I am not a teen.
It’s the stupid toxic “romance” that I want rid of. It gets so boring and tedious to watch. If it’s important to the story, then fine. But otherwise can we just normalize friendship between opposite gendered people without the need for bad relationship drama, jealousy, and normalizing the idea that when someone says no, they’re actually just “playing hard to get”.
Twilight really fucked up the romance genre, huh? Lol
can we just normalize friendship between opposite gendered people
Great idea. I would love a prominent TV show to have main characters of the opposite sex that are good friends and a romance is never shoehorned into it at any point.
Warehouse 13 got sooooo close.
If you haven’t seen it. Ted Lasso is a great one for this.
I’ve had that show recommended to me before and I keep avoiding it because the subject matter doesn’t interest me, but I keep being told to watch it despite that, so it is on my long list.
I’m not sure what you think the subject matter is, but I was completely caught off guard. The main character is ostensibly in a “duck out of water” story, and that certainly creates a humorous backdrop. But the show is really all about mental health and wellbeing. People supporting each other while they learn to love themselves, deal with anxiety, trauma, and prejudice… It’s immensely beautiful, uproariously funny, and I will happily be the next person to recommend you watch it.
It’s the sports part that held absolutely no interest to me because I think sports are really, really boring. But I’m told I’ll like it anyway, and you seem to back that up.
There are plenty of shows “about” subjects that you really don’t need to have any interest in to enjoy, because the show is actually about the characters. Like Succession, is any knowledge about or passion for corporate takeovers necessary? In Ted Lasso, the sport is there to motivate the characters, and is only very occasionally on screen.
Stargate SG1 did it as well or evem better than WH13 in my opinion. Sure Jack and Sam have some sort of romance but Teal’C, Sam, and Daniel are great friends. Atlantis did it even better with Ronon and Teyla.
Yeah, but not all the characters on any show were hooking up with each other outside of soap opera stuff. There was still an idea that two of them will end up falling in love. Why does that need to be part of the show at all? Let them all have partners outside of work.
Romance sells. Will they won’t they sells. Sex appeal sells.
It might seem cheap to you, but people do want and enjoy that kind of content.
Don’t you think people also might and want shows that don’t have those things? I really don’t think a single show where there is a mixed gender cast and no one ever ends up in bed with anyone else is going too far.
I’m sure some exist, but you’re an exception in not wanting that at all; most people want sex appeal and some romance.
Sex is an intrinsic part of being human and influences a lot of our decisions, it’s only natural for it to be in our media.
This is what I said:
Great idea. I would love a prominent TV show to have main characters of the opposite sex that are good friends and a romance is never shoehorned into it at any point.
A prominent TV show.
As in one. Singular.
So I’m not sure where you have gotten it into your head that I want no romance at all in media.
I want to believe.
Sherlock sorta did it. I don’t think those two ever got together?
I think you meant Elementary, but good point! I forgot about that show!
Not only did they not get together, Watson made it clear that ain’t gonna ever happen within the first two or three episodes.
Honestly, Law & Order is good for this imo. Especially Benson and Stabler from SVU, and some of Criminal Intent with Vincent D’Onofrio and Kathryn Erna.
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Character development? It might not directly impact the plot or move the story forward, but how a character relates to sex can tell us (the audience) a lot about them.
As I said here:
Why does it have to further the plot?! Why does sex/nudity have to justify itself when tons of movies have gratuitous action scenes and violence that add nothing to the plot? 90% of John Wick is gratuitous violence that added nothing to the story (but I still love it). Our culture celebrates violence and we’ll watch people get tortured to death without batting an eye - but if some tits show up on screen then suddenly everyone becomes a critic analyzing whether the story REALLY needed it or not.
It’s disturbing to me 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 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. I want art to stop awkwardly excluding a major part of life. I want out of this “Everyone is beautiful and no one is horny” Twilight Zone multiverse that all our modern movies seem to take place in.
Sex is too important to be left to porn.
Its very simple. Sex is boring to look at. Even porn. Whats the longest you watched a porn movie? 5 minutes? 15? Let’s top it off at 30 minutes. Just to be safe.
Violence is not boring. Stuff like John Wick grabs you by the ass and puts you on a roller coaster.
Want proof? Look at gaming. How big are the dating sims? Now compare that with call of duty/etc.
So, me? Yeah, stop with the xxl steamy sex scenes in movies. Very rarely do they add anything more then an interlude. A time to get coffee. To look at your notifications. At best.
To be clear: I love sex. My sex.
