I work in Hollywood. Like USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, the UCLA Center for Scholars & Storytellers is just another example of a political advocacy group using a university as cover for ideological messaging, under the auspices of “research.”
Note that both Annenberg and S&S rarely, if ever, publish the raw data used to draw these suspiciously blunt conclusions about media representation (in this case, about supposedly “dated and unrelatable romantic tropes”); they merely crank out glossy press releases designed to be regurgitated by overworked trade-magazine bloggers. Underneath these are lousy “self-reporting” surveys with data carefully massaged to fulfill an intended purpose.
There’s a lot of snake oil peddled in town, but this stuff irritates me the most, as it is often reported uncritically and discussed without any reflection on why these “studies” are conducted, or who funds them.
I tried watching some, and ended up not liking amd finishing any. Except exactly one- Reply 1988. I tried CLOY, Reply 1992, Hometown Cha Cha Cha, etc. and couldn't keep watching them. Any suggestions?
One only need to look at the current depictions of sex in popular shows to see why people don't like them. These are incredible gratuitous and basic and exist for shock value without a shred of passion nor artistry. Worse, they can detract from the actual story of the show and reduce overall enjoyment. For example, look at The Boys extremely detailed and crude rape scenes for absolutely zero reason.
Sex sells, but it can also diminish overall entertainment value if not done right. Too bad sale is the only thing most producers care about.
The Boys is a bad example because its whole aesthetic is hyperviolence and kink illustration. There's room for work that takes the extreme as its signature.
Same for shows specifically trying to illustrate tawdry or violent subcultures like club kids or gangs.
What gets boring, when too ubiquitous and gratuitous, are works that casually insert characters, scenes, etc that seem meant to resonate with some purported culture trend / market demand but aren't really necessary or coherent in the context. If you're not on that trend yourself, those insertions feel completely out of place and sometimes even offensive.
That's a perpetual pattern in media though. Presently, we see that explicit sexual content was "hot" for a while but some people are tired of it and a new generation just doesn't give a damn. But you can see similar comings and goings looking backwards (and forwards) as well, with: relgious symbols, queer recognition, political moralizing, lifestyle moralizing, positivity, stoic/sacrificing men, empowered women/survivors, violence and brawling, eye candy, sarcasm and cynicism, romance, superheroes, flashy lifestyles, sad sap lifestyles, etc
I can watch North by Northwest with my pre-teen kids and not really be worried too much about the obvious sex inbetween the scenes. It still distracting, but whatever.
TLDR; US: nudity & sex: no, violence: yes!, Europe: nudity & sex: np, violence: not so much.
> Movies and TV shows are things to watch with friends/family. It's awkward and annoying for sex scenes to come up.
I and all pretty much all my pan-European friends that I talked to about this issue are always flabbeghasted about this.
Can you elaborate why this is awkward and/or annoying to you? This is an earnest question out of pure curiosity.
Specifically weird for us is that in PG13-rated US movies/series/etc, depiction of sex (and nudity) is not ok but violence (and even death!) commonly is (as long as there is no blood or the blood is from aliens, i.e. green or purple). "Alien vs Predator" is an example.
In Europe it's literally upside down. When kids are watching we don't have an issue with sex scenes as much as with violence. Depiction of consensual sex is ok. Sex is fun, it's natural, it's wonderful (hopefully). You can explain that to kids. Violence -- not so much.
Nudity? What's the issue? When I leave my house in Berlin in summer the park next door is full of kids running around naked (as are most playgrounds). The issue with nudity (and the obsession of taking offense with female breasts/nipples) is completely beyond most people in northern Europe.
Basically, if many European family movies ever made it to the US market (they don't, ofc), quite a few would probably be edited for nudity (or even sex scenes) for that market.
