I think you are exaggerating a bit here. Rent levels are skyrocketing past wage growth, sure, but have you considered that used cars are also getting prohibitively expensive relative to the average income? Three of them would be roughly a zillion dollars if my math is correct
Ya can get a used early 2000s/late 90s saburban in my city for about $2000. Mind ya folks trade around cars here like a 1700s brothel traded the clap but still.
Weird. I’m a millennial. I tend to enjoy the movies and shows with more sex scenes. I thought GoT was better when there were more sex scenes (that’s probably not the reason it was entertaining, but it coincided). I find most PG-13 movies uninteresting, like all the superhero crap (except Deadpool, Super, and The Boys). Though, IDK WTF Bridgerton is, but that looks boring as hell. And Euphoria seems kinda sus (since the characters are supposed to be children).
Most movie sex scenes are terrible. They fail as both pornography and as literary devices.
When you put a sex scene, or any other scene in a movie it has to serve some purpose. It can move the plot along, it can show the characters emotions or it can just be there for titillation. If it’s just there because someone thinks that the main characters are supposed to smash, it’s dumb.
I remember that when we rented “Basic Instinct” you knew how often people re-watched the interrogation scene because the old VHS tapes would get worn at that spot and you could see the screen artifacts.
Two things made that worth watching. The whole movie was about sex so it made sense, both in the movie and for the character. The way to get porn at the time was to walk into a store and buy a magazine. And Sharon Stone was hot, OK 3 reasons.
There absolutely are movies where the sex scenes make sense and are important. David Kronenberg’s “Crash” and Kimberly Peirce’s “Boys Don’t Cry”, would have been weird if they didn’t include the sex scenes or just left them implied.
The sex scene in, “Team America: World Police”, worked because it was a satire of sex scenes in movies.
Pornhub works because their scenes are very explicit.
When you have a boring, unironic, semi-artistic sex scene in a movie that’s not otherwise about sex, it’s just a distraction.
Some, but remember that the only way that get real porn was to go to a store and buy a physical thing. Aside from the convenience there was a stigma to buying porn and it’s illegal for kids to buy. For a horny kid in the 80’s, light on-screen T&A and a Victoria’s Secret Catalog was a pretty good substitute.
When you have a boring, unironic, semi-artistic sex scene in a movie that’s not otherwise about sex, it’s just a distraction.
I don’t disagree. But I do see room to expand the definition.
Recently, I’ve been introducing my partner to The Sopranos for the first time (we’re in s3). I think there are legitimate depictions of sex in the series. They only appear briefly to help illustrate what types of people the characters are. They’re quick and out of the way. Like, oh, that guy’s fucking her, now let’s move on to the dialog that happens after. It’s when we see that these are characters who have sex as opposed to seeing the sex that makes the difference, imo.
I want romance in my romance and rom-coms. I do not want it in my action, thriller, history, sci-fi, fantasy, comedy, or biographical movies. Unless, and this is key, unless it legitimately adds to the movie.
The new UCLA “Teens and Screens” study, conducted by the Center for Scholars & Storytellers, found that across 1,500 members of Gen Z, ages 10 to 24, young people wanted to see platonic relationships between onscreen characters, and many felt sex wasn’t necessary for story plot. (Only the respondents ages 13 to 24 were asked about sexual content.)
“While it’s true that teens want less sex on TV and in movies, what the survey is really saying is that teens want more and different kinds of relationships reflected in the media they watch,” said Yalda T. Uhls
Gen x, i think, here. Sex alone does nothing for me. Nudity does nothing. I’m attracted more to people, subtlety, long, slow seductions.
Most sex I see in tv, movies, is ridiculous. Like, 2 people have been flirting for weeks. One day, chance meeting, they kiss. RIGHT THEN, right after the first kiss, they immediately start taking their clothes off.
Seriously, who does that?
Some of the best sex can be if you have your clothes on.
Also, too many fantasy TV shows have characters who can’t touch other people cuz demon in them, physically touching someone means they’ll lose control, whatever. So they go around miserable, horny, unrequited love and all that. Which to me shows failure of imagination. Sex can be imaginative, creative, so much variety, possibility. Phone sex, mutual self masturbation, why not work those options into the plot?
But no, in movies and TV, its almost always: kiss, clothes come right off, completely naked, always in a bed, orgasm in 5 minutes. Real life is way more complex than that.
As someone on the far older end of gen Z or the far younger end of millenial, depending on where you draw the line:
I hate sex scenes. I have some personal issues however that may affect my judgment. Trauma and such. Don’t wanna see sex unless I was fully mentally prepared for it, which I just can’t be if it’s shoved into some random movie, regardless of if you warn me in advance.
