No one is ugly. No one is really fat. Everyone is beautiful.
March 7, 2021 3:56 AM Subscribe
I defy you to find a mainstream film with a moment as horny and gay as the Sexy Saxophone Solo from The Lost Boys.
Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny, a pretty great look at how movies have moved from depicting idealized, yet reasonably attainable lives and their attendant messiness into what happens when you accidentally change the channel to informercials for the wealthy, glistening and perfect, but nothing lived in or liveable.
And speaking of Christopher Nolan’s inexplicably sexless oeuvre—did anyone else think it odd how Inception enters the deepest level of a rich man’s subconscious and finds not a psychosexual Oedipal nightmare of staggering depravity, but… a ski patrol?
And speaking of Christopher Nolan’s inexplicably sexless oeuvre—did anyone else think it odd how Inception enters the deepest level of a rich man’s subconscious and finds not a psychosexual Oedipal nightmare of staggering depravity, but… a ski patrol?
Despite accusations of being an incel icon, it is Heath Ledger’s Joker, not Christian Bale’s chaste and sexless Batman, who exudes the most sexual energy in the Dark Knight trilogy.
[pushes glasses incredibly far up nose] it was Joaquin Phoenix's Joker who was accused of being an incel icon; Jokers are all different & some of them fuck; what do you mean this is not the scheduled location for my TED talk
posted by taquito sunrise at 4:51 AM on March 7, 2021 [115 favorites]
[pushes glasses incredibly far up nose] it was Joaquin Phoenix's Joker who was accused of being an incel icon; Jokers are all different & some of them fuck; what do you mean this is not the scheduled location for my TED talk
posted by taquito sunrise at 4:51 AM on March 7, 2021 [115 favorites]
My filmmaking group has discussed this extensively. Go back to the 70s and early 80s, and you had homes that were lived in - being lived in. Jump back to the 40s, you had vibrant characters cast (with exception to the leads) with a wide variety of body types and a scale of “attractiveness.”
It is good that the author combined bodies and homes in this gaze. The connection is appropriate.
The superhero movies are targeted largely to children and teens - the ones most likely to clamor for the merch. And we have moved to a pathological view of the Self; where we admonish children in their late teens to start developing their “Brand” and where we are discussed in aggregate as “human capital.” There is no discussion of the elevated soul; of the dignity or decency of a life well lived. Passion, like life, is messy, and we don’t acknowledge messy right now.
I don’t have an ending thesis on this. Maybe just to say that I just woke up ridiculously early because of an interpersonal relationship that is excessively messy and I miss a voice like John Cassavetes in our cultural pipelines because he never shied away from the messiness and he understood that at that core is a need TO love and a desire to BE loved.
posted by Silvery Fish at 4:58 AM on March 7, 2021 [36 favorites]
It is good that the author combined bodies and homes in this gaze. The connection is appropriate.
The superhero movies are targeted largely to children and teens - the ones most likely to clamor for the merch. And we have moved to a pathological view of the Self; where we admonish children in their late teens to start developing their “Brand” and where we are discussed in aggregate as “human capital.” There is no discussion of the elevated soul; of the dignity or decency of a life well lived. Passion, like life, is messy, and we don’t acknowledge messy right now.
I don’t have an ending thesis on this. Maybe just to say that I just woke up ridiculously early because of an interpersonal relationship that is excessively messy and I miss a voice like John Cassavetes in our cultural pipelines because he never shied away from the messiness and he understood that at that core is a need TO love and a desire to BE loved.
posted by Silvery Fish at 4:58 AM on March 7, 2021 [36 favorites]
Capefans’ demands for more “mature” superhero movies always mean more graphic violence, not more sex.
It's interesting how this reflects what's been happening in their source industry as well. The Big Two's cape comics are well known for giving us painted on body suits, but no hints of actual sexuality (see also: the aghast reaction to the Batwang appearing in a panel for the first time). But sprays of blood and gore are fairly common.
I think it's telling that the parts of the comics industry that are arguably the Horniest have significant crossover with the parts also producing large amounts of queer/inclusive content. It's absolutely a Puritanical force driving these parts of our media landscape, and it's not just physical sexuality that's being erased.
posted by fight or flight at 5:01 AM on March 7, 2021 [10 favorites]
It's interesting how this reflects what's been happening in their source industry as well. The Big Two's cape comics are well known for giving us painted on body suits, but no hints of actual sexuality (see also: the aghast reaction to the Batwang appearing in a panel for the first time). But sprays of blood and gore are fairly common.
I think it's telling that the parts of the comics industry that are arguably the Horniest have significant crossover with the parts also producing large amounts of queer/inclusive content. It's absolutely a Puritanical force driving these parts of our media landscape, and it's not just physical sexuality that's being erased.
posted by fight or flight at 5:01 AM on March 7, 2021 [10 favorites]
(Pushes glasses up even further)
it was Joaquin Phoenix's Joker who was accused of being an incel icon
That Joker is only the most recent iteration of Joker as incel icon. The Aurora theater shooter claimed Ledger’s Joker inspired him. Oddly telling that the most blatantly sexual modern Joker (Jared Leto) didn’t seem to fit that bill.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:11 AM on March 7, 2021 [21 favorites]
it was Joaquin Phoenix's Joker who was accused of being an incel icon
That Joker is only the most recent iteration of Joker as incel icon. The Aurora theater shooter claimed Ledger’s Joker inspired him. Oddly telling that the most blatantly sexual modern Joker (Jared Leto) didn’t seem to fit that bill.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:11 AM on March 7, 2021 [21 favorites]
I have so many thoughts about this, but I can distill it to: oh wow, that's true.
Obviously being a cis mostly heteronormative woman, I have lived with varying beauty standards of the day all my life, but I feel bad for men in that now to be "hot", you need to have a chiseled body like any Marvel superhero. (I don't feel much glee in going "ha! see how you like how it feels!" because idealized body standards is pretty much fucked up no matter what gender.)
Current films have definitely stopped feeling sexy, and every time I watch something made pre-1990, I am always interested how certain scenes push the sexy buttons, and how those scenes are so rare in cinema today. I can't remember the last time a current film made the sexy buttons sit up and take notice.
posted by Kitteh at 5:12 AM on March 7, 2021 [33 favorites]
Obviously being a cis mostly heteronormative woman, I have lived with varying beauty standards of the day all my life, but I feel bad for men in that now to be "hot", you need to have a chiseled body like any Marvel superhero. (I don't feel much glee in going "ha! see how you like how it feels!" because idealized body standards is pretty much fucked up no matter what gender.)
Current films have definitely stopped feeling sexy, and every time I watch something made pre-1990, I am always interested how certain scenes push the sexy buttons, and how those scenes are so rare in cinema today. I can't remember the last time a current film made the sexy buttons sit up and take notice.
posted by Kitteh at 5:12 AM on March 7, 2021 [33 favorites]
I tend to watch a lot of old movies and old, old movies and I'm often surprised or at least amused at how deeply horny a lot of those films were, even during the depths of the Hays Office censorship.
posted by octothorpe at 5:20 AM on March 7, 2021 [16 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 5:20 AM on March 7, 2021 [16 favorites]
The most interesting idea in this essay, to me, is the connection that it draws between the sterilization and idealization of the body:
"Actors are more physically perfect than ever: impossibly lean, shockingly muscular, with magnificently coiffed hair, high cheekbones, impeccable surgical enhancements, and flawless skin"
...and the sterilization and idealization of the home:
"Compare this to homes in films now: massive, sterile cavernous spaces with minimalist furniture. Kitchens are industrial-sized and spotless, and they contain no food. There is no excess. There is no mess."
...and even the self:
"Now, we are perfect islands of emotional self-reliance, and it is seen as embarrassing and co-dependent to want to be touched."
(On preview, others have already pointed this out.)
I think this says a lot about why superhero movies (and so much of today's film and television in general) feel so hollow to me.
Everything is glossy, scrubbed-clean, and tightened to extreme tolerances. It squeezes all of the life out of life. It feels plastic.