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I’m not saying I want movies that have as much sex as John Wick has violence - obviously that would just be porn. My point is: why does sex have this obligation to move the plot forward when we give a pass to other gratuitous scenes (action, drama, violence, etc)?
If you want “Everyone is beautiful and everyone is fucking,” good news- that’s called porn already, and there’s so much of it.
The fact that you only equate sex/nudity to porn reveals the problem. Seems like many young people today can’t associate sex/nudity on a screen as art, or even just fun, anymore - because in their minds sex/nudity is inextricably tied to porn. The reality is sex/nudity can be fun, dramatic, scary, or funny depending on the context. It can have a place in many kinds of stories, and comparing it to porn is like saying “we have war documentaries so we don’t need war movies.” They are completely different things!!
while we pitiful repressed twilight zone voyeurs awkwardly exclude sex from our public lives.
Who said it has to be part of your “public life”? I’m not saying we should all want to watch Wild Things with our parents, but not every movie needs to be a ‘family movie’ that you’d want to watch in polite company. Some movies are best watched with rowdy friends or an intimate partner - and I’m sad that those types of movies have been in decline. The younger generations seem far more prudish than I ever expected.
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Exactly this. A lot of media is atrocious about shoehorning in things even if they are jarring and dont make sense. Token characters (race, sexuality), token ideologies (veganism, feminism, religion, etc), stereotypes, you name it.
People downvoting as a reactionary for making them feel bad, but I agree.
Having a stereotype as a character for the sake of “representation” is not representing anything good and is not doing justice to anyone who would be more than a single note character.
I’m tired of bad writing and gimmicks to get people to have a reaction to an otherwise bad story, but that doesn’t mean I want movies with none of the topics in it, I just want it to mean something when it’s there.
Exactly.
(Natural/Organic storytelling) The Boys: Maeve, Kimiko, and Starlight, beating the shit out of Stormfront
Vs
(Forced/jarring) That scene in Avengers Endgame, where every female character from across a massive battlefield appeared next to each other. As opposed to the scene in Infinity War with Proxima Midnight which felt fairly natural.
Or even better, movies actually dedicated to telling stories about underrepresented cultures such as The Woman King
I remember seeing trailers about that, completely forgot to actually go watch it. I’ll add it to my watch list (someday I’ll start watching things on the list)
Yeah because everyone in media needs to be straight, white, and Christian. 🙄
Representation matters.
They’re saying that characters irrelevant to the plot having diverse roles feels forced. Wouldn’t you agree diverse roles should be in meaningful roles like leads?
No, I don’t think I would agree. If I walk down the street, I’m going to see people of all types. Why should including people of all types in media be any different? Having more diversity in lead roles is preferable, yes, but I don’t see what feels “forced” about more diversity across all roles. If anything, it seems like that would be more realistic.
Sure, but I get what they mean. Sometimes you have a minority character that doesn’t very much seem to interact with the plot, nor has many discernable personality trait beyond being part of a minority.
Representation matters, but it should be done in a way that makes the characters actual people, not just a tick in a checkbox.
And there is definitely a tokenism issue in Hollywood. There’s a reason why the “gay best friend” is a Hollywood stereotype.
I’m not a teen (far from it), but I’m with the kids on this one. The vast majority of sex scenes in movies are awful. They’re awkward and totally unrealistic. It completely takes you out of the movie. Most sex scenes are not engrossing or engaging, they don’t immerse you in the story, they push you out of it.
Most every sex scene feels like it was made by someone who’s never had sex. Every angle is the right angle, every thrust is ecstasy, it’s nonsense. It’s like someone who thinks the covers of romance novels are depictions of real life.
There are a lot of intimate moments that can be portrayed convincingly enough on film, but sex is rarely one of them. And it’s just not necessary. Let the audience infer, let us use our imaginations.
I agree, every sex scene looks like something that is not how people have sex. Except for the guy in office space https://youtu.be/JNVqMgCAHmk. That sex was real.
I have a friend who’s dated a bit but has never really had a boyfriend. I think she gives up too soon because she expects a Hallmark movie where everything’s perfect and every kiss is magical.
I don’t know if that’s necessarily a bad thing, I kind of wish my standards had been higher when I was younger. I dated a lot of people longer than I should have, thinking that that was as good as it got. The fact that she is going on dates is a good thing- it means she’s at least getting an idea of how she fits with different types of people and she’s socially active.
Obviously she might overdo it, but as long as she’s content alone as well, she’s not really hurting herself. I guess it’s a function of how regretful a person she is and her age.
She’s 30 and has a physical disability that is obvious when she walks and requires her to use a wheelchair for longer distances. That makes dating difficult, so i hate to see her give up on people just because there’s no magic on the first couple of dates.
