Midweek Update: A Non-Existent Debate Over Sex in Movies

Arguing over a battle that's already been fought.

Dril, the poet of Twitter, once said:

wint @dril

thinking of inventing a new type of person to get mad at on here. maybe people who carry too many keys around.. i dont know yet

Part of Twitter is inventing someone to get mad at. Keep in mind that while Twitter has various uses in terms of quickly disseminating information or self-promotion, it functions largely as a conflict engine. And when you’ve grown bored of all the regular conflicts or a main character has not made themselves known, it’s time to make someone up.

The “discourse” brewing on Film Twitter every now and then is you find a person who made a bad tweet about sex in movies. This person typically doesn’t have many followers (they’re certainly not a major critical voice or creative in the industry), but their complaint is that they don’t like sex scenes in movies. The only thing that’s even slightly interesting is that it’s couched in liberal issues regarding consent and exploitation as opposed to the conservative viewpoint that sex shouldn’t be in movies because it’s offensive to purity culture.

Now, if this liberal anti-sex argument was really taking off to where we were hearing left-leaning politicians crusading against depictions of sex in entertainment, then we would have an actual issue where we would need to question progressive ideas and how they’re being processed through social media without the media literacy to grapple with the actual substance of the matter (if this were an issue to take seriously, Racquel Gates, Associate Professor of Film at Columbia University, demolished the argument in six tweets). But that’s not happening. There’s no concerted effort anywhere to create any kind of new Production Code because the censorship has already happened.

Sharon Stone as Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct | Image via Carolco Pictures and StudioCanal

Mainstream cinema in the 21st century is already largely sexless. Perhaps some people have become so accustomed to this neutered cinema that they’re taken aback when anything remotely sexy happens in a film because that’s no longer the norm. But because studios now make movies for the widest audience possible, that means bloodless violence is okay and sex is not. That’s what PG-13 means. If you make an R-rated film, that means less money and you’re opening yourself up to what other countries may censor. The safest ground right now in terms of maximizing profits is to avoid sex because that reaches the most demographics. That has nothing to do with what people want or whether the sex scenes are “good” or “bad.” It’s a financial call.

Personally, I think that’s the wrong call to make because cinema benefits when there’s a diversity of stories being told and succeeding with audiences, but I don’t get to make that call. But if you have a problem with sex scenes in movies, then congratulations, because you have picked the right moment to watch new movies because it’s not like it’s 1992 where Basic Instinct could be the sixth highest-grossing film of the year.

But honestly, I don’t know who these complainers are or how much sway they really have. It’s a crusade against an opponent that was already felled by market forces. And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is the turning of a tide. But if these neo-puritans were able to sway modern filmmaking, how would you even tell?

What I’m Watching

I went off on the new Ant-Man movie over on my Letterboxd. While I’m still looking forward to Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 3, it’s that more because it’s a James Gunn movie and Marvel clearly lets him do his thing. Outside of that, it’s tough to be excited for anything else in the MCU when you consider that the priority now seems to be just pushing product through the pipeline regardless if it’s fully cooked or not.

I’m still making my way through some classics of Black cinema that I haven’t seen before. Last weekend I watched Cooley High for the first time and loved it. My plan for this weekend is to finally watch Love & Basketball, Love Jones, and Set It Off.

What I’m Reading

I finished Go Tell It on the Mountain, and it floored me. One of the best books I’ve ever read but also one of the saddest. I was about to dive into Toni Morrison’s Beloved, but my wife wisely cautioned me to take a bit of a beat between heavy novels, so I’m giving the first volume of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Black Panther comics a read.

In other reads:

• I loved this piece in THR by director/producer Gina Prince-Bythewood on how the Academy dismissed her film The Woman King despite it being a critical and commercial success. It’s a great piece because she’s not arguing that her film is owed awards, but rather that when you make a film that checks all the boxes the Academy says they’re looking for, they still ignore it if it features Black women.

• For those longing for a return to the days of the Production Code, Jacob Oller over at Paste has a good read about why A) The man synonymous with the Code, Will Hays, was a little weasel; and B) This kind of self-censorship has always been about economics, not morality.

• William Earl did a great interview with John Carpenter for Variety back in January as the director turned 75. Carpenter is really fun to talk to (his bit on Memoirs of an Invisible Man can be added to the annals of “Everyone Dislikes Chevy Chase”), and I kind of like his perspective on his career right now in terms of just being happy to collect checks, play video games, and watch basketball. Carpenter doesn’t need to make more movies! He’s already a legend! Let him play Dead Space!

Substack Recommendation

Parker Molloy is a force of nature. They’re one of the best media critics working today, and god help you if your reporting is shoddy. Watching her tear apart self-professed free speech enthusiast Matthew Yglesias last week was particularly rewarding.

What I’m Hearing

Speaking of John Carpenter, he’s the rare director who is also terrific composer. Listen to some of his tracks:

What I’m Playing

God of War: Ragnarok finally has its Blades of Chaos in me. I have mixed feelings about the story overall, but the game still knows how to hit that sweet spot between combat, exploration, and character.