To comment specifically about bodies and sexual attraction (which are, after all, the focus of the article): Individual tastes vary, of course. But I don't understand why anyone considers bodies created via extreme artificial interventions to be sexy.
Then again, we're hardly the first culture to eroticize physical features created via extreme artificial interventions. (Foot binding is the historical example that often comes up. But one could probably point to piercing and tattooing, as well – less crippling that foot binding, but they do involve trauma to the flesh. We're just used to them, so they don't seem as shocking.)
Maybe it's kinda problematic to talk about "real bodies" and "real people" (e.g., the oft-encountered saying that "real women have curves"). Because that implies that people with lean bodies that do fit the cultural ideal are somehow unreal or invalid – and that's just another kind of body-policing.
But I would certainly agree that we put a lot of undue emphasis on very specific kinds of bodies. Sure – lean, muscular bodies with chiseled features can be attractive. But so can many other kinds of bodies. Why the obsession with the one specific type?
I dunno. I don't really understand the point of having "beauty standards" in the first place. Who gets to define those standards? Why should anyone care what they think? What benefit do we derive by comparing people to those standards – other than inculcating anxiety, and enabling capitalists to extract profit from said anxiety? How about we all just fuck whoever we're attracted to, and let other people do the same?
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:24 AM on March 7, 2021 [25 favorites]
"Actors are more physically perfect than ever: impossibly lean, shockingly muscular, with magnificently coiffed hair, high cheekbones, impeccable surgical enhancements, and flawless skin"
...and the sterilization and idealization of the home:
"Compare this to homes in films now: massive, sterile cavernous spaces with minimalist furniture. Kitchens are industrial-sized and spotless, and they contain no food. There is no excess. There is no mess."
...and even the self:
"Now, we are perfect islands of emotional self-reliance, and it is seen as embarrassing and co-dependent to want to be touched."
(On preview, others have already pointed this out.)
I think this says a lot about why superhero movies (and so much of today's film and television in general) feel so hollow to me.
Everything is glossy, scrubbed-clean, and tightened to extreme tolerances. It squeezes all of the life out of life. It feels plastic.
To comment specifically about bodies and sexual attraction (which are, after all, the focus of the article): Individual tastes vary, of course. But I don't understand why anyone considers bodies created via extreme artificial interventions to be sexy.
Then again, we're hardly the first culture to eroticize physical features created via extreme artificial interventions. (Foot binding is the historical example that often comes up. But one could probably point to piercing and tattooing, as well – less crippling that foot binding, but they do involve trauma to the flesh. We're just used to them, so they don't seem as shocking.)
Maybe it's kinda problematic to talk about "real bodies" and "real people" (e.g., the oft-encountered saying that "real women have curves"). Because that implies that people with lean bodies that do fit the cultural ideal are somehow unreal or invalid – and that's just another kind of body-policing.
But I would certainly agree that we put a lot of undue emphasis on very specific kinds of bodies. Sure – lean, muscular bodies with chiseled features can be attractive. But so can many other kinds of bodies. Why the obsession with the one specific type?
I dunno. I don't really understand the point of having "beauty standards" in the first place. Who gets to define those standards? Why should anyone care what they think? What benefit do we derive by comparing people to those standards – other than inculcating anxiety, and enabling capitalists to extract profit from said anxiety? How about we all just fuck whoever we're attracted to, and let other people do the same?
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:24 AM on March 7, 2021 [25 favorites]
The Aurora theater shooter claimed Ledger’s Joker inspired him
I think this has been debunked. Something about a cop making shit up.
Further, I don't think the Aurora shooter was an incel. He was a whole different kind of asshole.
posted by dobbs at 5:25 AM on March 7, 2021 [11 favorites]
I think this has been debunked. Something about a cop making shit up.
Further, I don't think the Aurora shooter was an incel. He was a whole different kind of asshole.
posted by dobbs at 5:25 AM on March 7, 2021 [11 favorites]
xylothek: "The trends described are at least as much a function of the skewed MPAA rating system as they are of cultural values. Most contemporary superhero movies are PG-13, and the MPAA's rating system is puritanical about sex but not violence (and makes special exception for cartoon/unrealistic violence of the type portrayed in superhero films). So it's totally fine for kids to see a supervillain level an entire city, but god forbid they see a naked human body."
It's also a function of the multi-national market for big films. They make them so they won't offend anyone in any country that buys movies tickets.
posted by octothorpe at 5:32 AM on March 7, 2021 [24 favorites]
It's also a function of the multi-national market for big films. They make them so they won't offend anyone in any country that buys movies tickets.
posted by octothorpe at 5:32 AM on March 7, 2021 [24 favorites]
I think this article is interesting, but also overgeneralizing. The last few "prestige" movies I can remember seeing include Parasite, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, BlackkKklansman, and Widows. These we're all big releases for non-blockbusters, and they all feature varying degrees of sexuality, and I don't think they really fetishize the body.
It's also a function of the multi-national market for big films. They make them so they won't offend anyone in any country that buys movies tickets.
I think this is the key. Sexual mores are so culturally specific, that the easiest way to make an international blockbuster is to remove sexuality. I mean... maybe people can talk a bit horny, but redubbing can fix that.
posted by Alex404 at 5:36 AM on March 7, 2021 [11 favorites]
It's also a function of the multi-national market for big films. They make them so they won't offend anyone in any country that buys movies tickets.
I think this is the key. Sexual mores are so culturally specific, that the easiest way to make an international blockbuster is to remove sexuality. I mean... maybe people can talk a bit horny, but redubbing can fix that.
posted by Alex404 at 5:36 AM on March 7, 2021 [11 favorites]
Interesting article. I appreciate the the diversion to McMansion hell. My SIL is an architect and took what was once a very lived-in looking suburban home, and turned it into a very clean modern thing you'd see in an architectural magazine. When it is prepped for company it doesn't look like anyone actually lives there, however if you stop by out of the blue, it is very much lived in.
posted by CostcoCultist at 5:39 AM on March 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by CostcoCultist at 5:39 AM on March 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
It squeezes all of the life out of life. It feels plastic.
Thanks for that. It made something click: for all of the careful sculpting, definition, and bulging veins of Hugh Jackman in the second Wolverine movie vs the still incredibly fit but not cut Wolverine from the first X-men movie, all the way up through any of the avengers films, there’s a whole mess of Jude Law’s Joe the sex robot from AI, lifelike, but with just enough angular lines and sculpted hair to make it clear how fake it was. That’s where we are, Joe made real, and portraying all our favorite superheroes.
It’s a damn shame, too, because there are some fantastic actors and directors being subsumed into this sexless obsession with perfection.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:46 AM on March 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
Thanks for that. It made something click: for all of the careful sculpting, definition, and bulging veins of Hugh Jackman in the second Wolverine movie vs the still incredibly fit but not cut Wolverine from the first X-men movie, all the way up through any of the avengers films, there’s a whole mess of Jude Law’s Joe the sex robot from AI, lifelike, but with just enough angular lines and sculpted hair to make it clear how fake it was. That’s where we are, Joe made real, and portraying all our favorite superheroes.
It’s a damn shame, too, because there are some fantastic actors and directors being subsumed into this sexless obsession with perfection.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:46 AM on March 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
On the horniest side of things, I haven't been much in on the MCU, but have enough exposure to agree with the author as far as big tent blockbusters are concern.
There are of course a huge array of smaller movies, where horniness is featured I really appreciated Lady Bird's depiction of both sexual awakening and real estate longing.
Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001) is still a high point for me in terms of a horny movie, but of course if you need some impossibly fit and impossible horny characters, you've got 8 hours of Bridgerton
posted by CostcoCultist at 5:53 AM on March 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
There are of course a huge array of smaller movies, where horniness is featured I really appreciated Lady Bird's depiction of both sexual awakening and real estate longing.
Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001) is still a high point for me in terms of a horny movie, but of course if you need some impossibly fit and impossible horny characters, you've got 8 hours of Bridgerton
posted by CostcoCultist at 5:53 AM on March 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
It's also a function of the multi-national market for big films. They make them so they won't offend anyone in any country that buys movies tickets.I’ve heard China mentioned as the main driver for this: massive market with strict controls. A studio might write off a small puritanical state but they’ll do a lot to keep general distribution in China - which is probably also the only reason all of the villains aren’t Chinese the way they were East German/Russian in the 1980s.
posted by adamsc at 5:58 AM on March 7, 2021 [17 favorites]
On reviewing the article, I guess they are focused on "Action and Superhero movies", so it's unfair to point out that non-tentpole movies buck these trends.
Still, if tentpole movies are becoming more comic-like and Disney-like, isn't it just because that actually describes 90% of tentpole movies? Comics have always featured distorted body-types, and Disney's gonna Disney. I don't know if there's much depth to this trend other than "mega-corps making movies sanitized for international consumption".
posted by Alex404 at 6:02 AM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
Still, if tentpole movies are becoming more comic-like and Disney-like, isn't it just because that actually describes 90% of tentpole movies? Comics have always featured distorted body-types, and Disney's gonna Disney. I don't know if there's much depth to this trend other than "mega-corps making movies sanitized for international consumption".
posted by Alex404 at 6:02 AM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
I’ve heard China mentioned as the main driver for this: massive market with strict controls.
I mean, let's not pretend that the largely conservative-leaning executives behind the big studios aren't concentrating just as much if not more on making sure they appeal to suburban Bible belt Americans. China and other international markets are just an easy excuse for something that would be going on anyway, if Ike Perlmutter and his ilk continue to hold the reins of power.
posted by fight or flight at 6:37 AM on March 7, 2021 [12 favorites]
I mean, let's not pretend that the largely conservative-leaning executives behind the big studios aren't concentrating just as much if not more on making sure they appeal to suburban Bible belt Americans. China and other international markets are just an easy excuse for something that would be going on anyway, if Ike Perlmutter and his ilk continue to hold the reins of power.
posted by fight or flight at 6:37 AM on March 7, 2021 [12 favorites]
Good article, thanks for posting. And I loved the mention of McMansion Hell. I don't know what cum gutters are, but I think I'm okay with that.
posted by sundrop at 6:46 AM on March 7, 2021
posted by sundrop at 6:46 AM on March 7, 2021
Now, we are perfect islands of emotional self-reliance, and it is seen as embarrassing and co-dependent to want to be touched.
Would someone be so kind as to expand on this for me? It is not something I was aware of, but as a Man of a Certain Age, I assume I am simply out of touch.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 6:51 AM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
Would someone be so kind as to expand on this for me? It is not something I was aware of, but as a Man of a Certain Age, I assume I am simply out of touch.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 6:51 AM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
That was a great read. I also really like the McMansions from Hell connection. Both the ridiculous body standards and the ridiculous McMansions have gone so far out of normalcy to me that when I see them I am more aware of their impracticability than any aesthetic beauty.
A few years ago I heard an interview with singer Maren Morris describing her incredibly restrictive diet, which I would describe as disordered eating. She was touring and performing constantly and was eating something like 6 oz of skinless baked chicken and some broccoli for supper. She liked a glass of wine at the end of the night and her nutritionist wanted her to switch to something lower calorie (I think hard liquor??). All so that she could sing onstage. Shortly after that I watched Beyoncé's "Homecoming" where she is preparing for Coachella. At the time she is also losing a huge amount of weight after giving birth to twins. She was eating basically a few raw fruits and vegetables. Plus working out all the time BESIDES rigorous dance rehearsals. Her costumes were already made, she expected herself to fit into them (not the other way around).
I also recall an interview with Hugh Jackman where he basically said, what it takes to look like he did (similar extreme dieting) as Wolverine is not worth it.
Ever since then when I see actors and other celebrities with ridiculous bodies, I'm not struck by how sculpted and incredible they look, I just think: that person is starving. Beyoncé put on the performance of a lifetime while starving. Maren Morris became a Big Deal in country music while starving. These people manage to show up on a red carpet and give fun interviews and make exciting movies while starving! It's ridiculous.
But it's not like when I see a more normal sized person in media I am able to forgo the total saturation of thin/swole beauty and appreciate it as easily. At this point I think I need Hollywood's help in retraining myself to see the beauty of normal-ish faces and bodies onscreen, because they so thoroughly trained me the other way.
posted by Emmy Rae at 7:12 AM on March 7, 2021 [57 favorites]
A few years ago I heard an interview with singer Maren Morris describing her incredibly restrictive diet, which I would describe as disordered eating. She was touring and performing constantly and was eating something like 6 oz of skinless baked chicken and some broccoli for supper. She liked a glass of wine at the end of the night and her nutritionist wanted her to switch to something lower calorie (I think hard liquor??). All so that she could sing onstage. Shortly after that I watched Beyoncé's "Homecoming" where she is preparing for Coachella. At the time she is also losing a huge amount of weight after giving birth to twins. She was eating basically a few raw fruits and vegetables. Plus working out all the time BESIDES rigorous dance rehearsals. Her costumes were already made, she expected herself to fit into them (not the other way around).
I also recall an interview with Hugh Jackman where he basically said, what it takes to look like he did (similar extreme dieting) as Wolverine is not worth it.
Ever since then when I see actors and other celebrities with ridiculous bodies, I'm not struck by how sculpted and incredible they look, I just think: that person is starving. Beyoncé put on the performance of a lifetime while starving. Maren Morris became a Big Deal in country music while starving. These people manage to show up on a red carpet and give fun interviews and make exciting movies while starving! It's ridiculous.
But it's not like when I see a more normal sized person in media I am able to forgo the total saturation of thin/swole beauty and appreciate it as easily. At this point I think I need Hollywood's help in retraining myself to see the beauty of normal-ish faces and bodies onscreen, because they so thoroughly trained me the other way.
posted by Emmy Rae at 7:12 AM on March 7, 2021 [57 favorites]
I had no idea they added fake-grenade-throwing "military days" to PE classes after 9/11, that's horrifying if true.
I think I was doomed to be a soft hedonist after a Presidential Fitness day where I suddenly realized how unfair it was to test me on a flexed arm hang or rope climbing after a solid year of doing shit like playing dodgeball. If you want me to do this, why not teach me how and train me all year? Unless the whole point is to make me feel like shit about myself, in which case, fuck you.
Anyway I would love to see more normal-looking people, especially women, on screen getting some, yes please.
posted by emjaybee at 7:16 AM on March 7, 2021 [53 favorites]
I think I was doomed to be a soft hedonist after a Presidential Fitness day where I suddenly realized how unfair it was to test me on a flexed arm hang or rope climbing after a solid year of doing shit like playing dodgeball. If you want me to do this, why not teach me how and train me all year? Unless the whole point is to make me feel like shit about myself, in which case, fuck you.
Anyway I would love to see more normal-looking people, especially women, on screen getting some, yes please.
posted by emjaybee at 7:16 AM on March 7, 2021 [53 favorites]
p.s. Is there a version of this article anywhere that is not white text on a black background? This sounds right up my alley, but I can't physically read it :-(
posted by EllaEm at 7:16 AM on March 7, 2021
posted by EllaEm at 7:16 AM on March 7, 2021
I had no idea they added fake-grenade-throwing "military days" to PE classes after 9/11, that's horrifying if true.
Not in my childrens' schools, at least. Ohio.
posted by cooker girl at 7:18 AM on March 7, 2021
Not in my childrens' schools, at least. Ohio.
posted by cooker girl at 7:18 AM on March 7, 2021
Cultural life is often held to be outside rather than within the embrace of this capitalist logic...while is is possible that speculative development in [cultural] domains would not be reinforced or discarded according to the post hoc rationalizations of profit-making, profitability...has long been implicated in these activities, and with the passing of time the strength of this connection has increased rather than diminished. Precisely because capitalism is expansionary and imperialistic, cultural life in more and more areas gets brought within the grasp of the cash nexus and the logic of capital circulation.
