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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.

American Beauty sitting between my dad and a close friend was not weird at all, why do you ask?

There needs to be a movie rating "Some scenes may not be suitable for parents"

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

I think mainstream entertainment ceding sex entirely to porn is bad bad bad. These grand narratives are how define social mores and societal norms. The arts are a vital place to interrogate that but now there’s this big hole where that discourse would be

I do of course think it’s also a very good thing that actors have much more leverage to turn down sex scenes now and that they’re handled much more ethically and thoughtfully

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.

though i guess there is something philosophical to be said to relegating sex as just porn rather than artistic expression. but unfortunately those nuanced thoughts don't really come to me when i'm watching a sex scene with my parents

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.

In my experience, people did talk about those shows, but dutifully avoided any discussion of *those* scenes in 'mixed company.' Then again, this feels like a very specifically White American PMC Millennial/Zoomer thing, strongly shaped by the zeitgeist during our formative years.

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