An interesting point. TV shows like “Game of Thrones” and “Spartacus” and others offered only on premium channels have outperformed movies in every respect. It could be that a premium-grade Lifetime Channel equivalent might come along and blow quite a few socks off with romances that include sex scenes that outstrip anything likely to be seen in films, which have that whole “public viewing” issue to bypass.
Impact on our culture? Please. For about a year, a book about bondage was the most popular book in the country. That’s it.
It had enormous impact. No, people aren’t going to be putting on leather masks and doing edge play, but it was a CLEAR signal that even the tone-deaf types could detect that soccer moms aren’t freaked out about bondage. They find it kinda sexy. This kind of information will have a huge impact on decisions made down the road. Bondage-themed books, movies and TV shows will no longer be rejected out of hand because they are bondage-themed. This WiLL make a difference. Perhaps we can even start looking at notions about hierarchical behavior and organizations differently. You need some optimism!
You keep saying that, but where is this avalanche of bondage-themed stuff? Aside from a few more books published in the wake of 50 Shades and the 50 Shades movie, I can’t think of any. Enlighten me, please.
Wait… wait… wait…
[Puts on dog collar]
Enlighten me, please
Time will tell … certainly there are a lot of bondage-themed erotic romances being written by and for women … in the meantime, I think we shall have to agree to disagree.
The erotic part of a sex story is the description of the feelings and thoughts of the participants. Actual sex-having, in all it’s squelchy glory, isn’t particularly erotic. And barring endless narraration, film can’t convey a persons thoughts.
So I guess my answer is, the reason there aren’t sex-story readers demanding more erotic films is, it’s because film is a lesser media for this type of tale, and just watching people bang doesn’t interest those people.
Most of them have ended up in thrift shops, from what I can see.
There’ve been plenty of erotic thriller or erotic romance movies.
For example, the Diane Lane movie Unfaithful.
That’s my point. No one is hanging on to these books and they don’t sell like they used to. No “erotic romance” novel does anymore. If it’s going to create a movement, it’s doing a poor job of it.
There’s fantasy, and there’s reality. In a book, you can be much more explicit and there is plenty of room for the imagination to take off. In a movie, the visuals can really turn a viewer off - the actors would be low level porn types, or don’t measure up to the viewer’s mind picture, or god forbid look just like ordinary people you’d see every day. Literature and film are two different things. Years ago, Peyton Place was a monstrous best selling book full of juicy scenes and dialogue. The movie was considerably toned down for its 50’s audience! Who wanted to actually hear the words in the book coming from the mouths of the actors?? It would be shocking and crass.
International distrubution.
For a mainstream movie to be successful - it needs the international receipts. You film a movie in such a way that minor cuts will make it acceptable for a variety of international palates. Its hard to do that with romance - American style romance doesn’t translate well in China or India, and its really hard to do that with erotica, which isn’t going to get much of a distribution outside the U.S. and Europe.
So you aren’t going to greenlight a project unless you think you can make the receipts here in the U.S. That takes a lot of box office - for a movie that may be hard to distribute.