(Harvey)
easiest way to make an international blockbuster is to remove sexuality
Indeed. And by corollary, it's interesting that the most memetically successful online content (besides pr0n) is violent multiplayer games.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 7:20 AM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
(Harvey)
easiest way to make an international blockbuster is to remove sexuality
Indeed. And by corollary, it's interesting that the most memetically successful online content (besides pr0n) is violent multiplayer games.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 7:20 AM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
if Ike Perlmutter and his ilk continue to hold the reins of power.
Hasn’t Perlmutter been more or less removed from any position of influence on this stuff? I understood Disney put all the film responsibilities on Kevin Feige’s desk in 2015 and then Ike lost the television, animation and print editorial operations in 2019 when Feige became Marvel Chief Creative Officer. He’s described as “CEO Emeritus” of Marvel Entertainment but I don’t know that he has that much real power any more.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:20 AM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
Hasn’t Perlmutter been more or less removed from any position of influence on this stuff? I understood Disney put all the film responsibilities on Kevin Feige’s desk in 2015 and then Ike lost the television, animation and print editorial operations in 2019 when Feige became Marvel Chief Creative Officer. He’s described as “CEO Emeritus” of Marvel Entertainment but I don’t know that he has that much real power any more.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:20 AM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
I also recall an interview with Hugh Jackman where he basically said, what it takes to look like he did (similar extreme dieting) as Wolverine is not worth it.
It's not just the months of workout prep, but also things like intentional dehydration for three days right before shooting, which is completely unsustainable for anyone longer than the time it takes to film the key shirtless scenes and some photo shoots.
Henry Cavill talks about it too.
posted by Pryde at 7:21 AM on March 7, 2021 [11 favorites]
It's not just the months of workout prep, but also things like intentional dehydration for three days right before shooting, which is completely unsustainable for anyone longer than the time it takes to film the key shirtless scenes and some photo shoots.
Henry Cavill talks about it too.
posted by Pryde at 7:21 AM on March 7, 2021 [11 favorites]
And, more generally, Katee Sackhoff also has a really revelatory YouTube video talking about the training she follows specifically designed to shape physiques for camera aesthetics. "It's not about being able to lift the car, it's about being able to look like you can lift the car."
posted by Pryde at 7:36 AM on March 7, 2021 [14 favorites]
posted by Pryde at 7:36 AM on March 7, 2021 [14 favorites]
EllaEm, I've got an app called Reader View which makes badly designed web pages more readable.
The article reminds me of a scene from the original Watchmen (the comic book, I don't know whether it was preserved in later versions) where a couple of the characters are having clumsy, friendly sex. In the background, a television set is playing an ad from Veidt for some human potential product. He's athletic, perfect, and alone. Not to do too much of a spoiler, but we eventually find out he's the bad guy.
More generally, where does the ideal of the hard body come from? We're organisms. We have varying degrees of softness and firmness, but we're at least somewhat compressible all over, except for the bones. (Even bones change slowly.)
I have a notion that on a large scale, people confuse being shocked/surprised with being pleased. An extreme body can be defined as beautiful or superior, but the jolt from seeing it isn't actually pleasure.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:38 AM on March 7, 2021 [9 favorites]
The article reminds me of a scene from the original Watchmen (the comic book, I don't know whether it was preserved in later versions) where a couple of the characters are having clumsy, friendly sex. In the background, a television set is playing an ad from Veidt for some human potential product. He's athletic, perfect, and alone. Not to do too much of a spoiler, but we eventually find out he's the bad guy.
More generally, where does the ideal of the hard body come from? We're organisms. We have varying degrees of softness and firmness, but we're at least somewhat compressible all over, except for the bones. (Even bones change slowly.)
I have a notion that on a large scale, people confuse being shocked/surprised with being pleased. An extreme body can be defined as beautiful or superior, but the jolt from seeing it isn't actually pleasure.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:38 AM on March 7, 2021 [9 favorites]
I feel like this essay is about half-right. The connection between a failing empire and its obsession with largely-sexless physical culture with a focus on strength and being swole tracks; a whole lot of that has dominated physical fitness in America in the last twenty years. But the emphasis on how everything changed all of a sudden, and completely, after 9/11 just isn't true. The part of the article that talks about the swole obsession is illustrated with a still from Conan the Barbarian... from 1982.
Even the pull quote at the top of this article is wrong: "I defy you to find a mainstream film with a moment as horny and gay as the Sexy Saxophone Solo from The Lost Boys." Not only is that not the horniest and most gay moment from The Lost Boys--surely that would be Kiefer Sutherland coaxing Jason Patric into becoming a vampire--but what about almost every single moment between Carol Danvers and Maria Rambeau in Captain Marvel? Or Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes across several movies? The article leads with a shot of shirtless Steve, but ignores the scene right after that in which Peggy Carter literally can't stop herself from touching Steve's chest, with a nurse in the background watching both of them and seeming to be about two seconds away from dragging them both off to a dark corner for a threesome. Natalie Dormer has a brief scene later in the movie that has no other apparent purpose than to show that she can't keep her hands off him, either, and Peggy's niece likewise is jonesing after him across the next two Cap films. Ant-Man and Wasp have a courtship going across two films (which is revived after the Blip), Bob and Helen Parr are having hot married sex in The Incredibles, T'Challa and Nakia... there are so many counter-examples that I wonder if the real problem is that people just aren't feeling horny in The Current Situation, and want to pin it on something external.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:49 AM on March 7, 2021 [32 favorites]
Even the pull quote at the top of this article is wrong: "I defy you to find a mainstream film with a moment as horny and gay as the Sexy Saxophone Solo from The Lost Boys." Not only is that not the horniest and most gay moment from The Lost Boys--surely that would be Kiefer Sutherland coaxing Jason Patric into becoming a vampire--but what about almost every single moment between Carol Danvers and Maria Rambeau in Captain Marvel? Or Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes across several movies? The article leads with a shot of shirtless Steve, but ignores the scene right after that in which Peggy Carter literally can't stop herself from touching Steve's chest, with a nurse in the background watching both of them and seeming to be about two seconds away from dragging them both off to a dark corner for a threesome. Natalie Dormer has a brief scene later in the movie that has no other apparent purpose than to show that she can't keep her hands off him, either, and Peggy's niece likewise is jonesing after him across the next two Cap films. Ant-Man and Wasp have a courtship going across two films (which is revived after the Blip), Bob and Helen Parr are having hot married sex in The Incredibles, T'Challa and Nakia... there are so many counter-examples that I wonder if the real problem is that people just aren't feeling horny in The Current Situation, and want to pin it on something external.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:49 AM on March 7, 2021 [32 favorites]
I suddenly realized how unfair it was to test me on a flexed arm hang or rope climbing after a solid year of doing shit like playing dodgeball. If you want me to do this, why not teach me how and train me all year?
I've fallen in love with the podcast You're Wrong About and they do an episode about this, including pointing out that problem, and going into the history of the test and why it has existed over so many years in so many forms. Turns out none of the reasons are very good at all. Nazis make a cameo! The deep-dive is fascinating though.
posted by traveler_ at 7:59 AM on March 7, 2021 [25 favorites]
I've fallen in love with the podcast You're Wrong About and they do an episode about this, including pointing out that problem, and going into the history of the test and why it has existed over so many years in so many forms. Turns out none of the reasons are very good at all. Nazis make a cameo! The deep-dive is fascinating though.
posted by traveler_ at 7:59 AM on March 7, 2021 [25 favorites]
I think she has a real point, though, about bodies: A body is no longer a holistic system. It is not the vehicle through which we experience joy and pleasure during our brief time in the land of the living. It is not a home to live in and be happy. It, too, is a collection of features: six pack, thigh gap, cum gutters. And these features exist not to make our lives more comfortable, but to increase the value of our assets.
As a collection of bodily assets, I fail, except for the ones valued in the 19th century (pretty face, shapely calf, almost all my own teeth). I am not built as a 21st century wife-girlfriend unit, and I am only one of millions of women who lack enthusiasm for hetero dating or even sex under conditions where you are always so keenly aware of what you are lacking.
