Sex, Nudity, and Cinematic Culture Shock

[Kasumi_Lee]

How about Season 2 Episode 4 of "House of the Dragon" which featured a completely explicit on screen cock in mouth. Not a coy little back-of-the-head suggestive camera angle. Erect cock. Inside. Mouth.

If that ain't a sign of the times a-changin', as far as media for American audiences goes...

No spoilers! I'm not that far along yet!

 

[THBGato]

AFAM subverted my assumptions by being the first sexually explicit rom-com I've ever seen.

Have you never seen an American Pie movie? Surely those are, at least in part, rom-coms? (My memory is, admittedly, a little hazy.)

 

[Kumquatqueen]

That double standard has always boggled my mind. Scenes of someone blowing somebody else's brains out with a shotgun or stabbing them in the gut with a sword? Meh. Scenes of naked Human adults or a penis penetrating a vagina?

The UK was a bit more balanced, but more importantly, when I was growing up no-one cared about cinema ratings. The 12 and 12A didn't yet exist, but above PG there were 15 and 18. My friends and I could get into either as soon as we went independently to the cinema, age 12 or so, and got shown some 18-rated stuff in school in year 7 (age 11-12). I didn't choose to see a 18 in the cinema until I was 14 only because most of them were horror films or pretty scary thrillers.

Now there's law that cinemas can't let under-age kids into the 15 and 18 films, and amazingly, the numbers wanting to watch have plummeted...

Though in Norway as I grew up, there was little TV but a cinema multiplex opened. Anything with violence was a 16 or 18 - the original Ghostbusters, for example. Routine sex was fine, maybe age 7 or 10 rating. Only sex with dubious consent or unsafe kinks got rated above 14, and they didn't care about underage kids watching, anyway.

I much prefer that as a rating system.

My sex education therefore included the Witches of Eastwick, Blue Lagoon and 9 1/2 Weeks. And Walkabout, with Jenny Agutter in the shower...

 

[ElectricBlue]

My sex education therefore included the Witches of Eastwick, Blue Lagoon and 9 1/2 Weeks. And Walkabout, with Jenny Agutter in the shower...

For all people of a certain age, that movie is a milestone. Here in Oz it had an R rating (18 years old, to see it) because of the nudity in the billabong - my first cinematic pubic hair. I don't remember a shower scene. I wasn't eighteen either, I'd ask someone to buy me a ticket to R rated movies and go in once the lights were down.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

For all people of a certain age, that movie is a milestone. Here in Oz it had an R rating (18 years old, to see it) because of the nudity in the billabong - my first cinematic pubic hair. I don't remember a shower scene. I wasn't eighteen either, I'd ask someone to buy me a ticket to R rated movies and go in once the lights were down.

A waterfall rather than a built shower. The same scene, I imagine! I wasn't focusing on the water supply details...

Half my teachers would now be on the Sex Offenders Register if they still taught in the same way - mostly for staggering in on a Monday, telling us to watch this VHS video they'd got out at the weekend, and to shut it while they nursed their hangovers next door. Showing 18-rated films to 11 year olds isn't legal now, certainly in a school! And certainly not 9 1/2 Weeks...

 

[ElectricBlue]

A waterfall rather than a built shower. The same scene, I imagine! I wasn't focusing on the water supply details...

To be honest, even as a young teenager, I was speculating how cold the water in the lagoon was...

It was a coming of age - the only other movie I'd seen Jenny Agutter in before Walkabout was The Railway Children, and while I do like trains, they're not the same. Of course, she's in Call The Midwife now, playing the Mother Superior. That's just odd. Very beautiful still - like Miranda in Picnic at Hanging Rock.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

Have you never seen an American Pie movie? Surely those are, at least in part, rom-coms? (My memory is, admittedly, a little hazy.)

I've always thought of those as slapstick comedies in which sex is part of the humor. Also, I don't remember any titties, female nipples, or bare butts on display in those movies. Unless my own memory is hazy, those were lines which even those films wouldn't cross.

 

[THBGato]

Also, I don't remember any titties, female nipples, or bare butts on display in those movies. Unless my own memory is hazy,

Your own memory is hazy! There were a lot!

 

[Yarglenurp]

Your own memory is hazy! There were a lot!

I only saw the first two movies, but remember very little actual showing of graphic material. There was a lot more implications and visual metaphors.

