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I recently watched a documentary called This Film is Not Yet Rated that discusses the bizarre American film rating system. The documentary includes interviews with several directors whose films received NC-17 ratings (essentially X-Ratings that render them unmarketable) or who had to change their films to avoid such a fate. The documentary had a lot to say about the arcane and arbitrary methods by which films were judged and pointed out many quirks of the process, such as gay sex being judged far more harshly than comparable straight sex, or extended female orgasms being treated as verboten. While the flaws with the rating process were all very interesting, the documentary brought up an interesting quandary for me. I was very sympathetic to the various directors whose artistic vision suffered under the thumb of an overzealous MPAA. The unfairness of the process spoke to me. And yet, I found myself again and again struggling with this thought: "Bummer for your artistic vision, but no movie has ever really been improved by an explicit sex scene and no movie really suffers from a lack of explicit sex, so... so what?" But I am not so naive or mired in my own tastes that I don't recognize the audacity of that opinion. How can I say that? I'll argue all day for the artistry of violence in, say, a Tarantino or a Haneke or a Refn, but I can muster no similar defense of eroticism? It's not that I have some moral objection to the topic, I just don't generally find sex scenes in movies interesting or compelling. For example, I recall the sex scene in Enemy At The Gates were Jude Law and Rachel Weisz have awkward uncomfortable silent sex in a packed army barracks. That scene was powerful and memorable because of its context, even though you could't see any genitals and no one was even naked. I'm all in favor of that, and it had nothing X-Rated in its presentation. Breaking Bad had an off-camera handjob played for laughs that I found effective. Boys Don't Cry had some powerful sex scenes that were poignant because of the context of the story and didn't suffer from having to artfully cut around showing pubic hair and genitals, in my opinion. So, as I said, I have no objection to sex taking place in cinema, but I don't find the explicit or "pornographic" portrayals very interesting. So that's my confession: I am illiterate in artistic erotic film-making. Or at least not-conversant. And, as someone who loves film and wants to be an informed cinema fan, that kind of bugs me. Is this just purely a matter of taste for me or am I uneducated on the topic? So, I'd like for some of you Cinema Discusso superstars to weigh in on the topic. Do (or can) explicit sex scenes improve a film? Are there films that would be less great if they lacked their sex scenes? If so, what does an "Artistic Sex Scene" (in the X-Rated sense) accomplish? (P.S. If you're so inclined, feel free to watch some Slavoj Zizek talk about sex in cinema - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBBoxXEBrxU )
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| # ? Feb 5, 2013 09:31 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 16:53 |
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I'm going to say, I think the problem is your assumption that an explicit sex scene has to be pornographic in nature - that is, tasteless and crass. Of course a pornographic scene isn't going to add anything of value to a movie that is not specifically a porn movie but...I think you can at least theoretically have an explicit scene that is still tasteful and not pornographic. To me, it's all about the portrayal of the scene. A pornographic scene is tasteless to me not because "oh I can see vag" but because of the intense focus on that. Camera angles, perspectives, lingering shots...it's not that I'm seeing a sex scene that would make me think the scene tasteless, but the portrayal and perspectives on the sex happening. A sex scene can still be explicit and tasteful at the same time, if the portrayal is on the characters and the emotion between them, rather than just their genitals and well, the pornographic nature of it. I think it's pretty messed up that there is just this assumption that all sex is inherently tasteless and crass, whereas the most explicit violence is accepted. I really dislike this, personally. Intense violence bugs me a lot more than an intense sex scene. But anyway - despite that I've argued in favor of a tasteful explicit sex scene, I do have to admit I think this is a really hard thing to do well. I would expect that most of the time, an explicit sex scene would just end up being pornographic and tasteless and not really gaining anything for showing the sex itself. I just think that hypothetically it can be done tastefully, though.
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| # ? Feb 5, 2013 11:12 |
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The one I keep coming back to in reading this thread is the sex scene at the beginning of Antichrist. It's extremely explicit, but I think that explicitness serves a purpose. It would be pretty lame to just come out and say Oh, they were loving and their kid fell out of the window instead of showing it. One could certainly argue about how much von Trier did with the rest of the movie, but I think the utility of the scene is pretty self-evident.
