I recently watched the Portugese movie O, Fantasma, a film about a teenaged slacker in modern Portugal and his series of mostly gay amorous adventures. I borrowed the movie through Netflix (which doesn’t rent porn in the usual sense) and was surprised at a men’s room scene in which the main character (played by a 17 year old actor IRL) received oral pleasure from a stranger. The shocking part was that NOTHING was simulated- this was actual lewinskification going on on-screen- you not only see mouth-penis contact and insertion, but you see it up close and really personal and for almost a minute of screen time. Later I learned that arthouse fixture and Oscar nominee Chloë Sevigny is believed to have actually pleasured director/star Vincent Gallo on film in the critically reviled Brown Bunny last year.
So is oral sex on film a taboo that’s being pulled down? I remember as a horny (gay) adolescent in the late 70s/early 80s that even then there were plenty of movies in which men sucked women’s nipples (a disproportionate number of which featured Angie Dickinson) and of course sex scenes have become more ubiquitous and racier since that time, but this seems a major frontier between R-rated simu-sex and porn.
I can’t quite figure my- ahem- position on it- while I have no problem with flat-out porn the thought of people doing the same thing in conventional movies seems somehow… icky. OTOH, the inclusion of actual oral sex scenes might finally make a Keanu Reeves or Tobey Maguire movie watchable. Would you support mainstream (or arthouse) movies being allowed to show oral sex? Do you think they should have disclaimers or X ratings?