can accomplish. Then he was like, “meh, I’ve already won. I’m going to go back to accepting every role that comes my way”.
I’ve blown all my money on things *ding dong Oh it’s the tax man, I guess I’ll say yes to every movie regardless of merit until I have paid down my massive tax liability.
And bought a dinosaur bones, and a castle in Europe, and fist superman comic book, and… Point is, he sucks with money and keeps throwing it at everything he fancies, regardless if he really needs it.
I really hope they don’t abandon what made them great. They’ve become my favorite studio. Almost every movie they put out, I absolutely love or can at least appreciate the big swing. Movies like Lamb don’t get made by any other studio and still be able to be seen by most. I don’t understand this decision after how Everything Everywhere All at Once was received.
The Oscars have ALWAYS been bullshit. The best films of a given year rarely get nominated let alone win. Barbie made a boatload of money and Gerwig will be able to make at least a few risky projects based on its success. I wish we would all collectively ignore the Oscars because the academy contributes so little to the art of film
Yup, very often the “winner” is determined because it’s their “turn” or they deserve it more so than what they did that actual year. Leonardo Di Capero (SP?) for a great example.
I mean I always knew that Oscars were mostly about hype and not actual artistic value but getting offended that the most hyped movie of the year didn’t get all the nominations is just weird. Mattel run multi-million, non traditional marketing campaign and got a lot of people exited about the movie. It doesn’t say anything about the acting or directing in it.
Yeah, better to finish while it’s still great before things get stale. Plus the way things are going with the characters, it must be hard to continue without repeating things.
Apparently I’m the only one that likes being titillated by movies. I don’t get the “it adds nothing to the plot” complaint. Tons of movies have action scenes and gratuitous violence that add nothing to the plot, yet i don’t see complaints about that. 90% of John Wick is gratuitous violence that added nothing to the plot, but I still love it.
I think this says more about American prudishness and people’s unhealthy attitudes towards sex than anything.
Bunch of unnecessary death? Cool and fun! An unnecessary titty? Awkward and gratuitous.
Fuck all of you. I want more nudity and sex in my movies and the comparative lack of it compared to the 80s and 90s feels like we’re going out of our way to exclude a huge part of life from art because it makes the prudes out there uncomfortable. But those same people are happy to watch nameless dudes get creatively and graphically killed for half a movie’s run time.
I want more gratuitous sex and less gratuitous moral pandering
I don’t want porn. I want art to stop awkwardly excluding a major part of life.
“Everyone is beautiful and no one is horny.” It’s like movies these days are all set in this weird Twilight Zone world where sexuality just isn’t a thing. I find this far creepier than the gratuitous sex scenes of the 80s.
This is because some people aren’t on the spectrum and ignored. They deserve representation. If you find that weird this is more a problem with you because maybe you have been submerged into sexuality for far too long that anything lacking sex is weird. It’s like being addicted to a food taste and realizing there are other types of food and you think it’s weird that other types of food exist , well then : you’re the weird one.
Porn is super easy to access. There are more hours of porn recorded than there are hours of my life left.
R-rated sex scenes are literally competing with a host of just better options.
Not once has a fake sex scene in a movie not trigger cringe in me. It’s nice to see the actresses’ titties but that is it. Fade to black, imply they fucked and move on. Pornhub literally is a click away.
The fact that you only equate sex and nudity to porn shows the problem. Sex and nudity can be fun, dramatic, scary, or funny depending on the context. It wouldn’t be “competing” with porn.
I can’t suspend my disbelief when media pretends sexuality just doesn’t exist or isn’t relevant.
It’s not 100%, someone else brought up Crank which has a hilarious sex scene that I wouldn’t cut and it’s vital to the plot.
Most sex scenes just have this feel of “the director wanted to see actresses’ naked and had the power of authority and money to make it happen”. It doesn’t feel fun it has an air of exploitation to it, which I’ll admit lots of porn does too, but not all. The best porn is when everyone involved likes it.
I think a sex scene in an otherwise not-pornographic film needs to be second guessed. Does cutting it ruin the plot? Could it just be implied and move on?
I just think they really need to justify it more than normally do.
I just think they really need to justify it more than normally do.
Why? Why can’t they just have it for fun like any other type of gratuitous scene in a movie? I agree it’s not usually done well, but that doesn’t mean it can’t or shouldn’t be done.
99% of previous attempts have been, what I would call “weak shit”. It’s up to the writers/director/actors to bring their A game and prove themselves, because so far, I’ve yet to see one i wouldn’t mind being cut out entirely.
Because one of John Wicks main reasons for existing is choreographed violence? And the violence is sort of character building in the way it shows John Wick’s skill as a killer. There is a case to be made here where sex is sort of superfluous, because unlike John Wick, choreographed sex generally does not contribute to story beats unless it’s a porno. And there’s nothing unhealthy about being uncomfortable watching an intimate moment unless your porn addled brain has made you desensitizes to sex.