It’s just boring, and defeats the purpose of good story telling IMO. It’s either uninteresting showing very little, or it’s like porn, and when I watch a movie, I’m generally not in the mood for porn.
If they had great sex, it may not mean the same to everybody. But if you show them at a later point, like breakfast or something, and they are glowing and smiling bigly to each other, we all know what happened, and how it went.I’m sorry, but this take feels out of touch. Every shot in a movie is at the right angle. Of course they’re unrealistic. Movies are unrealistic. Sure, some try to take a more gritty, grounded approach but in general art is trying to capture the highest and lowest points of life. Obviously it’s going to be unrealistic.
Fair enough, though calling this stuff art is a bit much. Most TV shows and movies are better described as visual junk food than art. I think a bare minimum standard is for the work to stick with you longer than 5 minutes after you finish watching it.
I think they’re probably referring to films that were otherwise meant to be realistic, then there is this terrible, unrealistic sex scene that is just a distraction
One point to disagree on: less teens than ever are having sex, and with no actual experience, their imaginations are based on porn. No wonder they’re terrified of it, if their first impression is what comes up when you Google “boy girl have sex”.
Too many parents are not open with their kids about sex. I made sure my daughter understood that there’s nothing shameful about watching porn or masturbating, but she should not expect actual sex to be like what she sees in porn and she will enjoy it a lot more if she won’t have those sort of expectations.
It’s not enough to just tell kids where babies come from. You need to tell them all sorts of things that they really need to know about sex because otherwise they’ll learn bullshit from the internet and other kids. Tell them about the things I mentioned and also about things like contraception and consent and even about kinks and why you shouldn’t feel shame or be worried if your kink involves consent all around.
As I said here:
By that logic you could make arguments against a lot of different genres and classic story elements. I don’t like the argument that because media these days sucks at doing something they should avoid it altogether. I think they should just do better. Movies in the past proved it can be done.
It’s disturbing to me 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 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. I want art to stop awkwardly excluding a major part of life. I want out of this “Everyone is beautiful and no one is horny” Twilight Zone multiverse that all our modern movies seem to take place in.
Sex is too important to be left to porn.
C’mon, didn’t you wanna see Oppenheimer reach criticality?
Soft coreHard coreDemon core
There’s a really good BBC miniseries about Oppenheimer made back in the 80s with Sam Waterston in the lead role.
On the one hand, it doesn’t have mind-blowing special effects.
On the other hand, there’s no sex scenes in a show about the scientist who helped make the atom bomb because why would watch a TV show about him and hope to see him fucking?
I wouldn’t even want sex scenes in a Feynman movie and he was fucking every woman who was willing. It’s just not a necessary thing to tell his story. You can show he was a horndog and not show him fucking.
Anyway, here’s the miniseries.
And no one is laughing or having a good time. It’s always some serious ass business.
ass business
This new generation of kids is much more chill, educated and not sex crazed like we were. I feel like we were all boning young and being wild, getting drunk in high school. Now teens like to code, go on social media, game, etc. Going out to party and get wild is not attractive to them
I don’t know about coding. Don’t most gen alphas have a lower proficiency with desktop computers because they’re used to iPads and phones? I get you can code on a tablet but it would be such a pain to do it right that most wouldn’t bother doing it that way.
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even the dreaded boomers gave us some of america’s greatest rebel icons
The ones that were fucking jail bait and society thought that it was acceptable?
I don’t think that’s entirely accurate, young people are definitely not “more chill” if anything they’ve just had to grow up faster in a world that bombards everyone with every adult concern as soon as they can read or pick up a phone.
There are some good things, like the massive drop in teen pregnancy and general decline of violence all around. But there’s now an epidemic of loneliness and depression affecting people of all ages, starting early in life. People have largely retreated to personal safety of their own online lives, and the shift to online dating hasn’t been good to people. Social media and scrolling is killing everyone’s attention-spans and ability to compromise and socialize. Women still are in danger of assault. Men are still desperately lonely. Existing is still a massive challenge if you don’t fall into the gender or sexuality binary and conservatism is on the rise among many young men because of sexual frustration and emotional vulnerabilities to the narratives of grifters. Definitely NOT chill shit going on and we have the dawning of technology that will make it even harder for people to connect. AI that can reliably fool people is going to throw a massive wrench into our entire culture. It’s worth being concerned about but we also have to encourage each other and ourselves to actually do challenging things like going out and talking to live humans as much as possible.
I always thought there should be more going to the restroom scenes.
Immediately thinking of Pulp Fiction
When I watched the 24 series I really wanted it to cut to Jack Bauer at least washing his hands afterwards.
