Gen Z is turned off by onscreen sex, a new study finds. Those born between 1997 and 2012 apparently prefer to see platonic relationships in film and TV.
Who wants to watch softcore nonsense involving people doing things that are not how sex actually works? Gen Z is first gen to come of age when porn is prolific. Mainstream film can't compete with step siblings getting stuck on the interwebs.
Millennial here. I've always found random sex scenes obnoxious. It completely kills the pacing and pulls me out of the story. If you need sex for character development, you can much more easily allude to it and move on. The only time I can think of when it actually made sense for the story was in the movie Her and it was such a mild scene that didn't have any visuals.
I'm not Gen Z and I hate the damn sex scenes. There was a minute there where netflix would just add one within 15 mins of every show or movie, even if they never showed another one again. It never added to the plot and seemed like it was just there to reel people in. But, it was obnoxious.
Glad they sort of stopped that, although I still find it happens now and again. Hopefully this puts the nail in the coffin.
Am a millennial. Sex scenes in movies should follow a simple formula: don’t do sex scenes, or do real sex scenes.
All that softcore, sex under the sheets while wearing a bra nonsense only serves to make watching it with family a bit awkward. Either make it a movie that stands on its own, or make a movie where I can actually watch celebrity people fuck in full explicitness.
Make it porn or not, both is fine, but don’t try to appeal to both sides. That’s just awkward and frustrating to either
Porn is porn, I’ll watch that when I want in private. If I’m watching a movie/tv show, I’m watching it for the content, for the storyline or whatever, adding shitty softcore porn to it just dilutes it and makes it unwatchable around friends/family. One of my gripes with Game of Thrones (not high compared to everything else wrong with it) was all the shitty sex scenes they added, which required them to cut out even more content than before. With only ~10 hours per season, they didn’t have alot of time to dick around, but they spent alot of time… dickin’ around.
Unless you're watching a romance movie there's almost zero point to have a romance plotline.
Pretty tired of the horror movies and action movies that just randomly throw in some love triangle or romance plot to try and make the actual plot more exciting, even though most of the time it makes no sense.
Most movie sex scenes are terrible. They fail as both pornography and as literary devices.
When you put a sex scene, or any other scene in a movie it has to serve some purpose. It can move the plot along, it can show the characters emotions or it can just be there for titillation. If it's just there because someone thinks that the main characters are supposed to smash, it's dumb.
I remember that when we rented "Basic Instinct" you knew how often people re-watched the interrogation scene because the old VHS tapes would get worn at that spot and you could see the screen artifacts.
Two things made that worth watching. The whole movie was about sex so it made sense, both in the movie and for the character. The way to get porn at the time was to walk into a store and buy a magazine. And Sharon Stone was hot, OK 3 reasons.
There absolutely are movies where the sex scenes make sense and are important. David Kronenberg's "Crash" and Kimberly Peirce's "Boys Don't Cry", would have been weird if they didn't include the sex scenes or just left them implied.
The sex scene in, "Team America: World Police", worked because it was a satire of sex scenes in movies.
Pornhub works because their scenes are very explicit.
When you have a boring, unironic, semi-artistic sex scene in a movie that's not otherwise about sex, it's just a distraction.
I want romance in my romance and rom-coms. I do not want it in my action, thriller, history, sci-fi, fantasy, comedy, or biographical movies. Unless, and this is key, unless it legitimately adds to the movie.
I feel that the title of the article is misleading, as the poll in the article shows that Gen Z are turned off by gratuitous sex scenes that are not relevant to the plot, and not Gen Z suddenly turning into evangelical prudes. What they wanted is not the unrealistic, lazy, paint-by-number relationships as commonly depicted to stir controversy to drive engagement(a very cynical approach, I might add), but a full spectrum of different types of relationships good and bad, authentic in their depiction and sincere in their on-screen expression.