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| # ? Feb 5, 2013 12:06 |
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Skeesix posted:The one I keep coming back to in reading this thread is the sex scene at the beginning of Antichrist. It's extremely explicit, but I think that explicitness serves a purpose. It would be pretty lame to just come out and say Oh, they were loving and their kid fell out of the window instead of showing it. One could certainly argue about how much von Trier did with the rest of the movie, but I think the utility of the scene is pretty self-evident. You know what? I actually agree with you. The opening sex scene manages to be both explicit but also artistic and compelling and contextually relevant, along the lines of what Aristobulus was getting at. That said, I might also argue that you could dial back the explicitness a few notches with nothing lost. I saw a lot of DafoeDick in that film and, for me personally, I'm not sure the impact of that movie would be lessened with more Implied Dick and less Overt Dick. The female castration part I could have done without entirely, but mostly because it haunts me to this day haha I guess a good supplementary question for the CD crowd would be this: If I'll grant that Von Trier knows how to make explicit sex scenes compelling, who else is doing this? Who else has mastered this?
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| # ? Feb 5, 2013 13:02 |
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Anal Surgery posted:It's not that I have some moral objection to the topic, I just don't generally find sex scenes in movies interesting or compelling. ... as I said, I have no objection to sex taking place in cinema, but I don't find the explicit or "pornographic" portrayals very interesting. It doesn't really matter if you have a moral objection to it that you can identify. Society at large does have issues with sex, and the representation of sex. This affects the way sex in movies is done, and if you've been watching movies for decades, that's going to affect your perception of sex in movies. Especially if you're an American. Because if sex scenes, especially 'explicit' ones are a rarity, and we are in a culture that still has a complicated and strange relationship with sex, a sex scene might be 'uninteresting' because you are anxious about the simple act of watching it, and want it to end. I mean, you keep referring to scenes and things as X-rated and I have no idea if you're talking about actual penetration or just a scene with some pubes. Anal Surgery posted:So, I'd like for some of you Cinema Discusso superstars to weigh in on the topic. Do (or can) explicit sex scenes improve a film? Are there films that would be less great if they lacked their sex scenes? If so, what does an "Artistic Sex Scene" (in the X-Rated sense) accomplish? First of all, I am not sure why you are so focused on explicit sex scenes. I'm also not entirely sure what you mean by explicit sex scenes. I would say that explicit sex scenes in the sense of anything that involves penetration can be hazardous for the actors' health, and they can be a line that they're unwilling to cross (or not allowed to by their partners, which seems fairly reasonable to me). Sex is important for people so they might not want to have 'real' sex. So, for the most part, 'explicit' sex is going to be off the table for most productions. I assume that's what you mean by 'pornographic' sex. It's more important to just focus on regular sex scenes. Which, to be fair, some people also don't want to do. So you have a real technical difficulty where people might just want to keep this aspect of their life private. Which is understandable, plenty of people want to keep many aspects of their life private and we don't give them grief for it. People have sex in real life. All sorts of sex. Good sex, bad sex, abusive sex, embarrassing sex, etc. It's a fairly common and important act between two (or more) people, a way of interacting. It's also a fairly important part of a relationship. It's one of the more 'emotional' things in people's lives, the one thing that makes many people be dramatic and irrational when other things don't sway them. In this way, sex is 'special', or 'important'. It's also something vast numbers of people do, so it's also completely 'normal' and not special. Our sexuality is a big part of ourselves. So if this is something that almost everyone does, that's an important part of relationships between human beings, that's an important part of how we define ourselves, and that can have all sorts of emotional causes and effects, why the hell wouldn't you want to portray it on film? Why wouldn't it be important? Why are we even asking the question of whether portraying something that can be important, that is a big part of people's and relationships' identities, is 'needed'? That's crazy to me. Something else we could think about is, why do we portray or not portray something. If I choose to show a character dying in my film, I made that choice for a reason. If I choose him being shot in the head at close-range and I represent that clearly and unambiguously, that's a choice I made for a reason. If I see him dying from a distance, that's a choice I made for a reason. If I don't see him die at all, that's a choice I made for a reason. Maybe you don't even know the reason yourself, you can't articulate it, the reason just comes from the fact that when you see movies do it in x way, it causes a different reaction in you that if the movie did it in z way. That's true in sex scenes. When you choose to portray an act, and how 'far' you choose to portray it, how long the scene is, how realistic it is... this all has an effect, just like with any other thing you portrayed in your film. What I'm trying to say here is that asking if a movie will be 'less great' if it doesn't have a sex scene just seems bizarre to me. It might be worse, it might be better, but it'll definitely be different, which seems like a big deal to me. It seems off to me to talk about whether we can just