I’m not saying I want a movie with non-stop sex, that would obviously just be porn. I’m saying the “it doesn’t progress the plot” complaint about sex in movies is bullshit when those same people watch other movies that are full of gratuitous shit that doesn’t move the plot (violence, action, contrived drama).
Movies have been all but stripped of sexuality other than clumsy attempts at pandering to lgbt people. I think some of it is an overcorrection from Weinstein and Me-Too, some of it is just America’s puritan cultural hangups that have always been there, and some of it is the effect of Gen-Z growing up with an abundance of porn and now they can’t associate sex/nudity on a screen as art (or even just fun).
Violence and action do drive plot. They can build character and be narratively cathartic. Sex in movies does not do that because sex is a subjective experience between two people.
violence is not the same as sex. it’s expected to see violence in an action movie. it would be expected to see sex in a porno. i’m not surprised people don’t want sex in their action movies
You’re right, it’s way worse. And it’s disturbing 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 action 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.
With all due respect, have you read the article? Attributing this to prudishness misses a lot of what’s actually being said: that shoe-horning in romance or sex for no reason is the problem, as well as lack of attention being given to developing platonic relationships. Exploring non-romantic or sexual relationships better doesn’t necessarily mean cutting out sex and romance, and imo, would likely lead to better sex and romance in TV and movies.
But I agree with you also, that gratuitous sex and nudity can be used to great effect. Another user lemmy.world/comment/4888355 (don’t know how to link comments, hopefully this will work) posted a link to the article “Everyone is beautiful, no-one is horny” above, and this really highlights the problem on this side of things, in my view
After reading the article it looks like they aren’t being prude. They just wanted to see more healthier relationship spectrums. I think that’s a fair call. Not all story points have to be about sex.
Plus representation matters.
There are asexuals. And many other sexuality types in the world. Violence is not making a point on that so I don’t know where you’re going with that.
There is also echoing healthier relationships between men and women. I’ve known far too many people who cry friendzone and watch complete shit like friends and HIMYM and the various sitcoms that echo very dehumanizing, simplistic, unhealthy relationships between men and women where they stubbornly won’t relate to each other and sexuality is used as a tolerance or payoff of each other’s existence.
So whiile we could debate gratuitous violence has an impact, I think bad relationships and how they have been presented as a template has had a different impact they are trying to discuss.
I’m fine with asexuals and representation. But currently it feels like 99% of media is catering to either asexuals or homosexuals.
And I bring up violence to point out the double standard. When it comes to nudity people scrutinize if it’s relevant to the plot - but don’t tend to do that with violence or clunky moral preaching.
oh please you don’t need representation because you don’t want to have sex. that has been a thing for as long as can be and no one has a problem with it. the worst oppression you might face is family members asking you when you will be having a child
when did i say it takes anything away from me? I’m just saying it’s not particularly important every single minor facet of life needs to shoehorn representation for such a minor thing as not wanting to have sex.
Somehow gen z’s early exposure to porn has made them more prudish than the religious. Literally. I’ve Seen so many posts on Reddit and had real life conversations with gen z people where they’ve said that they hate when couples publicly say their trying for a baby because it means they’re being “creampied” and that’s awkward for them.
It’s weird for two reasons. One, if you struggle to get pregnant it puts a lot of external pressure on you and you’ll have to go back and let people know you’re potentially infertile. Two, talking about biological things isn’t appropriate in some settings. I don’t want to hear about your colonoscopy. I don’t want to hear that you’re raw dogging your wife. I don’t want to hear about you surgery. Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
That sounds lonely. We all live together. Sharing is a much better default than walling everyone off and judging everyone for sharing really basic parts of life is kind of sad. Obviously there are limit, but “we’re trying to have a baby” and “I’m having surgery” shouldn’t be something that we’re pressured to not share.
I find it more weird that your coworkes talking about trying to get a child results in you imagening them “raw dogging”.
When one of my coworkers had a child born i also didn’t make a point of imagening the delivery process. I just congratulated them and asked them jokingly how much sleep they caught the last night.
Reminds me of some post I read on Reddit regarding a Rimworld sex mod. So many people thought it was completely immoral and had no place in the game.
A game in which you can kidnap and cannibalis children, make clothes of their skin and sell it, a game where you can strap people to a bed, steal all of their organs, cut of their lega so they cant escape and keep them as a blood transfusion slave for ever. Missionary sex between a married couple in their own bed room is wrong and immoral.
That was definitely one of the weirdest takes I have read in a while, still is.
This i can understand though. It is not that the sex itself would be immoral. It is that putting the sex into the context of this violence is immoral.
And i have to say i find this important. Sex to me is an expression of affection with my partner and “sacred” for that. I don’t want it tainted with the banality of pornography or the psychotic issues that make people connect sex and violence.
I’m a horny af millennial and I also don’t really care for sex scenes. They add nothing to the story itself, and they don’t show enough to be sexy. If you’re not going to show full penetration then don’t even bother.
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