Vice versa, US movies often do get edited for violence to become more "family friendly" for the European market. "Lilo and Stitch" is a good example; Disney edited the German version down by 1.5minutes to get a FSK-0 (no age restrictions) rating here. [1]
Specifically, female breasts occasionally visible in a kids movie won't raise eyebrows in atheist/agnostic/protestant northern Germany but in catholic southern Italy they may.
And speaking of the latter: Berlin is the first city that has acknowledged that actual gender equality requires women (or any gender for that matter) to be topless too, in any public bath [2].
So if you go with your kids/teens to a public bath here, they will see nipples (i.e. "nudity").
Regarding being topless, I realized the same. In Canada, BC, all women are allowed to be topless.
We had a huge issue at the homeowner association I'm part of because of the swimsuit of a man showing the shape of their genitalia (not in a sexualized wa) "more than usual", whatever that means. To which I responded that if a woman will show up topless, what are you going to do?
And then after some research, I discovered that for gender equality in bc, women can go topless.
I'd like to think I'm progressive on that stuff, but I'm embarrassed watching sex scenes with family, pretty sure this has to be due to the behavior of my parents with me about it. And yet, it bothers me being embarrassed, I wish I could fix the brainwashing, but emotions are not rational.
A lot of US nudity & sex tends to be bordering on soft-core porn. It's often gratuitous. I honestly don't think you are watching that with your little ones (if you have any) and your parents.
I agree that if violence is ok, sex should be too, however keep in mind that in life violence and death are met way earlier than sex, at least in current society.
Violence is something children face (in a minor shape, but still) at age 3 when they argue with another kid.
Death, they start facing it very rapidly: dead insect, dead bird. My 3 years old recently realized that when we say "we eat chicken" we mean that we are eating an actual chicken and was shocked. Took him a while to digest, he connected the dots with death.
Sex? They don't know what it is. Dad and mum do it behind locked doors.
They will find out from tv before real life experience.
That being said, if you look at farm animals, those deal with sex basically as soon as they are born. So I'm not sure how society grew hiding sex for a good chunk of life (not saying it's wrong, I just have no idea how it happened).
Sex scenes in movies are just soft core porn. Would find it awkward to watch hardcore porn with your family and friends? I would. But if you wouldn't find that awkward, I think that's a cultural divide that's just too big to explain.
IIRC, America's weird relationship with sex is rooted in our Puritan history.
Idk about our comfort with depictions of violence. We definitely have a history of "cowboy & indian" films, so it could come from the glorification of our genocidal past (or the genocidal past itself). The Vietnam War on the TV every night for a couple decades is another good option.
Sounds like this study is about what people say they want (and perhaps when given a multiple-choice selection of ideas), but not what their actual behavior is.
I doubt it. But if true, that feeling of inadequacy could still be triggered in nearly every other everyday activity. Be it social media, print media, people on the street, co-workers, close relations, or the visual arts. Good luck insulating yourself from attractive people.
The problem is that these teens want to watch tougher, mature stories like prestige TV stuff or the movies Variety cited and then complain that there's sex on it. If they are not comfortable watching sex they should stick to basic mainstream stuff, which became completely aseptic after the Superbowl tit incident. Not everything has to be for everyone.
It's really amazing how far society has backtracked since the days of "Free Love" of the 60s. It was in response to the patriarchal society then, and now the reversal is being pushed in the name of feminism today (perhaps even described as matriarchal society).
It seems obvious to me that Teens see sex as a negative today because they've been bombarded by sex-negative messaging for many various reasons that would be too long to go into here (and also because I can't find the right words to describe it).
The era you're calling back to to was just a hard push back against a post-war surge in clean imagery and buttoned up moralizing, amplified by the Hollywood Code, but you need only go back to the early forties to see and hear wide open celebrations of tawdry lives, and can dig back farther again to see repressive times around the Prohibition era, which you might reasonably assumed was in response to a time that was not so repressive at all, etc etc
In many areas, we can see the incoming generations being the new teetotalars and moralizers eager to temper things down again.