discard sex scenes from movies. Now, can a sex scene be more or less interesting? Yes, I guess. Depends on what it's trying to convey. If the only thing the sex scene is trying to convey is that two characters had sex, then that's not very interesting. If it's trying to convey something emotional, it might be more interesting. For example, it could show extreme happiness. It could show lust. It could show boredom. Self-loathing. Abuse. Recklessness. Mild affection. Conflicted feelings. It could also tell you something about the character. Maybe the way they dominate people through sex, or let themselves be dominated, or the way they're impotent, or inadequate on some way. Also, if the film is about sex and intimacy, then you probably want to have some sex and intimacy there. I am reminded of the HBO show 'Tell me you love me', about couples going through problems. There was some "X-rated" stuff there, because the show was about that. I think another good, recent example is Shame, the Steve McQueen film about sex addiction. There's a bunch of sex scenes in it. Some are exciting and show the riskiness and thrill of the sex addiction. Some are cold (camera fixed on a tripod) and show how the sex the character has is repetitive, mechanical, etc. Some are embarrassing, and show his problems. And some are portrayed in a mixture of decadent and terrible, in which we're meant to see both the thrill of it and how the character is just destroying himself. A more hypothetical example would be, if you make a movie which is mostly from the point of view of one character, and that character is in love, or lusts after, another character, and they end up having sex, or doing something sexual, it would be a disservice to the story if you didn't show it, because then you'd be leaving the character's point of view. There's certainly reasons to be borderline pornographic. I think a good reason would be because that's the kind of sex we have. If you have sex with a man, you're probably going to see a penis at some point. When you look at a sex scene with a man on a screen and there is no penis, you know what you're seeing, but there's still a sense of detachment, because you know that's not really how you experience it (if you have sex with a man, or are a man). It can help you believe what you're seeing is 'real'. And having a 'movie' representation of sex can definitely take you out of it, like a breaking of the fourth wall or something. Wow, that's a lot of incoherent rambling. Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at Feb 5, 2013 around 13:56 |
| # ? Feb 5, 2013 13:08 |
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Anal Surgery posted:You know what? I actually agree with you. The opening sex scene manages to be both explicit but also artistic and compelling and contextually relevant, along the lines of what Aristobulus was getting at. That said, I might also argue that you could dial back the explicitness a few notches with nothing lost. I saw a lot of DafoeDick in that film and, for me personally, I'm not sure the impact of that movie would be lessened with more Implied Dick and less Overt Dick. The female castration part I could have done without entirely, but mostly because it haunts me to this day haha The explicit sex and nudity in Antichrist is important because of how much it drives the guilt and resentment of the rest of the movie, and the first scene's explicitness in particular is important because it drives home the fact that the sex is not a stand-in for anything... we're talking about sex (not "relationship" or "marriage" or "romance") and the way it affects their guilt and resentment. Without it you just have a couple going crazy in the woods. sethsez fucked around with this message at Feb 5, 2013 around 15:01 |
| # ? Feb 5, 2013 14:58 |
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I thought it was very coherent Pedro, and well written. The choice of why to portray something is just as important as the images themselves, as the choice will reflect on the way we see a scene. Shame is indeed a great, recent example of 'explicit sex' that is used completely in the realms of a story. It's not pornographic, as even though the word doesn't necessarily mean that, people understand it to mean something to be shown in a pleasurable light, which much of Shame certainly does not despite being explicit. Sex is also important in cinema as it's the most raw and visceral way you can get across a relationship (whether good, bad, meaningless, you name it) to an audience. It's not done well a lot of the time but it should hardly be a black mark against it being used at all. I suspect that outside of a lot of the 'sex is normal, violence isn't but it's okay' arguments, there are a fair few parallels to be had (durr) which people don't always look at for the sake of making an argument. Sexualised violence is an interesting one as it seems the most taboo.
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| # ? Feb 5, 2013 15:12 |
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So when your goon name is Anal Surgery, I get a very explicit mental image of anal surgery. Did I need to get that mental image? Probably not. If you had gone with a less-explicit name like Cookie Puffs, I'd get a mental image of cookies in a bowl of Cocoa Puffs and I like cookies and Cocoa Puffs so you would probably be a better goon if your name were Cookie Puffs.
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| # ? Feb 5, 2013 17:00 |
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What would even require anal surgery?  Edit for content: I really like boobs, and that is exponentially true when they're the boobs of a movie starlet. Hope this helps. Also, Ebert has my back on this one. The Bananana fucked around with this message at Feb 5, 2013 around 17:21 |
| # ? Feb 5, 2013 17:17 |
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The Bananana posted:What would even require anal surgery? A line of people stitched together rear end-to-mouth, like some kind of crazy many-legged insect created with humans?
