Generally, gratuitous sex and nudity doesn't add anything to a show or movie. This isn't the 80s and 90s. No one needs to see Revenge of the Nerds to see boobs. Nothing about 9 1/2 Weeks is particularly transgressive these days. If you want to see a naked woman or sex, there's the big internet machine. These days in movies and tv, it's distracting from the larger story. People aren't going to tune into a movie or show just because Jennifer Lawrence or whoever is showing some flesh.

Plus I think there's been a lot of pushback from actors. The scene really does need to be necessary. And most really aren't. GOT was pretty licentious at first. But as soon as the cast had the power, all those nude scenes were gone. There was the walk of shame episode, but that was a body double. Actors are not doing scenes like that lightly.

I needed a new show. So put on the first episode of White Lotus. I kind of checked out when a character was worried about his balls. I don't need those visuals when I'm looking for some mindless entertainment at the end of the day. Didn't get to the second episode. And I think that's pretty normal. People watch shows and movies for the story. Obviously attractiveness is important. But they're not investing a couple of hours for close up zooms of genitalia.

Anonymous wrote:For some time, it seems like there’s also a lot of gratuitous lesbian sex scenes. I have nothing against lesbians or sex scenes, but, by watching movies and tv, you’d think all women are having hot sex with one another. You never see that with gay men.

No one wants to see men sucking each other off of putting it in a butt

Anonymous wrote:Do you think we’ll ever get to a place where this becomes unpopular? Are the days of Showgirl behind us (hopefully)?

I don’t think Julia Roberts or Meryl Streep have done nude scenes in their careers. Anyone else? I know that Penn Badgely has been vocal about his request to minimize nudity on his show.

I think we need more male actors to speak up. I’m not against nudity but there are too many films with unnecessary nude scenes. Seems like a lot of pressure for an actress and a clear power imbalance.

Doesn’t matter now that AI can make anyone look nood.

And also why are you such a prude.

Anonymous wrote:I actually don’t see a lot of nudity anymore in film. It used to be much more common…91/2 weeks etc.


OMG

'
OMG no. it's everywhere. Look at Oppenheimer! Even my young adult kids thought that creepy sex stuff at the examination table was so unncessary. And every single time we try out a new netflix series there is sex in the first eight minutes. I'm done with it[b]

It’s fine where it makes sense and you’re expecting it. That one random nude scene 4 episodes into the Gilded Age where there had been none before that and none after? Unnecessary.

Anonymous wrote:
You ARE seeing less in recent movies and television shows, OP; it's not in your imagination that there's less nudity and less sex.

The younger generation (13-24 in this study) wants to see LESS sex in TV and film. Interesting study here:
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/25/1208435267/sex-teens-tv-movies
This got covered fairly broadly, not just by NPR, so if you don't like NPR, this study (done by UCLA) was covered elsewhere too. (I know, nudity is not equivalent to sex, but the study talked about sex.)

If young adults up to 24 (in the study) want to see less sex, I'd wager that the same is probably true among older 20-somethings. I agree, OP, that the 80s-90s TV shows -- network and especially cable--had lots more skin showing than we'd see now in many shows, except certain streaming shows designed to be extremely sexual. And some recent streaming series that were promoted on the fact they were sexually explicit ended up flopping big-time. For instance, "The Idol" and "Obsession" were both promoted hard as series with plently of explicit sex and both got trashed by critics, in part for what sounded like the overuse of explicit sex and what many felt to be disturbingly violent sex. Basing plots around sex and showing it explicitly doesn't seem to be sitting well with viewers or critics, I think.

It's worth noting that what teens and young adults wanted to see instead of sex and nudity is

Well what can we do about this??? This cannot allow this to continue...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you think we’ll ever get to a place where this becomes unpopular? Are the days of Showgirl behind us (hopefully)?

I don’t think Julia Roberts or Meryl Streep have done nude scenes in their careers. Anyone else? I know that Penn Badgely has been vocal about his request to minimize nudity on his show.

