Gen Z is turned off by onscreen sex, wants no-mance over romance, a new study finds
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2023-10-26/gen-z-wants-less-sex-onscreen-more-platonic-relationshipsOpen linkView original on lemmy.world490
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Who wants to watch softcore nonsense involving people doing things that are not how sex actually works? Gen Z is first gen to come of age when porn is prolific. Mainstream film can't compete with step siblings getting stuck on the interwebs.
You don't make passionate love to your wife while she's wearing all her clothes and wake up in the morning with her wearing full makeup?
Where do we get the L-shaped blankets?
Porn is really not how sex actually works
I think porn gets it more right than Hollywood does. People in porn at least successfully take their pants off.
And no Hollywood, all women don't have an orgasm in 30 seconds! Movie sex would be extremely disappointing in real life.
Well according to Hollywood, sex is either life alteringly amazing, life alteringly traumatic, or interrupted by a phone call.
The Olympics is not how normal people exercise either
As an elder millennial, porn has been prolific longer than you think. Late 90s and early 2000s LAN parties were half playing video games and half copying vast amounts of porn from each other.
And how many people went to LAN parties?
Those were the Nerds, the weirdos that spent halft their free time on a computer and talking about how to get faster internet. For the "cool kids" i think a lot were the magazines or someone stealing a VCR from their dads private collection.
Stealing a VCR. Oh man…
The VCR was the player. You might call the tape or cassette a VHS, as there were two types of cassette. The other less popular being beta max.
It was more mainstream than you'd think in Norway at least. I was easily the nerdiest one at the local one I attended at the time.
Every town and city I ever went in the early 2000s to had multiple crowded LAN centers. It was definitely mainstream, and definitely wasn’t just geeks. Pretending file sharing was not mainstream by 2000 is like pretending Star Wars is only for nerds.
Way out of touch.
Eeh, swede here but a majority of men in my generation (90s) were probably at dreamhack at one point or another during their teens. Not to mention homeparties. Girls is less obviously but many of those went too
I've also found that gen z aren't as sex crazed as we were, I felt like I had a monkey on my back and had to screw everything. Gen z is more aware of the consequences, and they have other shit to keep them occupied, we were bored a lot.
Lolol millennials had online porn from before early puberty for all but the most seniors of them.
Most senior? Gen X here. I got my porn from the Internet too. Just before the web existed. We used Usenet and Gopher.
All 12 of you 🤣
I went on the side of caution. At some point early 90s, it became more popular outside of the limited users of computers.
41 here. No internet before puberty. I remember watching late night TV hoping for a few seconds of smooching and maybe even boobs.
Most of us had it, but most were on things like family computers trying to be covert about it. Capacitive touch screen phones changed everything for access. No one was getting imaginative with the snake game on a Nokia 3310 back in the day.
Kinks have diversified. Main stream can't catch up!
Millennial here. I've always found random sex scenes obnoxious. It completely kills the pacing and pulls me out of the story. If you need sex for character development, you can much more easily allude to it and move on. The only time I can think of when it actually made sense for the story was in the movie Her and it was such a mild scene that didn't have any visuals.
I think it worked for some early GOT moments too. It showed the monster that Khal Drogo really was, for example
She gave consent in the book, although she was still only like 14 because George RR Martin is a creeper. So not really consent, but not quite like the show.
calling him a creep for using historically accurate depictions of medieval marriage is...going a bit far...
the story is set in a medieval world. so how is it creepy to use real medieval culture in the context of the story?
It was cool as shit in blade runner 2049
Even this?
https://piped.video/watch?v=BEva0pT9ndg
I somehow feel like my life has been enriched.
Never watched I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry?
I'm with Gen Z here. They're absolutely right
Just feels awkward, uncomfortable, and unnecessary most of the time.
I don't feel like it's awkward or uncomfortable, but I do hate it when it's completely unnecessary. I don't even care if the sex is unrealistic as long as it's necessary for the plot. Just Chekhov's gun that shit.
Especially with many audiences. On your own or with a romantic partner it's not nearly as bad, but watching a sex scene with pretty much anyone else feels so awkward, which pulls you out of the scene.
same tbh
Amen , I am millenial and I too find it very uncomfortable. When I was young I was eagerly waiting for some hot scenes when porn was scarce but now anything remotely sexual iRRitates me.
Yup, especially as a gay, sex scenes in movies have always been "I'm fine with straight people existing, but I don't want them rubbing my face in it" at best ... and it's rarely at best, with all the chemistry of a jar of nitrogen.
Yep. 46 years old here and agree 100%. I find them gratuitous and awkward in a standard show or movie. And I have no problem with porn.
I'm not Gen Z and I hate the damn sex scenes. There was a minute there where netflix would just add one within 15 mins of every show or movie, even if they never showed another one again. It never added to the plot and seemed like it was just there to reel people in. But, it was obnoxious.
Glad they sort of stopped that, although I still find it happens now and again. Hopefully this puts the nail in the coffin.
Maybe I am a prude. So what!
The issue for me isn't the sex, it's that the scene is irrelevant to the plot. If the sex is relevant to the plot I don't mind, but when it's obviously just slotted in to show tits, that's annoying because it breaks immersion for me. It makes me think about the agenda behind adding that scene instead of thinking about the story I'm watching.
Obvious product placement is kind of in the same category for me. Like Will Smith in I, Robot spending 5 minutes of the movie super excited about receiving some "vintage 2004 Converse All Stars". Like, the movie is set in 2035, but you just had to find a way to plug this year's model of some shoes. Sure, those shoes have looked the same since forever, but the 2004 ones were just something else, man!
Then he gets into his Audi (everyone else is driving Audis too), and then out of his Audi, then back in his Audi, and so on. Audi.
It's awkward seeing scenes like that unfold with other people like friends and family. Implying a scene and fading to black is more than enough. And I think many actors would be happier too not having to act out those scenes.
Not a prude, and I still FF Netflix sex scenes.
Too many people tried to emulate the vulgarity of game of thrones. It worked in game of thrones, it doesn't work everywhere.