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| # ? Feb 5, 2013 17:21 |
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A good sex scene, like a good fight scene, reveals a lot about the characters by their actions. Like Shame, which shows all the emotions Fassbender's character keeps bottled up in the sex scenes. Or Terminator 1, which shows Sarah and Kyle's synchronicity in their mutual orgasm. Without that, there's something missing in their relationship.
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| # ? Feb 5, 2013 17:26 |
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Anal Surgery posted:I guess a good supplementary question for the CD crowd would be this: If I'll grant that Von Trier knows how to make explicit sex scenes compelling, who else is doing this? Who else has mastered this? This question makes me think more about the fact that you obviously havent seen very many serious movies rather than anything else about sex on cinema. I usually hate the framing of this kind of thing as "prudes vs enlightened free spirits" but in your posts I really do get the impression that you actually do have hangups about seeing people gently caress and that you aren't very familiar with film in general. If you have more of a problem with, say, the married couple's sex scene in Crash than the exploding head in Scanners, that seems pretty self-evidently weird to me. Edit: this post really isn't meant to be insulting, to clarify. Just the actual thought of asking "what movies have non-porn sex in them" is really strange to me. acephalousuniverse fucked around with this message at Feb 5, 2013 around 17:50 |
| # ? Feb 5, 2013 17:41 |
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I thought the point against the mpaa isn't that you cannot show explicit sex at all but that their standards for impropriety are absurd especially compared to violence. Also that there is a social stigma that agrees with them and makes nc17 movies impossible to market. "explicit surprise sex is allowed but showing a woman orgasming in consensual sex is not". "counting the number of thrusts", "no erections ever" are some of the stories I've heard. The mpaa basically do not censor impropriety, they just reinforce outdated political ideas.
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| # ? Feb 5, 2013 18:58 |
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Pedro De Heredia posted:If the only thing the sex scene is trying to convey is that two characters had sex, then that's not very interesting. Why not? If the only thing a violent shootout scene is trying to convey is that some dudes got shot, nobody bats an eye. Why must sex scenes inherently be required to serve some deeper purpose? If we see some guy's head get blown off his shoulders we laugh and cheer, but if we see the hint of a scrotum during a sex scene we squirm and call it "gratuitous" or "pointless" or "explicit".
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| # ? Feb 5, 2013 19:31 |
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acephalousuniverse posted:This question makes me think more about the fact that you obviously havent seen very many serious movies rather than anything else about sex on cinema. I usually hate the framing of this kind of thing as "prudes vs enlightened free spirits" but in your posts I really do get the impression that you actually do have hangups about seeing people gently caress and that you aren't very familiar with film in general. If you have more of a problem with, say, the married couple's sex scene in Crash than the exploding head in Scanners, that seems pretty self-evidently weird to me. The guy straight up described himself as "illiterate" in this topic so I'm not sure what "guess you dont watch many movies!" adds. massive spider fucked around with this message at Feb 5, 2013 around 21:31 |
| # ? Feb 5, 2013 19:52 |
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caiman posted:Why not? If the only thing a violent shootout scene is trying to convey is that some dudes got shot, nobody bats an eye. Why must sex scenes inherently be required to serve some deeper purpose? If we see some guy's head get blown off his shoulders we laugh and cheer, but if we see the hint of a scrotum during a sex scene we squirm and call it "gratuitous" or "pointless" or "explicit". I used that as an example because it's about the most trivial thing you can say about a scene: it portrays a thing that happened. It doesn't really matter how explicit the scene is, in this case, just that it's saying as little as humanly possible. Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at Feb 5, 2013 around 20:35 |
| # ? Feb 5, 2013 20:27 |
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I don't think sex scenes say as little as humanly possible. They're extremely shallow and pointless, but that's not the same as having no communication at all. Childish attitudes about sex that are constantly reflected in film re-enforce the impression in the public that sex itself is a largely self-gratifying act that people only do for fun. I think sex as commonly portrayed in film actually greatly underscores the complex motivations behind the act in real life and cheapens it. This is not, of course, absolutely true. It's absolutely possible to have compelling meaningful sex scenes and this thread has already brought up several examples of that. The main hypocrisy I saw exposed in This Film Is Not Yet Rated is the insulting double standard that the MPAA uses with regards to sex. As long as it's portrayed in a childish, immature, heavily commercialized way, it gets a pass because the MPAA is in the pockets of the industry. These are the movies that people actually see and affect culture. But if an independent film attempts something meaningful, that