I was just reading the Anatomy of Hell thread, and it occurred to me. Well, it occurred to me for the first time while I was watching Eyes Wide Shut, and I have wondered about it ever since.
There is a lot, and I mean a lot, of sex in the movies. Very little of it is between characters who are married to each other. Outside of Eyes Wide Shut, (and all that gave us was Tom Cruise pawing Nicole Simpson’s boob) the only time I think I’ve seen a sex scene involving a married couple was in some low-budget sci-fi/horror flick, and that ended with the aliens freezing the action, levitating the wife to the mother ship, impregnating her with an alien fetus, and putting her back in bed with her hubby.
Why so little married sex in the movies? Seriously, I think eroticism on film is OK, I just have a problem with the fact that so much of the time, it is between people who have just met ten minutes to a few days ago film time. I want to see a scene where an older but still attractive couple waves goodbye as their youngest goes off to college, look at each other, then cut to them hanging from the ceiling fan having revolving bat sex.
Because married people who watch movies want to escape from the reality of married sex, i.e. the same sex with the same person over, and over, and over, and want to fantasize about sex with someone new. Sex sells, just not the married kind.
My WAG? A lot of sex scenes involve new romances—love stories that are just unfolding as the audience watches. If you introduce married couple onscreen, the love story has already happened…in the past, and offscreen. There’s no “falling in love” to watch—they’re already in love. 'Not a lot to make a movie about. Kind of like how you don’t see a fantasy movie picking up just after the evil emperor is defeated, and when the kingdom is beggining the slow process of rebuilding the infrastructure and economy. Most people would rather watch the swashbuckling hero swinging on a chandelier to rescue the princess.
Of course, I might be wrong and completely offbase. (Which wouldn’t be surprising, considering the movies I watch.)
I think Ranchoth is on the right track. It’s about sexual tension. I’m guessing that when people are shown having sex, it’s usually because the fact that they’re doing so is an important point to the plot, characters, or whatever; and it’s very often the first time those two characters have gone to bed [or wherever they’re doin’ it] together, and we’ve spent some time wondering whether or not they would end up in bed together.
After that, they rarely have sex unless they are trying to make more children. This can involve charts, thermometers, and medications to facilitate. It’s about as hot as fixing your toilet.
On the other hand, TV shows (or rather implies) a lot of married sex. Partially because the traditional sitcom format almost demands a married couple, I guess, but see The Cosby Show and The Simpsons particularly. Even TV drama has more married sex than the movies do, as in The Sopranos (which also has a great deal of extramarital sex, of course, and a scene I cannot scrub from my brain with Janice and Ralphie.)