Hmm. I haven't really thought about it much. Why do I, a porn enjoying man from smack in the middle of the Millennial generation, dislike so many Hollywood sex scenes?
I would be interested in gathering some data, take a large sample of movies and TV shows made during my lifetime, and rate them as to why they're in a film. What purpose do they serve in the story, what do they tell us about the characters...why is this here?
Am a millennial. Sex scenes in movies should follow a simple formula: don’t do sex scenes, or do real sex scenes.
All that softcore, sex under the sheets while wearing a bra nonsense only serves to make watching it with family a bit awkward. Either make it a movie that stands on its own, or make a movie where I can actually watch celebrity people fuck in full explicitness.
Make it porn or not, both is fine, but don’t try to appeal to both sides. That’s just awkward and frustrating to either
Here's the twist. We show it. We show all of it.
https://youtu.be/Ftoffknbrfc?si=9pfHb5eV4SRbqbwV
Because what's the one major thing missing from all action movies these days, guys? Full penetration. Guys, we're going to show full penetration, and we're going to show a lot of it.
Team America did it right. They went all the way and I loved it.
It makes me happy that somewhere, someone, is reading your comment with no knowledge of the scene you're referring to. I hope they search for it and are delighted.
Edit: And I agree 100%.
Not a millennial but broadly agree with you.
It’s also just so … base … like, ok, your characters bonk, we get it, just fade to black. When did a sex scene add anything to a story other than titillation? It’s the equivalent of serving me up another algorithmically targeted TikTok video. I feel like they’re just taking advantage of me.
So, in short, I’d be happy if they leave that shit at the door. If I was searching for porn, I’d know where to look.
I think you touched on it here. Back in the day ppl wanted those sex scenes. Now we have porn and don't need them for titillation
Doesn't help that sex keeps being written into shows where it doesn't belong.
It's trying to make a show "more adult" in literally the most childish way possible.
That Halo show is a good example of completely needless sex scenes.
It's not the sex. It's the cringy romantic bullshit typically surrounding it where everyone treats each other like shit for the sake of drama.
I suspect that is true as well. Most of the really dramatic girls I've known have been super into romcoms and reality TV. If not causing the behavior they are at least reinforcing it.
Porn is porn, I’ll watch that when I want in private. If I’m watching a movie/tv show, I’m watching it for the content, for the storyline or whatever, adding shitty softcore porn to it just dilutes it and makes it unwatchable around friends/family. One of my gripes with Game of Thrones (not high compared to everything else wrong with it) was all the shitty sex scenes they added, which required them to cut out even more content than before. With only ~10 hours per season, they didn’t have alot of time to dick around, but they spent alot of time… dickin’ around.
Unless you're watching a romance movie there's almost zero point to have a romance plotline.
Pretty tired of the horror movies and action movies that just randomly throw in some love triangle or romance plot to try and make the actual plot more exciting, even though most of the time it makes no sense.
Oh I met you three days ago? MARRY ME HANDSOME!
I wish I could go tell this to that hack who wrote the “Iliad”. Like seriously you’re going to go and insert some stupid love shot into your kick arse war story? Oh and don’t even get me started on using the name Helen in a fantasy Greek setting, pffft.
That's a pretty bad example, since love is the reason that the war started to begin with, making it quite essential for the plot
Is it just Gen Z?
Most movie sex scenes are terrible. They fail as both pornography and as literary devices.
When you put a sex scene, or any other scene in a movie it has to serve some purpose. It can move the plot along, it can show the characters emotions or it can just be there for titillation. If it's just there because someone thinks that the main characters are supposed to smash, it's dumb.
I remember that when we rented "Basic Instinct" you knew how often people re-watched the interrogation scene because the old VHS tapes would get worn at that spot and you could see the screen artifacts.
Two things made that worth watching. The whole movie was about sex so it made sense, both in the movie and for the character. The way to get porn at the time was to walk into a store and buy a magazine. And Sharon Stone was hot, OK 3 reasons.
There absolutely are movies where the sex scenes make sense and are important. David Kronenberg's "Crash" and Kimberly Peirce's "Boys Don't Cry", would have been weird if they didn't include the sex scenes or just left them implied.
The sex scene in, "Team America: World Police", worked because it was a satire of sex scenes in movies.
Pornhub works because their scenes are very explicit.
When you have a boring, unironic, semi-artistic sex scene in a movie that's not otherwise about sex, it's just a distraction.
I don't disagree. But I do see room to expand the definition.
Recently, I've been introducing my partner to The Sopranos for the first time (we're in s3). I think there are legitimate depictions of sex in the series. They only appear briefly to help illustrate what types of people the characters are. They're quick and out of the way. Like, oh, that guy's fucking her, now let's move on to the dialog that happens after. It's when we see that these are characters who have sex as opposed to seeing the sex that makes the difference, imo.
You just described the average 80's movie with your last paragraph.
Some, but remember that the only way that get real porn was to go to a store and buy a physical thing. Aside from the convenience there was a stigma to buying porn and it’s illegal for kids to buy. For a horny kid in the 80’s, light on-screen T&A and a Victoria’s Secret Catalog was a pretty good substitute.
I want romance in my romance and rom-coms. I do not want it in my action, thriller, history, sci-fi, fantasy, comedy, or biographical movies. Unless, and this is key, unless it legitimately adds to the movie.
"Gen Z doesn't like sex scene put into the movie by senile board members, so they must not like sex in movies anymore"
@2ncs not really what the study found.
I think it more likely that they are sick of the idiot love triangle crutch which so many productions desperately wedge into films it has no place in.
I feel that the title of the article is misleading, as the poll in the article shows that Gen Z are turned off by gratuitous sex scenes that are not relevant to the plot, and not Gen Z suddenly turning into evangelical prudes. What they wanted is not the unrealistic, lazy, paint-by-number relationships as commonly depicted to stir controversy to drive engagement(a very cynical approach, I might add), but a full spectrum of different types of relationships good and bad, authentic in their depiction and sincere in their on-screen expression.
