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this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2026
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Fuck the plot. The plot is just a framework to hang the parts of the movie I actually care about on. Give me texture. Give me emotion. If there’s a big moment between two characters, let’s sit with it a minute. Make me feel something.
Not saying every movie needs a sex scene, but they shouldn’t need to be excused or justified. The idea that adult viewers are getting squeamish about this is disturbing to me.
I feel like you had your way for a while. Seemingly every movie targeted at vaguely adult audiences needed to have a sex scene in it. For some it was fitting (Anora is the last one that comes to mind), but for the vast majority it just felt so forced. You could almost see that everyone involved in making the movie, from actors to camera operators to the director, didn't really want a sex scene and just had to add it because it would boost movie ticket sales (or more likely blu-ray sales, hopefully people wouldn't be wackin' it in the theaters). Some of those scenes were so out-of-tune and out-of-pallet from the rest of the movie, it completely shattered the suspension of disbelief, reminding me that it is really just a bunch of scenes spliced together rather than a believable story or a self-contained experience.
In this case, since it's literally a movie about fucking, a few explicit sex scenes are in order. But overall I think it's good, at least for the art of moviemaking, that the pendulum is swinging the other way.
That’s a reasonable position. The movie industry has definitely been weird about sex in a lot of ways, especially with regard to the women in front of the camera.
But I’m really not advocating that we need some particular quota of sex scenes in our media, I’m more disturbed by the reason that number is decreasing. It’s not because the creatives making these movies are pushing for it. In this case the director was forced to cut out his sex scenes because the test audiences immediately started squirming in their seats like a bunch of school kids. To me that seems like an extremely unhealthy relationship with sex. And that’s in line with a general trend I’m sensing of the world getting increasingly prudish and puritanical.
Doesn’t help that the other two responses I got here are acting like I should be self flagellating for enjoying Pillion last week.
If you want to watch porn, you know where to find it. There's no reason why people who sit down to watch a movie should be surprised to find out one of its scenes is literally porn.
If you need to use nudity to make your audience feel something, then you're a shit director and need to quit your job and transfer to the porn industry.
And if you require nudity in order to feel emotion then you're probably a porn addict and should get therapy.
Sure they do. Seeing 2 people nude up and simulate motion isn't texture, it's carnal gratification no different than porn. You can dress it up as art or meaning or whatever that makes you ignore the fact that you want to see sex.
You know how I know I'm right? Where are the sex scenes with ugly and fat people in them?
It absolutely can be texture. Have you seen a History of Violence? The film has two sex scenes, and they're crucial to the tone of the film, the characterization of the protagonist, and the narrative tension of a marriage in crisis. Would the film work without those scenes? Maybe, but it's a much tougher sell to understand Viggo Mortensen's character and emotional journey without them.
As for fat and ugly people not having sex scenes, that's a selection bias. Most celebrities are not fat or ugly. The few celebrities that are may also be self conscious and unwilling to do such scenes. But they definitely happen. Off the top of my head, Kathy Bates and Woody Harrelson have both done sex scenes despite not being conventionally attractive.
There are plenty of things that are just in movies for the spectacle and excitement. Explosions, car chases. Surely we shouldn't ban all of them.
Like, I get where people who don't want to see sex scenes are coming from, but this is a movie literally about sex. There are plenty of Disney movies you can watch, let me have some sexiness here!