It's rough on men, too. The disappearance of chest hair on leading men and models in the late '80s is the first example I noticed, even though I was a girl at the time. Whether you like it or not, you have to admit that chest hair is individual and natural. But it's not something that you can fit in an action-figure mold.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:04 AM on March 7, 2021 [22 favorites]
As a collection of bodily assets, I fail, except for the ones valued in the 19th century (pretty face, shapely calf, almost all my own teeth). I am not built as a 21st century wife-girlfriend unit, and I am only one of millions of women who lack enthusiasm for hetero dating or even sex under conditions where you are always so keenly aware of what you are lacking.
It's rough on men, too. The disappearance of chest hair on leading men and models in the late '80s is the first example I noticed, even though I was a girl at the time. Whether you like it or not, you have to admit that chest hair is individual and natural. But it's not something that you can fit in an action-figure mold.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:04 AM on March 7, 2021 [22 favorites]
@Countess Elena: As nature made him, Mr. Evans is equipped with a very nice chest pelt. Speaking as one tiny demographic, the bare chest of Captain America is not an improvement. *sigh*
posted by which_chick at 8:17 AM on March 7, 2021 [10 favorites]
posted by which_chick at 8:17 AM on March 7, 2021 [10 favorites]
absolutely screaming at the assertion that bodies are now presented as a feature of ourselves, and not our selves . I see it a surprising and haunting and terrifying amount amongst my generation and generation z. Scores and scores of tiktoks of young, impressionably teens and early 20s girls (and boys!) covering themselves in loose clothing, hiding themselves as AJJ's "Body Terror Song" plays in the background. Memes of wishing to not be perceived, of wishing to be incorporeal, of talking about your own body in the 3rd person. We are SO disconnected from material reality and it terrifies me! (this is the 2nd time this month I've brought up this previous comment of mine, but it's the same thing as people saying that amazon (possibly) moving headquarters to NYC to get the benefits of the city had no obligation to hire NYC residents - as if the community, the city, is not the people that inhabit it)
posted by FirstMateKate at 8:24 AM on March 7, 2021 [19 favorites]
posted by FirstMateKate at 8:24 AM on March 7, 2021 [19 favorites]
On reviewing the article, I guess they are focused on "Action and Superhero movies", so it's unfair to point out that non-tentpole movies buck these trends.
I like the article, appreciate its intent but it does get some stuff wrong. For instance,
And when Isabella Rosselini strips in Blue Velvet, her skin is pale and her body is soft. She looks vulnerable and real.
even in 1986, this particular moment shocked, because you just didn't see bodies like Ms. Rosselini's in movies. Like a Rubens painting come to life. And holding up Blue Velvet as indicative of anything "normal" to the 80s completely misses the reality. It was the definition of subversive, an outlier. Nobody had ever seen anything like it and lots of normal folks went running for the exits ...
And yet, these characters fucked.
true and yet ... I had a screenwriter friend who made a point of pointing out unnecessary fucking in movies, all the times that the male and female lead would find time (usually in spite of plot energies pulling elsewhere) to get to it on screen, and how often it was just dull, slowed the story to a crawl because as he (the friend) would put it, "it was in the contract. Mel Gibson and Michelle Pfeiffer were always going to get mostly naked and stop the plot for a while for bit of soft focus fucking in a hot tub while a bad yacht rock song played. Who cares what the writer or the director or the editor thinks?"
Not saying I like the current state of sterility (I HATE SUPERHERO MOVIES). Just hoping we can find a way to go forward, not back.
posted by philip-random at 8:25 AM on March 7, 2021 [19 favorites]
I like the article, appreciate its intent but it does get some stuff wrong. For instance,
And when Isabella Rosselini strips in Blue Velvet, her skin is pale and her body is soft. She looks vulnerable and real.
even in 1986, this particular moment shocked, because you just didn't see bodies like Ms. Rosselini's in movies. Like a Rubens painting come to life. And holding up Blue Velvet as indicative of anything "normal" to the 80s completely misses the reality. It was the definition of subversive, an outlier. Nobody had ever seen anything like it and lots of normal folks went running for the exits ...
And yet, these characters fucked.
true and yet ... I had a screenwriter friend who made a point of pointing out unnecessary fucking in movies, all the times that the male and female lead would find time (usually in spite of plot energies pulling elsewhere) to get to it on screen, and how often it was just dull, slowed the story to a crawl because as he (the friend) would put it, "it was in the contract. Mel Gibson and Michelle Pfeiffer were always going to get mostly naked and stop the plot for a while for bit of soft focus fucking in a hot tub while a bad yacht rock song played. Who cares what the writer or the director or the editor thinks?"
Not saying I like the current state of sterility (I HATE SUPERHERO MOVIES). Just hoping we can find a way to go forward, not back.
posted by philip-random at 8:25 AM on March 7, 2021 [19 favorites]
Something about globalization that flattens to a single boring ideal - something about small and regional that permits more mess and more difference - something about Drag Race US vs. Drag Race UK - something about the pressure of the least common denominator - the more integrated the producer of entertainment is, the less variation and the less output? I apologize, I would articulate any of these thoughts but I am mid-sleep-strike (babies are lucky they’re cute).
posted by prefpara at 8:31 AM on March 7, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by prefpara at 8:31 AM on March 7, 2021 [9 favorites]
I had a screenwriter friend who made a point of pointing out unnecessary fucking in movies,
Agreed, but i don't really think that the author is mad that there's not actual sex scenes, they do list several movies that don't have them, I think they're remarking at the removal of the body as a vehicle for pleasure and joy.
posted by FirstMateKate at 8:32 AM on March 7, 2021 [9 favorites]
Agreed, but i don't really think that the author is mad that there's not actual sex scenes, they do list several movies that don't have them, I think they're remarking at the removal of the body as a vehicle for pleasure and joy.
posted by FirstMateKate at 8:32 AM on March 7, 2021 [9 favorites]
This article dovetails nicely with a New Yorker interview with Kathryn Hahn (WandaVision finale spoilers!), who plays Agnes on WandaVision.
Bonus link: Sax Man on Lost Boys. I always think of Lost Boys being super gay but this particular bit seems explicitly heterosexual. Sax man is a Chippendale dancer, not a gay bar go-go boy.
posted by Nelson at 8:36 AM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
I wanted to ask you about that in the context of “WandaVision,” because one way that you’ve humanized your characters is by exploring them as sexual beings. But you can’t do that in a Marvel show.How weird is that, the reality you just can't explore sexuality in a Marvel show? A little romance maybe, the more family-friendly the better. But no actual sexuality. Hahn subverts this quite a bit in the last few episodes of WandaVision but it's hard to discuss without getting in to spoiler territory. Maybe a better discussion for our FanFare thread.
Bonus link: Sax Man on Lost Boys. I always think of Lost Boys being super gay but this particular bit seems explicitly heterosexual. Sax man is a Chippendale dancer, not a gay bar go-go boy.
posted by Nelson at 8:36 AM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
MetaFilter: I don't know what cum gutters are, but I think I'm okay with that
posted by chavenet at 8:45 AM on March 7, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 8:45 AM on March 7, 2021 [9 favorites]
Is it any wonder at all that more of us regular folks are overweight, in a culture in which what is held up as the default attractive body is something that can only be achieved by extreme, often harmful measures? (Or by winning a thousand-to-one grand prize in the genetic lottery)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:55 AM on March 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:55 AM on March 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
A wonderful acting teacher I had as a college freshman exhorted us, "Love your body. It is the source of your joy." I've tried to carry that with me, in the face of all of the miserable messaging this article calls out. Bodies are messy. The efforts of pleasure are messy. Abundance instead of restriction is messy.