Note that the sincerity of expression doesn't mean that the relationship depicted has to be good, or even genuine. For example, the sex scenes in "The Wolf of Wall Street" (you're welcome, by the way) are important because they highlight that between Jordan and Naomi, there is nothing between the two besides money and sex, it's shallow, materialistic, two selfish, toxic people using the other to get what they want, without which they can't stand each other, in stark contrast with the genuine parental love that Naomi felt for her children, and it is the resolution of said contradiction which contributed to Jordan Belfort's downfall.
I don't mind sex scenes but I'm so over forced, low stakes, softcore sex scenes between characters that have nonexistent chemistry.
I still think it's best when it's artfully implied and brief between characters with chemistry.
90% and 100% more like
Top Gun Maverick did it perfectly IMO.
I was getting all concerned I was going to have watch ageing Tom Cruise do his thing, but they did a 90s soap opera option and panned away. They knew the audience understood and didn't need to see. I was so relieved and surprised.
That's not just a Gen Z thing, nobody I've ever talked to likes sex scenes.
Most of them are just dumb. Like a guy finds out his mom just died in a bear attack, so he and his coworker have passionate sex for the first time.
Ah, bear-grief sex.
A classic.
That's right. If I wanna see that, there's pornhub etc. In any other movie: skip button. One exception: "The Room". Makes the cringe complete. Oh, never watch it sober. Of course.
It's oddly the perfect Hollywood sex scene.
I mean, they try for verisimilitude. When I have sex I of course spend hours under flowing white bed sheets running my hand along my partners body and kind of grinding at them, I mean who doesn't? But it's always unrealistic. You never even see the dude you're paying $5.00 an hour to undulate the sheets, not the dude holding the sheets up so you can stare lovingly into your partners eyes.
How does Gen Z feel about nudity in films? Either nudity that fits the scene and feels logical or nudity just for fan service?
I'm cool if your just not a fan of shoe horned in and cringey sex scenes, but lots of younger folks come off as weirdly puritanically prudish to me. Why are we so much more comfortable with casual violence than casual nudity? That bothers me.
As a Gen Z I wonder the exact same thing, and that violence seemsto be better than nudity bothes me too.
Personally I'm perfectly fine with nudity in media be it fitting or fan service.
If something bothers me about nude scenes or sex scenes for that matter, it isn't about the nudity or sex in of it self, but more so that extremely shoehornd in romance and sex just because it has to happen if a male and female lead or support, spends any amount of time together.
I really hate that sort of practice and I much more prefer a crime movie with two friends as the main characters. Over the same crime movie but now they have to be in love, because one of them happened to be a woman. Of it's a good love story or it makes sense I buy it, but more of the time it really doesn't.
And as this is a very common trope in movies, this dose lead to me choosing movie that doesn't feature romance or sex at all. Because that is easier than trying to find one that doesn't just shoehorn the stuff in for the sack of it.
Things are allowed to just be fun.
Yes, though the word "gratuitous" is a bit loaded, but I understand that's just common parlance.
Gen Z in the macro sense is a very prudish generation. It's weird because they clad themselves in sex-positivity, and are conceptually pro-sexuality, but individually are often quite prudish and reserved.
Very broad brush, of course.
Isn't this just typical of how young people are?
Short answer: no. Long answer: also, no.
This is very different from my personal lives experience, and those of most people I know, but again my entire point here is that I don't really know the current experience of young people.
All I have is a really broad brush.
I wonder to what extent that it could be an observation bias? genZ are very online and very used to having a public persona that's safe and detached - it's very true that online most genZ seem almost corporate, they're less likely to say something wild than the Wendy's lady.
When I think of the ones I actually interact with personally very few of them are like that, obviously this is likely to be selection bias but in person or private conversation they're very different to their social media persona.
They're a very nervous and shy generation because they've been so in the spotlight on social media, their parents are generally at least internet aware too so it's not like the private world it was for us. I wonder if they're just more used to guarding their statements.
I feel like Gen Z are very conservative when it comes to sex and nudity and not just in films. The amount of swerfs and "sex positive" individuals is staggering.
Oh I'm gonna hate myself for asking this but wtf is a swerf
Sex worker-exclusionary radical feminist, apparently.
Sex-worker Exclusionary Radical Feminists. They are individuals who are against sex work and workers to the point of sexual confinement. From my experience, most are sex negative, puritanical, and end up supporting policies that increase abuse.
Jesus christ. I'm learning that anything ending in "ERF" is probably something I'm not gonna like.
It's a genuinely fascinating topic and I kind of want to see if there's any research on why this is the case.
because sex and violence are not really comparable
Well no shit. Nobody wants to watch sex scenes with their parents, and when rent costs 3 used cars per month they don't have a ton of choice.
I think you are exaggerating a bit here. Rent levels are skyrocketing past wage growth, sure, but have you considered that used cars are also getting prohibitively expensive relative to the average income? Three of them would be roughly a zillion dollars if my math is correct
Well if you people would stop buying your Pepsis and Cosmo magazines then maybe you could afford a 2001 dodge neon ... Dammit
Ya can get a used early 2000s/late 90s saburban in my city for about $2000. Mind ya folks trade around cars here like a 1700s brothel traded the clap but still.
Actually I think they have the same problem with it we Millennials do, and that we don't find it Charming when a guy acts like a total creep and is rewarded for it because the movie was written by total creeps. Or if our lead is a woman, I'm tired of hearing about how successful and fulfilled she is with her brilliant career that no one takes seriously, because she hasn't found the right man yet, but then she does and discovers that all of her problems are solved by his penis. Because those movies are also made by creeps
First of all. Are there any stories without sex/romance? I personally would love the occasional platonic story. About people who aren't all trying to get in eachothers pants.
I'm not Gen Z (Millenial) but I do get tired of being bombarded with sex, making out, etc. If it's done well and integral to the plot, then it's fine. But honestly less is more. Do I really need a camera to closeup pan the full length of someone's naked body to realize what's going on? After a while it just gets weird, like I am legit waching porn here, am I supposed to be aroused?
The other problem is how flawless they look. I wouldn't mind seeing some real, average looking people for a change. Hold hands or awkwardly kiss after knowing eachother a few months or years, not like "oh hi we just met and it's the two of us alone how convenient hehe guess there's nothing left to do but use our perfect bodies for totally fake sex".
