Sometimes the scene serves the needs of the narrative or is just a bit of fun which is icing on the cake for a large portion of the audience. Of course, the internet is overloaded with icing, for free, and most people just skip the cake. Aaaaaand I regret my metaphor even as a type this (phrasing!). So the question is, what is the niche for more prurient scenes?
Even that question is arguably too broad. Doing it right raises the question of what you're trying to do. There is that fight scene, for example, in Eastern Promises in which Viggo fights butt naked to emphasize his vulnerability. I respect the choice and am not offended by the swinging dong. The bed room is also a scene of vulnerability and can be exploited for the same purpose (e.g., showing sexual dysfunction or unkind words being exchanged in an intimate moment). If we're not doing sex simply for titillation, but to drive the needs of the plot, there are a lot of legit cases to consider, right? For another example, the "joke" sex scene in Jackie Brown works (ex con doesn't last long with surfer girl), because it is humorous and realistic that a middle-aged man fresh out of the joint would not be a majestic sexual moment. And it also serves the plot in that the intimacy allows Melanie to truly emasculate and taunt Louis later on in the film.
Of course. I see your point re
Jackie Brown, and while the question is certainly broader than what I originally posed, I do think the
Jackie Brown version also contributes to making sex “anything but” arousing.
A few years ago, everyone was obsessed with the short story
Cat Person by Kristen Roupenian, which was published in The New Yorker. It had, in short, the most disgusting sex scene I’ve ever seen/read anywhere (and I don’t mean “disgusting” in a good way). I suppose that was intended as humorous. I attended a talk with Roupenian around 2019 and the whole experience, with her challenging the audience in the vein of “raise your hand if you’ve never had bad sex” (spoilers: some people did!), was beyond mad. She challenged those who raised their hands, came over and essentially tried to convince people that they were being delusional and in denial and if they thought long and hard, they’d realise the sex they thought of as so great would turn out to have been terrible. It was stranger than fiction. And again, I think that talk was really emblematic of the issue: this woman was hell bent on convincing the audience that good, arousing sex didn’t happen. I feel that the talk about old Hollywood sex scenes being “unrealistically filled with pleasure/orgasms/acrobatics or whatnot” is in the same vein. After all, some people do have great sex lives and orgasm many times a week, that’s not in itself unrealistic! But the shift seems to be towards celebrating the “bad” or the non-existent over acknowledging the good.
Yes, there used to historically be an imbalance between unrealistically well-choreographed sex scenes where all parties experience supreme ecstasy and what “really happens”. But I do think, as you say below,
So the scene is there for arousal, but not complete arousal. It is a moment of heightened stimulation…. I think the zone here is less "sexuality" and more "sensuality" - that feeling of seduction and intimacy rather than the depiction of it. There is a space for it, but I think it is probably hard to stick the landing now and that producers stick with the vices they can safely get away with depicting (e.g., hyper-violence).
that a good sex scene
is for some form of arousal. I see an irony in the fact that everyone goes out of their way to focus on “bad sex” where no such state of arousal is obtained either by the participants or by the audience, but the “successful” sex scenes which feel, yes, arousing, are far and few between and made “chaste” on top of that.
Stuff like
Moonrise Kingdom definitely succeeds via sensuality over sexuality.
P.S. the metaphor was good enough imo 😃
Also remember the scene in
Eastern Promises, it’s great, but I think the use of nudity to channel vulnerability is a bit of a different beast.
Also, I think a lot of your frustration probably emerges from how conventionally these scenes are shot. Takoma nailed this aspect in a prior post. These scenes are all done in a very particular way which makes them a bit staid, no matter how much flesh is exposed. I think the most radical thing a film could do is just show people having realistic sex (e.g., no acrobatics) without the conventional blocking and camera angles and so on. Shoot it as if it is any other scene and that might be interesting.
Yes, that is true. Takoma has an uncanny ability to pinpoint what I am getting at better than I could have. Also on that note, I agree that for what that’s worth, LGBT sex scenes have been much hotter than “mainstream” sex for a good decade.
Dogme 95 sex scenes probably would make things more interesting, but I fear it would go into
Cat Person territory and focus on all the “bad” and “funny” things over anything good, exciting and pleasurable.