I think we need more male actors to speak up. I’m not against nudity but there are too many films with unnecessary nude scenes. Seems like a lot of pressure for an actress and a clear power imbalance.

Doubtful. Absent some modern day Great Awakening, our culture will continue slide downward and demand for excessive titillation increases.

Maybe go back and look at the post about the survey of 13 to 24 year olds, PP. They say they want to see less of romantic storylines overall, and definitely want less sex on screen. So this may not be the ongoing downward slide you predict.

Anonymous wrote:Do you think we’ll ever get to a place where this becomes unpopular? Are the days of Showgirl behind us (hopefully)?

I don’t think Julia Roberts or Meryl Streep have done nude scenes in their careers. Anyone else? I know that Penn Badgely has been vocal about his request to minimize nudity on his show.

I think we need more male actors to speak up. I’m not against nudity but there are too many films with unnecessary nude scenes. Seems like a lot of pressure for an actress and a clear power imbalance.

Doubtful. Absent some modern day Great Awakening, our culture will continue slide downward and demand for excessive titillation increases.

Anonymous wrote:I don't know about less nudity or less sex. Recently I watched Oppenheimer with its entirely gratuitous sex scenes, Designated Survivor with its entirely gratuitous gay sex scene, and The Diplomat with its entirely gratuitous nudity.

If I wanted nudity and sex scenes, I would pick the genre dedicated to that. I'm not actually interested in seeing that stuff in more intellectual offerings. It kills the vibe, for me, and it means I can't show interesting plot lines to my kids, who have the bandwidth to appreciate such movies or shows, but aren't old enough to watch sexual content. It's annoying.

Agree about Oppenheimer. The sex scenes, the nudity and esp the interrogation scene were all gratuitous. I couldn’t figure out why the director made these choices.

Re: violence against women in film/tv. How many seasons has L&O been on tv?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I’ve been watching late 90’s movies lately and it was nearly every film. I was thinking it’s maybe shifted recently. Wanted to see if others get that sense as well. I’m sure it still happens from time to time.

Yeah it was gratuitous in the 80s and 90s, and then there was pushback from evangelicals/parent groups, which put pressure on Hollywood. The rating system changed and now a movie would have to be NC-17 if it has certain levels of nudity, which hurts box office attendance. So needless to say, film makers avoid a lot of nudity now.

We can't let the evangelicals win. Demand more nudity in film!

Internet porn is what led to less nudity in mainstream movies.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I’ve been watching late 90’s movies lately and it was nearly every film. I was thinking it’s maybe shifted recently. Wanted to see if others get that sense as well. I’m sure it still happens from time to time.

You: "Do you think we'll ever get to a point where there is less nudity in film?
Also you: "I'm watching movies from 25 years ago."

I think that film audiences used to be titillated by nudity a lot more than they are now. It's not socially taboo now to have nudity as much as it was in the 1900s (as my teenager calls them). Honestly, my issue is less about the nudity and more about the extent to which violence against women is a plot point for a lot of media. This has always been true, but there was definitely a time when it was sanitized in mainstream movies. Then you have TV like Game of Thrones and its sh*tty sequel series that the theme of which is basically "violence against women." That some of those women were also naked was a lot less upsetting than literally every other aspect of the scenes.

Ha! +1

Definitely much less prevalent than in 80s and 90s
There used to just be random scenes of gratuitous nudity (mostly bare boobs) for no reason whatsoever (e.g., sixteen candles, airplane)—just to get an R rating

+1 Movies wanted the R rating so people knew they were for adults and not kids. The addition of PG-13 complicated this.

How else can THEY corrupt youth if they don't brainwash them with the god of sex drugs rock and roll rap and women that are really men ?

That's why so many movies show titties. Men wearing their jewelry and proudly showing them off HOPING you do the same so you can be raped by power and control real men. Titillating youth in their nether region has always been profitable so why change that now ? They can abort the mistake and the elite gets to eat.