Has anyone ever had sex and thought afterwards, wow that was just like TV/movies/whatever? In my experience it's both more awkward and way hotter. They're not going to script all the little things we enjoy in reality...
Dredd 2012. Judge Dredd takes on a female apprentice Anderson for a training day. They mop the floor with gangsters and crooked cops. It's a non-stop action thrill ride.
No romance. No sexual tension. They do their jobs.
I absolutely love the part when Dredd is extremely injured and basically walking wounded, Anderson saves him from being executed, and it's the perfect time for the Hollywood 'Anderson nurses Dredd back from near death.'
But what happens? Dredd just field dresses himself, and it's not romantic, at all. She literally covers him while he does it, and then they move on.
There can be. But what if that made you to look other problems of the life? Like poverty and misguided education to help capitalism or like health problems caused by environmental changes or war for drug money? That is why they stick to the emotional side of humans, love of a partner or care of a parent.
Alien and Aliens stand out, and as the poster below said, Dredd as well.
Space Jam
Doom, Event Horizon, Hereditary, Silence of the Lambs, The Big Short, Frank... There's heaps of movies out there for us people who steer well clear of romance. They're just not mainstream and I'm fine with that.
The only romance movies I really like are The Wedding Singer, 50 First Dates and the 1995 Pride and Prejudice series. I think it's because the characters actually have depth and are fun to watch.
What TV-series is this: «Tits and dragons»
This article tells us nothing as it isn't comparing the results to other age groups. The study it cites might though.
Generation Xer here... I, too, find the enforced "made-by-numbers" romance and sex cringy, superfluous and utterly banal.
Same. 100% on the nose.
Somehow gen z’s early exposure to porn has made them more prudish than the religious. Literally. I’ve Seen so many posts on Reddit and had real life conversations with gen z people where they’ve said that they hate when couples publicly say their trying for a baby because it means they’re being “creampied” and that’s awkward for them.
Reminds me of some post I read on Reddit regarding a Rimworld sex mod. So many people thought it was completely immoral and had no place in the game.
A game in which you can kidnap and cannibalis children, make clothes of their skin and sell it, a game where you can strap people to a bed, steal all of their organs, cut of their lega so they cant escape and keep them as a blood transfusion slave for ever. Missionary sex between a married couple in their own bed room is wrong and immoral.
That was definitely one of the weirdest takes I have read in a while, still is.
This i can understand though. It is not that the sex itself would be immoral. It is that putting the sex into the context of this violence is immoral.
And i have to say i find this important. Sex to me is an expression of affection with my partner and "sacred" for that. I don't want it tainted with the banality of pornography or the psychotic issues that make people connect sex and violence.
Yeah, that's nothing to do with porn, and everything to do with the awkwardness of your coworkers talking about banging their spouses at work.
that’s incredibly prudish to not even want someone to say they’re trying for a baby.
Keep ur personal life to yourself.
It's weird for two reasons. One, if you struggle to get pregnant it puts a lot of external pressure on you and you'll have to go back and let people know you're potentially infertile. Two, talking about biological things isn't appropriate in some settings. I don't want to hear about your colonoscopy. I don't want to hear that you're raw dogging your wife. I don't want to hear about you surgery. Sir, this is a Wendy's.
That sounds lonely. We all live together. Sharing is a much better default than walling everyone off and judging everyone for sharing really basic parts of life is kind of sad. Obviously there are limit, but “we’re trying to have a baby” and “I’m having surgery” shouldn’t be something that we’re pressured to not share.
I find it more weird that your coworkes talking about trying to get a child results in you imagening them "raw dogging".
When one of my coworkers had a child born i also didn't make a point of imagening the delivery process. I just congratulated them and asked them jokingly how much sleep they caught the last night.
To be fair, it is pretty awkward when people talk about where they are shooting their cum. Keep that shit to yourself.
Just make something that isn't the exact same fucking thing I've seen 12 times, fuck
Oppenheimer: A man intertwined with US nuclear policy, both when creating the first nuke, and during the cold war. Political intrigue mixed with science!
Execs: "What if it had a sex scene?"
Execs (apparently): What if we chose to explore his flaws by showing that he had an extramarital affair?"
Puritans: This biopic should really only show his other flaws. And political intrigue. Sex wouldn't make sense in an R rated film.
What if we had a sex scene in the middle of a board meeting?
Every member of the executive board high fiving and wolf whistling
Everyone is saying sex scenes aren't needed. I present my evidence that sex scenes are needed: Office Space
The sex scene shows that Peter is paranoid and deeply uncomfortable with the fact that his girlfriend, Joanna had sex with his boss. A fact that Peter heard as a rumour from a horny co-worker. Lumbergh would never talk about their sex life at work as that would inappropriate as a manager.
The scene also shows how Peter see Lumbergh as a person. It also sets up for the conflict between Peter and Joanna as Peter acts on his nightmare like a child.
Granted the scene is extremely soft core and played for laughs. However, I think the movie would be a little weaker if Peter had gone to to the office the next day and told everyone about the nightmare without showing it. Yes, you could cut out the scene as the party scene sets everything up for the future conflict. The sex scene shows how deeply uncomfortable Peter is with the situation. It's truly a scene that does "Show, Don't Tell".
I think they mean scenes that are in earnest. The one in office space is used to intentionally make us uncomfortable, just as Peter is. So it works great here for us to connect more with the main character. But yeah I basically agree. They can work when used with intent.
I'm a horny af millennial and I also don't really care for sex scenes. They add nothing to the story itself, and they don't show enough to be sexy. If you're not going to show full penetration then don't even bother.
This is definitely a cultural prudishness emerging. But that's only part of it. There has also been a shift away from artistic filmmaking and toward high-grossing tentpole movies. Because nudity is a taboo in our society, you need an artistic purpose to the nudity (or sex scene) in the film or it won't serve any purpose to the film, and people will notice that it's out of place. If most of the movies you have are cookie-cutter concept movies with little to no artistic expression, you just can't make anything taboo work in them.
