How necessary are explicit sex scenes in movies?

Cafe Society
1

First, I want to state two things:

  1. I’m not shocked or disturbed by sex scenes. Nor scandalized. I have an open mind to see any kind of scenes.

  2. Please don’t start with feminists concepts of “women exploitation”. This treats both men and women equally.

Maybe inspired by a buried idea from the other thread Most degrading or humiliating scenes, it came a concept that I’ve been discussing before (not in message boards, but with old friends).

How necessary are explicit sex scenes in movies? The idea came again because of the Kelly Fox scene in Intimacy or Chloe Sevigny in The Brown Bunny. Why the need to depict a blowjob so graphically? Why trespass the limits between mainstream and porn? If you were making a movie, how do you justify an actor or actress the need not only to simulate the sex activity (oral, intercourse, whatever) is happening, but to do it for real?

If you want to tell your audience that the character is enjoying a fellatio, ask Brian DePalma how he did in Carrie. That’s fair enough. On the other hand, ask Vincent Gallo why he keep the character for himself, and why didn’t he give it to a fellow actor.

I think Basic Instinct is a well-crafted thriller, its nature is sensual/sexual and the Sharon Stone excesses are justified (IMHO). But Paul Verhoeven is a director who uses to introduce suspiciously gratuitous sex scenes. Consider Hollow Man and Starship Troopers. And he’s not the only one.

I know when they’re doing sex on screen there is no real intercourse, but then, you can save the most graphic way if you want to communicate they had sex. Unless you want to sexually excite the spectator and/or sell more tickets.

If you want to make a movie about sex, you can make it in a good taste and design sex scenes that never reach the state of (not only hardcore, but) softcore. Still, there would be sex scenes. But don’t tell me you have to show the audience how it is a blowjob, as if they don’t know. If you pretend to justify your very explicit scenes with that argument, smart moviegoers would almost consider it an insult to intelligence.

Is it ventured to say that most of sex scenes in mainstream movies are unnecessary? What do you think? (prejudices aside, please).

2

One of the basic tenets of most movies is for them to be believable. That is why we decry wooden or over acting, that is why we dislike heavy-handed or disjointed direction, that is why we want dialogue to be realistic. For the same reason, we want violence and sex to be somewhat explicit because I assume movie makers don’t want us all laughing or complaining when people get shot with machine guns but there isn’t any blood or sex is depicted as a long, closed-mouth kiss.

The other reason, I guess, is because people are titillated by that sort of stuff and movie makers can get away with it nowadays. So, in the end, they do it because we want to see it, either because it adds to the film’s believability or it adds to the film’s appeal to a certain market.

3

Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding…We have a winner!

4

Ok, but that reason is very well known. The point is if the movies need the scenes, which do and which don’t.

5

I can’t think of any legitimate reason to see any Sharon Stone movie where she doesn’t get naked. Am I the only one?

6

Necessary? Hell, it ought to be mandatory.

7

A certain amount of appeal to the average moviegoer is shock value. Over the years, many boundaries have been broken. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised that I see XXX scenes in a mainstream R-rated movie in my lifetime.

8

As a amateur filmmaker that is looking to put a sex scene (lesbian sex scene, no less) in an upcoming movie, I look at it as both an attempt to see if I can do it, AND recognizing that it’s a particularly powerful way of grabbing the audience.

Think of it this way: You can IMPLY all you want. Sometimes it can have a powerful effect (such as, say, showing a murderer stabbing a victim via a shadow on the wall, or a silhouette, instead of pouring fake blood everywhere). However, other times, it’s a weak, pussy-footed cop-out. We already went through the era where Guy And Girl Glance At Each Other Lustfully And Then Disappear In The Bedroom… we called it the '50s. The '50s were lame, for a reason (too many double beds).

In acting classes, one excercise is to make new actors go through a private routine, something so mundane as brushing their teeth, just to get accustomed to “revealing” personal actions on stage. With a sex scene, you get even MORE revealing… you see how a person is at their most basic, carnal level. If a guy is a sex-hungry beast in the sack, that might reveal something about his character. If a woman just lies back and lets the man do all the work, that reveals something about HER character.

But lemme say this… there’s nothing in the universe so painful as a bad sex scene. The audience can tell if it’s bad. If you can’t make it non-bad, don’t put it in your movie. Your actors need to be able to stay in character, even when they’re pretending to get it on.

9

Well, for me, violence is no fantasy, but sex is.

