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My highly scientific wild ass guess is that a lot of the performative sex negativity online nowadays is a symptom of how pervasive monetized parasocial relationships with online softcore model types have become, even without full blown porn addiction

And there's nothing "xenophobic" at all in criticizing China China is an authoritarian, murderous regime

This is extremely outdated and even for the time it wasn’t is an oversimplification. The biggest hurdle movies face in China is just that the government imports less and less these days. The ones getting in tend to be major franchises and all and those just haven’t had tons of sex anyway.

Absolutely

As a teen, I definitely went to R rated movies to potentially see "famous boobs."

And/or this could be schismogenesis: the audiences who want to see sex have a better source, so Hollywood tries to latch on to an audience that they still hope might be captive? (Want to see sex *and* plot, character development, effects? Sorry - that's art....)

This makes more sense than anything. As kids, used to wake up in the middle of the night to watch scrambled Skinimax (Cinemax) broadcasts, and wo to the friend who actually subscribed; it was a whole THING. No need to do that anymore.

totally anecdotal: I think Wicker looks like a fun movie, but I can't imagine seeing it in the theater in this day and age for vague unease reasons that I think have to do with no guaranteed privacy in public spaces, maybe? it just feels like a risk as a teacher.

I had assumed it was just me, but I have a habit of skipping ahead during sex scenes because I found them boring and generally not important to the plot or character development. Maybe, our standards for good story telling have gone up?

Back in the 80s my teenage brother would watch whatever movie Showtime played at midnight since there was usually lots of nudity and sex. Seems quaint now.

By a lot of people's own admission it's mostly on response to being uncomfortable about watching HBO shows with their parents, which is a thing they do for some reason.

Huh? Porn with zero friction would be no fun at... OH YOU MEANT NEVER MIND

* This also weirdly implies that we should actually be seeing *more* sex in films and not less cause of all the fascist porn bans happening across the country. But that's clearly not happening cause it isn't really about audience preferences nor how accessible porn is.

Do not ask me about the time I went WITH MY DAD to see Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

lol I saw Conan the Barbarian as a kid with my mom and grandma. snake orgy!

And I mean I personally AM someone who doesn’t enjoy sex scenes in movies much but I do think they have a real place in art

This rings true to me, because we‘re also still seeing popular TV shows with remarkably explicit and lengthy sex scenes (e.g. Bridgerton). But you can calibrate your privacy level for watching those, as you can with books, and you can pause or skip them at will. All things you can’t do at AMC.

I watched "Clerks 2" in the theater with my dad in the 2000s and it wasn't weird for me, even with the donkey show.

this is so funny because i was literally just thinking about sex in movies and why im generally like... not always a fan, and this was basically my conclusion. if i want to see man butt i can do it on my own time much easier, and if i'm going to the theater i'm usually going with my family, sooo

Re not wanting to watch sex scenes with family: I'm in several online groups related to books, and I have noticed that people asking for audiobook recs for long car trips w/fam ask for no sex scenes. That's understandable to me (even though I inwardly laugh about their assumptions re grandma).

I've kinda wondered how much of sex scenes in the recent past were driven by Weinstein, either directly by his request that movies under his umbrella sex it up, or indirectly by directors and producers who wanted to impress the guy with so much power (or they just assumed it HAD to be that way).

Was Meg Ryan propping up the romcom industry?

There certainly is a difference in porn, if not in regular movies. Porn made by and for women is an entirely different thing because it centers female pleasure and doesn’t fall as deeply into the standard tropes.

Quite possible, although to my knowledge "men, in the aggregate, react more strongly to visual sexual stimuli" is one of the few bits of behavioral dimorphism that's thus far held up to scrutiny.

Heated Rivalry is a phenomenon for a reason (I mean, many reasons, but…)

Romantasy with explicit sex has been a thing for a while, because I used to read my mom’s when I was a kid.

My high school history teacher called those books, "housewife pornography". If he caught us reading one in his class he would "offer" to read a random page to the class. 🥸

The sex scenes were always nerfed, but because of the lack of supply shortcuts like side boob were still arousing. Today it comes across as tame/pointless.

Have you ever heard of Rosemary Rogers or Kathleen Woodiwiss? Bodice rippers? Romance books have had a spicy room for a long time.

Then again, I'm sure people were willing to talk about having watched Game of Thrones and Bridgerton despite those having sex scenes all the time.