As for the role of feminism, it's found a voice on both sides all along, during all of the cycles. That's its reflection of true freedom. Even during the "Free Love" era and its direct continuance, the Gloria Steinem voices were driving a different vision than the ones celebrating "free love". And in fact, you can see a through line of that tradition within feminism to the one you're critiquing in the present.
The starting point was an absence of sex in the public domain, an avoidance of reference to basic reproduction facts, a ban on anything beyond, etc.
Things have progressed to sex scenes becoming so prevelant and readily accessible that it's become desirable to have a choice to see material that doesn't constantly interupt plot for steam.
Sex has moved from titalling rarity to boring omnipresence. and is now winding back somewhat; this is not a backtrack from the state of play in the 60s though, the world has leapfrogged past that era.
There are still patriarchal abstinence-only programs in a considerable part of the US; so that can be affecting attitudes some. But also; with increased awareness of queer and asexual personalities and relationships, and emphasis on consent in general; that can be overall influencing attitudes as well.
I work in Hollywood. Like USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, the UCLA Center for Scholars & Storytellers is just another example of a political advocacy group using a university as cover for ideological messaging, under the auspices of “research.”
Note that both Annenberg and S&S rarely, if ever, publish the raw data used to draw these suspiciously blunt conclusions about media representation (in this case, about supposedly “dated and unrelatable romantic tropes”); they merely crank out glossy press releases designed to be regurgitated by overworked trade-magazine bloggers. Underneath these are lousy “self-reporting” surveys with data carefully massaged to fulfill an intended purpose.
There’s a lot of snake oil peddled in town, but this stuff irritates me the most, as it is often reported uncritically and discussed without any reflection on why these “studies” are conducted, or who funds them.
I imagine the trend may be inversely-correlated to how easily someone can find depictions of sex on-demand through other sources, i.e. actual porn.
So then other areas like "safe bastion of platonic intimacy" or "awkwardly happy mutual hand-holding" are comparatively under-served.
> are comparatively under-served
Korean soaps have this covered. And the plots are great too.
I tried watching some, and ended up not liking amd finishing any. Except exactly one- Reply 1988. I tried CLOY, Reply 1992, Hometown Cha Cha Cha, etc. and couldn't keep watching them. Any suggestions?
You didn't like Hometown Cha Cha Cha ? I loved it so much I watched it twice :)
One only need to look at the current depictions of sex in popular shows to see why people don't like them. These are incredible gratuitous and basic and exist for shock value without a shred of passion nor artistry. Worse, they can detract from the actual story of the show and reduce overall enjoyment. For example, look at The Boys extremely detailed and crude rape scenes for absolutely zero reason.
Sex sells, but it can also diminish overall entertainment value if not done right. Too bad sale is the only thing most producers care about.
The Boys is a bad example because its whole aesthetic is hyperviolence and kink illustration. There's room for work that takes the extreme as its signature.
Same for shows specifically trying to illustrate tawdry or violent subcultures like club kids or gangs.
What gets boring, when too ubiquitous and gratuitous, are works that casually insert characters, scenes, etc that seem meant to resonate with some purported culture trend / market demand but aren't really necessary or coherent in the context. If you're not on that trend yourself, those insertions feel completely out of place and sometimes even offensive.
That's a perpetual pattern in media though. Presently, we see that explicit sexual content was "hot" for a while but some people are tired of it and a new generation just doesn't give a damn. But you can see similar comings and goings looking backwards (and forwards) as well, with: relgious symbols, queer recognition, political moralizing, lifestyle moralizing, positivity, stoic/sacrificing men, empowered women/survivors, violence and brawling, eye candy, sarcasm and cynicism, romance, superheroes, flashy lifestyles, sad sap lifestyles, etc
Movies and TV shows are things to watch with friends/family. It's awkward and annoying for sex scenes to come up.
This.
I can watch North by Northwest with my pre-teen kids and not really be worried too much about the obvious sex inbetween the scenes. It still distracting, but whatever.
