The law of unintended consequence has undone another law once thought immutable. Sex sells.
Sex doesn’t sell anymore, at least when it comes to mainstream movies.
According to Vincent Bruzzese of Ipsos, a market research company, sex has been all but eradicated from Hollywood scripts over the past 18 months. “Sex scenes used to be written, no matter the plot, to spice up a film trailer,” he said in an interview at the weekend. “But all that does today is get the film an adult-only rating and lose a younger audience.”
These days, he maintains, people are so uninterested in sex that on-screen couplings are now written out by Hollywood producers before they’re even shot. “They ask, ‘Do we really even need the sex?’ ‘Can we fill the space with dazzling special effects instead and keep the family-friendly rating?’ ” They can and they do. They’ll blow up whole Chinese provinces, the White House and MI6’s HQ, and create humanoid species with which to populate the moon, but they won’t show a couple getting it on.
In a weird way, I think the pervasiveness of porn these days is cleaning up mainstream movies.
Who is going to buy a ticket for a movie with a boring R-rated sex scene when XXX debauchery is available for free and just a click away?
Steamy sex scenes helped sell a movie when screen sex was still taboo and more inaccessible. In a world of porn-on-demand, r-rated sex seems like pale imitation.
So market forces leading movie-makers to the conclusion that sex doesn’t help and can only hurt the accessibility of the films. So why do it?
It is my sincere hope that film-makers, without the crutch of the sex-scene, will actually try to make better films that appeal to more nobler aspects of the human experience and not just their libidos. If they do, I think they will be pleasantly surprised.