Note that the sincerity of expression doesn't mean that the relationship depicted has to be good, or even genuine. For example, the sex scenes in "The Wolf of Wall Street" (you're welcome, by the way) are important because they highlight that between Jordan and Naomi, there is nothing between the two besides money and sex, it's shallow, materialistic, two selfish, toxic people using the other to get what they want, without which they can't stand each other, in stark contrast with the genuine parental love that Naomi felt for her children, and it is the resolution of said contradiction which contributed to Jordan Belfort's downfall.
How does Gen Z feel about nudity in films? Either nudity that fits the scene and feels logical or nudity just for fan service?
I'm cool if your just not a fan of shoe horned in and cringey sex scenes, but lots of younger folks come off as weirdly puritanically prudish to me. Why are we so much more comfortable with casual violence than casual nudity? That bothers me.
First of all. Are there any stories without sex/romance? I personally would love the occasional platonic story. About people who aren't all trying to get in eachothers pants.
I'm not Gen Z (Millenial) but I do get tired of being bombarded with sex, making out, etc. If it's done well and integral to the plot, then it's fine. But honestly less is more. Do I really need a camera to closeup pan the full length of someone's naked body to realize what's going on? After a while it just gets weird, like I am legit waching porn here, am I supposed to be aroused?
The other problem is how flawless they look. I wouldn't mind seeing some real, average looking people for a change. Hold hands or awkwardly kiss after knowing eachother a few months or years, not like "oh hi we just met and it's the two of us alone how convenient hehe guess there's nothing left to do but use our perfect bodies for totally fake sex".
Has anyone ever had sex and thought afterwards, wow that was just like TV/movies/whatever? In my experience it's both more awkward and way hotter. They're not going to script all the little things we enjoy in reality...
Actually I think they have the same problem with it we Millennials do, and that we don't find it Charming when a guy acts like a total creep and is rewarded for it because the movie was written by total creeps. Or if our lead is a woman, I'm tired of hearing about how successful and fulfilled she is with her brilliant career that no one takes seriously, because she hasn't found the right man yet, but then she does and discovers that all of her problems are solved by his penis. Because those movies are also made by creeps
Somehow gen z’s early exposure to porn has made them more prudish than the religious. Literally. I’ve Seen so many posts on Reddit and had real life conversations with gen z people where they’ve said that they hate when couples publicly say their trying for a baby because it means they’re being “creampied” and that’s awkward for them.
Oppenheimer: A man intertwined with US nuclear policy, both when creating the first nuke, and during the cold war. Political intrigue mixed with science!
This is definitely a cultural prudishness emerging. But that's only part of it. There has also been a shift away from artistic filmmaking and toward high-grossing tentpole movies. Because nudity is a taboo in our society, you need an artistic purpose to the nudity (or sex scene) in the film or it won't serve any purpose to the film, and people will notice that it's out of place. If most of the movies you have are cookie-cutter concept movies with little to no artistic expression, you just can't make anything taboo work in them.
Obviously everyone has different taste in movies, but some films that made on-screen sex work really well are Basic Instinct, Blue Velvet, and Eyes Wide Shut. It also adds a lot to really campy movies. Nightmare on Elm Street comes to mind. Species became a cult classic because of its use of nudity and sex. For just plain nudity, It Follows used it well in the briefest of glimpses of the antagonist. It also added a lot to Ex Machina.
Those are just the movies off the top of my head that were made more impactful by sex and nudity.
Oh! Airplane also has a big laugh thanks to a scene of gratuitous nudity. Let's not forget the comedies!
Everyone is saying sex scenes aren't needed. I present my evidence that sex scenes are needed: Office Space
The sex scene shows that Peter is paranoid and deeply uncomfortable with the fact that his girlfriend, Joanna had sex with his boss. A fact that Peter heard as a rumour from a horny co-worker. Lumbergh would never talk about their sex life at work as that would inappropriate as a manager.
The scene also shows how Peter see Lumbergh as a person. It also sets up for the conflict between Peter and Joanna as Peter acts on his nightmare like a child.
Granted the scene is extremely soft core and played for laughs. However, I think the movie would be a little weaker if Peter had gone to to the office the next day and told everyone about the nightmare without showing it. Yes, you could cut out the scene as the party scene sets everything up for the future conflict. The sex scene shows how deeply uncomfortable Peter is with the situation. It's truly a scene that does "Show, Don't Tell".