Obviously everyone has different taste in movies, but some films that made on-screen sex work really well are Basic Instinct, Blue Velvet, and Eyes Wide Shut. It also adds a lot to really campy movies. Nightmare on Elm Street comes to mind. Species became a cult classic because of its use of nudity and sex. For just plain nudity, It Follows used it well in the briefest of glimpses of the antagonist. It also added a lot to Ex Machina.
Those are just the movies off the top of my head that were made more impactful by sex and nudity.
Oh! Airplane also has a big laugh thanks to a scene of gratuitous nudity. Let's not forget the comedies!
Not because it’s taboo, script writing is art. If you put anything in a movie without a reason then it’s a waste of time
Well it’s what society is like in this movie
Original Sin comes to the forefront of my mind when I think of gratuitous sex scenes in movies, yet the movie still worked, since it was pretty much all about sex.
The nude scene from Walk Hard was hilarious, especially that confused dude standing in the door way XD
The problem is many filmmakers use romance/relationships/gender/identity as a filler that really doesn’t add to the story. This is compounded when it feels more like pandering to an audience.
It never bothered me as a kid, but now for some reason I get triggered by the way Hollywood portrays romance. Why is everyone such a HUGE slut? It's such a huge turn off. It is actually really hard to find a film that portrays a healthy loving monogamous relationship.
I’m gen x and find that this transition started happening earlier. Once online smut was accessible in early 90’s, what little sex shown on the silver screen became less sought after and just became something we had to sit through awkwardly with family.
just cut to a train entering a tunnel and fade to black
Meanwhile, one of the most popular show recently was euphoria
That show wasn't popular with Gen Z though. How do I know this? Gen Z doesn't watch HBO (they can't afford yet another streaming service and they're too lazy to pirate anything that isn't anime because it's too inconvenient).
I just hate the wet noises that accompany it. Same thing with kissing scenes where they have a shotgun mic basically inside their mouths. It drives my sensory issues up a wall.
Macaroni and cheese time!
Sensory processing disorder gang represent lol
(no-mance ftw for other reasons too, but that's the biggest)
It’s the same sound track they use for the walking dead when they are walking through the guts of zombies.
Queue the giant slurp at the end as the last noodle gets sucked in. And then the ‘ah’ gasp.
Different times. When I was growing up, a sex scene in a movie might be one of very few opportunities where you got to see a pair of boobs, unless you could get someone to buy you a porno magazine or VHS tape. These days, there are probably millions of options in this area, instantly accessible. And Hollywood-produced nude/sex scenes are all going to be fake and cringy in comparison.
The younger generation is having less sex despite abstinence only education, not because of it. We have multiple studies showing "abstinence only" education is one of the worst ways to prevent teen pregnancy, yet religious conservatives continue to push for this because they would rather control women than lower teen pregnancy.
You may still be right but this actually doesn't prove what you're saying. Abstinence only education having more pregnancies can't be used alone to indicate if underlying rates of sexual encounters is higher or lower without also knowing other information like rates of condom useage. It can still be the case that rates are lower, but the encounters that are happening are less informed and more risky.
I can tell you haven't researched this at all, because that's one of the first data dimensions controlled for. Random first google result https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5690810/
I dont think the abstinence stuff is having sn effect, or is as prevalent as you think. Maybe in America, but the rest of the western world don't really fuck with it I think>nk?
Germany keeps good statistics on it, the tl;dr is early loss of virginity peaked around the turn of the millennium, and has been steadily going down since then. The sexual revolution never got questioned in Germany once it was through (sadly, you can't annoy reverends by kissing in front of their church, any more), no "abstinence only" sex "education" to be found anywhere. The by far overwhelming reason kids cited is "didn't yet find the right one", only exception being girls with immigrant background, there it's "am still too young", though that number is falling towards "didn't yet find the right one".
Not on that page but when being given a couple of choices saying "which of these things would be a calamity for you right now, and how bad" something like 99% of girls respond with "pregnancy would be the worst". Teen abortion rates are still very low (at least for a country not caught up in Catholic morals) but that's due to low pregnancy rates in the first place combined with extensive support thrown at teen couples.
I think the reason why is the easy access to pornography.
That has nothing to do with less children. It's a known thing in biology that animals are fully aware of critical mass and adjust their mating for the conditions.
Every single industrialized country has reduced birth rates because of child mortality, financial stability, and many other reasons that go with it.
There is no one that didn't have a kid because of a movie. That's just ludicrous.
Younger people have less sex because they are more educated and much more picky.
Apparently I'm the only one that likes being titillated by movies. I don't get the "it adds nothing to the plot" complaint. Tons of movies have action scenes and gratuitous violence that add nothing to the plot, yet i don't see complaints about that. 90% of John Wick is gratuitous violence that added nothing to the plot, but I still love it.
I think this says more about American prudishness and people's unhealthy attitudes towards sex than anything.
Bunch of unnecessary death? Cool and fun! An unnecessary titty? Awkward and gratuitous.
Fuck all of you. I want more nudity and sex in my movies and the comparative lack of it compared to the 80s and 90s feels like we're going out of our way to exclude a huge part of life from art because it makes the prudes out there uncomfortable. But those same people are happy to watch nameless dudes get creatively and graphically killed for half a movie's run time.
I want more gratuitous sex and less gratuitous moral pandering
After reading the article it looks like they aren’t being prude. They just wanted to see more healthier relationship spectrums. I think that’s a fair call. Not all story points have to be about sex.
Plus representation matters.
There are asexuals. And many other sexuality types in the world. Violence is not making a point on that so I don’t know where you’re going with that.
There is also echoing healthier relationships between men and women. I’ve known far too many people who cry friendzone and watch complete shit like friends and HIMYM and the various sitcoms that echo very dehumanizing, simplistic, unhealthy relationships between men and women where they stubbornly won’t relate to each other and sexuality is used as a tolerance or payoff of each other’s existence.
So whiile we could debate gratuitous violence has an impact, I think bad relationships and how they have been presented as a template has had a different impact they are trying to discuss.
Asexuals and homosexuals are just the tip of the ice berg.
