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Where Have All the Sex Scenes Gone?

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Re: Where Have All the Sex Scenes Gone?

#81

Post by Alex3917 »

Joeboy wrote: post #61
Alex3917 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Message #3 in this email thread: https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/8SE7gM0xRkGI2taSIFBJhw/rensa-g...

> Black Widow was fully created with motion capture ("pre-visualization") before a script was even written. That sounds very unlikely and I'd need a better citation. And pre-visualization doesn't really mean what they seem to be using it to mean here. Edit: It seems like this is you trying to promote your Hollywood startup, rather than an accurate assessment of how things are currently done in Hollywood.

"It seems like this is you trying to promote your Hollywood startup"

Not my startup, I don't have any connection to them other than via my co-founder. I do run FWD:Everyone though.

Re: Where Have All the Sex Scenes Gone?

#82

Post by sbarre »

Alex3917 wrote: post #65
sbarre wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your reference is something else you wrote? I'd love to see some other references if have any. It's a bold claim (from the linked article) to say that: > Black Widow was fully created with motion capture ("pre-visualization") before a script was even written

> So your reference is something else you wrote? I didn't write it, that's my co-founder. And plus there is a full article about it here if you just Google it: https://www.insider.com/marvel-plans-movies-action-scenes-ye... "While previs used to be used for just one or two tricky action scenes, Marvel has embraced the approach of visualizing entire movies, including quieter beats and dialogue scenes." "The first visu…

Ok sure..

"Before a script is fully finished" is a long way from "before a script was even written".

Script rewrites happen throughout the whole process, even well into post-production sometimes (with re-shoots etc)..

That's not at all the same thing as "before a script is written".

Re: Where Have All the Sex Scenes Gone?

#83

Post by d3nj4l »

theyx wrote: post #42
d3nj4l wrote: post #20

There's actually one really interesting point in here: Zoomers are incredibly "puritanical" and anti-sex. It seems extremely weird that one of the most liberal generations ever is so sex negative.

Any data to back up the claim about zoomers? I am a zoomer and none of the people around my age I know are anti-sex. If anything, we are all for (safe) sex without the constraints of social pressure/puritan morality.

It’s a twitter thing, which probably points to sec negative zoom era being more vocal perhaps.

Re: Where Have All the Sex Scenes Gone?

#84

Post by Joeboy »

Alex3917 wrote: post #81
Joeboy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Black Widow was fully created with motion capture ("pre-visualization") before a script was even written. That sounds very unlikely and I'd need a better citation. And pre-visualization doesn't really mean what they seem to be using it to mean here. Edit: It seems like this is you trying to promote your Hollywood startup, rather than an accurate assessment of how things are currently done in Hollywood.

"It seems like this is you trying to promote your Hollywood startup" Not my startup, I don't have any connection to them other than via my co-founder. I do run FWD:Everyone though.

Apologies. It seems like your link is your co-founder trying to promote his Hollywood startup, rather than an accurate assessment of how things are currently done in Hollywood.

Re: Where Have All the Sex Scenes Gone?

#85

Post by Koshkin »

ravenstine wrote: post #75
stared wrote: post #35

It saddens me that we live in a culture in which movies showing violence (including torture and murder) are acceptable, whereas ones showing consensual, non-pornographic intercourse - aren’t. You might argue that on Netflix every second movie have a lot of sex scenes. Yes, must mostly with partial or implied nudity (think of all of these scenes with sex with bra on, waking up clothed, or L-shaped sheets). At the same…

And when we do show sex, it's in ways where it's always "complicated". Sex, according to the mainstream, must involve some sort of transgressive participation. You must be committing adultery, or be "in the closet", or committing incest, or doing it with total disregard for responsibilities, or doing it in inappropriate circumstances, or by committing rape. Unless you're watching a deliberately romantic film, I don't…

Would you find interesting a movie in which people shoot at cardboard figures instead of each other?

Re: Where Have All the Sex Scenes Gone?

