Who wants to watch softcore nonsense involving people doing things that are not how sex actually works? Gen Z is first gen to come of age when porn is prolific. Mainstream film can’t compete with step siblings getting stuck on the interwebs.
You don’t make passionate love to your wife while she’s wearing all her clothes and wake up in the morning with her wearing full makeup?
Where do we get the L-shaped blankets?
Porn is really not how sex actually works
I think porn gets it more right than Hollywood does. People in porn at least successfully take their pants off.
And no Hollywood, all women don’t have an orgasm in 30 seconds! Movie sex would be extremely disappointing in real life.
Well according to Hollywood, sex is either life alteringly amazing, life alteringly traumatic, or interrupted by a phone call.
The Olympics is not how normal people exercise either
As an elder millennial, porn has been prolific longer than you think. Late 90s and early 2000s LAN parties were half playing video games and half copying vast amounts of porn from each other.
And how many people went to LAN parties?
Those were the Nerds, the weirdos that spent halft their free time on a computer and talking about how to get faster internet. For the “cool kids” i think a lot were the magazines or someone stealing a VCR from their dads private collection.
Stealing a VCR. Oh man…
The VCR was the player. You might call the tape or cassette a VHS, as there were two types of cassette. The other less popular being beta max.
It was more mainstream than you’d think in Norway at least. I was easily the nerdiest one at the local one I attended at the time.
Every town and city I ever went in the early 2000s to had multiple crowded LAN centers. It was definitely mainstream, and definitely wasn’t just geeks. Pretending file sharing was not mainstream by 2000 is like pretending Star Wars is only for nerds.
Way out of touch.
Eeh, swede here but a majority of men in my generation (90s) were probably at dreamhack at one point or another during their teens. Not to mention homeparties. Girls is less obviously but many of those went too
I’ve also found that gen z aren’t as sex crazed as we were, I felt like I had a monkey on my back and had to screw everything. Gen z is more aware of the consequences, and they have other shit to keep them occupied, we were bored a lot.
Lolol millennials had online porn from before early puberty for all but the most seniors of them.
Most senior? Gen X here. I got my porn from the Internet too. Just before the web existed. We used Usenet and Gopher.
All 12 of you 🤣
I went on the side of caution. At some point early 90s, it became more popular outside of the limited users of computers.
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41 here. No internet before puberty. I remember watching late night TV hoping for a few seconds of smooching and maybe even boobs.
Most of us had it, but most were on things like family computers trying to be covert about it. Capacitive touch screen phones changed everything for access. No one was getting imaginative with the snake game on a Nokia 3310 back in the day.
Kinks have diversified. Main stream can’t catch up!
Millennial here. I’ve always found random sex scenes obnoxious. It completely kills the pacing and pulls me out of the story. If you need sex for character development, you can much more easily allude to it and move on. The only time I can think of when it actually made sense for the story was in the movie Her and it was such a mild scene that didn’t have any visuals.
I think it worked for some early GOT moments too. It showed the monster that Khal Drogo really was, for example
She gave consent in the book, although she was still only like 14 because George RR Martin is a creeper. So not really consent, but not quite like the show.
calling him a creep for using historically accurate depictions of medieval marriage is…going a bit far…
the story is set in a medieval world. so how is it creepy to use real medieval culture in the context of the story?
It was cool as shit in blade runner 2049
Even this?
I somehow feel like my life has been enriched.
The only time I can think of when it actually made sense for the story…
Never watched I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry?
I’m with Gen Z here. They’re absolutely right
Just feels awkward, uncomfortable, and unnecessary most of the time.
I don’t feel like it’s awkward or uncomfortable, but I do hate it when it’s completely unnecessary. I don’t even care if the sex is unrealistic as long as it’s necessary for the plot. Just Chekhov’s gun that shit.
