• nednobbins
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    8 months ago

    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.

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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      8 months ago

      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.

    • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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      8 months ago

      You just described the average 80’s movie with your last paragraph.

      • nednobbins
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        8 months ago

        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.