totally crosses the morality line. It's an absurd situation. The pie masturbation scene has had a more negative impact on American sexual culture than every independent R-rated film put together. (the above is also true of violence in movies. I acknowledge this here mainly to avoid derails on the topic) Now, as to the OP's broader question, as to whether sex is as huge a necessity in intelligent film as many artistic types like to claim, I don't think it is. In my opinion sex appears in film more for shock value (indie cred) than it does as meaningful expression. The best sex scenes I've ever seen in film I don't actually remember that well- they were very well integrated and relevant to the narrative in such a way that they reflected the diverse human expression and character development of the plot rather than subsuming it. I'll toss in Auto-Focus as an example here. Even though this is a film that is, to a large extent about sex and sex addiction, it's a vehicle for the problems inherent in Bob Crane's character. There's a great sub-plot where Crane's girlfriend assumes that Crane's wife is just a prude about Cranes sexual needs, but when the girlfriend marries Crane, she soon finds herself the victim of the exact same emotional issues for which Crane's sexual activities are more of a symptom than a cause. But, what does this say about explicit content, like nudity? I'm honestly hard-pressed to come up with any sex scene that really sold itself on the explicit nudity alone. But I can think of plenty where the nudity (and the excuse of "artistic expression") were empty distractions because the director felt like taking an extended Male Gaze shot of an attractive woman. The Silence Before Bach was really bad about this. It's not as obvious with most independent films because they're better about wrapping themselves up in profundity. Now, this itself is a big part of the problem. I've been so over-exposed to "sex is profound" tropes that the whole notion has become a very boring cliche to me. I can still enjoy a genuinely well-done sex scene but if the only positive anybody can give me about a movie is "great sex scene" it has about the same effect on me as "cool zombie explosions". Call me a prude if you like, but the human experience is filled with such fantastically diverse emotions that I'm really just not sold on the idea that all of it can or should be connected to sexual intercourse somehow.
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| # ? Feb 5, 2013 21:49 |
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Some Guy TT posted:The Silence Before Bach was really bad about this. It's not as obvious with most independent films because they're better about wrapping themselves up in profundity. This is an absurd sentence. Some Guy TT posted:Call me a prude if you like, but the human experience is filled with such fantastically diverse emotions that I'm really just not sold on the idea that all of it can or should be connected to sexual intercourse somehow. So is this, because what you're really suggesting is that film should be completely disconnected from sexual intercourse except in a vague, Victorian way. Sex happens. It is a good thing, one of the pleasures that makes life worth living. Why shouldn't it happen on screen, and why do we find it distasteful when it does? penismightier fucked around with this message at Feb 5, 2013 around 22:35 |
| # ? Feb 5, 2013 22:31 |
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As an American, I live in a culture that acts like things don't exist. Repugnant, naughty, awesome things. We all do them. We all enjoy them. But we DON'T talk about them, and we DEFINITELY don't show them in our movies!
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| # ? Feb 5, 2013 22:49 |
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You seem to be under the impression that because I dislike sex scenes in film I must be some sort of puritan moralist. That is most certainly not the case (such a person would never in a million years praise Auto-Focus' depiction of sex). Rather, I simply find that typical overuse of sex tropes leads to dull and uninteresting variations on the same overdone themes. There's a big difference between being disgusted and bored.caiman posted:As an American, I live in a culture that acts like things don't exist. Repugnant, naughty, awesome things. We all do them. We all enjoy them. But we DON'T talk about them, and we DEFINITELY don't show them in our movies! Yes, we do. I'm really sick of this myth going around that American movies don't involve sex. Typical cineplex movies are chock-full of sexual or erotic scenes that exist for little purpose other than titillation. These tropes and the plots that surround them are the most common forms through women are objectified in film today. An absence of sex is not the problem. The immature version of sex portrayed and glamorized contextually is the problem. If the having sex inside Bumblebee scene in Transformers had been more graphic and explicit, that would not have been an improvement. It just would have been tasteless.
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| # ? Feb 5, 2013 23:08 |
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Some Guy TT posted:Rather, I simply find that typical overuse of sex tropes leads to dull and uninteresting variations on the same overdone themes. What tropes?
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| # ? Feb 5, 2013 23:29 |
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Maybe it has something to do with everyone already knowing how the sex is going to end. There is no reason to watch and I always find myself not paying attention and talking to my girlfriend/friend/looking at my phone during one while waiting for the drama to start again.
