Raunchy scenes in regular films....why?

fields5069

goldtop said:

Cols said:

Because it’s an easy way of bumping up audience numbers.  And it’s not just naked girls either.

I’m reminded of a story from the making of Top Gun.  The US Navy cooperated extensively with the film makers, and provided a dedicated technical advisor.  On viewing the locker room scene confrontation between Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer, he pointed out that the Navy doesn’t have communal locker rooms and this wouldn’t happen in real life.

The film makers told him “We’re paying Tom Cruise $1 million for this movie.  We gotta see some flesh”.

Wait what... Of everything in Top Gun, the US Navy said the bit that was technically unrealistic was the locker room layout?   

Reminds me of the 3rd year of Uni. A guy in my corridor had his mate up to stay for the weekend, we were in a packed JCR. We ask mate what he does. "Oh I'm in the air force". "Oh wow OK, doing what specifically>". "I can't really talk about it, it's a bit like Top Gun". Cue a table of 20 or so pissed up students nearly wetting themselves for the next 5 minutes.

Philly_Q

Neill said:

I've seen a few films recently which have been thoroughly enjoyable and when I analyse it there's almost always no gratuitous sex.  It's such an outdated device, might have been of interest to some of us 50 years ago when the occasional glimpse of a woman's bare torso was the height of excitement, but not today.  

It does seem sometimes that the pendulum's swung too far in the opposite direction.

Taking action films as an example, until really quite recently female characters would only be included as love interest, sex objects or helpless damsels in distress.  Nowadays, there's never even a hint of romance, sex or even a mild bit of flirty banter and the female characters, without exception, have to be every bit as kick-ass as the men. 

It's like all the characters have taken a vow of celibacy.  The decline of gratuitous sex scenes is a good thing, but I don't think relationships in films should be portrayed as completely sexless.

Kittyfrisk

'Last Tango in Paris' was actually commissioned by the EU to help with a surplus dairy issue.

Winny_Pooh

I read this thread and think... so we're all so comfortable with the normalisation of violence, that's it no longer noticeable? 

More disturbing is that violence in superhero movies is sanitized and gives no moral depth. In movies the polarisation of "good" and "evil" feeds into a modern nationalist mindset bubble that ignores that most of all human conflict is evil and intolerable. 

Cols

goldtop said:

Cols said:

Because it’s an easy way of bumping up audience numbers.  And it’s not just naked girls either.

I’m reminded of a story from the making of Top Gun.  The US Navy cooperated extensively with the film makers, and provided a dedicated technical advisor.  On viewing the locker room scene confrontation between Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer, he pointed out that the Navy doesn’t have communal locker rooms and this wouldn’t happen in real life.

The film makers told him “We’re paying Tom Cruise $1 million for this movie.  We gotta see some flesh”.

Wait what... Of everything in Top Gun, the US Navy said the bit that was technically unrealistic was the locker room layout?   

Oh, there was plenty for the technical advisor to go mental over.  This was the only comment he had about gratuitously staged homoeroticism though.

EricTheWeary

Kittyfrisk said:

'Last Tango in Paris' was actually commissioned by the EU to help with a surplus dairy issue.

There was a decline in the birth rate in France about thirty years ago and the main channels started showing ‘ high class’ porn on Saturday nights to help get people in the mood. French tv would go from the equivalent of Parkinson to couples bonking in a chateaux. 

PhilW1

What really annoys me is the fact that they can show someone getting ripped to bits, intestines everywhere, have their faces ripped off and all sorts of gratuitous violence but come the sex scene the bras are kept on and everything’s covered up. What’s normal about that?

DefaultM

My Dad somehow convinced my Mum to let me watch Terminator 2 with them when I was about 10, but he'd forgotten about the sheer amount of swearing from Sarah Connor and my Mum started going mad.
Then a week later he waited until she was out and we watched Terminator 1 together, but he'd forgotten about the sex scene.
When it came on he took the approach of not acknowledging it whatsoever, and there was what felt like an absolute age of tension in the air. I can still feel it in my jaw now.

I get that its pretty vital to the series that Sarah has a child, but I think he remembered it as more of a screen fades to black type thing than her riding him with her tits out.

Sassafras

I find the lovey dovey scenes cringey and embarassing.
We know they're just actors pretending to get jiggy with each other.
Same thing with fight scenes that go on and on and on.

fob

roundthebend said:

What I don't understand, and have mentioned this to friends previously, is why do so many films have raunchy sex scenes when they aren't really needed to support the story?

You could say that about so much in any film though (swearing seeming to be popular in this thread). If we're reducing a film down to just stepping through necessary plot points we could perhaps reduce most of them down to about 5 minutes. Most famously: Nazis want supernatural artefact, they find it, it kills them. Why let a good film get in the way?

Still, if this means fewer Keira Knightly films, I'm fully behind the decision.

goldtop

Cols said:

goldtop said:

Cols said:

Because it’s an easy way of bumping up audience numbers.  And it’s not just naked girls either.

I’m reminded of a story from the making of Top Gun.  The US Navy cooperated extensively with the film makers, and provided a dedicated technical advisor.  On viewing the locker room scene confrontation between Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer, he pointed out that the Navy doesn’t have communal locker rooms and this wouldn’t happen in real life.

The film makers told him “We’re paying Tom Cruise $1 million for this movie.  We gotta see some flesh”.

Wait what... Of everything in Top Gun, the US Navy said the bit that was technically unrealistic was the locker room layout?   

