> Or it could have mentioned sex has moved into HBO and streaming and away from film.
This was my initial impression. No sex on TV? It's a meme that HBO's most popular shows are full of it. Normal People is another recent example of a TV show that did not exactly shy away from intimate moments.
"Follow the money" is right, and the author seems to think that movies in the 80s were full of sex scenes for some reason other than a guy in a suit making a decision that a sex scene would increase revenue. Nowadays porn is on-demand and free so it probably doesn't add as much value to a Hollywood blockbuster.
Maybe I'm just a prude but I find most sex scenes to be awkward and shoe-horned in anyway. Why do we need a sex scene in a movie about a crime-fighting superhero anyway? Maybe characters in modern movies are having sex, just... off camera?
There's something more nuanced going on here. Depictions of sex and romance have essentially disappeared from American mainstream cinema as it has become dominated by franchise films. While prestige television is frequently more sophisticated and thematically 'adult', here too we've seen the 'love scene' disappear (with notable exceptions like Normal People).
It's harder now to include any element in a screenplay that will offend either the moral majority, or their mirror images on the left. Both of whom are deeply suspicious of anything approaching depictions of sex and sexuality for approximately opposite ostensible reasons.
Even shooting such scenes today is beset with issues with the rise of 'intimacy coordination' as a profession, and the perception that a director seeking to address these themes is lecherous. Sum total of this is a weird eliding of sex on screen. Where it is depicted, there's a clinical careful quality, often political (e.g.: I May Destroy You) rarely eroticism.
Hacker Cinema
3 comments on Hacker News
> Or it could have mentioned sex has moved into HBO and streaming and away from film.
This was my initial impression. No sex on TV? It's a meme that HBO's most popular shows are full of it. Normal People is another recent example of a TV show that did not exactly shy away from intimate moments.
"Follow the money" is right, and the author seems to think that movies in the 80s were full of sex scenes for some reason other than a guy in a suit making a decision that a sex scene would increase revenue. Nowadays porn is on-demand and free so it probably doesn't add as much value to a Hollywood blockbuster.
Maybe I'm just a prude but I find most sex scenes to be awkward and shoe-horned in anyway. Why do we need a sex scene in a movie about a crime-fighting superhero anyway? Maybe characters in modern movies are having sex, just... off camera?
That's really sweet. I think I remember a scene from the TV show Normal People where something similar happens.
There's something more nuanced going on here. Depictions of sex and romance have essentially disappeared from American mainstream cinema as it has become dominated by franchise films. While prestige television is frequently more sophisticated and thematically 'adult', here too we've seen the 'love scene' disappear (with notable exceptions like Normal People).
It's harder now to include any element in a screenplay that will offend either the moral majority, or their mirror images on the left. Both of whom are deeply suspicious of anything approaching depictions of sex and sexuality for approximately opposite ostensible reasons.
Even shooting such scenes today is beset with issues with the rise of 'intimacy coordination' as a profession, and the perception that a director seeking to address these themes is lecherous. Sum total of this is a weird eliding of sex on screen. Where it is depicted, there's a clinical careful quality, often political (e.g.: I May Destroy You) rarely eroticism.