ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

11 years, 7 months ago - Franz von Habsburg FBKS MSc

Just watched The Pink Panther again. That scene with the tiger skin rug is VERY erotic!

11 years, 7 months ago - Ivo Marloh

I'm really not sure if we have become pruder as a reaction to all the naked flesh around us, but I think partially yes. But I think it's way more complex. It's probably to do with the fact that internet reality nowadays is all-invading, and any random stranger seems to have access to your private life. So behind the nude front has gone up an iron curtain to attempt to safeguard our privacy. When we were teenagers we went on hichhiking holidays abroad for 3 or 4 weeks in the summer with almost zero money, and it was an adventure, but at the same time fairly safe. This would never happen now, partially because with the all-pervading "communication" comes all-pervading fear mongering and all-pervading access for potentially unsavoury people. Maybe it's been a communication/fear-mongering/privacy-invading arms race over the last couple of decades. Maybe it's to do that people now sit at home and think that being virtually connected with hundreds of facebook friends is the same as meeting real people, and so they don't realise what that does to their psyche. I can't quite work it out. Someone is probably doing a PHD about it. But it's sort of scary because our world feels more and more like a tinderbox ready to blow, almost pre-1930s with added nudity. Sorry, that was a bit of a rant!

11 years, 7 months ago - Ben Blaine

Shame is "not that explicit"? Claudette I think you need to watch less porn!

Shame is certainly never gratuitous but I don't think McQueen is every anything other than explicit in his filmmaking.

Nevertheless I agree with you that this is a great example of a story where our understanding of the character and his understanding of himself is directly progressed by his sexual intercourse.

I think a lot of nonsense has been spilled across this debate. Physical action is one of the key ways in which characters develop and in which the audience comprehend them. No one suggests we cut away from John McClane at the start of a fight. We often know the result of a car chase long before the characters turn on the engines but it isn't necessarily gratuitous to show these events play out. Sex is just the same.

Of course we can all point to examples of car chases, fist fights, and sex scenes that don't work and don't tell us anything we need to know... but that's just because not all films are especially successful. The distinction between porn and art is simple - it's the same as the distinction between watching "Fast & The Furious" and "Police Camera Action!" If I learn something about the characters or about myself then it is some sort of art.

11 years, 7 months ago - Claudette FLINT

Hi Charles
I could not agree with you more.When in France I saw a TV document about Japanese business men entertainment. Quite sad really. They were in a night club where girls were just showing their private parts as if at the gynecologist. It was not porn, it was biology!!

Though I was not keen on it, I think the film Blue is the Warmest Colour (La Vie d'Adele, Palme d'Or, Cannes Festival) is where porn is the closest to art.

I'd like to recommend the Franco-Spanish film The Artist and The Model, with Jean Rochefort and Claudia Cardinal.

And Marlom, you are right when you say that most of the time the sex scenes are unnecessary, just padding or spicing. One example where the sex scene was indispensable was in Fatal Attraction.

In any case what is a successful sex scene? One that turns the spectator on or the one that comes in the right place, at the right moment and was long expected?
I suppose a male spectator would always been turned on but we, women, are a lot more sophisticated, we need art and a story! ;-)

Having said that, the French film director Marie-Helene Breillat proves me wrong.

11 years, 7 months ago - Tim iloobia

Vanessa, that is way too much of a generalisation to say of course explicit sex is porn. Explorations of sex and sexuality, however explicit, are not the same as porn. As one example of many, In the film 'in the realm of the senses' we are immersed into the intense and spirallingly destructive affair between two characters and their increasingly extreme behaviour, which we witness in frank and uncompromising detail. It is a film about sex , the consequences of sex, and the psychology of sex where we see real sex that advances a story for adults but simply cannot be reduced to porn. It is not porn. Porn has a wholly other function. And also, since when did every frame of a film have to be about story advancement. That attitude would cut out a hell of a lot of great cinema, sex or otherwise. 2001 would certainly be a lot shorter!

11 years, 7 months ago - Tim iloobia

I did read what you said Marlom, but because you said it was almost never, I thought of a few of the multitudes that exist off the top of my head....

11 years, 7 months ago - Claudette FLINT

Don't you think that if we have become pruder and more conservative it is a reaction against the porn (or the sex?) invading arts, media,net,books,etc...?