Oh, there was plenty for the technical advisor to go mental over.  This was the only comment he had about gratuitously staged homoeroticism though.

Hmmm, he doth protest too much. Back then, US Navy recruitment videos were pretty clear:


 

dano

I've just been googling Keira Knightly nude scenes and she hasn't done many, not sure what she is making the fuss about.

Philly_Q

dano said:

I've just been googling Keira Knightly nude scenes and she hasn't done many, not sure what she is making the fuss about.

I wasn't going to mention this because it sounds a bit pervy, but I'm pretty sure she appears topless in the horror film The Hole - and she must have been 15 when it was filmed.

Emp_Fab

Why?  Why not?  It's a part of life (allegedly) and if a film is about a relationship then sex is usually a part of that.  It has to be in the right context though and not gratuitous.  Some films it just wouldn't work in...  Twelve Angry Men for example.

Though that does sound like a niche porno in its own right.

Dominic

scrumhalf said:

Sex scenes are a way of filling time. A couple of fumbles and that's less dialogue needed. As for swearing, it's gritty realism, isn't it?

Both things were seen as part of the liberation and revolution of the sixties and seventies, post-Lady Chatterly and all of that. Not having them in your film suggested you were part of the fuddy-duddy old school.

Good fellas would have been a good hour shorter without the word "fuck", and would it have affected the film that much?

Fuck off you Fucking dumb Fuck 

In answer to your question ......Yes it would have totally ruined the film
Pesci's character (quoted above ) would not have come to life as the mindless,vicious and profane little thug without that degree of dumb aggression.
The whole New Jersey Mafia Gangster zeitgeist rests upon the mindless and crude ,under-educated thuggery.  People who are educationally challenged often revert to Fuck every third word as a filler for inability to articulate or string words together in a cohesive fashion..........it's the default conjunction for a series of non-sequiter statements .

fretmeister

Dominic said:

scrumhalf said:

Sex scenes are a way of filling time. A couple of fumbles and that's less dialogue needed. As for swearing, it's gritty realism, isn't it?

Both things were seen as part of the liberation and revolution of the sixties and seventies, post-Lady Chatterly and all of that. Not having them in your film suggested you were part of the fuddy-duddy old school.

Good fellas would have been a good hour shorter without the word "fuck", and would it have affected the film that much?

Fuck off you Fucking dumb Fuck 

In answer to your question ......Yes it would have totally ruined the film
Pesci's character (quoted above ) would not have come to life as the mindless,vicious and profane little thug without that degree of dumb aggression.
The whole New Jersey Mafia Gangster zeitgeist rests upon the mindless and crude ,under-educated thuggery.  People who are educationally challenged often revert to Fuck every third word as a filler for inability to articulate or string words together in a cohesive fashion..........it's the default conjunction for a series of non-sequiter statements .

I know plenty of highly educated people who speak like that.

VimFuego

fretmeister said:

Dominic said:

scrumhalf said:

Sex scenes are a way of filling time. A couple of fumbles and that's less dialogue needed. As for swearing, it's gritty realism, isn't it?

Both things were seen as part of the liberation and revolution of the sixties and seventies, post-Lady Chatterly and all of that. Not having them in your film suggested you were part of the fuddy-duddy old school.

Good fellas would have been a good hour shorter without the word "fuck", and would it have affected the film that much?

Fuck off you Fucking dumb Fuck 

In answer to your question ......Yes it would have totally ruined the film
Pesci's character (quoted above ) would not have come to life as the mindless,vicious and profane little thug without that degree of dumb aggression.
The whole New Jersey Mafia Gangster zeitgeist rests upon the mindless and crude ,under-educated thuggery.  People who are educationally challenged often revert to Fuck every third word as a filler for inability to articulate or string words together in a cohesive fashion..........it's the default conjunction for a series of non-sequiter statements .

I know plenty of highly educated people who speak like that.

I had a boss once, ex etonion, Oxford graduate, ex Goldmans Sachs, daddy owned half of wiltshire, that type. I have literally never, in my entire life, before or since, heard anyone swear as much as him. 

Haych

I used to work with a guy who couldn't put a sentence together without using f*ck, c*nt, tw*t, p*ss, sh*t etc.  Didn't matter what we would talk about it would always be the same, everything was prefixed with some kind of expletive.  Even the most innocent of topics would be turned into an profanity ridden conversation.

One day I asked him, "Roy, why do you feel the need to use so much bad language all the time?"

He replied, "Well, you know what I mean, don't you?"

As far as he was concerned so long as the listener could understand the point he was making it made no difference whether he used none or a hundred swear words in a sentence.

It was difficult to hold a conversation to be honest, you'd just wince with what came out of his mouth.  Apart from that he was a really nice guy.  Went to see Toto with him during the Mindfields tour.  Bet he's dead now

He was incredibly intelligent, too.  

jpfamps

Dominic said:

 People who are educationally challenged often revert to Fuck every third word as a filler for inability to articulate or string words together in a cohesive fashion..........it's the default conjunction for a series of non-sequiter statements .

This paper would suggest otherwise:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S038800011400151X

ThorpyFX

jpfamps said:

Dominic said:

 People who are educationally challenged often revert to Fuck every third word as a filler for inability to articulate or string words together in a cohesive fashion..........it's the default conjunction for a series of non-sequiter statements .

This paper would suggest otherwise:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S038800011400151X

I swear like a trooper (literally) its a habit formed over 2 decades..... strangely i dont feel uneducated either, i have enough academic and professional qualifications to make at least 3 people very happy.