Comparing to violence purposely misses the point.
oh please you don't need representation because you don't want to have sex. that has been a thing for as long as can be and no one has a problem with it. the worst oppression you might face is family members asking you when you will be having a child
You talk like anyone getting represented is taking away from you? That right there is what being a snowflake is.
when did i say it takes anything away from me? I'm just saying it's not particularly important every single minor facet of life needs to shoehorn representation for such a minor thing as not wanting to have sex.
Yeah because you are perfectly exampling how a rational person who isn’t triggered by something that doesn’t specifically cater to them reacts. /s
who is triggered lol just posting my opinion on a discussion forum, take a chill pill
Personally, my problem with sex in shows and movies is that it's blatantly not titillating. Hollywood sex scenes are just awfully done/acted/shot.
With all due respect, have you read the article? Attributing this to prudishness misses a lot of what's actually being said: that shoe-horning in romance or sex for no reason is the problem, as well as lack of attention being given to developing platonic relationships. Exploring non-romantic or sexual relationships better doesn't necessarily mean cutting out sex and romance, and imo, would likely lead to better sex and romance in TV and movies.
But I agree with you also, that gratuitous sex and nudity can be used to great effect. Another user https://lemmy.world/comment/4888355 (don't know how to link comments, hopefully this will work) posted a link to the article "Everyone is beautiful, no-one is horny" above, and this really highlights the problem on this side of things, in my view
Because one of John Wicks main reasons for existing is choreographed violence? And the violence is sort of character building in the way it shows John Wick's skill as a killer. There is a case to be made here where sex is sort of superfluous, because unlike John Wick, choreographed sex generally does not contribute to story beats unless it's a porno. And there's nothing unhealthy about being uncomfortable watching an intimate moment unless your porn addled brain has made you desensitizes to sex.
I'm not saying I want a movie with non-stop sex, that would obviously just be porn. I'm saying the "it doesn't progress the plot" complaint about sex in movies is bullshit when those same people watch other movies that are full of gratuitous shit that doesn't move the plot (violence, action, contrived drama).
Movies have been all but stripped of sexuality other than clumsy attempts at pandering to lgbt people. I think some of it is an overcorrection from Weinstein and Me-Too, some of it is just America's puritan cultural hangups that have always been there, and some of it is the effect of Gen-Z growing up with an abundance of porn and now they can't associate sex/nudity on a screen as art (or even just fun).
Violence and action do drive plot. They can build character and be narratively cathartic. Sex in movies does not do that because sex is a subjective experience between two people.
As a fan of Greek mythology - if you don't think sex can drive a plot you need to read more stories.
Valid. Though it's more the effect of sex that drives the plot, not the performance itself.
violence is not the same as sex. it's expected to see violence in an action movie. it would be expected to see sex in a porno. i'm not surprised people don't want sex in their action movies
You're right, it's way worse. And it's disturbing that we're culturally encouraged to find fun in violence but sex needs to be cordoned off to a containment genre and excised from mainstream art. I'm not saying it needs to be in every action movie - but its been obvious for a while they're going out of their way to avoid it even in places where it would make sense or be fun.
A lot of people like sex to be a private thing. This is not unique to western culture either.
Oh please there's a difference between porn a movie. People watch porn to jack off, not to enjoy the story.
Pornhub is somewhere over there ——>
I don't want porn. I want art to stop awkwardly excluding a major part of life.
"Everyone is beautiful and no one is horny." It's like movies these days are all set in this weird Twilight Zone world where sexuality just isn't a thing. I find this far creepier than the gratuitous sex scenes of the 80s.
This is because some people aren’t on the spectrum and ignored. They deserve representation. If you find that weird this is more a problem with you because maybe you have been submerged into sexuality for far too long that anything lacking sex is weird. It’s like being addicted to a food taste and realizing there are other types of food and you think it’s weird that other types of food exist , well then : you’re the weird one.
Why are you booing him? He's right.
Porn is super easy to access. There are more hours of porn recorded than there are hours of my life left.
R-rated sex scenes are literally competing with a host of just better options.
Not once has a fake sex scene in a movie not trigger cringe in me. It's nice to see the actresses' titties but that is it. Fade to black, imply they fucked and move on. Pornhub literally is a click away.
The fact that you only equate sex and nudity to porn shows the problem. Sex and nudity can be fun, dramatic, scary, or funny depending on the context. It wouldn't be "competing" with porn.
I can't suspend my disbelief when media pretends sexuality just doesn't exist or isn't relevant.
It's not 100%, someone else brought up Crank which has a hilarious sex scene that I wouldn't cut and it's vital to the plot.
Most sex scenes just have this feel of "the director wanted to see actresses' naked and had the power of authority and money to make it happen". It doesn't feel fun it has an air of exploitation to it, which I'll admit lots of porn does too, but not all. The best porn is when everyone involved likes it.
I think a sex scene in an otherwise not-pornographic film needs to be second guessed. Does cutting it ruin the plot? Could it just be implied and move on?
I just think they really need to justify it more than normally do.
Why? Why can't they just have it for fun like any other type of gratuitous scene in a movie? I agree it's not usually done well, but that doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be done.
99% of previous attempts have been, what I would call "weak shit". It's up to the writers/director/actors to bring their A game and prove themselves, because so far, I've yet to see one i wouldn't mind being cut out entirely.
In short, it's a skill issue.
I gave up on movies in like '09. No I do not want to see your 5,000th Marvel movie or remake of an 80s movie, regardless of sex scenes, thanks.
A-fucking-men. So boring.
A fucking men is the problem.
Fuck
Lmao
G'day fellow 'coon!
Ahoy!
This seems unlikely considering the massive number of popular teen romance shows happening, such as Heartstopper. It's just that any sex scenes need to have actual depth behind them when they happen, not just random sex out of nowhere.
I'd be a sucker for meaningful queer sex and romance that actually looks and feels as it does in real life. I just rarely even really relate to the on-screen happenings for most.
Or, hell, even some good and sensual BDSM type play would be probably very welcome. I don't know if I've seen any of that yet.
There’s some BDSM dom/sub kinda stuff in Billions. At least in the first few season, tapered off in the later seasons because of story developments. But it even had a place in the story since the character was a public figure and didn’t want it to be public knowledge.