The kids are right.
It makes sense. Sex scenes were interesting when we didn’t have on-hand porn streaming because it was something you didn’t see often. Nudity and sex are now so readily available that they aren’t exciting. As someone else said, just infer it.
It doesn’t make sense.
Is it more interesting to see your girlfriend or boyfriend naked or in a sensual situation or porn? How about just someone you know?
Extending this logic, it is more interesting to see someone you know in se(x/n)ual scenes from an acting perspective. Meaning, while it’s may not help the plot of every movie, I would say having these elements added by your favorite actor gives some pupil dilating special sauce that horny longdong and bouncy jangletits hardcore adventure does not provide.
Just have the screen go black at a sex scene.
“Pause here, go watch your favourite porn vid and come back. That’s what just happened.”
A choose your own adventure!
I can’t think of a single sex scene in a movie that added value to it. They’re pointless and akward to both the audience and actors.
Any art house film trying to portray reality.
Basic instinct interview
The Room
American Pie
Other poster had a
goodonly example.Team America world police
That’s a pretty blanket statement on it being awkward for actors when We Live in Time is in theaters right now and this is a story about a sex scene in it. https://www.bustle.com/entertainment/andrew-garfield-florence-pugh-we-live-in-time-sex-scene,
LOL I love the camera man hiding in the corner cause he can’t leave but wants to give them some privacy if they are having a moment.
The McGruber movie had a good one
Debbie does Dallas would’ve been a rather mediocre high school drama without the sex scenes.
Euro trip
Black Swan
Brokeback Mountain
Eyes Wide Shut
Poor Things (which even makes it an important plot about finding your own power through sexuality while it also being a tool that can be used to take advantage of you)
Oh forgot TEETH very different movie if there was no sex
Eurotrip is excellent
Lars van Trier’s Nymphomaniac would be very confusing without sex.
Yeah a lot of people proclaimimg from their own soapbox of limited perspective that sex is pointless and gratuitous when there are so many stories that don’t work.
We literally have stories that revolve around sex as its own topic like Nymphomaniac Last Tango in Paris that don’t work without sex. But someone got the ick watching Titanic so now apparently all sex scenes are derivative.
Long shot
Disagree, if it’s in a romance movie it’s sometimes a necessary addition
Team America World Police
Sounds like someone has never seen MacGruber! Pointless and awkward absolutely but the value added was immeasurable.
Off the top of my head, scenes in:
Poor Things
Nymphomaniac
Antichrist
Requiem for a Dream
Saltburn
Blue is the warmest color.
I give lots of examples here
My issue is that it’s almost always gratuitous now. I so rarely see a sex scene in a TV show or movie and think that it could have easily been skipped, but they felt the need to show an actress’ breasts and have her simulate an orgasm.
I don’t get titillated by it. I have porn if I need that.
I didn’t get past the first episode of Game of Thrones because I found all the sex and nudity too gratuitous for my tastes.
I don’t think I’m a prude. I have no problem with sex scenes and nudity in films where they make sense. Basic Instinct wouldn’t make sense without them. Last Tango in Paris wouldn’t make sense without them. They’re both movies worth watching.
You didn’t think it made sense in game of thrones?
It’s olden days in a hostile world. All there is to do is have sex and die. What felt inaccurate to life about that?
In the one episode I saw? No. It seemed almost entirely gratuitous. I don’t need to watch a prostitute sucking off Peter Dinklage to know he’s having sex with a bunch of prostitutes what with him already being in bed with them.
I often find sex scenes to be gratuitous and unnecessary, but I would never let sex prevent me from watching an amazing TV show or movie. I think that’s just foolish.
When there are countless other good things to watch that don’t involve those? Why spend my time on the ones that do just because they’re also considered to be good? I won’t enjoy them as much, so obviously they won’t be as good for me as they are for others.
I could be missing all kinds of amazing things to watch for all kinds of reasons. So could you. There’s only 24 hours in a day. You have to pick and choose.
Just a trivial and silly way to limit your exposure to different types of film/TV.
A sex scene might make me take a point off of my score for a movie, but I’ve seen far too many flat out incredible movies/shows with unnecessary sex scenes to know just how much I’d be missing if I removed such a large chunk of content from the pool right off the bat like that.
No thanks. I will watch something without regard for its sexual content, because I’m an adult. And then, if it turned out to have a gratuitous sex scene, that will factor into my opinion of the thing.
The thing about gratuitous and unnecessary sex scenes is, by definition, they are unnecessary. So if you really care that much, why not just fast forward through them? You would miss nothing (otherwise it wouldn’t have been unnecessary).