I admire the Pussy Riots showing their boobs and maybe more as tools of rebellion and I used to go topless on the beach in Nice. And yet I am shocked to see drunk girls three quarter naked, lying on the pavement outside pubs and night clubs. Am I prude and conservative? I don't care

11 years, 7 months ago - Claudette FLINT

I just want to mention an error: it is not Marie-Hélène Breillat who makes sex films but her sister Catherine Breillat.

Charles, I very much would like you to watch the film Blue is the Warmest Colour to tell us your opinion.
The director filmed sex with art and I would agree it was necessary for the story of the film but he was indulging himself with it. About 2hours out of 3h. Half an hour would have been plenty to inform the spectator that the two girls get on particularly well with sex.

11 years, 7 months ago - Nigel Rogers

I like the idea of portraying the social impact of all the fear mongering... Any script writers here? IVO?

11 years, 7 months ago - Ken Barnes

Great discussion. I've been considering whether a love scene in my current script should contain sex and how far it should go. There is a theory that sex in a film actually causes a rise in body temperature along with other physiological responses. This apparently makes the viewer more susceptible to suspense and surprise. In a film like Body Heat (named for the theory, apparently) and even more so in an old cult horror called 'Dead and Buried', the sex scenes definitely help ratchet up the tension and therefore seem to serve a purpose, manipulative as it may be.

The porn/erotica/art debate is an old one. One might try to define porn as that which objectifies, devalues or otherwise denigrates the personhood of a participant (willing or otherwise). But even that's tricky and requires very careful wording and further definitions.

A former philosophy professor of mine once stated that while SOME portrayals of sex (we were discussing porn v erotica) might cause SOME men (his gender example) to objectify/devalue women and PERHAPS create feelings of hatred, power and/or, in the extreme, stimulate rape, it is PROBABLY equally true that some perfumes, fashions, etc. MIGHT cause SOME men enough impetus to commit similar acts. It seems SOME men (in his example) are capable of violence (here, porn is defined as violence) while others less so. (And, yes, I'm aware of the situational studies where people in stressful situations might commit acts they wouldn't normally do. But I think we can safely say that voluntarily watching acts of denigration is a choice)

People are, obviously, aroused by different things. We will define porn/erotica/art according to our reactions to various forms, I suspect. I might define porn as violence or anything that denigrates love and the human spirit (including much pop culture, sensationalist media and the excesses of materialism) but I would never attempt to prevent someone who believes S&M is erotica and not porn to view (or practice) their fantasies. The line needs to be drawn when unwilling or uninformed people are forced into another's definition. Like any act of force, that should be, and generally is, a crime.

As writers, we sometimes need to show crime in films. That might mean writing a scene that portrays the brutality of abuse, sexual or violent. Should we take that portrayal to its sexual or violent extreme? Will it motivate violent behaviour in some? I don't have the answers but I suspect the following:

I think that the real danger comes when many aspects of violence (including porn as defined above) pervade our forms of 'entertainment' together. One is 'casual-ness' of violence, making it seem almost 'normal'; another is the extreme-ification (?) of it, making less extreme forms seem more palatable by comparison; another is its comedic portrayal, i.e. making brutality funny; another is making violence seem cool, especially when practised by the 'hero'; and at least one other is being served up the horrors of war and terrorism as entertainment on a daily basis. All of this is obviously happening as each new 'entertainment' seeks to out-shock the previous. Shock sells, after all. And the so-called mainstream media are among the porn sellers. Anyone who doesn't think the combination of all this 'shock' doesn't enter the consciousness of citizens and desensitise some, perhaps most, people over time is really, really naive. In SOME people, it might cause imitation of the behaviour. In others, hopefully, it might motivate action that seeks to alleviate violence and suffering in others in peaceful ways. Who will win this classic battle? On a good day, I feel the latter group is making gains. Fingers crossed.

11 years, 7 months ago - Olly Ginelli

Paul Thomas Anderson made an interesting point in regards to Boogie Nights that porn could be a genre...

Personally I think as a result of the porn culture that exists it will be harder to defy public perception and expectations. As Charles mentioned, we are all aware of the un-evocative sex scenes in which the audience is left waiting for the cut.

However I agree with Tim, and two additional films spring to mind where the scene really was necessary to the story, and delivered emotion full-whack.

Casino - When Joe Pesci gets a blowjob from ginger.
And Fish Tank - Fassbender and the young girl.

So the same could be said for explosions or using swear words etc. It's commonplace they're used ineffectively, but anything can evoke emotion and develop story when handled correctly.

