We live in a paradoxical era: the impression is that the sex is everywhereat the cinema, in series, on social media, in video games and on TV, and yet his representation is increasingly scarce especially on a quantitative level (but much could also be said about the qualitative level). However, these are not simple impressions: a recent article in theEconomistin fact, quotes one study by Stephen Followsa data analyst specializing in the film industry, who has analyzed American films released since the beginning of the century, that is over the last twenty years abundant, finding that the amount of erotic scenes has drastically decreased. Compared to the past, in fact, sexual content on the big screen is dropped by 40%with the percentage of titles featuring no sex scene rising from 20% to 50% over the same period.
It must be said that at the same time, however, the sex scenes themselves became much more explicitjust think about the erect penis of May Decemberto sex in brothels of Poor creatures! or to bloody oral intercourse of Saltburn. The same research shows how, if there has been a decrease in erotic content in Hollywood blockbusters, the level of scenes involving swearing, drugs and violence remained fairly stableindeed, with a slight resurgence of the more violent scenes.
Hypotheses about the reasons
Why this “censorial” tendency only on sex, then? On the one hand it can be explained by the fact that the most popular trends in recent decades, in particular that of cinema comicsis in itself free from explicit moments, while at the same time the sexual experiments have moved, here too in a decidedly more libertine way, into the field of TV series.
But there could also be a more purely generational factor: according to another study conducted in 2023 by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) the much infamous Generation Z it would be in general much less interested in sex, especially its depiction in films and series. 51% of respondents would like to see more representations of on screen platonic or friendly relationships, while 47.5% feel that sex scenes in audiovisual products are often superfluous. Always a search for Playboy of 2023 monitored the films registered on the online database IMDB, arriving at the conclusion that the number of films from 2010 to today that contain sex scenes is the lowest since the 1960s. Very explicit titles released recently, such as Poor creatures! And Saltburn in fact they could represent the beginning of a trend reversal, but for now we have very little sex. At least at the cinema.