I'm a horny af millennial and I also don't really care for sex scenes. They add nothing to the story itself, and they don't show enough to be sexy. If you're not going to show full penetration then don't even bother.
The problem is many filmmakers use romance/relationships/gender/identity as a filler that really doesn’t add to the story. This is compounded when it feels more like pandering to an audience.
It never bothered me as a kid, but now for some reason I get triggered by the way Hollywood portrays romance. Why is everyone such a HUGE slut? It's such a huge turn off. It is actually really hard to find a film that portrays a healthy loving monogamous relationship.
I’m gen x and find that this transition started happening earlier. Once online smut was accessible in early 90’s, what little sex shown on the silver screen became less sought after and just became something we had to sit through awkwardly with family.
I just hate the wet noises that accompany it. Same thing with kissing scenes where they have a shotgun mic basically inside their mouths. It drives my sensory issues up a wall.
Different times. When I was growing up, a sex scene in a movie might be one of very few opportunities where you got to see a pair of boobs, unless you could get someone to buy you a porno magazine or VHS tape. These days, there are probably millions of options in this area, instantly accessible. And Hollywood-produced nude/sex scenes are all going to be fake and cringy in comparison.
Lots of people in here talking about how sex scenes suck, and they’re right. But I think we should also consider this: decades of focus on abstinence education and evolving parental and institutional surveillance has been successful at making young people have less sex. And now the olds, having achieved their mission, are confused about why the kids are having less sex and making less babies and the media they are creating and consuming is reflecting that.
Apparently I'm the only one that likes being titillated by movies. I don't get the "it adds nothing to the plot" complaint. Tons of movies have action scenes and gratuitous violence that add nothing to the plot, yet i don't see complaints about that. 90% of John Wick is gratuitous violence that added nothing to the plot, but I still love it.
I think this says more about American prudishness and people's unhealthy attitudes towards sex than anything.
Bunch of unnecessary death? Cool and fun! An unnecessary titty? Awkward and gratuitous.
Fuck all of you. I want more nudity and sex in my movies and the comparative lack of it compared to the 80s and 90s feels like we're going out of our way to exclude a huge part of life from art because it makes the prudes out there uncomfortable. But those same people are happy to watch nameless dudes get creatively and graphically killed for half a movie's run time.
I want more gratuitous sex and less gratuitous moral pandering
This seems unlikely considering the massive number of popular teen romance shows happening, such as Heartstopper. It's just that any sex scenes need to have actual depth behind them when they happen, not just random sex out of nowhere.
I'd personally prefer that if they aren't allowed to show it they not bother. All this does is make watching with family uncomfortable or possibly if your aware of the scene beforehand prevent watching it with family at all.
Assuming i'm not trying to watch it with family I prefer my content uncensored, like they can say fuck if they want to or fuck if they want or actually be seen nude after a shower instead being censored in some form.
Even when I am watching things with family i'd prefer they just not did things they'd have to censor than taint it with censorship.
Y'all need to go fuck some more. Films like La La Land are really missing something without a sex scene, the chemistry feels really fake and the relationship isn't believable.
Sex is normal. Sex is good. Sex in films is necessary to convey intensity which a pan from bed shot can never achieve.
Great example: Terminator. Without this scene the whole franchise fails. The film doesn't have the gravitas when John does die without it. And it's a highly charged emotional reaction to the harrowing events they have both just been through.
As someone on the far older end of gen Z or the far younger end of millenial, depending on where you draw the line:
I hate sex scenes. I have some personal issues however that may affect my judgment. Trauma and such. Don't wanna see sex unless I was fully mentally prepared for it, which I just can't be if it's shoved into some random movie, regardless of if you warn me in advance.