11 years, 4 months ago - Karel Bata

I find watching two actors pretending to have sex really embarrassing. Suspension of disbelief always goes out the window and I end up cringe-ing.

11 years, 7 months ago - Ivo Marloh

There are a lot of amazing films about sex and its consequences, as Tim said — Shame is a great example.
Then filmmakers also use explicit sex to court controversy (Von Trier, Breillat, Despentes etc). The Idiots didn't need explicit sex to work, Breillat could probably do without her 'porn auteur' tag.

But the point is, sex sells. Von Trier knows that, Breillat knows it, Verhoeven knows it and so does Ang Lee. He needed Ann Hathaway's boobs in Brokeback Mountain to satisfy hetero producers.

We all agree sex scenes are only satisfying (sorry couldn't resist) if they move the story forward. But that's at the writing stage. Add the reality of production, and this whole discussion becomes futile. The moment there is cast involved, there will be discussions about how "hot" said cast is, and if you do have a crowd-puller, start alluding to them getting their kit off and you have pre-sales!

I've written scripts where there wasn't a whiff of sex until casting was in place, and suddenyl I had to add sex scenes for named actors because it was part of the contract and needed to get more funding.

But I do remember as a kid the lingerie sections in a clothing catalog provided hours of entertainment. Now any child can google porn and get it instantly. Yet as a society we have become ever pruder and conservative. The mystery and magic's gone on that one.

11 years, 7 months ago - Vanessa Bailey

Of course explicit sex is porn!

11 years, 7 months ago - Ellie Rofe

Maybe the easiest way to think about this is to consider the primary function of any media we consume.

I believe the primary intention of porn is to titillate (no relation to 'tits' apparently but what a wonderful word). Porn might have other *results* - but me laughing at an appalling setup or horrific dialogue does not make it a comedy.

So a sex scene which is only there to get hot naked people on screen and people watching hot under the collar - that's porn.

A scene which is designed to show a crucial development in a relationship - the Fish Tank scene mentioned above for example - is art.

That doesn't mean 'artistic' scenes can't be horn-inducing. It's just that their primary aims are to achieve something else.

I also think that's why we react so strongly/awkwardly to the sterile bits of flesh-shuffling that some directors shoehorn into films. We're being shifted from one type of media to another and they don't sit comfortably next to one another. Even though the Fish Tank scene made me deeply uncomfortable, it was a lot more 'enjoyable' to watch than any of that slowmo writhing from 80s Hollywood.

Just for interest, this way of thinking also puts Page 3 into the 'porn' category and the shoe advert into 'advertising', although the latter might get a foot fetishist more frisky than the former.

It also perhaps explains Tom's point above - violence and killing are often (not always) part of a narrative drive, whereas sex devoid of character advancement seems less like a gear change and more like being plonked onto a different road altogether. I don't think it's prudishness (not any more). I think it's an audience's story sense being upset.

11 years, 7 months ago - Marlom Tander

Read what I said.

"Conversely "when should you show a sex scene?" and the answer is "when it advances the story/character"."

and you then highlight a bunch of films where you consider that the sex scenes do just that, and, for the ones I've seen, I agree with you :-)

But I'm pointing out that in the vast majority of films that have a sex scene, the sex scene does not advance the story or the character.

cheers

11 years, 7 months ago - Marlom Tander

That's two questions. The first I'll leave - what is porn? what is art? draw the venn diagram of your choice.

The second however (as far as films are concerned) :-

"They will now have sex",.... and... CUT.

You cut because at this point the audience has all the story and character information they need.

Conversely "when should you show a sex scene?" and the answer is "when it advances the story/character".

As a writer, I'd suggest this is almost never, because when you think about it, all those looks, words, actions that do advance the movie are better placed either just before sex, or just after it, or during it, but in a way that makes the sex incidental (so that sheet over them is fine). It's very rare that a story depends on the the actual way that people have sex.

Sex scenes are like the "driving between locations" scenes, but with less scope for dialogue. Just as you do just enough to tell the audience "they will now go to the next place", you do just enough to say "their relationship is now sexual" so that the audience in this rom-com understands why he panics when she calls to say she's late.

I think that most sex scenes in movies didn't get there because the writer wanted them, but someone else decided they needed some. And really, they didn't, and shouldn't have.

