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Where Has the Sex Gone?

Growing up, my parents had a clear policy on movies: the sex was no big deal, but I wasn’t allowed to see violent films. These days, the reverse seems to be the de facto policy. Though there’s more sheets of blood and gunplay than ever, there seems to be less sex than ever before in Hollywood movies. Maybe my perception of sexual content has changed, but it seems to me that the Eighties and ealy Nineties were chock-full of randy films like Basic Instinct or Damage. In these Republican, conservative times, the most trouser-raising we can get from Hollywood is the occasional implied hummer or naked flank.

Once again, one has to look abroad for quality sexual content. Y tu mama tambien, for example, is a clever, sexy coming-of-age film. I haven’t seen it, but Baise Moi was controversially full of sex, violence and violent sex.

I know there was plenty of talk about sex at the Toronto Film Festival, but that’s hardly Hollywood, is it?

This entry was posted in:Movies
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Published by dbarefoot

Darren Barefoot is an author, speaker and digital strategist. He’s the co-founder of Capulet Communications, and co-author of “Friends With Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook”.

5 comments

  1. my parents had the exact same rule. blood and gore and violence was totally not allowed.. sexual stuff was totally fine. if it was explict sex, they would explain what was going on (in a quiet, non-embarassing way) so that we had the right idea about it.

    er, the makes it sound like my mom narrated porn for us. she didn’t. i was more thinking about the sex scene in flatliners. which was when i got my first big sex talk.

    okay, my parents were strange.

  2. The Spanish and the French seem to make the best use of sex in film. “Sex and Lucia” is another great sexy, Spanish film. And you can’t beat Almodovar, especially his earlier works. “Romance” (French) is another very explicit, controversial film.

  3. the yanks have it far worse than us Canadians…the only way you’d get a female nipple on TV is to put a bullet through it down there. Despite that, coming from a more conservative family with an ‘eye for an eye’ cultural upbringing, the violence was fine when I was a kid. I can’t even fathom touching a gun now, oddly enough.

  4. Amores Peros is another sex-drenched Spanish movie. The plot of the movie was quite brilliant; it reminded me of Pulp Fiction.

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