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| # ? Feb 5, 2013 23:56 |
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I think the worst one is sex being metaphorically used as a prize symbolizing the male lead's accomplishment over whatever the actual plot of the movie was. It's especially annoying because it's obvious that modern writers have realized this is problematic, and have "solved" it by adding the twist that she's a Strong Female Character who likes sex because that's totally a thing Strong Female Characters do. Like most of the problems in Hollywood today it's amplified by a lack of creativity. I probably wouldn't find it so annoying except sometimes it seems like every other movie is using this same template.
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| # ? Feb 6, 2013 00:02 |
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Some Guy TT posted:have "solved" it by adding the twist that she's a Strong Female Character who likes sex because that's totally a thing Strong Female Characters do. But it's a human thing to do! Humans like sex! That's normal. What are these movies y'all are seeing where they slap "predictable" sex in, as if that's a thing any more than predictable meal scene is? The dopiest thing in movies now is a lack of sex. Why did Captain America and Peggy not sleep together? Or Thor and Portman? There's no reason at all except some vague sense that it's improper and icky which is absurd.
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| # ? Feb 6, 2013 00:08 |
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This thought follows Some Guy IT's above. I kind of like watching the older censorship mostly because of the creativity it inspired. I mean I'm glad they don't advertise cigarettes from Hollywood anymore but you have to admit it's pretty loving hot when the female lead lights the male's cigarette and gives "the look." To me, that's far more powerful than a straight forward sex scene.
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| # ? Feb 6, 2013 00:11 |
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Not that it was an amazing movie (pretty good), but Shortbus showed that you can have explicit sex in a movie, minus the "tastefully done, emotional" part and still have it serve the story. In Shortbus the explicit sex was both used as a device for humor (because actual sex can be awkward and funny when looked at from the outside) and as the basis for the drama between characters and the progression of the plot. Plus the focal point of the movie is that sex often just happens. It's not a "reward", or a means to an end, it's a pleasurable thing that two people (or one person) can do just because it feels good.
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| # ? Feb 6, 2013 02:10 |
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Another argument you could raise: We may not have seen many explicit sex scenes that add extra depth to an American-made movie, because directors don't have the experience of past-made films, both successful and failures, to choose what works, and what doesn't. You could argue that some of Tarentino's films would never have seen the light of day if extreme violence was forbidden in movies before Tarentino's time. Producers in the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's etc... improved upon how to use violence in a movie, and how to better make the audience react to scenes containing violence all through experience. Future directors will likely look at films being made today, and think "yeah, I really like that shot, angle and depth to that scene, I think I'll do something like it in a future production".
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| # ? Feb 6, 2013 02:24 |
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penismightier posted:The dopiest thing in movies now is a lack of sex. Why did Captain America and Peggy not sleep together? Or Thor and Portman? There's no reason at all except some vague sense that it's improper and icky which is absurd. Plenty of people have conservative ideas about sex, not because their thinking is somehow repressed, but simply because they prefer not to engage in these kinds of relationships casually. The notion that all, or even most people can or should be liberal regarding their sexual exploits is very much a Hollywood idea. Guigui posted:Another argument you could raise: We may not have seen many explicit sex scenes that add extra depth to an American-made movie, because directors don't have the experience of past-made films, both successful and failures, to choose what works, and what doesn't. We do have a large backlog of explicit sex scenes on film- they're just in the form of outright pornography. This backlog doesn't really do many favors to the artistry of the modern industry, though. Probably the best artistic porn you're likely to find is from amateurs with relatively little exposure to current industry standards.
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| # ? Feb 6, 2013 03:43 |
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Some Guy TT posted:We do have a large backlog of explicit sex scenes on film- they're just in the form of outright pornography. This backlog doesn't really do many favors to the artistry of the modern industry, though. Probably the best artistic porn you're likely to find is from amateurs with relatively little exposure to current industry standards. Lee Frost.
