Sex Sells (Sorta)

That thrill was killed by an internet that not only allows you to stream movies at home but also gives you access to quite literally any sexual content you could ever imagine. As audiences became less dependent on the thrill of sexy movies (and studios began catering to more conservative foreign markets), sex in Hollywood more or less disappeared. 

And while this creates an odd, neutered dullness in some blockbusters (how often do you see The Rock kiss?), we shouldn’t mourn the kind of sexuality these films promote. Almost always shot with a male gaze, a lot of these movies tipped into misogyny by reducing the complexity of human sexuality into caricature for the sake of titillation.

When there is sex on screen these days, it usually comes from an independent filmmaker who’s looking to say something new. Two films playing at The Triplex this week do just that: The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed, director Joanna Arnow’s debut hit indie comedy, shows how a BDSM relationship, often exoticized in movies like Fifty Shades of Grey, can become part of a monotonous rut. Bottoms, which plays Saturday night as part of our Late Night Pride program, recontextualizes the dumb, male horniness of teen sex comedies through a queer, female lens. 

These movies and the conversations they invoke are peculiar byproducts of our shifting relationship with movie-going — instead of being used as a marketing tool, sex is depicted on screen the way it can be in real life: fun, messy, and complicated.

Scott Cohen joins us for a talkback following the 7:15 screening of The Feeling That… on Friday, June 14th.