11 years, 7 months ago - Bruce M. Foster

In the descriptive sense, porn is art. Inescapable conclusion. We don't get to limit that category. In the prescriptive sense, well, read Susan Sontag. Personally? Most porn reminds me of an Indiana Jones movie or a Friday the 13th movie. And the audiences are of a similar mindset. Demanding little buggers. Interesting for five minutes. It's just that the frisson from being thrilled or frightened is easier to clean up after?

11 years, 7 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

I think for every boundary there's an exception. Sometimes it'll just fall to the audience to decide. 'That scene' in Irreversible (not a date movie), for instance, is clearly very sexual, extremely unerotic, frankly horrible to watch but absolutely core to the film.

But for most movies, why??? The scenes are turgid and uncomfortable for everyone involved, frequently fail to propel the story and usually tell us nothing about the characters other than that they have a 6-pack/shapely boobs. That's not usually a crucial character point worth the screen time.

11 years, 7 months ago - Dan Selakovich

As an editor, I absolutely hate cutting the "obligatory love scene." Yes, there are films where sex is a necessary part of character and moving the story forward. Unfortunately, I've never worked on any of those. The vast majority of films are stopping the story so two characters can get it on, and that bores the shit out of me both as an editor and a viewer. Probably why I prefer films in the Hayes Code era, where there were creative ways of implying sex.

11 years, 7 months ago - Matt Jamie

My view is that it's not the directors job to SHOW everything which is happening, but to tell the story and allow the audience to use their imagination. I think when you have a full frontal / explicit sex scene, whatever the motivation or plot-making point being made by the scene itself - the audience becomes aware they are watching naked actors and will have their own physiological / psychological reaction to that, which I don't think is necessarily anything to do with the story or the characters. I believe it is possible to show an intimate/tender/violent/embarassing/awkward/intense/or dull sex scene without having to show everything. I don't think that's prudish, but the story-telling should arrive through the set up before the sex, what happens afterwards, and interactions between the characters during - it's more interesting to see or guess what they are *thinking* and feeling mentally during sex than to see which bits go where. It's a tricky line if the scene is important for the story but you can edit around carefully. You can get prudish, and seeing people shyly covering themselves up the morning after is always an unrealistic moment in many a film (I deliberately used the "couple falling back into bed" as the opening of one of my films - it was supposed to be ironic but it just looks like another crap scene!). But I think it is possible to achieve. Monsters Ball almost managed it - the sex scene in that is something like 5 minutes long - for the first 2-3 minutes it's shot so not much is seen, but the emotion of the story and what's happening is well told (reflections in mirrors with hearts on it, camera looking through doors / behind tables etc). Then it carries on for more and in my view becomes unnecessarily explicit - more about Halle Berry's body than her story. I think that's an example where box office draw became more important than story telling.

11 years, 7 months ago - Tom Kelly

We live in a world where showing Violence and killing people is much more acceptable then sex. I guess we have to blame religion for that. How someone can say that a sex scene adds nothing because there is no dialogue misses the point. How many times have great scenes between characters involved minimal or no dialogue. I agree there are a lot of redundant sex scenes in a lot of films but thats down to poor writing and poor direction, not the concept of having sex scenes in your film being wrong.

11 years, 7 months ago - Nigel Rogers

Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist" I believe the scenes advanced the story, they were explicit, graphic and on occasions violent.

Are we saying explicit sex is porn ie showing a penis entering a vagina? A film does tell a story visually.

Is portraying violent sex as pleasurable a no no?

I do think the answers are about the viewers time and place. As British writers/artist/filmmakers alive now we have a lot of freedom to explore these things, we have a censor and law courts who define the boundary, is that so bad?

11 years, 7 months ago - Charles Harris

Hi Tim, you ask if anytime you see people having sex it's porn. This is a good question. When is it, and when isn't it?

In my opinion, too many scripts treat sex scenes as time off from the job of creating character and story, as Marlom says.

Scenes that are written, all too often, so as to have something prurient to put in the trailer.

Claudette, you ask what a successful sex scene might be. I feel this gets right to the point. If, as writers, we can't answer this, maybe we should think more deeply.

The thing that makes art different from other activities is that it's always about something more than what it seems to be about. Seven Samurai is about far more than seven warriors and a fight between peasants and bandits. Les Quatre Cent Coups is about much more than a boy growing up in Paris.

However, too many sex scenes lack that essential subtext that makes art come to life.

Maybe that's what we should be looking for, and what differentiates art from porn...