Also, books allow the reader to visualize things in their mind's eye exactly how they want them to be, while movies force you to look through somebody else's gaze, which is traumatizing.

Gonna be a lot more friction pretty soon, if the government gets their way.

This has crossed my mind a lot lately — we’ve been revisiting some tv shows and movies from 90s/early-2000s … and it seems even more obvious now when some nudity or sex was wedged in to push an audience arousal button vs character/story

Dunno if that would explain the collapse in scenes with obvious sexual chemistry but nothing overt actually happening. That's the stuff that's really glaring to me. The clooney/lopez sexual tension in out of sight for example, it's become as rare as hens teeth.

Basic Instinct was absolutely notorious for a brief moment of what Instagram bots throw at you with regularity.

Is there also a drop off in prostitution? There should be linkage.. Then there's the whole AI porn component. Why watch some rando pornstar when you can watch your favorite thespian as a cartoon..

I think you’re on to something here, because I think it trained people to be like “sex on the screen is something I see by myself in a darkened room, and I perceive it to be some level of shameful” so they’re uncomfortable seeing it outside of that context

Another factor: nudity in film was HEAVILY skewed to female nudity, and we are aware that unwilling actresses were often compelled to be naked jusT to get parts.

Sinners too. But yeah, riskier and you need extra adults to go to “make up for” the kids not brought with them.

I don’t miss the unnecessary strip club scene in every 80s movie.

Or maybe because the competition is more - ahem - stiff.

Condolences.

it could very well be that. I viewed it as kind of a pendulum swing away from what felt like directors adding sex scenes to meet a quota. the one on the front of my mind is the scene from Oppenheimer where kitty imagines him having sex in the middle of the security hearing

my pet theory as well bsky.app/profile/tyle...

Mmmmmethinks that the AI porn is as addictive and expensive as gambling; must be so, cuz of data centers

Steamy content sells pretty well on streaming platforms and kind of fills the gap in the viewing market left by the end of big-studio mid-budget moviemaking

Maybe for franchises and some big directors. But for most films, the rights are sold at festivals when buyers can see the product and hear the buzz... There are lots of multi-country "co-productions" in Europe though.

This really only applies to major franchise stuff. Like the thing that started this round if the discussion was that dogshit sex purge movie director saying he cut sex scenes because modern audiences don’t like them.

And also that simply it takes a special effects extravaganza to get people to see something on the big screen when we all have 50+ inch TVs and surround sound at home.

In the early 70's, the crossover success of Deep Throat caused many people to assume that mainstreaming of porn was on the horizon- that A list actors and mainstream movies would have hard core sex scenes. But it never progressed beyond R rated stuff you see on Game of Thrones.

I think this is the answer but most people don’t want to admit It.

That's definitely part of it. I wonder how much of the puritanism from the kids also has to do with the fact they're always watched/surveilled in public. They can watch smut on their own time without fear of being watched (as you've pointed out, with no friction), so why risk being seen doing it?

In my house, I joke about it as being generational. It was really important to boomers to see a physical manifestation of the fucking. I think there’s something to the point you made about internet smut. Those scenes also often focused on objectifying the actresses, who have more power now.

I never understood the point of long "sex" scenes in Hollywood movies. I was always thinking, "Ok, I get it. They had sex. The best sex ever. Can we please move on?"

This is actually a really fascinating theory I haven’t considered.

I think there's more going on because aside from sex scenes versus not, a subject on which I'm of a similar mind to baseball scenes versus not- does it belong in your story? If yes do it- But why the hell do actors have zero chemistry with each other, now? Acting like this is a board meeting.

You go first. Name five Hollywood films released this year which have had a sex scene.

I remember a moment in the 80s where every movie had titties in it

They were part of the marketing. Especially because in the 80s/90s there were a bunch of taboos to bust in terms of what filmmakers could get past the censors.

Probably a much smaller part, but I wonder how much is actresses being less willing to be nude for unnecessary reasons? Here I'm thinking of Emilia Clarke renegotiating her nudity clause after S1 of GoT

I don’t follow wrestling discourse so apologies if this rehashes any giant flame wars but this was also my sense of what happened w/ the WWE's 'Attitude Era' having some level of near softcore regularly. As real porn became more accessible being more family friendly felt like a stronger strategy