It might seem odd, but I wonder if the almost unavoidable overexposure to porn from a very young age elicits a similar response in a lot of younger people. The fact that for a lot of your life, sex is a forbidden thing you have to sneak around to indulge in, and which the one form you have exposure to, porn, carries the risk of addiction. It seems like it'd leave an impression on your mind that it's a scary thing you have to hide, which I could see eliciting some kind of trauma response when suddenly it's everywhere and you're still stuck feeling like you have to hide it.
I’m just sick of hollywood shoehorning a romance into every story. Not every story needs a romance, and most of the romances in movies are cliche and unnecessary.
Gen x, i think, here. Sex alone does nothing for me. Nudity does nothing. I'm attracted more to people, subtlety, long, slow seductions.
Most sex I see in tv, movies, is ridiculous. Like, 2 people have been flirting for weeks. One day, chance meeting, they kiss. RIGHT THEN, right after the first kiss, they immediately start taking their clothes off.
Seriously, who does that?
Some of the best sex can be if you have your clothes on.
Also, too many fantasy TV shows have characters who can't touch other people cuz demon in them, physically touching someone means they'll lose control, whatever. So they go around miserable, horny, unrequited love and all that. Which to me shows failure of imagination. Sex can be imaginative, creative, so much variety, possibility. Phone sex, mutual self masturbation, why not work those options into the plot?
But no, in movies and TV, its almost always: kiss, clothes come right off, completely naked, always in a bed, orgasm in 5 minutes. Real life is way more complex than that.
I have a standing wager with my friends that there has never been a filmed or written sex scene that needed to be included in the media. Talk about it, allude to it, show the ramifications of it, but there has never been one that needed to be there. Sex scenes are there to sell TnA, not to move the plot forward.
For an example of a close call. In A History of Violence, Viggo rapes his wife. This is about as close as you could come to a needed scene because it shows a wild character development, but if you were to cut the scene out entirely, you'd still get all of the character development that he gets from the scene, anyway, rendering it useless.
A Boomer here, and I'm finding these comments to be very interesting--mostly because I'm realizing I agree in many cases! Far from prudish, just last night I fast-forwarded past the sex scenes in the first episode of a new streamer series. "Yeah, yeah, I get it...you're hot for each other. Can we move it along, please?"
I'm the gen that saw couples having sex butt-naked on the kitchen counter in a random movie at 3-4 in the afternoon. And all i remember now of that movie is that i don't like seeing guys butts.
Sounds good to me and I'm a couple letters behind Gen Z. Either the scenes don't do anything for me, in which case they're boring, or they do something for me, in which case...what do I do when it's over? Do I pause and go take care of it, or sit there all hot and bothered while somebody talks about business stuff or getting the bad guys or whatever? Either way it's annoying. And I'm no prude, it's just, if I want to see sex I'll just watch porn. But I'm not watching porn, I'm trying to watch a story. IDK. It's like if the mall decided every store needed a stripper pole.
I'm with Gen Z on this. Hell, I've have been complaining about this since I was a kid in the 80s. You do not need every damn relationship to be a romance. People can be friends and acquaintances and frienemies and enemies and everything in-between without there being romance or sex.
I hate sex scenes in movies. By far the worst sex scene I've seen was sthe end of Sausage Party. I felt physically ill from it. I watched the movie with my parents and they thought my disgust was hilarious. Now I rarely watch movies other than superhero movies with them.
strange, I thought it was aimed at them, hence the shitty Netflix billboard that I am impossible to scroll with my kids around and tbh, I feel also this shit as an aggression, like ads.
There are three things that should never be shown in media because it's completely unnecessary and all three can be directly implied without showing any real detail of them.
These three things are: Sex, vomiting, going to the bathroom.
All three of these can be relayed to the viewer without actually showing them but it seems like they're shown all the time and it's infuriating.
Weird. I'm a millennial. I tend to enjoy the movies and shows with more sex scenes. I thought GoT was better when there were more sex scenes (that's probably not the reason it was entertaining, but it coincided). I find most PG-13 movies uninteresting, like all the superhero crap (except Deadpool, Super, and The Boys). Though, IDK WTF Bridgerton is, but that looks boring as hell. And Euphoria seems kinda sus (since the characters are supposed to be children).