10

I think there’s three classes of cinema sex/nudity. There are a few movies like Last Tango In Paris, where sex is connected to character, and which would be totally meaningless without the sex scenes.

Sex and nudity can be used to show intimacy and honesty and rawness and emotional nakedness (e.g. Harvey Keitel’s full frontals in various movies); in these cases it is a valid artistic technique (functioning as a metaphor or symbol) but not strictly necessary.

But most Hollywood movies have no reason for existing (they have nothing to say and no interesting stylistic way to say it) so for the makers to say the sex scenes are necessary is ridiculous. The whole movie is not necessary. The fact that most movie sex scenes bear no resemblance to real life sex means that the film-makers can’t even claim to be representing reality or discussing actual issues about sex.

11

Too many people see the sex in films as sex. It’s actually used to represent qualities of a relationship between characters, as SPOOFE sort of mentioned. (My best friend was an acting coach). So it’s often neccessary to show character & character relationships. The eye candy part probably isn’t necessary, e.g. Casablanca.

12

There’s a wonderful montage in Don’t Look Now with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christy as a long-time married couple. Shots of them progressing from casually lying around their hotel room to intense love-making are intercut with shots of the mundane business of getting dressed to go out to dinner. It’s a neat little portrait of the relationship in all its passion, intimacy and taking-for-grantedness. It wouldn’t me the same without the fairly explicit sex.

13

The older I get, the weirder the taboos about sex seem to me.

Why is there a limit? Why is there a boundary at all?

There are two types of stories, in my opinion: those that reflect us as we are, and those that show us as we wish we were. The latter type are the popular “Hollywood happy-ending” movies, where the boy and the girl live happily ever after, or where Darth Vader rediscovers his humanity and saves his son, or whatever. The former type are either guilty pleasures (soap operas where everybody’s a greedy conniver) or they have a dark and depressing view of humanity (e.g. Network).

Can you tell I’m a cynic?

Anyway, the point is, all aspects of human life are fodder for our stories. We tell each other stories for various reasons: to teach moral lessons (choose a scripture here), to feed our primal impulses (choose a violent and/or sexy movie here), to feel joy (choose a comedy), and so forth. These categories are as old as humanity; read the Greeks sometime.

So why shouldn’t sex be available for discourse? Isn’t it a constant of human experience? It’s something we all want, that we’re all biologically driven to pursue. Some categories of human occupation are defined in large part by its very absence (e.g. priests and nuns). Other than those people, we all do it. It’s a significant aspect of how we relate to one another. You can learn a hell of a lot about a marriage, for example, by how the husband and wife treat one another in bed. (Or on the kitchen table. YMMV.)

Given that, it’s always been peculiar to me, growing more and more so, how we try to compartmentalize that aspect of ourselves and keep it away from our storytelling. Movies with explicit sex are called “porn.” Why? Who among us is surprised by the biology of it? Tab A, Slot B. (Or, if you prefer, Slot A, Slot B, Strap-on C.)

I have an operating theory about why sex is considered “dirty,” but it’s probably better suited for Great Debates. Even so, note that it isn’t a cultural constant: There are some cultures where sex is (or was, at least) discussed openly, without shame. Look at some of those ancient Indian tapestries, for example.

In any event, I think the question is backwards. Given that sex is a normal, unifying urge in human beings, and plays a huge part in how we connect with other people and live our lives, I’d like to see you make a case that it shouldn’t have a place in movies (and storytelling in general).

I’ll even give you an example: There’s a Spike Lee movie — Jungle Fever, I think — that opens with a sex scene. I may be remembering this incorrectly, but I seem to recall that the first thing in the film is the camera craning up to a window where we see a husband and wife together in bed. Leaving aside the fascinating question of why 99.9% movie sex shows partners coupling for the first time (seriously: think about it for a minute), the sex between the husband and wife is clearly not particularly satisfying for either of them. It is critical to understanding their relationship, and following the motivation of the husband, to know that this part of the marriage isn’t working. Now, Jungle Fever is hardly Lee’s best movie, but he gets this piece of it very right, in my opinion.

So I repeat: Why shouldn’t sex scenes be fair game for movie storytelling?

Oh, and:

I think you are making an incorrect assumption of what Verhoeven is about as a filmmaker, but that’s probably a subject for another thread.

