piridi replied to your post:
Also just from a straightforward point of view- people who like sex scenes will know where to find them, whereas movie viewers who just want a love story have to roll their eyes, or if they're with family, sweat profusely and fumble for the remote control to speed ahead. It's really pointless in a movie setting because it never adds to the plot, or is put in there to convince us of something the chemistry between two characters should do anyway (they're in love!).
!!!!!!!!!! This!!!!!!! So much this!!!! And OH GOSH YOU’RE SO RIGHT ABOUT THE DANGERS OF WATCHING IT WITH FAMILY. The pain and awkwardness of trying to skip a scene with your mom watching with questioning and accusing and horrified “I thought this movie was going to be appropriate for my children” eyes. :))) SAVE ME.
Anyway. It’s not that I believe all movies need to be appropriate for a child to watch because that would be impossible in terms of both theme and content but I really do think that there should be way, way, way more movies in which sex scenes are not the thing keeping families from being able to watch movies together. Because families should be able to. As a child on the younger end of a big family I especially resented being left out of watching not just “adult” movies but any good movies because of sexual content. I believe that movies can and should work on more than one level for more than one specific audience and the best movies can be watched by kids and adults and they don’t have to just be dumbed-down “fun for the whole family” movies!! Insisting on keeping sex scenes in movies when they don’t need to be there widens the divide between children and adult entertainment and so makes one more inane and vacuous and the other uglier and crueler than either needs to be and ignores the truth that we’re all human and we should be to watch at least some things that are meant for and can be loved by all of us. When will people think of ME specifically, Florence!!!! or more precisely my younger self!!! :))
Also I agree. it adds nothing that can’t be in the movie in some other more creative, more honest, and frankly CUTER way. I want to see their love in ordinary moments. In “picking up the bottles on New Year’s day”. In laughter, in conversations, in doing the damn dishes!! And it doesn’t mean sex should never be implied, or that all tension and flirting disappears, and the movie is supposed to pretend it doesn’t exist. But that’s the point. All of that tension and delight can still be there and is better kept without the sex. You’re right! We don’t need TO ACTUALLY SEE the sex to buy their chemistry. The point is it should be good enough that we can take that for granted, in a sense, or at least leave it as the private, sacred, “just theirs” thing that it IS, that we don’t need to see, that we don’t have any right to see. The sex can’t tell us anything about the characters because it is not FOR us, because it is intensely private and personal and it’s theirs alone. So we should just draw the curtain and leave them be and then delight in the moments we do get to see all the more because we know that this isn’t all there is. That doesn’t make a love story weaker, it makes it so much stronger because its restraint leaves you with a sense of a larger, deeper relationship that you’re not let in on as an audience member. And it’s paradoxical but that makes it better. The fact that there is something you don’t see and aren’t allowed to see makes what you do see better.
The best sex scenes are the ones that aren’t sex scenes anyway. Crazy Stupid Love is one of my favorite romantic comedies because Jacob and Hannah’s relationship starts off with sex so it avoids the pitfall of most romantic comedies, which is abandoning cuteness and flirting to fall into sex. Shoving characters into bed together and calling that good story development is cheap and over-done and kills the tension. Because CSL can’t devolve into that- and all the problems that sex scenes present anyway including but not limited to the physical lies and distortion created by selectively chosen angles in which the female body almost always gets the short end of the stick BUT THAT’S A SEPARATE CONVERSATION- there isn’t anywhere else for them to go but up and it’s beautiful. You get the fun of playboy Jacob actually liking her as a Person, of not continuing his heartless, soulless sleeping around with women he neither respects nor cares about, whom he doesn’t even see as people. You get his surprise and his “you’re adorable” and his teasing and you get Hannah learning about him as a person, about his mom, and the fact that he buys useless crap like massage chairs because his life is so empty and it’s SO MUCH BETTER TO WATCH THEM LAUGHING ABOUT HOW TERRIBLE HIS MASSAGE CHAIR IS than to watch- what? To watch them having sex. Which, again, isn’t ours to see and which only makes their connection (including the sex!!!) stronger and more moving precisely because we didn’t see it.
onenightshebakes replied to your post:
okay, so i'm not opposed to a good sex scene but it's all about how it's done. also, for some reason i completely lost interest in the vampire diaries after elena and damon got together. even though i was rooting for them so hard. but they lost me soon after their first kiss. even though i almost died because they used ed sheeran's 'kiss me'.
This is a really interesting point!! I’ve noticed that a lot of people lost interest after they got together. (I’m in way too deep so I will love them regardless.) I thought maybe at first that it was just because people really love ANGST and PINING and SEXUAL TENSION and that is definitely part of it!!! But I think that a lot of it honestly has a lot to do with the way their connection keeps being presented as being, like, ABOUT THE SEX. The moment you’re talking about is adorable. Their dance in front of the fire is SO CUTE AND TENDER AND FRAGILE AND AHHHHHHH and then. Well between the way that dance devolved into shoving each other against a wall and tearing each other’s clothes off and Caroline’s realization that this was a sire bond I was ready to throw my laptop across the room in anger and frustration. I didn’t mind the sire bond development- okay that’s a lie I kind of hated it, but it did its JOB of keeping them apart and letting us revel in Damon’s torment about whether or not it was real until the end of the season. But the resolution of their tension by just letting them have sex- and the way that’s replicated at the start of season 5- is disappointing to say the least. There is so much tension in those early seasons!!! And yes a lot of it is sexual tension but it is also other kinds of tension- longing and love and fear- and SEX only resolves one part of that tension and kills the other part of it.
And here’s the thing. I don’t think that happy endings are boring. And I hate when people think they are because they’ve been given so many bad ones. If you think happy endings are boring you haven’t seen a well-done happy ending!! I don’t think watching Damon and Elena be happy together and around each other, at peace, at ease, content and domestic and couple-y is boring. Not even a little bit. But their sex doesn’t give you that- it just gives you their desire and attraction and strips all nuance away. And I know this might sound weird- and maybe this is just me- but it also weirdly strips away their love. I just want it to be over because I want to see and be reminded that they actually love each other. Sex doesn’t give you that as a viewer because it’s not for you. Smaller, tenderer moments are. I’m 15 minutes into the first episode of season 5 and that one moment when Damon smiles to himself and gets all dazed and starry-eyed right after Elena kisses him is WORTH A MILLION TIMES MORE TO ME THAN ANY OF THEIR *ACTION*.
grumbles in frustration.
Anyway I’m sorry guys. Apparently I feel very passionately about this.
