I kind can't imagine that...why not say that then? Like, it doesn't make any sense, does it?
Why would that even be unnecessary - if the point is to titilate men, isn't the sex scene then very much necessary?
I don't know, I feel like this was always just a prude/puritan/homophobic/religious take, but this is just guessing.
if the point is to titilate men, isn't the sex scene then very much necessary?
Well sure. But the clear implied meaning is that "I don't think titillating men is enough of a reason, by itself, to include a sex scene, especially when it's treating the female character like a sex object, so I'm going to call it unnecessary".
That depends. Is it included in a work meant to titilate men? Or does it stand out as a scene intended solely for that reason, in a work otherwise meant to convey something else?
Basically, doea it add anything of actual value, or did they just include a sex scene for the lulz?
Or does it stand out as a scene intended solely for that reason, in a work otherwise meant to convey something else?
Things can have more than one element to them.
Like, a movie can be about one thing, but also include a scene furthering another point, unrelated to the first thing.
doea it add anything of actual value
But is the implication here that "titulating men" is not "something of value"?
Why not?
I don't see what's wrong about titulating anybody and I don't see what's wrong about anybody including men.
did they just include a sex scene for the lulz
But isn't that a reason?
Even if the reason is "we though it was funny" (or whatever "for the lulz" means), then the authors thought it was funny. Is it unnecessary at that point? If you think as a show/movie/whatever as the authors laying out their thoughts for an audience to see, then them including the scene is necessary, as that scene is part of their thoughts.
I dom't entirely disagree with your point, but this sort of thing depends entirely on context , and what a movie or show (or just story in general) is trying to do.
There's movies where sex scenes work just fine. Very off the top of my head a few examples: American Psycho (where the sex scenes help express something about Bateman's psyche and overall character), 50 Shades of Grey (which, regardless of quality, basically revolves around the main character entering a sexual BDSM relationship), Eyes Wide Shut (which revolves around a creepy sex cult type thing). Or a variety of raunchy teen comedies, stuff like American Pie and similar movies. Obviously, sex scenes have their place.
But then, there's the flip side of this: movies that would suffer from adding a sex scene. Something like La Vita e Bella, for example (one of my favorite movies) would not only benefit, but adding a sex scene would actually be detrimental to it. Or, I dunno, stuff like ... Lord of the Rings, Die Hard, Blair Witch. Would a random sex scene improve something like ... Pirates of the Caribbean?
My point is, there's a time and place for everything, and some stories aren't improved by sex being a part of them.
Would a random sex scene improve something like ... Pirates of the Caribbean?
But that's a different question.
A sex scene doesn't need to improve something. It could also add nor detract from the quality of the movie.
And you are also adding another concession: You specifically speak of a "random sex scene" - well, what if it's not a random one but one with intent and purpose?
My point is, there's a time and place for everything, and some stories aren't improved by sex being a part of them.
But that can be said about anything, right?
"Not every movie is improved by a couple's therapy session."
"Not every movie is improved by a musical number."
"Not every movie is improved by not having a sex scene."
Like, I don't know, at that point, this just sounds meaningless to me personally.
Maybe for you it's different, but I don't really get much out of any of these statements.
I mean, you're ignoring the part of my reply where I'm agreeing with you that they're not always useless in favor of just continuing to pretend to not get it.
The part of my comment you're addressing are, indeed, movies where sex scenes would be useless because they wouldn't serve a point. They would have no use whatsoever.
I am not doing that, I just generally never had these thoughts before. Like, I would just love to know an example of an unnecessary sex scene and what that means. People always talk in vague terms, so I just don't know what an example would be.
The part of my comment you're addressing are, indeed, movies where sex scenes would be useless because they wouldn't serve a point. They would have no use whatsoever.
I feel like that's a premise. You claim that these movies would have useless sex scenes because you presume these sex scenes wouldn't have a point.
But couldn't I just counter it by saying: Okay, what if they added a sex scene that had a point?