Gratuitous violence, though, that’s fine.
I think we need to rethink what we’re normalizing and what we’re comfortable with, and why.
TLDR; US: nudity & sex: no, violence: yes!, Europe: nudity & sex: np, violence: not so much.
> Movies and TV shows are things to watch with friends/family. It's awkward and annoying for sex scenes to come up.
I and all pretty much all my pan-European friends that I talked to about this issue are always flabbeghasted about this.
Can you elaborate why this is awkward and/or annoying to you? This is an earnest question out of pure curiosity.
Specifically weird for us is that in PG13-rated US movies/series/etc, depiction of sex (and nudity) is not ok but violence (and even death!) commonly is (as long as there is no blood or the blood is from aliens, i.e. green or purple). "Alien vs Predator" is an example.
In Europe it's literally upside down. When kids are watching we don't have an issue with sex scenes as much as with violence. Depiction of consensual sex is ok. Sex is fun, it's natural, it's wonderful (hopefully). You can explain that to kids. Violence -- not so much.
Nudity? What's the issue? When I leave my house in Berlin in summer the park next door is full of kids running around naked (as are most playgrounds). The issue with nudity (and the obsession of taking offense with female breasts/nipples) is completely beyond most people in northern Europe.
Basically, if many European family movies ever made it to the US market (they don't, ofc), quite a few would probably be edited for nudity (or even sex scenes) for that market.
Vice versa, US movies often do get edited for violence to become more "family friendly" for the European market. "Lilo and Stitch" is a good example; Disney edited the German version down by 1.5minutes to get a FSK-0 (no age restrictions) rating here. [1]
Specifically, female breasts occasionally visible in a kids movie won't raise eyebrows in atheist/agnostic/protestant northern Germany but in catholic southern Italy they may.
And speaking of the latter: Berlin is the first city that has acknowledged that actual gender equality requires women (or any gender for that matter) to be topless too, in any public bath [2].
So if you go with your kids/teens to a public bath here, they will see nipples (i.e. "nudity").
[1] https://www.schnittberichte.com/schnittbericht.php?ID=1004
[2] https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-clarifies-gender-equality-rules...
Regarding being topless, I realized the same. In Canada, BC, all women are allowed to be topless.
We had a huge issue at the homeowner association I'm part of because of the swimsuit of a man showing the shape of their genitalia (not in a sexualized wa) "more than usual", whatever that means. To which I responded that if a woman will show up topless, what are you going to do? And then after some research, I discovered that for gender equality in bc, women can go topless.
I'd like to think I'm progressive on that stuff, but I'm embarrassed watching sex scenes with family, pretty sure this has to be due to the behavior of my parents with me about it. And yet, it bothers me being embarrassed, I wish I could fix the brainwashing, but emotions are not rational.
A lot of US nudity & sex tends to be bordering on soft-core porn. It's often gratuitous. I honestly don't think you are watching that with your little ones (if you have any) and your parents.
I thought about this for a bit.
I agree that if violence is ok, sex should be too, however keep in mind that in life violence and death are met way earlier than sex, at least in current society.
Violence is something children face (in a minor shape, but still) at age 3 when they argue with another kid. Death, they start facing it very rapidly: dead insect, dead bird. My 3 years old recently realized that when we say "we eat chicken" we mean that we are eating an actual chicken and was shocked. Took him a while to digest, he connected the dots with death.
Sex? They don't know what it is. Dad and mum do it behind locked doors. They will find out from tv before real life experience.
That being said, if you look at farm animals, those deal with sex basically as soon as they are born. So I'm not sure how society grew hiding sex for a good chunk of life (not saying it's wrong, I just have no idea how it happened).
It's a hard topic
Sex scenes in movies are just soft core porn. Would find it awkward to watch hardcore porn with your family and friends? I would. But if you wouldn't find that awkward, I think that's a cultural divide that's just too big to explain.