It might seem odd, but I wonder if the almost unavoidable overexposure to porn from a very young age elicits a similar response in a lot of younger people. The fact that for a lot of your life, sex is a forbidden thing you have to sneak around to indulge in, and which the one form you have exposure to, porn, carries the risk of addiction. It seems like it’d leave an impression on your mind that it’s a scary thing you have to hide, which I could see eliciting some kind of trauma response when suddenly it’s everywhere and you’re still stuck feeling like you have to hide it.
Am a millennial. Sex scenes in movies should follow a simple formula: don’t do sex scenes, or do real sex scenes.
All that softcore, sex under the sheets while wearing a bra nonsense only serves to make watching it with family a bit awkward. Either make it a movie that stands on its own, or make a movie where I can actually watch celebrity people fuck in full explicitness.
Make it porn or not, both is fine, but don’t try to appeal to both sides. That’s just awkward and frustrating to either
Because what’s the one major thing missing from all action movies these days, guys? Full penetration. Guys, we’re going to show full penetration, and we’re going to show a lot of it.
It makes me happy that somewhere, someone, is reading your comment with no knowledge of the scene you’re referring to. I hope they search for it and are delighted.
It’s also just so … base … like, ok, your characters bonk, we get it, just fade to black. When did a sex scene add anything to a story other than titillation? It’s the equivalent of serving me up another algorithmically targeted TikTok video. I feel like they’re just taking advantage of me.
So, in short, I’d be happy if they leave that shit at the door. If I was searching for porn, I’d know where to look.
I’m gen x and find that this transition started happening earlier. Once online smut was accessible in early 90’s, what little sex shown on the silver screen became less sought after and just became something we had to sit through awkwardly with family.
This is definitely a cultural prudishness emerging. But that’s only part of it. There has also been a shift away from artistic filmmaking and toward high-grossing tentpole movies. Because nudity is a taboo in our society, you need an artistic purpose to the nudity (or sex scene) in the film or it won’t serve any purpose to the film, and people will notice that it’s out of place. If most of the movies you have are cookie-cutter concept movies with little to no artistic expression, you just can’t make anything taboo work in them.
Obviously everyone has different taste in movies, but some films that made on-screen sex work really well are Basic Instinct, Blue Velvet, and Eyes Wide Shut. It also adds a lot to really campy movies. Nightmare on Elm Street comes to mind. Species became a cult classic because of its use of nudity and sex. For just plain nudity, It Follows used it well in the briefest of glimpses of the antagonist. It also added a lot to Ex Machina.
Those are just the movies off the top of my head that were made more impactful by sex and nudity.
Oh! Airplane also has a big laugh thanks to a scene of gratuitous nudity. Let’s not forget the comedies!
Original Sin comes to the forefront of my mind when I think of gratuitous sex scenes in movies, yet the movie still worked, since it was pretty much all about sex.
Everyone is saying sex scenes aren’t needed. I present my evidence that sex scenes are needed: Office Space
The sex scene shows that Peter is paranoid and deeply uncomfortable with the fact that his girlfriend, Joanna had sex with his boss. A fact that Peter heard as a rumour from a horny co-worker. Lumbergh would never talk about their sex life at work as that would inappropriate as a manager.
The scene also shows how Peter see Lumbergh as a person. It also sets up for the conflict between Peter and Joanna as Peter acts on his nightmare like a child.
Granted the scene is extremely soft core and played for laughs. However, I think the movie would be a little weaker if Peter had gone to to the office the next day and told everyone about the nightmare without showing it. Yes, you could cut out the scene as the party scene sets everything up for the future conflict. The sex scene shows how deeply uncomfortable Peter is with the situation. It’s truly a scene that does “Show, Don’t Tell”.
I think they mean scenes that are in earnest. The one in office space is used to intentionally make us uncomfortable, just as Peter is. So it works great here for us to connect more with the main character. But yeah I basically agree. They can work when used with intent.
There are three things that should never be shown in media because it’s completely unnecessary and all three can be directly implied without showing any real detail of them.
These three things are: Sex, vomiting, going to the bathroom.
All three of these can be relayed to the viewer without actually showing them but it seems like they’re shown all the time and it’s infuriating.
I’m sure there’s some real person out there who would argue that a particular shitting scene is necessary because it shows the authors mindset on the constipation of the world in the sense of some kind of moral ambiguity or some bs like that
The person you responded to doesn’t understand statistics. As long as your sample is random and unbiased, you don’t need to sample the whole population.
Think of someone cooking. They just taste a little bit of the food to adjust the spices. If they mixed it up evenly, they don’t need to eat the whole thing to get an idea of how it tastes. That is the basis of random sampling.
There’s a weird online phenomena of people with no knowledge of statistics criticizing the sample size of studies they disagree with. Of course that criticism never comes up when it backs up their world view.
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