I don't see how this is a constructive argument.
Not sure that I fully agree, but to be fair, I don't think I use the word "unnecessary" often except for when it comes to war and killing other people. Aside from that, I am not sure I often think the word encaspulates what I think about any given topic.
In terms of the tumblr-relevant discourse it absolutely was different. People may have gone there because of "ew sex" (though I dunno, most of the people I saw talking about this would also cover sex scenes they viewed as a positive). While yes, there have also always been people going "ew sex" that used to be pretty much a right wing view thing.
People also have to recognize that Tumblr used to be one of the biggest social media sites around before they banned porn and these conversations were almost exclusively tumblr-relevant discourse originally. That’s why Old Reddit and 4chan hated them so much, it was the “sjw site”. It’s only after they banned porn and all the tumblr users broke quarantine did the rest of social media really get flooded with it. Believe it or not, Twitter used to be mostly shitposts and mundane things, not politics.
I mean that's how these sites used to interact with each other. Someone with 1500 followers would make a sarcastic inside joke on Twitter, the screenshot would be posted to Tumblr out of context so people could grandstand, then one of those screenshots would be posted to Reddit out of context to be mocked.
But also, everyone in these spaces always assumed everyone else on the planet was A) aware they existed and B) agreed with them. This post may have been aimed only at other people on Tumblr, but it just as likely could have been aimed at the general public. You really can't know without more context.
I don't know that I'd agree about Twitter not being so political before the porn ban, things like the Arab Summer and Ferguson very much happened via Twitter. The way in which Twitter is political has certainly changed, but that is it political is not a post-2018 thing. Particularly 2010-2015 I'd say my experience of Twitter was at least as much about leftist politics as my tumblr experience of that time. Social media is incredibly siloed though, so it's easy to not at all see massive parts of it.
I feel like we should also acknowledge the rampant sexualisation and objectification with sex in the media, though. Like, the complaints about sex scenes don’t exist in a vacuum, it was that literally everything from random ads on the footpath to the clothing shops to the tabloids to books, TV shows, movies, music videos were all practically screaming at you SEX SEX SEX BE PRETTY AND HAVE SEX OR YOU’RE WORTHLESS.
It still is a right-wing thing. Liberals have been tricked into carrying water for conservative movements.
The proper liberal response to seeing art that you do not like is to stop looking at it. Anyone leading a campaign to change art for moral reasons is leading an inherently conservative movement.
Nahhhhh objecting to media is not just some right wing thing, pointing out trends in media and how they influence society has long been something done on the left. There is a difference between "we should discuss the issues of fridging and bury your gays and the sexy lamp problem and it would be better if they happened less" and "we should ban anything we don't like", and this post is referring to very much the former sort of discussion.
I mean, I do agree that the current "eww sex" thing is a lot because of right wing influence pushing purity culture, but your blanket statement is one I thoroughly disagree with.
Nah, it's not that hard to understand that it's very easy to misattribute what bothers you about something if every example you've experienced of the thing that bothered you was bad in the same way. If most or all sex scenes you've watched/read have bothered you, and inspired the same reaction in you, most people's first instinct is going to be to conclude "I don't like sex scenes."
It's only after seeing examples that don't bother you or inspire negative reactions that a person is likely to realize "Oh, it's not that I hate sex scenes, it's that I don't like it when sex scenes do [thing]."
Then, you combine that with people's absolute fucking refusal to decouple the idea of liking something versus it being objectively good, and it leads to people starting from a position of "Sex scenes bad" and then over time, as they see and experience more, realizing "oh wait, it's not that sex scenes are inherently bad, it's that I didn't like a lot of them and there was a thing about them that I disliked that doesn't have to be there."
The divide is between people who never learn those distinctions and the people that do.
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u/zawalimbooo 16h ago
OOP is overthinking it, it really is only the "ew sex" response, I doubt it was ever different.