Especially with many audiences. On your own or with a romantic partner it’s not nearly as bad, but watching a sex scene with pretty much anyone else feels so awkward, which pulls you out of the scene.
same tbh
Amen , I am millenial and I too find it very uncomfortable. When I was young I was eagerly waiting for some hot scenes when porn was scarce but now anything remotely sexual iRRitates me.
Yup, especially as a gay, sex scenes in movies have always been “I’m fine with straight people existing, but I don’t want them rubbing my face in it” at best … and it’s rarely at best, with all the chemistry of a jar of nitrogen.
Yep. 46 years old here and agree 100%. I find them gratuitous and awkward in a standard show or movie. And I have no problem with porn.
Counterpoint:
I’m not Gen Z and I hate the damn sex scenes. There was a minute there where netflix would just add one within 15 mins of every show or movie, even if they never showed another one again. It never added to the plot and seemed like it was just there to reel people in. But, it was obnoxious.
Glad they sort of stopped that, although I still find it happens now and again. Hopefully this puts the nail in the coffin.
Maybe I am a prude. So what!
It’s awkward seeing scenes like that unfold with other people like friends and family. Implying a scene and fading to black is more than enough. And I think many actors would be happier too not having to act out those scenes.
The issue for me isn’t the sex, it’s that the scene is irrelevant to the plot. If the sex is relevant to the plot I don’t mind, but when it’s obviously just slotted in to show tits, that’s annoying because it breaks immersion for me. It makes me think about the agenda behind adding that scene instead of thinking about the story I’m watching.
Obvious product placement is kind of in the same category for me. Like Will Smith in I, Robot spending 5 minutes of the movie super excited about receiving some “vintage 2004 Converse All Stars”. Like, the movie is set in 2035, but you just had to find a way to plug this year’s model of some shoes. Sure, those shoes have looked the same since forever, but the 2004 ones were just something else, man!
Then he gets into his Audi (everyone else is driving Audis too), and then out of his Audi, then back in his Audi, and so on. Audi.
Not a prude, and I still FF Netflix sex scenes.
Too many people tried to emulate the vulgarity of game of thrones. It worked in game of thrones, it doesn’t work everywhere.
Hmm. I haven’t really thought about it much. Why do I, a porn enjoying man from smack in the middle of the Millennial generation, dislike so many Hollywood sex scenes?
I would be interested in gathering some data, take a large sample of movies and TV shows made during my lifetime, and rate them as to why they’re in a film. What purpose do they serve in the story, what do they tell us about the characters…why is this here?
Am a millennial. Sex scenes in movies should follow a simple formula: don’t do sex scenes, or do real sex scenes.
All that softcore, sex under the sheets while wearing a bra nonsense only serves to make watching it with family a bit awkward. Either make it a movie that stands on its own, or make a movie where I can actually watch celebrity people fuck in full explicitness.
Make it porn or not, both is fine, but don’t try to appeal to both sides. That’s just awkward and frustrating to either
Here’s the twist. We show it. We show all of it.
Because what’s the one major thing missing from all action movies these days, guys? Full penetration. Guys, we’re going to show full penetration, and we’re going to show a lot of it.
Not a millennial but broadly agree with you.
It’s also just so … base … like, ok, your characters bonk, we get it, just fade to black. When did a sex scene add anything to a story other than titillation? It’s the equivalent of serving me up another algorithmically targeted TikTok video. I feel like they’re just taking advantage of me.
So, in short, I’d be happy if they leave that shit at the door. If I was searching for porn, I’d know where to look.
I think you touched on it here. Back in the day ppl wanted those sex scenes. Now we have porn and don’t need them for titillation
Team America did it right. They went all the way and I loved it.
It makes me happy that somewhere, someone, is reading your comment with no knowledge of the scene you’re referring to. I hope they search for it and are delighted.
Edit: And I agree 100%.
Desperado did it right.