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| # ? Feb 6, 2013 03:44 |
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acephalousuniverse posted:This question makes me think more about the fact that you obviously havent seen very many serious movies rather than anything else about sex on cinema. I usually hate the framing of this kind of thing as "prudes vs enlightened free spirits" but in your posts I really do get the impression that you actually do have hangups about seeing people gently caress and that you aren't very familiar with film in general. If you have more of a problem with, say, the married couple's sex scene in Crash than the exploding head in Scanners, that seems pretty self-evidently weird to me. For the record, I didn't take this as insulting.  You're... half right about me, I suppose. I do have hang ups about watching people gently caress in the same sense that I have hang ups about watching people poo poo. It's not that I object to it happening or want to pretend humans don't do it, I just need a good reason to want to see it. I would say I am familiar with film in general, in that I like to watch a wide variety of films from many countries and I enjoy learning about filmcraft. So, I've noticed non-American movies tend to be a little freer about depicting sex explicitly, but it just never comes across as... crucial in the same way that violence is in other movies (and I get the strangeness of that!). I of course realize that art is all about expression and mood and vision, I've just never found sexual explicitness to really make a film more effective for me. Except for Antichrist, as we discussed, which is why I was asking for others. I've SEEN lots of films (good, bad, commercial, indie, foreign, etc) but I've only recently started thinking about why sex is used in them the way it is. I'm looking to broaden my literacy in the topic, which is why my question wasn't "what movies have non-porn sex in them" but rather "what movies have explicit sex in them where the sex makes the film MORE effective/artistic/complete/whatever". And to the poster asking about my fixation on "explicitness", I'm mainly going off the things the MPAA hates in This Film is Not Yet Rated. One of the directors was complaining about having to censor pubic hair, for example. I just remember going "That must have been a huge loss to the work..." sarcastically and then questioning my own reaction. I don't want to be a lazy thinker!!
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| # ? Feb 6, 2013 03:49 |
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Anal Surgery posted:And to the poster asking about my fixation on "explicitness", I'm mainly going off the things the MPAA hates in This Film is Not Yet Rated. One of the directors was complaining about having to censor pubic hair, for example. I just remember going "That must have been a huge loss to the work..." sarcastically and then questioning my own reaction. I don't want to be a lazy thinker!! I don't know what movie that was, but that sort of thing can make a huge difference. Ridley Scott wanted them all to be naked in the cryo chambers in the beginning of Alien, and he was right to want that because it would've strengthened the parallels to birth, and emphasized from the beginning their frail humanity as a contrast to the Alien the way Ripley in her underwear does at the end.
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| # ? Feb 6, 2013 03:52 |
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Yeah, the big issue with the MPAA isn't even sex necessarily, they just have this weird fixation on innocuous minor stuff and completely ignore how any of it works in the greater context of the film. Alien's a pretty comical example- apparently children are more likely to be scarred by nudity than a monster that violently bursts out of people's chests. My personal favorite is Whale Rider, a fairly innocuous family movie. As near as anyone can tell, the only reason that movie got a PG rating was because in the father's room at one point there's an object that kind of looks like a bong.
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| # ? Feb 6, 2013 04:19 |
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penismightier posted:What are these movies y'all are seeing where they slap "predictable" sex in, as if that's a thing any more than predictable meal scene is? This is what I find weird. This thread seems to have two vaguely-defined 'bad guys': (1) Hollywood films with 'predictable' sex (either with the hero concluding with sex -- most notably Bond movies, which had it as part of the formula -- or with some end-of-second-act sex) and (2) pretentious European films, suffused with sex and nudity. The first seems ridiculous to me, as more-and-more Hollywood seems to be not only avoiding sex but even deleting sex (notably, the latest Bond films violate the age-old Bond rule of a concluding sexual encounter). Add to that the obsession with 'explicit' versus 'artistic'/'implied' sex, when it seems to me nudity and explicit sex seemed to have been run out of Hollywood films since the early 90s, only seeming recently to reappear either as shocking/humorous or as depressing/depraved. Please give me some examples of recent Hollywood films people think either are unnecessarily explicit or have 'predictable' sex because frankly it seems to me generally the opposite is true. (Incidentally, given Zizek is mentioned in the OP his claim is these days that Hollywood films are becoming increasingly desexualised.) The second is just a lazy caricature. I really hate to be so dismissive, but the caricature itself is dismissive. Also, the comparison of sex scenes to making GBS threads scenes -- as in 'that's personal stuff and I don't need to see it' -- seems a little weird when bodily functions are a pretty regular fixture of Hollywood comedies: making GBS threads scenes, farting scenes, pissing scenes, etc.