I recently watched “Jeanne Dielman…” after seeing it top the BFI Top 100 list. That movie has quite a bit of sex, but it was well worth the watch, and it would be a shame to have prevented myself from even having that opportunity because it contains sex.
It wasn’t a sex scene in the case of the first episode of GoT.
I don’t have a problem with a sex scene. Especially if it serves the plot.
I literally said so at the beginning of this comment chain:
I have no problem with sex scenes and nudity in films where they make sense. Basic Instinct wouldn’t make sense without them. Last Tango in Paris wouldn’t make sense without them. They’re both movies worth watching.
Yeah I understand that and agree that most sex scenes are unnecessary. And I am talking about movies and TV shows that are considered some of the greatest media ever created, that might happen to have unnecessary sex in it. I’m not going to arbitrarily limit myself and miss out on watching that stuff because there might be 90 seconds (of a 2+ hour film) of unnecessary sex. Again, because I’m an adult.
Using your example, you are missing out on one of the best stories ever told on television (until the last season at least), because the first episode of the show had sex in it that you found to be unnecessary (and btw, while most of the sex in that show is unnecessary, there is at least one or two *very important" sex scenes in season 1 that one might not recognize as being important… Yet).
As someone who read the books, I was able to tell which sex scenes were important, and which weren’t, but not all of it is unnecessary.
I understand your position, I just think it’s silly (and kind of sad).
I think, at least in the GoT example, sexual situations can be used to communicate a lot about the attitudes and culture around sex and nudity in the universe of the show or movie. It’s much more interesting than somebody saying, “Hey, person who already knows this: it’s considered normal for men to use brothels, isn’t it?”
It’s much less interesting and necessary for something set in the “current” world, since the audience doesn’t need as much education in the social mores. However, it can make the work have better instructive longevity if it’s an accurate depiction of the time, since people fifty years in the future can watch and understand what was different.
But I do agree that overall there has been a lot of gratuitous nudity and sex, just the same with violence, etc.
You should suffer through it. The series is pretty primo. Books are good too, but season one is less time investment than book one and they run pretty parallel. Book two and season two… Different story.
To be honest that particular sex scene is pretty central to their story and Bran’s story. It could have been less gratuitous but the actual point of him catching them in the act drives the rest of their story lines.
There were multiple sex scenes in the first episode, not just one. If I remember correctly, the scene with Peter Dinklage getting sucked off was right near the beginning.
I went back to look at the parents guide for the first episode and holy shit. There was so much that I forgot about. 90% of it was completely gratuitous.
Oo! Link please!
IMDB Parents Guide
Thanks!
ITT I found out that Satan was right.
My right hand starts pressing right arrow button automatically when the scene starts
I am an adult and I do this too, but not because sex bothers me, it’s because the vast majority of sex in mainstream media is incredibly stilted and embarrassing to watch. Cinema has had over a century to try to portray and capture actual relationships between people and still hasn’t even come close to accurately portraying attractive, affectionate chemistry between two people.
The fact that in mainstream programs and movies, the lead characters ALWAYS have to have this “enemies to lovers” dynamic makes me gag. It was funny once or twice, but that’s not remotely how real people have real intimate relationships, so why does Hollywood lean in SO HARD to the same trope of the sassy female proving she’s as tough as the rugged male anti-hero and they always have to have this weird battle-of-wills where they have separate goals and can’t show affection openly to each other.
It’s no longer interesting. I have seen porn with better, loving, attractive relationships.
it’s at an all time low. idk how less it could get.
Right? That’s my thought. We already have a record low of sex scenes in media but people are still complaining about it?
It’s then not about the use but some other social issue, like say social stigmas against sex by a growing authoritarian right while being an act that is performed less and less by younger people on all sides say maybe by fears of the biological outcomes of unprotected sex?
I think it’s just stress at the thought and an avoidance tactic.
lots of factors, I would say. I think the main thing is that it is still taboo which means you can’t really enjoy something with sex scenes with your family and even friends. there’s also the undeniable fact that lots of sex scenes have historically been gratuitous, obviously inserted to titillate rather than honestly add anything to the story. then again, there isn’t the same kind of reaction against other types of gratuitous scenes, like violence or action.
Just do like, a sexy handshake, and move on.
Sex, going to the bathroom, and puking.
All 3 can be easily inferred without actually showing it.
Counterpoint: showing the sex and the puking in graphic detail in Team America were both important parts of the movie.
If there’s a 1 minute sex scene in a 90 minute movie, you’re guaranteed to have your parents walk in during that one sex scene.