IIRC, America's weird relationship with sex is rooted in our Puritan history.
Idk about our comfort with depictions of violence. We definitely have a history of "cowboy & indian" films, so it could come from the glorification of our genocidal past (or the genocidal past itself). The Vietnam War on the TV every night for a couple decades is another good option.
Sounds like this study is about what people say they want (and perhaps when given a multiple-choice selection of ideas), but not what their actual behavior is.
But if it's repeated over time, that still indicates a change in what they're willing to admit-wanting.
If you followed the study’s advice, you’d miss the massive popularity of hate watching.
What about it sounds like that?
https://youtu.be/VUHFXnOn7mI?si=TdBZwL1qoHbaxQzT
Here's the link to the 2024 study:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/633f0603fdaa7311ba384...
Here's the 2023 study:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/633f0603fdaa7311ba384...
Maybe seeing attractive people in media makes people feel bad about their own appearance. Or their partner's appearance.
Maybe they don't want to watch something just to be reminded of their mediocre/nonexistent sex life.
I doubt it. But if true, that feeling of inadequacy could still be triggered in nearly every other everyday activity. Be it social media, print media, people on the street, co-workers, close relations, or the visual arts. Good luck insulating yourself from attractive people.
Movies/series/TV are/is shown/streamed/aired & watched worldwide.
I presume the study was done in the US.
Go figure.
I stopped watching Black Sails because of it.
If there's any substance to a survey like this, it'll be reflected in their viewing habits and choices going forward.
I'm old and I think the same thing.
The problem is that these teens want to watch tougher, mature stories like prestige TV stuff or the movies Variety cited and then complain that there's sex on it. If they are not comfortable watching sex they should stick to basic mainstream stuff, which became completely aseptic after the Superbowl tit incident. Not everything has to be for everyone.
It's really amazing how far society has backtracked since the days of "Free Love" of the 60s. It was in response to the patriarchal society then, and now the reversal is being pushed in the name of feminism today (perhaps even described as matriarchal society).
It seems obvious to me that Teens see sex as a negative today because they've been bombarded by sex-negative messaging for many various reasons that would be too long to go into here (and also because I can't find the right words to describe it).
It's always just been cyclic and continues to be.
The era you're calling back to to was just a hard push back against a post-war surge in clean imagery and buttoned up moralizing, amplified by the Hollywood Code, but you need only go back to the early forties to see and hear wide open celebrations of tawdry lives, and can dig back farther again to see repressive times around the Prohibition era, which you might reasonably assumed was in response to a time that was not so repressive at all, etc etc
In many areas, we can see the incoming generations being the new teetotalars and moralizers eager to temper things down again.
As for the role of feminism, it's found a voice on both sides all along, during all of the cycles. That's its reflection of true freedom. Even during the "Free Love" era and its direct continuance, the Gloria Steinem voices were driving a different vision than the ones celebrating "free love". And in fact, you can see a through line of that tradition within feminism to the one you're critiquing in the present.
Backtracked and reversal are out of place here.
The starting point was an absence of sex in the public domain, an avoidance of reference to basic reproduction facts, a ban on anything beyond, etc.
Things have progressed to sex scenes becoming so prevelant and readily accessible that it's become desirable to have a choice to see material that doesn't constantly interupt plot for steam.
Sex has moved from titalling rarity to boring omnipresence. and is now winding back somewhat; this is not a backtrack from the state of play in the 60s though, the world has leapfrogged past that era.
There are still patriarchal abstinence-only programs in a considerable part of the US; so that can be affecting attitudes some. But also; with increased awareness of queer and asexual personalities and relationships, and emphasis on consent in general; that can be overall influencing attitudes as well.
The period after they invented antibiotics but before they invented HIV was a local maximum in sexual expression.
Jerry Falwell won - he just never envisioned it would be progressives making the boob tube safe for the children.
[dead]