An Education From Movie Sex Scenes 🍿

And the controversy around them.

Aug 16, 2023

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We all have that movie scene that we watched in groups at sleepovers, or wore out on VHS from rewinding so many times, or cringe-ily experienced next to our parents on the couch. Sex scenes have been on my mind this past week and there has been new discourse about them. Ira Sachs’s new film Passages is the latest to receive an NC-17 rating. The scene that triggered the rating was an extended sex scene, and the MPA does not like things that are long. Or hard. The other sex scenes that have spurned much discussion recently are the notably strange scenes in Oppenheimer. He was a genius and a philanderer, but did I really need to experience it? Does the atomic bomb make you horny?

Growing up, I learned a lot about sex from film and TV. I had my sexual awakening when Devon Sawa walked down the stairs in Casper. He makes another appearance on my sexual journey—my friends and I rewound a specific scene in Now and Then to see if he flashed a bit of peen (he likely didn’t). I learned what jizz was when Forrest Gump ruined a bathrobe belonging to Jenny’s roommate. The first sex scene I ever saw in a movie theater was when my friend and I snuck in to see Jerry Maguire (it was rated R). At the beginning of the film, Tom Cruise and Kelly Preston (R.I.P.) have an explosion of Scientology against a bookcase. One of the rare sex scenes to showcase female pleasure, she unabashedly enjoys herself. Cruel Intentions taught me about horny teenagers. Secretary taught me about horny adults.

Every few weeks, there seems to be a new discussion on social media about Gen Z being anti-sex scene. Overall, the younger generation is having less sex. Online critics have described sex scenes as gratuitous and creepy (which some, of course, are). The persistent question seems to be: are sex scenes necessary at all?

In recent years, there has been a reckoning for the way sex scenes have been filmed in the past. Sharon Stone has been public about her experience making Basic Instinct; in 1973, Last Tango in Paris was heralded as a masterpiece, even though the film contained a scene in which actress Maria Schneider was unaware that her co-star Marlon Brando and the director Bernardo Bertolucci had planned to film a sex scene without her consent. We now have intimacy coordinators on set, but the content of old scenes doesn’t always hold up either. The one that sticks out from my childhood was the scene in American Pie when an exchange student is filmed without her consent for public viewing (and we were supposed to think this was funny because she was foreign).

The other element in play is American censorship and a pervasive purity culture (see this piece I wrote a few newsletters ago). In the United States, the MPA severely limits what can be shown in a sex scene unless you want an NC-17 rating. The number of readers I have overseas has grown, so I’ll explain briefly: The MPA is an organization that provides ratings for films. It’s completely voluntary, but films that aren’t rated or have an NC-17 rating might be turned down by theaters. While many films end up on streamers and on demand, a theatrical release is still valuable, especially for marketing. The MPA doesn’t have any listed criteria and the ratings are inconsistent. They are biased against LGBTQ scenes, have come down hard on scenes that show female pleasure, and limit things like nudity and the number of thrusts in scenes. A sex scene with no thrusting? Within these prude guidelines, it’s difficult to show sex with any accuracy.

So between censorship, general awkwardness, and Gen Z disdain for sex scenes, are they still worth it? What qualifies a sex scene as being necessary, and what makes them good? As a filmmaker currently developing new projects, these are questions I’ve been asking myself and my collaborators. The following are the criteria that I’ve developed for myself.

It should go without saying that the actors must feel safe and consent to every single moment that happens in the scene.
When it comes to necessity, the scenes are less gratuitous to me if I learn something about the characters. Even though the Oppenheimer scenes were odd, I saw a different dimension of the character. There’s a lot to learn about people based on the way they get down.
As much as possible, sex scenes should be accurate to the human experience.
It will hopefully bolster the tone of the film. If the film is a dark comedy, can the characters have darkly comedic sex? In an historical epic, can we learn about sexual attitudes of the time and how the characters respond to them?
Sometimes sex scenes can also just be fun and horny. We don’t always have sex in ways that make sense, so does it need to be so serious?

As for censorship, there are moments that squeeze through. When Kelly Preston’s character in Jerry Maguire shouted, “Don’t ever stop f*cking me” in Tom Cruise’s face, something ignited in me. I discovered something about sex that I couldn’t have known as a pre-teen who had never done it. I hope every kid gets to have their horny moment.

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Informal poll: what was the movie or TV sex scene that impacted you the most? Tell me in the comments!

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