The titillation of sex: Industry exploits Americans’ puritanical view of love and relationships

It is hard to find an article in the entertainment section that is of more substantial content than what kind of trouble Michael Jackson is in, or how Hilary Swank had a run-in with New Zealand authorities for “bearing forbidden fruit,” but an article from CNN.com while I was searching the Internet caught my eye.

This article articulated what I had been aware of for quite a while – America’s entertainment industry is such where nearly everything that is bought and sold is pushed through the titillation of sex.

I remember watching a commercial for Uncle Ben’s microwavable rice and wondering why it had anything to do with two young adults making out in a kitchen. However, confronted with the true intimacy and reality of sex, it is made clear how shallow – or backwards – Americans’ views on sexual intimacy really are.

The CNN article started by naming a few of the movies which dealt seriously with sexual intimacy in regard to relationships, and all of them proved to be “box-office casualties.” It is also ironic that the NC-17 rated documentary, “Inside Deep Throat,” has only made $500,000 to date, while the pornography that has been influenced and inspired by the original 1972 porn film is available to the public and is consumed wholeheartedly in its multi-billion dollar industry.

I believe writer-director Bill Condon said it best in the article when he said, “the actual idea of talking about sex makes a lot of people nervous, no question.”

How could this have happened? Was not America supposed to the leader of not only the free world, but also the leader in modern Western forward thinking? Have the 1970s taught us nothing? America has always been at the forefront of innovativeness, whether it in economy, technology or sociology.

There was a time when the British snuffed their noses at us for being too “vulgar” in our views on sexuality. Now it seems the tides have turned – it is not America who is at the forefront of progressive sexuality, but the European nations. Yes, even Britain is more promiscuous in their ideas about sexuality and intimacy than America.

It is as if Americans have begun to hide from the prospect of talking seriously about sexuality. They hide from it by reducing it to mere slapstick humor, crude jokes and wet tee-shirts in entertainment and the media. Popular movies with this theme include “There’s Something About Mary,” “American Pie” and “Road Trip.” Spike TV also comes to mind.

Don’t get me wrong; sexual humor can actually raise my spirits when I need a break or when I am down. Producer Peter Guber says in the article, “If you spell fun, it sells. Sex inside a comedy candy-coats sex and allows the audience to feel comfortable. Laughter covers up insecurity.”

However, to view sex only in terms of shallow vulgarity damages an individual in the long run. How can someone who only attributes candy-coated insecurity to sexuality truly take sex and intimacy seriously? If films can be sexy but – again from the article – “can’t portray the sexual intimacy most people crave,” what kind of distressing social disorder are we brewing for ourselves?

I see this tendency to shy away from sexual topics everyday. Even when friends get together and live up the good times by joking around, everyone has that awkward silence moment when they wonder if they should actually mention something sexually-related, not to mention intimacy-related. You might call it manners, but they are a far cry away from what we’d like to talk about judging by the entertainment we watch.

I would call it a discrepancy between what

See HOLDER, Page 15

HOLDER, from page 14

we say and what we really are thinking because – let’s face it – unless those researchers are wrong, we have sex on the brain almost nonstop.

These same researches have said that men on average think about sex nearly once every 6-15 seconds. Women, on the other hand, think about sex less, but with more time duration. So why this constant involuntary need to think about the one thing we’d dare not discuss, nor indulge our vulnerable sides in other than humor or in shallow regard? Why are Americans so uncomfortable to be confronted with sexuality? Is it the current resurgence in religious moral obligation? Have our Puritanical roots taken effect?

The CNN article stated that sex these days is in the home. “In the privacy of your own home, you can see all the racy material you want in ‘Sex in the City,’ ‘The L Word,’ ‘Queer as Folk,’ ‘Deadwood’ and ‘Desperate Housewives.'”

From this it is easy to gather that most of the public aren’t comfortable with being seen at a movie with serious adult themes. There is a fear of running into the people who make an influence in your life: children, neighbors, and co-workers. How embarrassing would it be to run into your boss when you are at the movie complex to see “Inside Deep Throat?” Or even worse, to run into that “nice old neighbor lady” at the complex?

This is why most movie audiences shy away from that possibility and why most films of that same genre do poorly economically. In addition, much of the business in movie audiences is the 13-28 demographic who are regulars on the weekends. R-rated and NC-17 rated movies would never get the needed exposure from the coveted teen and young adult group.

It is interesting to contrast the amount of violence that is permitted in entertainment in comparison to sex. I remember seeing XXX and being shocked at the amount of violence in that action-adventure flick, especially since it was a PG-13 movie. There is much dialogue about how violent media is affecting the young American generation, but nothing gets more fervent discussion than the issue of sex and its effect on young children and teenagers.

It reminds me of the South Park episode where the main characters found martial arts weapons and spent the entire episode playing with them, slicing off appendages and eventually killing some people. At the end it was all fun and games until Cartman, who through some freak accident thought he was a Taiwanese prostitute, showed up on a stage naked in front of an audience of adults. The ending line to the episode went something along the lines of “it’s all fine until children and sex get involved.”

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, movies were abound with sexual liaisons. Today, we are lucky to get an entire sex scene. The most recent movie I can think of that actually had a well-developed sex scene was in “The Matrix: Reloaded” between Neo and Trinity. In “Team America,” the marionette-filled movie abound with political satire, was almost given an NC-17 rating when the creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone wanted to put a puppet sex scene in.

This causes me to wonder, “What are people thinking? They’re puppets, for crying out loud! They have crotches like Barbie dolls!” Is the association between dolls and children too close to home? I don’t know, but today’s views on sexuality sure are fickle. I would think in our Western progressive society we would take a hearty laugh at little string people doing sexual acts. It could be like a new Punch and Judy.

I do not see us getting our act together any time soon. It seems that all stand-up comics nowadays do is either talk about politics or crude sexual humor. Is the achievement of comedy today attributed to “Git ‘er done?” Must we get our thrills from college girls who “go wild” and show breasts which are socially accepted in Europe? Let’s not start on the issue of other sexualities, such as homosexuality or bisexuality. It’s like Kryptonite to America.

What is happening here is actually a progressive digression into a time when sex was considered dirty, even within the confines of socially accepted partnerships. There is still that residue that sex is thrilling; it is something that we all are entranced by because it seems so dangerous. The CNN article also states, “sex plays well within the thriller genre. …director Adrian Lyne repeatedly has scored in this arena, with ‘Fatal Attraction,’ ‘9 1/2 Weeks,’ ‘Indecent Proposal,'” etc. Because it is so thrilling and dangerous to us, we must play it off with vulgar and dumb sex plays. However, all we are doing is postponing the inevitable: that we are suppressing something that is and has always been inherent in us. It is whether we feel uncomfortable about it is the difference. The DreamWorks Press says it bluntly: “We are a Puritan society. We’d rather watch it at home.”

Lyz Holder may be reached at webmaster@kdcouk.com .