 

[THBGato]

There was the whole "foreign exchange girl strips off while on a webcam" then the stripping dare game.

Maybe it seemed a lot to my teenaged mind!

 

[Yarglenurp]

There was the whole "foreign exchange girl strips off while on a webcam" then the stripping dare game.

Maybe it seemed a lot to my teenaged mind!

I’d suggest rewatching… as a grown adult, I remember seeing it again and thinking it was funny because of naive and innocent all the “teenagers” (actually grown men) seemed. The sexual content was pretty tame.

 

[alohadave]

1,000,000 people getting killed in a meteor strike? PG-13. A woman’s nipple in view? Rated R.

All decided on by a board of people who have dubious credentials.

Ratings are assigned by a board of parents who consider factors such as violence, sex, language and drug use, then assign a rating they believe the majority of American parents would give a movie.

https://www.filmratings.com/RatingsGuide

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

Many years ago the Australian government set up a multicultural TV broadcaster, SBS. For a while it was deeply uncool - stereotyped as the home of news in Serbo-Croatian and the wrong type of football - and then people realised that a lot of the European films had far more nudity and sex than we were used to on the other TV stations.

In US-made stuff, cable and streaming seems to be the home of nudity. I was surprised a couple of years back by a series on Starz that had not one but two depictions of erect wang, the second in the context of male-male sex.

I remember the Starz production Spartacus. I watched all the seasons. Oh boy, that show was graphic. Both blood and sex, and very stylized.

 

[THBGato]

@Kasumi_Lee saw this: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-...ks-the-sex-movie-craze-that-swept-70s-britain and thought of you. ;-)

 

[KeithD]

I'd like to see more well-shot feature movies with plots that also include very graphic sex scenes. These need not go in the mainstream movie houses, but I'd like to see graphic sex dropped in where sex is appropriate to the plot whether its a romantic comedy, a slasher movie (which I wouldn't watch), or a thriller.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'd like to see more well-shot feature movies with plots that also include very graphic sex scenes. These need not go in the mainstream movie houses, but I'd like to see graphic sex dropped in where sex is appropriate to the plot whether its a romantic comedy, a slasher movie (which I wouldn't watch), or a thriller.

This is one of the things I appreciate about Literotica - it's a place where people can and often do combine serious story with sex, which I don't see often in other media.

Clarifying that: there are plenty of shows which feature serious story and somewhat explicit content within the same episode, but the connection between the two often feels superficial. You could take the sex scenes out of Game of Thrones, for instance, and it would still be pretty much the same story. I'm interested in stories where the sex is inseparable from the story.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

This is one of the things I appreciate about Literotica - it's a place where people can and often do combine serious story with sex, which I don't see often in other media.

Clarifying that: there are plenty of shows which feature serious story and somewhat explicit content within the same episode, but the connection between the two often feels superficial. You could take the sex scenes out of Game of Thrones, for instance, and it would still be pretty much the same story. I'm interested in stories where the sex is inseparable from the story.

In that case, I'd recommend Starz's production of Spartacus. It has graphic sex and bloody violence galore, and a lot of the subplots and character arcs would be impossible without the sex that takes places. If you watch the whole series, I recommend you watch the seasons in the following order:

Spartacus: Blood and Sand (first season)

Spartacus: Gods of the Arena (prequel mini-series)

Spartacus: Vengeance (second season)

Spartacus: War of the Damned (third and final season)

 

[THBGato]

Starz's production of Spartacus.

And we finally get to see the Lucy Lawless lesbian sex scene Xena fans waited 7 whole seasons for (and never got).

 

[SimonDoom]

Clarifying that: there are plenty of shows which feature serious story and somewhat explicit content within the same episode, but the connection between the two often feels superficial. You could take the sex scenes out of Game of Thrones, for instance, and it would still be pretty much the same story. I'm interested in stories where the sex is inseparable from the story.

That's exactly what I'd like to see. Literotica would be a gold mine of potential stories if a film producer ever got the itch to film these kinds of movies.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

And we finally get to see the Lucy Lawless lesbian sex scene Xena fans waited 7 whole seasons for (and never got).

I believe that's in the prequel season, Gods of the Arena.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I believe that's in the prequel season, Gods of the Arena.

[takes careful notes]