11 years, 7 months ago - Nigel Rogers

Yes porn can be art and yes porn can be included for other reasons. Yes the pornifying of our culture could well be detrimental although I think there have been some benefits? I for one welcome the debate and films that contribute to it, (art).

11 years, 7 months ago - Franz von Habsburg FBKS MSc

Isn't it amazing that when Sex is being discussed, it produces the longest discussion...just look above! It took me ages to scroll down to write this! For me, the chess scene in the original Thomas Crown Affair has to be the best sex scene ever. Most explicit and yet they remain fully clothed throughout! Happy New Year.

11 years, 7 months ago - Charles Harris

Ellie's right, imho, that the purpose of the scene, or at least the purpose as perceived by the audience, is crucial.

However, having just watched Scorsese's new movie The Wolf of Wall Street, I'm not sure I now agree (with my own earlier implication) that all sex scenes have to forward the plot.

Wolf has a large amount of sex in it, very air-brushed almost to a Playboy shine. This is totally unrealistic sex. It only sometimes forwards the plot, and its purpose seems to be to show a kind of addiction.

This is a satire on modern consumerism, dressed up as a ballsy, roller-coaster true story biopic of a millionaire fraudster - and the sex-, drugs- and money-porn is part of its shtick.

The point of the sex scenes seems to be that sex has become a shiny commodity, like everything else. So if the sex scenes are not plot-driven, what are they?

American Hustler does something similar. Interesting. Anyone seen either yet?

11 years, 7 months ago - Claudette FLINT

About a film on sex: SHAME by Steve Mac Queen 2 where the explicit sex is necessary (and yet, not that explicit).
I wonder if Shame means shameful or it is a pity. In fact both meanings fit. The story of a man who is sex addict and can't fall in love. He is handsome and intelligent and even nice but emotionally dysfunctional. He is a normal man but his drug is sex. He enjoys sex through porn, prostitutes and brief encounters; but his addiction gives the wrong message. In fact he is desperate for the feel of Love. We gradually found out more about his feelings and that is what makes the film so interesting; not a dirty film but a profound analysis of an aspect of the human mind. My opinion is that he is a puritan because he can't conceive that sex can be associated with love.

I believe that this film makes people progress in the comprehension of sex. Never simple.

Maybe I should have put this comment in 'Reviews'!

11 years, 7 months ago - Tim iloobia

I'm finding what a read to be really strange on a number of levels. In fact I've rarely read such total narrow minded nonsense!!!

1 - describing sex as porn is a weird definition. The two are vastly different. Are you trying to say you view them as the same thing? so anytime you see people having sex it is porn?
2 - Shunga is not high class Japanese porn, it is an expansive area of erotic art with hundreds of years of history.
3 - to write 'Most sex scenes are plainly boring' - this sounds like what my mum said in a slightly embarrassed way to me as a teenager while i was discovering the wonders of Ken Russell and we watched together.
4 - There are multitudes of incredible scenes involving sex and intimacy that are rich in meaning, narrative and necessity - eg, Lost Highway where the principal characters decaying relationship is elegantly portrayed through a hollow moment of marital intimacy: Don't look Now, In the Realm of the Senses, Blue Velvet, Taxidermia, Woman of the Dunes, Onibaba, Shame etc etc etc - adult explorations of the complexities of love, desire, intimacy,and sex which, as an adult I don't find in the least bit boring.
5 - Claudette - i hope you are joking when you say 'I suppose a male spectator would always been turned on but we, women, are a lot more sophisticated, we need art and a story! ;-)' poor show indeed. very poor.
6 - and Marlom, you say, 'It's very rare that a story depends on the the actual way that people have sex." what utter nonsense! watch some or all of the films listed above and please rethink...

blah blah blah - perhaps this posting is just some weird friday the 13th joke to make me rant at the prudes out there.

anyway, you did ask what we thought.....

11 years, 7 months ago - Vanessa Bailey

I agree with CXharles, Claudette and Marlom - unless the sex scene advances the plot we're just watching the sex (porn) not the story. We can see the emotions behind the sex without needing the sex spelled out. It's not about being a prude or being narrow-minded or uncreative, it's about putting the story first, not the desire to see the actors naked. We all know sex scenes in film are often written in to provide eye-candy for the viewer. That's what porn is for. But emotionally charged love scenes where we focus on the development between the characters (and not their bodies) well - bring it on! And yes, keep the sheet there! ;P