I would *love* to see more of that ethos reflected in the most widely viewed, and therefore disproportionately influential, media of our time. If we must have endless superheroes (and it appears that we must) I'd be so much happier if they fucked.
posted by merriment at 9:08 AM on March 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
I would *love* to see more of that ethos reflected in the most widely viewed, and therefore disproportionately influential, media of our time. If we must have endless superheroes (and it appears that we must) I'd be so much happier if they fucked.
posted by merriment at 9:08 AM on March 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
I have a hard time engaging with this when it doesn't acknowledge how much all this horniness was written, directed, cast, photographed, and costumed by and for men. In my perception, a big chunk of what has been jettisoned is not healthy sexuality but an assumption of male entitlement to women's bodies. Han Solo is hornier than Poe Dameron, but my kids think he's an entitled creep who is unworthy of Leia's attention. Thor kisses Jane's hand rather than ravishing her with his hammer because the movie is trying to care about her point of view rather than just putting an attractive body on screen for Thor and the dudes in the audience to enjoy. Captain Marvel gets to wear a flight suit rather than a swimsuit because we are a little more interested in what a woman would want to wear than what a man would want to look at.
posted by straight at 9:32 AM on March 7, 2021 [87 favorites]
posted by straight at 9:32 AM on March 7, 2021 [87 favorites]
Around the nineties or so, I noticed a transition in TV sitcoms in terms of sets. Old folks: remember All In The Family, Taxi, Happy Days, so many others? A Sears-level decorating budget for TV sitcom families was more than acceptable: it was the norm.
As of a few years into the Clinton era, no TV sitcom communal space looked like working people lived or worked there anymore: it was all "Friends" style bougie expensive apartments. Now, I wasn't watching many live-action sitcoms anymore, so perhaps I was missing some obvious counterexamples. But I also watched during the same period as my extended family either achieved the kind of jobs that could pay for those bougie marble kitchen counters, or borrowed like crazy to be able to afford them.
I haven't yet read the article linked in the FPP but I'm pretty sure I'll be an enthusiastic cosigner.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 9:33 AM on March 7, 2021 [10 favorites]
As of a few years into the Clinton era, no TV sitcom communal space looked like working people lived or worked there anymore: it was all "Friends" style bougie expensive apartments. Now, I wasn't watching many live-action sitcoms anymore, so perhaps I was missing some obvious counterexamples. But I also watched during the same period as my extended family either achieved the kind of jobs that could pay for those bougie marble kitchen counters, or borrowed like crazy to be able to afford them.
I haven't yet read the article linked in the FPP but I'm pretty sure I'll be an enthusiastic cosigner.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 9:33 AM on March 7, 2021 [10 favorites]
easiest way to make an international blockbuster is to remove sexuality
I had an analogous thought several years ago when What Does the Fox Say [YT] became an international smash hit. It was the first of Ylvis's songs that I felt comfortable forwarding to my mom.
posted by heatherlogan at 9:35 AM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
I had an analogous thought several years ago when What Does the Fox Say [YT] became an international smash hit. It was the first of Ylvis's songs that I felt comfortable forwarding to my mom.
posted by heatherlogan at 9:35 AM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
Definetly could have done without reading the phrase "cum gutters" or the general undercurrent of edginess.
Also, this might be nitpicky, but: "It was all bullshit:no one looks most people don't look like that without calorie restriction."
Skinny people exist. Not all thin people have eating disorders. If we want to see a wide variety of human bodies, let's not exclude people. Also maybe skip the phrase "bony harridan."
Finally, a counterpoint: I feel like prestige television shows have increasingly featured people who are not young women as objects of desire, and have showcased a wider variety of naked bodies in a wider variety of circumstances. There are plenty of sex scenes, but there's also non-sexual nudity, because people still have bodies when they're doing things that aren't sex, and I feel like normalizing that is good, too.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 9:35 AM on March 7, 2021 [33 favorites]
Also, this might be nitpicky, but: "It was all bullshit:
Skinny people exist. Not all thin people have eating disorders. If we want to see a wide variety of human bodies, let's not exclude people. Also maybe skip the phrase "bony harridan."
Finally, a counterpoint: I feel like prestige television shows have increasingly featured people who are not young women as objects of desire, and have showcased a wider variety of naked bodies in a wider variety of circumstances. There are plenty of sex scenes, but there's also non-sexual nudity, because people still have bodies when they're doing things that aren't sex, and I feel like normalizing that is good, too.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 9:35 AM on March 7, 2021 [33 favorites]
The article reminds me of a scene from the original Watchmen (the comic book, I don't know whether it was preserved in later versions) where a couple of the characters are having clumsy, friendly sex. In the background, a television set is playing an ad from Veidt for some human potential product. He's athletic, perfect, and alone. Not to do too much of a spoiler, but we eventually find out he's the bad guy.
The thing is that he did SPOILER save the world /SPOILER though...
And the clumsy sex scene was used in the Watchmen movie as well and that was post-9/11 as well (though the author would probably consider it to be the exception that proves the rule).
posted by gtrwolf at 9:40 AM on March 7, 2021
The thing is that he did SPOILER save the world /SPOILER though...
And the clumsy sex scene was used in the Watchmen movie as well and that was post-9/11 as well (though the author would probably consider it to be the exception that proves the rule).
posted by gtrwolf at 9:40 AM on March 7, 2021
We’re told that Tony Stark and Pepper Potts are an item, but no actual romantic or sexual chemistry between them is shown in the films. Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor utterly lack the sexual chemistry to convince us that either of them would be thirsty enough to
This is where I completely checked out. You can say, "These things weren't to my tastes" or "didn't work for me," but to say they aren't present just shows you can't think outside your own little box and your own little sense of personal taste.
I write smutty urban fantasy. A thing about writing sexy stuffs is how any individual element will get reactions from all over the map. Some folks are glad you ignored issue X, others wish you had included it. But whatever happens in the story is totally definitely obviously everything the author knows and believes about sex, right?
We all know everyone's romantic and sexual tastes differ and everyone's mileage varies. People know it, but don't really believe it.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:43 AM on March 7, 2021 [11 favorites]
This is where I completely checked out. You can say, "These things weren't to my tastes" or "didn't work for me," but to say they aren't present just shows you can't think outside your own little box and your own little sense of personal taste.
I write smutty urban fantasy. A thing about writing sexy stuffs is how any individual element will get reactions from all over the map. Some folks are glad you ignored issue X, others wish you had included it. But whatever happens in the story is totally definitely obviously everything the author knows and believes about sex, right?
We all know everyone's romantic and sexual tastes differ and everyone's mileage varies. People know it, but don't really believe it.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:43 AM on March 7, 2021 [11 favorites]
Now, I wasn't watching many live-action sitcoms anymore, so perhaps I was missing some obvious counterexamples.
Well there's The Connors (aka the Roseanne revival that's still continuing on after she became too vocally terrible for prime time) but it's intentionally preserving the original look of the show. And it's continually emphasized that their house is a dump because they're so poor. Yet it looks...nice? Perfectly fine?
posted by Pryde at 10:06 AM on March 7, 2021
Well there's The Connors (aka the Roseanne revival that's still continuing on after she became too vocally terrible for prime time) but it's intentionally preserving the original look of the show. And it's continually emphasized that their house is a dump because they're so poor. Yet it looks...nice? Perfectly fine?
posted by Pryde at 10:06 AM on March 7, 2021
If there is one thing that Hollywood does not care about it is the tastes and preferences of socially conservative Americans, and they fully express that not-caring in their prestige film and television slates which have minimal distribution in Asia and Latin America.