#86

Post by monkeyodeath »

gfosco wrote: post #11

They've moved to TV shows... Hard to watch any (American) Netflix series without an unnecessary sex scene every 6-8 minutes.

What, pray tell, constitutes "necessary" in art?

People act like the only point of narrative work is to tell a story and advance a plot, forgetting that some of the greatest novels, plays, and movies of all time have creaky plots and barely-there stories, and plenty of "unnecessary" stuff.

Re: Where Have All the Sex Scenes Gone?

#87

Post by jillesvangurp »

Movies in general have been in decline for a while and theaters have of course not had a lot of business in the last two years. But even before Covid, a lot of the business was changing and it has more to do with economics than with morals.

A few things stand out:

- DVD sales and rentals are no longer a thing. In the top days of rental videos, and straight to video movies, Sex was a key way to compensate for otherwise mediocre production; that and outrageous action. Preferably both. Also DVD sales were the bulk of movie revenue. So even the stuff that was shown in the cinema was actually optimized for that. With all that gone, it's just a lot less attractive and necessary to spend money on spicing up movies a little as that used to be mostly about beefing up rental and dvd sales.

- A lot of that stuff has now moved to streaming. There are now award winning movies that go straight to Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc. And of course streaming services still provide access to plenty of on screen sex. Sex sells and when half your audience is male and the other half has their own needs on this front, basically you get specialized material for both groups. Netflix uses a data driven approach to figuring out what to serve. Apparently, sex sells ... monthly subscriptions.

- We've had the whole me-too movement and a large amount of scandals around abuse of actresses in the movie industry in recent years. So, naturally the cost and risk of on screen sex has gone up a quite a bit. There are ways around this of course.

Re: Where Have All the Sex Scenes Gone?

#88

Post by Zababa »

> And that's too bad. Sexiness and tawdriness are both fundamental parts of the human experience and should be celebrated and explored on the biggest screen possible. There shouldn't be any shame in watching onscreen shamelessness.

I don't think that's true. At least, not the "sexiness and tawdriness" that was shown in most of the "old" movies. The article seem to argue that movies were better when they showed sex on screen, but I don't think that's true either. I think what happened is that we shifted from one warped perception of sex to another. Considering how culture and history tend to work, that's probably a cyclical movement and we may get more sex on the screen at some point in the next ~50 years.

Re: Where Have All the Sex Scenes Gone?

#89

Post by Zababa »

monkeyodeath wrote: post #86
gfosco wrote: post #11

They've moved to TV shows... Hard to watch any (American) Netflix series without an unnecessary sex scene every 6-8 minutes.

What, pray tell, constitutes "necessary" in art? People act like the only point of narrative work is to tell a story and advance a plot, forgetting that some of the greatest novels, plays, and movies of all time have creaky plots and barely-there stories, and plenty of "unnecessary" stuff.

I don't think the discussion is around "art", considering the examples given in the article. It's mostly about mass media.

Re: Where Have All the Sex Scenes Gone?

#90

Post by MontyCarloHall »

Jedd wrote: post #55
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #17

This article is just a bunch of anecdata. Has the proportion of theatrical releases containing sex scenes indeed declined in recent years? What about streaming releases? Neither of these questions is quantitatively answered. The “evidence” that sex scenes have become taboo because they embody the “male gaze” and are therefore problematic comes from some un-cited hypothetical tweet. Assuming this tweet is even real, i…

It's an opinion piece in the culture section of the Free Beacon - what kind of article were you expecting (beyond 'bunch of anecdata'). FWIW I found it a hugely entertaining, and spectacularly well written piece. As to your concern about the un-cited hypothetical tweet, a) on my reading of the article it was very much NOT ascribing much evidence to this phenomenon, and b) your favourite search engine will quickly rev…

I expect opinion pieces opining on objectively verifiable facts to support their statements with objective evidence. This piece simply asserts with zero evidence that sex scenes are less frequent in recent movies, and then speculates at great length why this might be. But because the piece has done nothing to prove its initial assertion (i.e. sex scenes are less frequent), any further discussion predicated on this assertion being true is inherently meaningless.
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