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| # ? Feb 6, 2013 06:21 |
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It's fun reading folks take on the OP's questions, but I worry that the comparing of sex:violence here might not lead to too many useful insights. Sure, they're both titillating primordial activities, but I personally find that: -Watching or reading simulated violence is pretty entertaining, whereas participating in actual violence is extremely unpleasant -Having sex is super awesome, whereas watching or reading about sex is more often frustrating than enjoyable The enduring popularity or porn suggests that a great many people do actually enjoy watching sex acts, but this falls pretty squarely in the "titillation" pile so it's a nonstarter if you're discussing sex-as-a-means-of-artistic-expression. I'd bet that most filmgoers still look to movies for escapism as much as for artistic fufillment, and when you get right down to it, sex isn't exotic. Sex is something that you have to deal with every day. A gunfight or sword-decapitation isn't, at least in this part of the world. I find it easier to get a grip on this dilemma by contrasting onscreen eating to onscreen sex. Suppose some talented cinematographer really captured the essence of a man eating a delicious eggroll. Would the camera linger on his throbbing gullet as the bites travel down his esophagus? Should there be explicit shots of gooey wrap and cabbage chunks dancing across his teeth, skillfully manipulated by his pulsing tongue? Mmm, yummy, are we hungry yet? Or perhaps it would be more tasteful to merely *hint* at these things, keeping the visuals half in shadow while the audio carries sensual lip smacks and saliva slushing sounds throughout the theatre. Would such a scene really be an effective way to communicate some facet or the human experience to the audience? What it boils down to is that I think the MPAA is doing the right thing (limiting pointless sex scenes in public venues) for the wrong reasons. It's their inconsistency and bigotry that's infuriating, not the overall practice.
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| # ? Feb 6, 2013 06:40 |
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That is a loving terrible post, for reasons that begin with your rejection of anything titillating as an artistic non-starter, continue on with you completely blanking on the hundreds to thousands of delicious looking meals featured heavily in films, and end on your inability to see the possibility of sexuality on film as a means to obscure or reveal character, story, or thematic information just like every other activity in the human experience.
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| # ? Feb 6, 2013 06:47 |
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Kieselguhr Kid posted:Also, the comparison of sex scenes to making GBS threads scenes -- as in 'that's personal stuff and I don't need to see it' -- seems a little weird when bodily functions are a pretty regular fixture of Hollywood comedies: making GBS threads scenes, farting scenes, pissing scenes, etc. To be fair, and I don't want to put words in the other poster's mouth, he may find those distasteful as well.
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| # ? Feb 6, 2013 06:49 |
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I'm not going to anticipate the response because I'm legit curious here to draw out what Anal Surgery means by 'crucial.' My point was only to observe that while urination/defecation are commonly used as the go-to examples of private acts filmmakers considerately leave behind closed-doors -- and it's true they're infrequently depicted in 'serious' films -- we often neglect the fact these are commonplace in comedies (and are, presumably, as 'crucial' any other joke is to a comedy). I think without drawing out this notion of 'crucial,' we're likely going to be stuck repeating vacuous stuff like 'sex is inessential and gratuitous except when it's not.' Also, since I figure I should point this out as total disclosure: I'm legitimately shocked by the people arguing against sex in cinema per se. While I often find myself bothered by violence on-screen, I simply couldn't imagine ever asking someone to justify on-screen violence for me (or sex, or bodily-functions, or eating, or whatever). I'm going to echo acephalousuniverse in that while I hate this 'prudes v. free-spirits' stuff I think some people may have some weird issues with seeing sexuality depicted on screen, affording it a kind of weird status that makes it improper to be depicted. At least Some Guy TT seems to have a specific problem with particular thematic uses of sex (sex-as-reward for male protagonist, a kind of climax-after-the-climax). Kieselguhr Kid fucked around with this message at Feb 6, 2013 around 07:58 |
| # ? Feb 6, 2013 07:56 |
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A History of Violence probably has some of the best usage of sex scenes for developing characters I've seen. It's also a good example of violent sex being used in a not gratuitous manner in the context of the plot.
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| # ? Feb 6, 2013 08:14 |
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mmmm posted:food analogy The opening scenes of Dexter are the best moment in the show. They reveal a lot about the character while simultaneously making me really hungry.
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| # ? Feb 6, 2013 08:28 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 16:53 |
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My main issues stem with how sex in film is commonly used to excuse the objectification of women. In broader plot terms, I also don't like how women's desire for sex is treated as an inherently feminist ideal when in actuality it's still tying women to men. Now, women do desire sex with men, but in film they're still inordinately concerned with it compared to men who typically either have other motivations or treat it a lot more flippantly. Look at The Kids Are All Right, for example, which even goes so far as to do this with a lesbian. I don't think there's any inherent problem with explicit sex outside of these trends and have seen myself plenty of movies where I'd say it was well-integrated and effectively done. It's just that the only (recent) mainstream films I can think of that used it did so in a rather tasteless way that didn't really advance anyone's understanding of anything. Off the top of my head, Avatar is the main one I can come up with- though I don't know whether that really counts as recent anymore. It may well be on the downturn because I can't think of any movie in 2012 that I would really describe as objectionable on these lines, though there are still plenty with major gender problems.
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| # ? Feb 6, 2013 08:45 |
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