Yeah I wouldn't even agree with the depth, it's not like all the braindead yet-another-american-high-school-dramas with no substance ever went anywhere, no plot, no nothing, just the same regurgitated melodrama and idiocy dressed for yet another generation. Even shows that would be actually great apparently need to have some bullshit drama and gratuitous sex in it for absolutely no reason at all.
I’m gen y and I agree. Skip the shitty softcore.
Exactly. If you want to show it, they should show everything.
Full penetration.
I'd personally prefer that if they aren't allowed to show it they not bother. All this does is make watching with family uncomfortable or possibly if your aware of the scene beforehand prevent watching it with family at all.
Assuming i'm not trying to watch it with family I prefer my content uncensored, like they can say fuck if they want to or fuck if they want or actually be seen nude after a shower instead being censored in some form.
Even when I am watching things with family i'd prefer they just not did things they'd have to censor than taint it with censorship.
Out of all movies with sex scenes in it, I only like the one in Crank.
Yes, because it was funny as shit!
Y'all need to go fuck some more. Films like La La Land are really missing something without a sex scene, the chemistry feels really fake and the relationship isn't believable.
Sex is normal. Sex is good. Sex in films is necessary to convey intensity which a pan from bed shot can never achieve.
Great example: Terminator. Without this scene the whole franchise fails. The film doesn't have the gravitas when John does die without it. And it's a highly charged emotional reaction to the harrowing events they have both just been through.
Terminator needs to have those two have sex because that’s how John Connor is born.
What isn’t needed is us having to watch the hero fondle her tits for 5 minutes.
sex isnt necessary for an intense relationship, and if your romantic pairing requires the characters literally porking onscreen to be believable or to read as having any chemistry you did a shit job writing it
99% of sex on film is casual sex and to claim that "casual sex" is normal and good is not straightforward to me.
For example most of the time with a macho male protagonist, they will show him using women for sex like disposable condoms. Another worrying trend on the rise is plot lines that basically glorify cheating.
I am not bothered by the sex or the nudity per se, but Hollywood loves to glorify characters with very problematic characters.
I’m just sick of hollywood shoehorning a romance into every story. Not every story needs a romance, and most of the romances in movies are cliche and unnecessary.
As someone on the far older end of gen Z or the far younger end of millenial, depending on where you draw the line:
I hate sex scenes. I have some personal issues however that may affect my judgment. Trauma and such. Don't wanna see sex unless I was fully mentally prepared for it, which I just can't be if it's shoved into some random movie, regardless of if you warn me in advance.
It might seem odd, but I wonder if the almost unavoidable overexposure to porn from a very young age elicits a similar response in a lot of younger people. The fact that for a lot of your life, sex is a forbidden thing you have to sneak around to indulge in, and which the one form you have exposure to, porn, carries the risk of addiction. It seems like it'd leave an impression on your mind that it's a scary thing you have to hide, which I could see eliciting some kind of trauma response when suddenly it's everywhere and you're still stuck feeling like you have to hide it.
Gen x, i think, here. Sex alone does nothing for me. Nudity does nothing. I'm attracted more to people, subtlety, long, slow seductions.
Most sex I see in tv, movies, is ridiculous. Like, 2 people have been flirting for weeks. One day, chance meeting, they kiss. RIGHT THEN, right after the first kiss, they immediately start taking their clothes off.
Seriously, who does that?
Some of the best sex can be if you have your clothes on.
Also, too many fantasy TV shows have characters who can't touch other people cuz demon in them, physically touching someone means they'll lose control, whatever. So they go around miserable, horny, unrequited love and all that. Which to me shows failure of imagination. Sex can be imaginative, creative, so much variety, possibility. Phone sex, mutual self masturbation, why not work those options into the plot?
But no, in movies and TV, its almost always: kiss, clothes come right off, completely naked, always in a bed, orgasm in 5 minutes. Real life is way more complex than that.
A Boomer here, and I'm finding these comments to be very interesting--mostly because I'm realizing I agree in many cases! Far from prudish, just last night I fast-forwarded past the sex scenes in the first episode of a new streamer series. "Yeah, yeah, I get it...you're hot for each other. Can we move it along, please?"
It's just gen z being pragmatic. We don't need sex in movies cuz we have unlimited better porn.
There it is again. People acting like genZ are the first to say no and protest to things…. This simply isn’t true.
Genz didn’t invent this idea of protesting it . Women against pornography was formed in the 60s. So we know people have been bothered by it for more than one generation and people have tried to act against it.
I don’t think this should be a generation topic. Film makers are by far and large trying to get people to watch their shit using gags and named actors. they use sex and violence in film like capitalists use sugar and salt in food to get people to consume it. It’s a crutch.
They're not against it it's just so cliche as to be cringe. Genz is not prude...hahaha wow
And you thought that is a new thought that you yourself invented? Maybe you should Crawl out of your own ass.
I'm not gen z u fucktard
I find this so funny, how a lot of "Boomer media" makes such a fuss about discovering that Gen Z ist also just normal people, with some more progressed ideas and ideals but also tired of being overloaded with information and media.
I think part of it now is that they also realize that half of the fads they have been making up about how the youth of the 2000/2010 era with how sex, violence and drugs craving it alledgely was, were just bullshit.
I'm the gen that saw couples having sex butt-naked on the kitchen counter in a random movie at 3-4 in the afternoon. And all i remember now of that movie is that i don't like seeing guys butts.
I have a standing wager with my friends that there has never been a filmed or written sex scene that needed to be included in the media. Talk about it, allude to it, show the ramifications of it, but there has never been one that needed to be there. Sex scenes are there to sell TnA, not to move the plot forward.
For an example of a close call. In A History of Violence, Viggo rapes his wife. This is about as close as you could come to a needed scene because it shows a wild character development, but if you were to cut the scene out entirely, you'd still get all of the character development that he gets from the scene, anyway, rendering it useless.
By this logic there has never been a scene of any kind in any movie that needed to be there.
That's the point, like, read a book, dork!
The only scenes that matter are the load bearing ones, apparently
Have you seen Biodome?