Socially conservative Americans probably should send a thank you letter to Xi Xiping and evangelical church heads in Brazil for keeping comic book and action movies more to their tastes...
posted by MattD at 10:10 AM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
Socially conservative Americans probably should send a thank you letter to Xi Xiping and evangelical church heads in Brazil for keeping comic book and action movies more to their tastes...
posted by MattD at 10:10 AM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
I think the article successfully exposes valid questions. We can get caught up on details and nuances, but in broad strokes there appears to be fairly explicit trends over time, in entertainment media, where our desires are increasingly bound within a prescriptiveness: sexuality reduced to unrealistic and unhealthy ideals, but also removed to a type of impotent voyeurism (vs. anything resembling visceral participatory fantasy). Built environments many of us can scarcely realize, that serve to remind us that we can never earn enough or buy enough to achieve the barren perfection depicted on the screen. This is a perfect expression of late-stage capitalism, a movement from an assault of unrealistic expectations to rubbing our faces in something we will never have, and remind us of our loathsome inadequacy.
posted by elkevelvet at 10:15 AM on March 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by elkevelvet at 10:15 AM on March 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
how much all this horniness was written, directed, cast, photographed, and costumed by and for men
And, particularly, hetero white dudes of a certain age. So particular body types and interactions are presented as mainstream ideals, even though they're subculturally bound and live alongside other (often equally unobtainable) ideals, even in pop culture.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 10:22 AM on March 7, 2021 [5 favorites]
And, particularly, hetero white dudes of a certain age. So particular body types and interactions are presented as mainstream ideals, even though they're subculturally bound and live alongside other (often equally unobtainable) ideals, even in pop culture.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 10:22 AM on March 7, 2021 [5 favorites]
If there is one thing that Hollywood does not care about it is the tastes and preferences of socially conservative Americans
Ah, that explains all of the LGBT+ storylines and POC in lead roles in those major blockbusters not distributed in Latin America and Asia. Oh, wait..
posted by fight or flight at 10:24 AM on March 7, 2021 [13 favorites]
Ah, that explains all of the LGBT+ storylines and POC in lead roles in those major blockbusters not distributed in Latin America and Asia. Oh, wait..
posted by fight or flight at 10:24 AM on March 7, 2021 [13 favorites]
Kitchens are industrial-sized and spotless, and they contain no food.
Honestly shocked that the author didn't just straight up crib Fight Club on this one.
"A house full of condiments and no real food. If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't."
It seems like Fight Club the book was sussing out some of the problems Blood Knife seems to be addressing here, the falseness of the modern world around us and how it forces us to be false as well (i.e. building our own personals "brands").
Also, I'm not a blogger, but I've definitely brought up this exact same subject a litany of times (including on MeFi), which is that modern films stopped feeling like they reflect reality at all, and instead are all deep into hyper reality, something more real than real to draw people in who are bored with the real world.
It's how you end up with people who want to "live in the past" because their view of the past is this strange, sanitized version that they have gobbled up through television and movies and they seem to not understand that the people who weren't regularly raped or beaten tended to be nobility and not some poverty stricken dingus like they currently are. The likelihood of them being born into money or nobility in the past is extremely unlikely, yet they pine for this world that would be categorically worse for them.
People and places in film used to look and sound real. Hell, it's why I think so highly of Spielberg's early stuff. Take the scene in Jaws where everyone has just found out about the shark and there is a public meeting about what to do. People are all talking over one another, but they do it in a way that sincerely sounds like what would happen in a real public setting. It wasn't just the look of the people and of the homes, as Blood Knife describes in Poltergeist the realness of it was found in how the on-screen relationship of husband and wife played out. Somehow, Hollywood writers have lost (or have been forced to lose, by business interests) the ability to truly show a connection between two characters.
But perhaps it is because they are forced (via business models) to change their writing to ensure the most possible units sold, and like all things with capitalism, when the bottom line matters more than the content, the content will always end up being substandard.
But final note for real the word people (including Blood Knife) should be looking for and using is "hyper reality."
"Heightened reality vignettes! That all exist in the examples I've just described!"
The ad industry has been doing this purposefully since the 1970's at least.
posted by deadaluspark at 10:31 AM on March 7, 2021 [28 favorites]
Honestly shocked that the author didn't just straight up crib Fight Club on this one.
"A house full of condiments and no real food. If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't."
It seems like Fight Club the book was sussing out some of the problems Blood Knife seems to be addressing here, the falseness of the modern world around us and how it forces us to be false as well (i.e. building our own personals "brands").
Also, I'm not a blogger, but I've definitely brought up this exact same subject a litany of times (including on MeFi), which is that modern films stopped feeling like they reflect reality at all, and instead are all deep into hyper reality, something more real than real to draw people in who are bored with the real world.
It's how you end up with people who want to "live in the past" because their view of the past is this strange, sanitized version that they have gobbled up through television and movies and they seem to not understand that the people who weren't regularly raped or beaten tended to be nobility and not some poverty stricken dingus like they currently are. The likelihood of them being born into money or nobility in the past is extremely unlikely, yet they pine for this world that would be categorically worse for them.
People and places in film used to look and sound real. Hell, it's why I think so highly of Spielberg's early stuff. Take the scene in Jaws where everyone has just found out about the shark and there is a public meeting about what to do. People are all talking over one another, but they do it in a way that sincerely sounds like what would happen in a real public setting. It wasn't just the look of the people and of the homes, as Blood Knife describes in Poltergeist the realness of it was found in how the on-screen relationship of husband and wife played out. Somehow, Hollywood writers have lost (or have been forced to lose, by business interests) the ability to truly show a connection between two characters.
But perhaps it is because they are forced (via business models) to change their writing to ensure the most possible units sold, and like all things with capitalism, when the bottom line matters more than the content, the content will always end up being substandard.
But final note for real the word people (including Blood Knife) should be looking for and using is "hyper reality."
"Heightened reality vignettes! That all exist in the examples I've just described!"
The ad industry has been doing this purposefully since the 1970's at least.
posted by deadaluspark at 10:31 AM on March 7, 2021 [28 favorites]
Totally agree with straight. I think this essay raises a lot of great points about the body, I like the comparison to McMansions, but I actually like the trend of more blockbusters featuring platonic relationships between men and women. While Hollywood is still controlled to the tastes of cis white straight men I don’t think I want more horniness from them... I think of the sex scenes in recent James Bond films and they’re not good or inclusive. I think in some cases what he calls horny (a married couple smoking pot in bed?) isn’t about the sex as much as intimacy and realism.
posted by Emily's Fist at 10:40 AM on March 7, 2021 [18 favorites]
posted by Emily's Fist at 10:40 AM on March 7, 2021 [18 favorites]
Skinny people exist. Not all thin people have eating disorders.
Skinny, yeah. Ripped in the middle, nah. If somebody's abdominal muscles are visible, they did something deliberate and extravagant to achieve that. There was no call to turn poor Hugh Jackman into a hi-def mess. His Wolverine worked fine without that because he's a good actor. If they thought they needed to do that to the character to sell more little plastic Wolverine figures to more kids, what's wrong with CGIing it? Why'd he have to go through that crap?
posted by Don Pepino at 10:45 AM on March 7, 2021 [19 favorites]
Skinny, yeah. Ripped in the middle, nah. If somebody's abdominal muscles are visible, they did something deliberate and extravagant to achieve that. There was no call to turn poor Hugh Jackman into a hi-def mess. His Wolverine worked fine without that because he's a good actor. If they thought they needed to do that to the character to sell more little plastic Wolverine figures to more kids, what's wrong with CGIing it? Why'd he have to go through that crap?
posted by Don Pepino at 10:45 AM on March 7, 2021 [19 favorites]
Also as an example of the ways in which this doesn’t seem to consider how women might feel and experience some of these media... my takeaway from the famous Starship Troopers shower scene wasn’t “wow these people are horny for war instead of each other, dystopian” but “wow even in a world where they seem to have achieved gender equality to the extent women can be naked around men without experiencing sexual harassment, it’s all in the service of a fascist government that coerces them into war, dystopian.”
As an aside I didn’t like the author’s implication that not having sex makes one inhuman. I think one can argue for the depiction of healthy and consensual and realistic sex lives on screen, while ALSO being mindful that for a lot of people that might mean not having much/any sex and that’s also normal and okay.
posted by Emily's Fist at 10:58 AM on March 7, 2021 [34 favorites]
As an aside I didn’t like the author’s implication that not having sex makes one inhuman. I think one can argue for the depiction of healthy and consensual and realistic sex lives on screen, while ALSO being mindful that for a lot of people that might mean not having much/any sex and that’s also normal and okay.
posted by Emily's Fist at 10:58 AM on March 7, 2021 [34 favorites]
The house looks real, too. There are toys and magazines scattered around the floor. There are cardboard boxes waiting to be unpacked since the recent move. Framed pictures rest against the wall; the parents haven’t gotten around to mounting them yet. The kitchen counters are cluttered and mealtimes are rambunctious and sloppy, as one expects in a house with three children. They’re building a pool in the backyard, but not for appearances: it’s a place for the kids to swim, for the parents to throw parties, and for the father to reacquaint himself with his love of diving.