Porn is porn, I’ll watch that when I want in private. If I’m watching a movie/tv show, I’m watching it for the content, for the storyline or whatever, adding shitty softcore porn to it just dilutes it and makes it unwatchable around friends/family. One of my gripes with Game of Thrones (not high compared to everything else wrong with it) was all the shitty sex scenes they added, which required them to cut out even more content than before. With only ~10 hours per season, they didn’t have alot of time to dick around, but they spent alot of time… dickin’ around.
Unless you’re watching a romance movie there’s almost zero point to have a romance plotline.
Pretty tired of the horror movies and action movies that just randomly throw in some love triangle or romance plot to try and make the actual plot more exciting, even though most of the time it makes no sense.
Oh I met you three days ago? MARRY ME HANDSOME!
I wish I could go tell this to that hack who wrote the “Iliad”. Like seriously you’re going to go and insert some stupid love shot into your kick arse war story? Oh and don’t even get me started on using the name Helen in a fantasy Greek setting, pffft.
That’s a pretty bad example, since love is the reason that the war started to begin with, making it quite essential for the plot
Doesn’t help that sex keeps being written into shows where it doesn’t belong.
It’s trying to make a show “more adult” in literally the most childish way possible.
That Halo show is a good example of completely needless sex scenes.
It’s not the sex. It’s the cringy romantic bullshit typically surrounding it where everyone treats each other like shit for the sake of drama.
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I suspect that is true as well. Most of the really dramatic girls I’ve known have been super into romcoms and reality TV. If not causing the behavior they are at least reinforcing it.
I want romance in my romance and rom-coms. I do not want it in my action, thriller, history, sci-fi, fantasy, comedy, or biographical movies. Unless, and this is key, unless it legitimately adds to the movie.
“Gen Z doesn’t like sex scene put into the movie by senile board members, so they must not like sex in movies anymore”
@2ncs not really what the study found.
The new UCLA “Teens and Screens” study, conducted by the Center for Scholars & Storytellers, found that across 1,500 members of Gen Z, ages 10 to 24, young people wanted to see platonic relationships between onscreen characters, and many felt sex wasn’t necessary for story plot. (Only the respondents ages 13 to 24 were asked about sexual content.)
“While it’s true that teens want less sex on TV and in movies, what the survey is really saying is that teens want more and different kinds of relationships reflected in the media they watch,” said Yalda T. Uhls
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.
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.
You just described the average 80’s movie with your last paragraph.
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.
I think it more likely that they are sick of the idiot love triangle crutch which so many productions desperately wedge into films it has no place in.
I feel that the title of the article is misleading, as the poll in the article shows that Gen Z are turned off by gratuitous sex scenes that are not relevant to the plot, and not Gen Z suddenly turning into evangelical prudes. What they wanted is not the unrealistic, lazy, paint-by-number relationships as commonly depicted to stir controversy to drive engagement(a very cynical approach, I might add), but a full spectrum of different types of relationships good and bad, authentic in their depiction and sincere in their on-screen expression.
Note that the sincerity of expression doesn’t mean that the relationship depicted has to be good, or even genuine. For example, the sex scenes in “The Wolf of Wall Street” (you’re welcome, by the way) are important because they highlight that between Jordan and Naomi, there is nothing between the two besides money and sex, it’s shallow, materialistic, two selfish, toxic people using the other to get what they want, without which they can’t stand each other, in stark contrast with the genuine parental love that Naomi felt for her children, and it is the resolution of said contradiction which contributed to Jordan Belfort’s downfall.
I don’t mind sex scenes but I’m so over forced, low stakes, softcore sex scenes between characters that have nonexistent chemistry.
I still think it’s best when it’s artfully implied and brief between characters with chemistry.
so half of netflix and prime, got it.
90% and 100% more like
Top Gun Maverick did it perfectly IMO.
I was getting all concerned I was going to have watch ageing Tom Cruise do his thing, but they did a 90s soap opera option and panned away. They knew the audience understood and didn’t need to see. I was so relieved and surprised.