14

In Verhhoeven’s defense, the scene in Starship Troopers was not gratuitous - if memory serves, Heinlan mentioned in the book that soldiers of the opposite gender were doing more than just holding hands. I could be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure that this scene was in the spirit of the book - thus, only gratuitous if you thought the same thing in the book was gratuitous.

15

I’ve been wanting to post to say exactly what Cervaise has said, but I could never have said ot so articulately . I agree completely with his post. The question isn’t how necessary explicit sex scenes are, it’s why is this even an issue?

16

im fine with sex scenes in movies because i see films telling u what life is like and sex is a natural part of life. but i also think sex scenes are ok to and exstent. like in QUILLS all the sexual related material was nessisary but in movies like STARSHIP TROOPERS the sex just ends up hurting the movie.

17

I disagree. Look at the shower scene in Psycho – no explicit violence is shown, yet it remains a terrifying scene that nobody ever forgets. Likewise, classic films like Casablanca lose absolutely nothing by not showing us Bogart and Bergman gettin’ it on in the bedroom in Paris. Likewise (to pull out yet another totally random example), the novels of Raymond Chandler lose nothing by their lack of explicit sex, even in The Big Sleep, the plot of which involved pornography. Sometimes a Guy And Girl Glancing At Each Other Lustfully And Then Disappearing In The Bedroom is all we need to see. We’re not stupid – we know what happens next. In short, I have never been convinced that explicit sex or violence is ever necessary to telling a good story. There are too many examples of excellent, non-explicit entertainment for that to be true.

As for a sex scene revealing important character traits – that’s conceivable, but I still would not say it’s necessary. Hell, it may also reveal pertinent character traits to watch them going to the crapper. Do they read in there? Do they look before they flush? Are they wadders or folders? :stuck_out_tongue:

In other words, there is such a thing as TMI. :slight_smile:

18

Absolutely not. The closest most of the male soldiers ever got to a woman was to stand guard on the opposite side of a steel bulkhead-- And they fought over who got that honor!

But back to the topic. It seems to me that for most sex scenes, you should go all or nothing. If your purpose is to excite the crowd, show everything. Let’s see nipples and buttocks, and full-frontals if you can get away with it. Heck, go ahead and show the penetration itself, if you don’t mind being cursed with an NC17. I won’t knock that sort of scene, if that’s what you’re trying for.

But on the other hand, if your purpose is artistic, then in almost every case, less is more. Shadows on the wall, maybe, or even just watching a candle flame flicker with no human shapes, while romantic music plays in the background. I mean, really, if you see the male and female leads look significantly at each other, and then fade to a shot of clothes on the floor in dim lighting, is anyone really not going to figure it out? Doing more is just going to either distract the audience, or bore them.

19

Mmhh I hope don’t flame me for bringing back this issue but I forgot one point in my early interventions. In the first post I stated clearly that I am open-minded, but someone said my complaining about sex is because of sexual mores.

I agree with Winston Bongo, and I can add that I have the strong suspicion (still it’s just my opinion) that most of directors when including gruesome sex scenes is because somehow they enjoy the time and fact of filming them. Of course, they’ll never accept it.

I second the idea that movies like Last Tango in Paris or 9 1/2 Weeks would be meaningless without sex scenes. In fact, I like and enjoy movies like those. But in many other movies, I consider that all I needed was to know what they were going to do. Only the suggesting. This is what I call gratuitous.

If our society allowed the act of normal sex in public, this issue would not be an issue.

20

I say it is very often unnecessary, and a distraction.

But let me continue to say that I love nudity in the movies. Show me naked women in the shower and I’m a happy guy. When we get to know an actress through conversations, and then see her naked, it’s really a thrill.

But that’s the problem. Once I see a nude scene, the movie has taken a different direction for me, and I want to see more of it. With each new scene, I’m sort of wondering if this is going to lead to more nudity somehow. And when the movie’s over, those scenes stand out in my memory of the film.

For example, Harrison Ford made an excellent movie, Presumed Innocent. Near the beginning of the film we find out that an attorney was just murdered, and there is all sorts of physical evidence pointing to Ford as being the killer. We find out that Ford had an affair with her. Thoughout the film we see Ford having various flashback memories, and in one we see the actress naked, going at it with Harrison. Once I saw that, I became distracted from the mystery and intrigue, and I started wondering when we would see more nudity. I don’t think it belonged in this movie.

On the other hand, if it’s a goofy romp about college students, and we see lots of nudity thrown in, it can be fun movie on that level.