Where have all the sex scenes gone?

Let's talk about the horniness deficit — that is, what happened to great sex scenes?

Today on Commotion, I joined host Elamin Abdelmahmoud and culture writer Angela Watercutter in a group chat about the ongoing debate around intimacy onscreen. 

Listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts and read more of my thoughts below.

14:44Let's talk about sex, baby (and how it appears on TV)

It seems like there are fewer steamy scenes on screen these days, which begs the question: what do we lose when sex scenes aren't as mainstream? Culture writers Rad Simonpillai and Angela Watercutter dive into the horniness deficit, and the debate around intimacy onscreen.

Actor Penn Badgley's recent revelation that he's averse to filming sex scenes got some people's panties in a knot. The star of Netflix's You — playing a serial killer by the way — made the comments on his podcast, Podcrushed, saying that he had asked the show's co-creator Sera Gamble to reduce the intimacy scenes involving him on recent seasons. The murder stuff, however, is fine.

Some on Twitter expressed their own aversion to seeing sex scenes and suggested doing away with them entirely. A much louder chorus of film fans and film journalists scrambled to shut such sentiments down.

Overreaction? Maybe. But our urge to protect onscreen intimacy at all costs is less a reaction to Badgley's concerns and more a response to shifting winds in the industry, where movies have become less sexy and more puritanical. A 2019 study published in Playboy found that only 1.21 per cent among movies released in the 2010s depicted sex, which is lower than any decade since the 60s and down from 1.79 per cent during the 90s, when an erotic thriller like Basic Instinct could be a box office smash. If the percentage drop seems small, just remember that there are nearly four times as many movies released in recent years. And according to the author of that study, the figure dropped below a single per cent in 2022.

Coordinating intimacy

Badgley's request for fewer intimacy scenes involving him was a personal one. He said it came from an urge to protect his marriage, which is fair enough. He's not the only one in Hollywood with those boundaries. When was the last time you saw Denzel Washington share anything more than a marital peck on screen? Even Brad Pitt has been keeping it PG since his now volatile relationship with Angelina Jolie began. But Badgley, famous for being a thirst trap on Gossip Girl and You, is among the first to say it out loud.

His reasoning seemed to suggest that acting in intimacy scenes is like cheating, which rubbed some the wrong way. Meanwhile, others gave him kudos for knowing and respecting the boundaries in his marriage.

The conversation about actors being comfortable on set is also a sensitive one, because we are talking about an industry that has a history of exploitation and creates abusive environments. However, in the post #MeToo dialogue, we saw intimacy coordinators become an industry standard. These are professionals on-set who have long discussions with filmmakers and individual cast members to protect boundaries and make sure everyone is comfortable and knows what to expect. With such exacting planning requirements and tricky conversations regarding consent, some producers may find it easier to just write sex scenes out, especially because they don't necessarily see the payoff.

Where have all the sex scenes gone?

Blame the "Marvel-ization" of cinema and the rise of PornHub as reasons why we don't see sex on the big screen anymore. Easy access to pornography means erotic movies can no longer count on the box office bump from audiences coming out for the titillation. Now the box office is catering almost exclusively to four-quadrant movies that primarily appeal to teenage boys. Sex has largely moved to television, a more intimate space, where it's flaunted in disturbing ways on shows like Game Of Thrones and Euphoria. 

There's been a recent rise in incredibly popular erotic content on Netflix, like the Polish film franchise 365 Days and the Toronto-shot series Sex/Life — its second season drops on Thursday. The thirst not for porn but sexy and exciting domestic fantasies is obvious when audiences are willing to settle for such harlequin-grade content. We're all deprived of the glory days when Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct, Showgirls) and Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction, Unfaithful) made bad behaviour beneath the sheets thrilling and revelatory cinema.

Sex scenes: greatest hits

The debate whether movies should depict sex is a recurring one. Each time it comes up, cinephiles take the opportunity to unload their favourites, new and old, educating those audiences who didn't realize eroticism on screen could be this good.

The example that gets the most mileage — the Mona Lisa of movie sex scenes — is from Don't Look Now, Nicholas Roeg's 50-year-old horror movie starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as a couple haunted by their child's death. The film, which has inspired countless new elevated horror movies, has a sex scene between their characters noted for both its unique editing and the passion Sutherland and Christie bring to their performance. The scene hops back and forth between the foreplay, the sex and getting ready to go out after. And the performances, the way these characters make love, expresses so much about a couple revelling in a brief reprieve from their grief.

In a recent piece in Vanity Fair, Richard Lawson brings up Of An Age, a beautiful coming-of-age movie about a teen (Elias Anton) who is not yet out of the closet enjoying a Before Sunrise-style romantic interlude with an older guy (Thom Green). Their romance climaxes (excuse the pun) during a fumbling sex scene in the back of a car that feels monumental because it is as much about self-discovery as it is forging a meaningful connection.

Other articles brought up the power and pleasure in the loving gazes in Céline Sciamma's Portrait of A Lady On Fire and Gina Prince-Bythewood's Love & Basketball. The sex scene in the latter caught me off guard because it was the first time I saw a male character (Omar Epps) tenderly initiate wearing protection.

I have my own favourites, the most recent being the tender expression of Black love in If Beale Street Could Talk. Watch Stephan James and Kiki Layne's performances during their slow and sweaty lovemaking. Notice the protectiveness in his gaze and how her nerves give way to release because they've affectionately built themselves a safe space.

Canada's contributions

Canadian cinema has its own important contributions to sex onscreen from filmmakers Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg. In movies like Exotica, Where The Truth Lies and Chloe, Egoyan brings a watchful eye to the power dynamics in sex. In Crash, Cronenberg famously linked car crash fetishism to sex, exploring what's dangerous and exciting about metals and bodies getting tangled.

Cronenberg's A History Of Violence is another favourite, specifically because the movie is a neo-Western that uses sex to drive its point home. The film is about how an almost utopian American town is undone by one heroic act of violence. There's a sex scene early in the movie, before violence enters the picture, when the heroes played by Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello, the latter dressed in her high school cheerleader uniform, have playful and innocent sex. Later in the movie, there's an aggressive and brutal sex scene between them; the violence unleashed on the town finds its way into this intimate moment in a way that's both disturbing and exciting.

That's just a small sampling of how sexual expression can elevate cinema and help explore people and society more intimately. But do we really need to trot out such high-minded examples? It's okay if sex on screen is just hot — so long as everyone participating is consenting and comfortable with it.