I'm trying to imagine Zach and Miri Make A Porno without any sex scenes in it.
I guess there's not many grammar lessons with sex scenes in theme.
FTFY
woosh
Lol, well, don't worry about it. The only reason I poked fun at you was because it's such a common mistake for English speakers as well.
It's just "anything" instead of "nothing".
English is not my first language... But «I do not watch nothing without sex scenes» sounds iffy gramatically
Sounds good to me and I'm a couple letters behind Gen Z. Either the scenes don't do anything for me, in which case they're boring, or they do something for me, in which case...what do I do when it's over? Do I pause and go take care of it, or sit there all hot and bothered while somebody talks about business stuff or getting the bad guys or whatever? Either way it's annoying. And I'm no prude, it's just, if I want to see sex I'll just watch porn. But I'm not watching porn, I'm trying to watch a story. IDK. It's like if the mall decided every store needed a stripper pole.
I see you have been visiting the mall I work at. :)
I like your example. I agree, even as a pretty perverted person.
A study of only 1500 teens still seem pretty small to me
that is a sufficient enough sample size to analyze trends.
The person you responded to doesn't understand statistics. As long as your sample is random and unbiased, you don't need to sample the whole population.
Think of someone cooking. They just taste a little bit of the food to adjust the spices. If they mixed it up evenly, they don't need to eat the whole thing to get an idea of how it tastes. That is the basis of random sampling.
There's a weird online phenomena of people with no knowledge of statistics criticizing the sample size of studies they disagree with. Of course that criticism never comes up when it backs up their world view.
I can get behind this. I can't even remember the last time I saw a sex scene in a movie that needed to be there - it just makes for an awkward moment.
If I wanted to see a sex scene, I'd just watch porn, not a movie where other stuff is meant to be happening.
I think the one in Blade Runner 2049 did a lot for the character of Joi in particular. But it's about the only example I can think of just now
Don Jon (2013) is about a porn addict, so having some sex scenes made sense there.
A Somewhat Gentle Man (2010) has a few sex scenes which are hilarious, and they really fit the vibe of the movie.
Alternatively some of the porns that have other shit happening are pretty decent.
I'm with Gen Z on this. Hell, I've have been complaining about this since I was a kid in the 80s. You do not need every damn relationship to be a romance. People can be friends and acquaintances and frienemies and enemies and everything in-between without there being romance or sex.
I mean so are my parents
Good.
I think none of you have seen Irreversible.
We can tell when a movie is being sold by the one sex scene in it and if that is the case, there isn't much value to the movie
Whatever happened to great movies like Breakfast Club? (I'm gen-x)
I hate sex scenes in movies. By far the worst sex scene I've seen was sthe end of Sausage Party. I felt physically ill from it. I watched the movie with my parents and they thought my disgust was hilarious. Now I rarely watch movies other than superhero movies with them.
That whole movie was just absolute dog water. There's are good ways to do lowbrow comedy and then there's Sausage Party.
It's one of two movies that I actually regret watching.
I mean idt they're talking about cartoon hot dog sex in the article, but fair...
It's still absolutely disgusting tho
I watched a few movies from the 80s and 90s recently, and there are so many cringy and unnecessary sex scenes in those movies it's absolutely insane
then the boomers try to act like the youth have a sex problem
I can't watch many movies from the 80s and 90s because of the cringe sex scenes. My parents think that time was the best time for movies and they're just wrong lol
I think the phrase "amatonormativity" should be more well-known, I think it would be pretty relevant in this discussion.
strange, I thought it was aimed at them, hence the shitty Netflix billboard that I am impossible to scroll with my kids around and tbh, I feel also this shit as an aggression, like ads.
There are three things that should never be shown in media because it's completely unnecessary and all three can be directly implied without showing any real detail of them.
These three things are: Sex, vomiting, going to the bathroom.
All three of these can be relayed to the viewer without actually showing them but it seems like they're shown all the time and it's infuriating.
Idk what this is supposed to be but unfortunately it won't load
You can't take away my poop scenes
I'm sure there's some real person out there who would argue that a particular shitting scene is necessary because it shows the authors mindset on the constipation of the world in the sense of some kind of moral ambiguity or some bs like that
Pulp fiction had a great poop scene.
Edit: and the latest Paw Patrol had a fantastic poop joke which really made the scene tie together.
And don't forget the great toilet scene in Trainwatching!
I was meaning more like showing the actual poop
Poop jokes can be hilarious. But I don't need to see the actual poop.
Rick & Morty: The old man and the seat, had a great poop scene which also showed lots of poop.
It’s all in the execution.
Poop can be really funny.
Hey look it's the dude the article is describing lol
Lmao fair enough though I'm a millennial
Thanks for taking it as the joke it was lol
The Karen Generation.
Weird. I'm a millennial. I tend to enjoy the movies and shows with more sex scenes. I thought GoT was better when there were more sex scenes (that's probably not the reason it was entertaining, but it coincided). I find most PG-13 movies uninteresting, like all the superhero crap (except Deadpool, Super, and The Boys). Though, IDK WTF Bridgerton is, but that looks boring as hell. And Euphoria seems kinda sus (since the characters are supposed to be children).
AMEN
Iam not gen z and not offended by nudity, but mostly i find it doesn't add to the story if the sex scenes are played out. If i want porn, i just watch porn.
For years everyone questioned why literally everything is so overly sexualized. Every plot, every ad, every spare moment when sex is shoehorned into literally everything we see, watch and hear in media. Now, the young adults are sayin, "nah, fuck that" and I dont disagree with that response. I think it's less them being offended as you're making it out to be and more just wanting something different besides the status quo. Its unwise and unhelpful to shit on these kids at every turn. Previous generations said the same thing about your generation when you were that age.
Edit: typo
No one is offended by it. Its just boring. I would prefer the movie to be 10 minutes shorter than have a 10 minutes sex scene in it.
It's a natural part of life but so is pooping and I don't want to watch anybody do that on screen either. Fade to black. Same with extreme violence. These things can be an important part of the story without being shown graphically.
Watching other people drool over each other and exchange bodily fluids is just cringe.
Most sex scenes these days and done for the sake of creativity.