At the time, this house represented an aspirational ideal of American affluence.
Several thoughts:
1) Income and wealth inequality reached a low point circa 1940-1980. Economic inequality started rising then and has roared ahead ever since. A Swiss reinsurance outfit refers to this economy as "the new Gilded Age." You can see the difference in how movies depict homes.
2) The infernal monster that is HGTV.
3) Personal note: my wife and I sold our house two years ago and still have nightmares from the hellish experience. Literal nightmares. One reason was how ruthlessly we had to purge our home and land of every shred of our selves - the art, the thousands of books, clothing, papers, toys, even furniture. What was left was an evacuated shell, a nothing...
....and we had to live in that nothing for the weeks, then months the house was on the market. Every day we had to make sure nothing of ourselves was present.
Watching 21st century movies is a validation of that experience and also a twitch-inducing reminder.
posted by doctornemo at 11:03 AM on March 7, 2021 [16 favorites]
At the time, this house represented an aspirational ideal of American affluence.
Several thoughts:
1) Income and wealth inequality reached a low point circa 1940-1980. Economic inequality started rising then and has roared ahead ever since. A Swiss reinsurance outfit refers to this economy as "the new Gilded Age." You can see the difference in how movies depict homes.
2) The infernal monster that is HGTV.
3) Personal note: my wife and I sold our house two years ago and still have nightmares from the hellish experience. Literal nightmares. One reason was how ruthlessly we had to purge our home and land of every shred of our selves - the art, the thousands of books, clothing, papers, toys, even furniture. What was left was an evacuated shell, a nothing...
....and we had to live in that nothing for the weeks, then months the house was on the market. Every day we had to make sure nothing of ourselves was present.
Watching 21st century movies is a validation of that experience and also a twitch-inducing reminder.
posted by doctornemo at 11:03 AM on March 7, 2021 [16 favorites]
Ugly, fat people are considered diseased and shunned from the tribe. Ask me how I know! I have thought a lot about this and think that you're just swimming upstream against genetics to imagine any ill-favored person has a hope of a life in this world.
posted by SPrintF at 11:15 AM on March 7, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by SPrintF at 11:15 AM on March 7, 2021 [9 favorites]
Complaining that comic book movies aren’t horny enough seems odd considering kids are a big part of the target demographic. Of course the movies aren’t horny.
I’d guess that less sex in movies may have something to do with the availability of internet porn. There’s just no reason for the contractual Hollywood sex scene to exist anymore, when the audience reaction is now “meh”. Even Game of Thrones figured this out, with substantially less gratuitous sex in later seasons.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 11:16 AM on March 7, 2021 [14 favorites]
I’d guess that less sex in movies may have something to do with the availability of internet porn. There’s just no reason for the contractual Hollywood sex scene to exist anymore, when the audience reaction is now “meh”. Even Game of Thrones figured this out, with substantially less gratuitous sex in later seasons.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 11:16 AM on March 7, 2021 [14 favorites]
Turning back to Spielberg just a moment, when it came to attractive people in those early films, those attractive people still felt like they were the kind of attractive you could "find in your hometown."
Terri Gar looks a mess in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but she was considered a beautiful Hollywood heartthrob. Yet, she looks like the kind of woman I could have met in any of the small towns I have lived in. She didn't look strangely plastic or airbrushed in the way they all seem today, this hyperreality. (Yes, she was still underweight compared to the average American woman at the time, but I'm really more speaking of her face than her body.) There was such a time that nobody had perfect skin, and blotchiness on your face was something basically everyone dealt with, and the 1970's was still that time.
I think this also ties into why more "underground" artists like Lorde or Billie Eilish are growing in popularity, where the content of their music matters more than if they look sexually attractive while making music. It comes back around to that point about intimacy and realism. I think others in this thread are correct that the author of this piece would have done better to focus on intimacy over sex, because the real issue is the lack of intimacy and realism in favor of a strangely sexless world full of overly sexy people.
Modern movies are the Ashlee Simpson of movies, they're merely lipsyncing the words, and that's why it all feels so fake and false and pointless. Sometimes they get caught and shamble awkwardly off the stage as their box office earning tank.
Watching 21st century movies is a validation of that experience and also a twitch-inducing reminder.
“The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.” --Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 1968.
The Spectacle in this case being the erasure of images to create the false reality that no one has ever lived in this domicile. Makes sense that Debord was a Marxist, because this is a prime example of the Spectacle causing alientation. I would definitely consider the experience of hiding your lived experience to someone buying your property as an example of estranging you from your humanity.
posted by deadaluspark at 11:16 AM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
Terri Gar looks a mess in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but she was considered a beautiful Hollywood heartthrob. Yet, she looks like the kind of woman I could have met in any of the small towns I have lived in. She didn't look strangely plastic or airbrushed in the way they all seem today, this hyperreality. (Yes, she was still underweight compared to the average American woman at the time, but I'm really more speaking of her face than her body.) There was such a time that nobody had perfect skin, and blotchiness on your face was something basically everyone dealt with, and the 1970's was still that time.
I think this also ties into why more "underground" artists like Lorde or Billie Eilish are growing in popularity, where the content of their music matters more than if they look sexually attractive while making music. It comes back around to that point about intimacy and realism. I think others in this thread are correct that the author of this piece would have done better to focus on intimacy over sex, because the real issue is the lack of intimacy and realism in favor of a strangely sexless world full of overly sexy people.
Modern movies are the Ashlee Simpson of movies, they're merely lipsyncing the words, and that's why it all feels so fake and false and pointless. Sometimes they get caught and shamble awkwardly off the stage as their box office earning tank.
Watching 21st century movies is a validation of that experience and also a twitch-inducing reminder.
“The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.” --Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 1968.
The Spectacle in this case being the erasure of images to create the false reality that no one has ever lived in this domicile. Makes sense that Debord was a Marxist, because this is a prime example of the Spectacle causing alientation. I would definitely consider the experience of hiding your lived experience to someone buying your property as an example of estranging you from your humanity.
posted by deadaluspark at 11:16 AM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
SPrintF: My impression is that if there are fat people, it will be handled as a character trait. What you don't see is any plump people.
Let me know if I'm missing something about more recent movies.
What got me on to the subject was thinking about The Wind Done Gone, a hate-read fanfic (commercially published) of Gone with the Wind. The author is biracial, and what got her on to the subject was realizing that everyone in GWTW was either very dark or definitely white-- the biracial people were written out of the setting so as to obscure sexual abuse.
Anyway, it made me realize that if intermediate people aren't in a setting, the implication is that there are two qualitatively sorts of people.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 11:33 AM on March 7, 2021 [14 favorites]
Let me know if I'm missing something about more recent movies.
What got me on to the subject was thinking about The Wind Done Gone, a hate-read fanfic (commercially published) of Gone with the Wind. The author is biracial, and what got her on to the subject was realizing that everyone in GWTW was either very dark or definitely white-- the biracial people were written out of the setting so as to obscure sexual abuse.
Anyway, it made me realize that if intermediate people aren't in a setting, the implication is that there are two qualitatively sorts of people.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 11:33 AM on March 7, 2021 [14 favorites]
p.s. Is there a version of this article anywhere that is not white text on a black background? This sounds right up my alley, but I can't physically read it :-(If you are using Firefox you can turn on Reader View. The feature is in both desktop and mobile versions and you can configure a handful of preferences like background colour, font size, spacing, etc. I keep mine set to sepia with book-sized margins. Reader View will also just read the page out to you if you prefer, although I imagine anyone with accessibility needs already has a screen reader.
If you're on desktop with firefox just press F9 on your keyboard and you're done. No need to install any extensions or anything else. I use it all the time.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 11:47 AM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
if you've got anything horrid to say about Teri Garr, then you can just about bloomin' well say it to me first
posted by Devoidoid at 11:56 AM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by Devoidoid at 11:56 AM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
I mean, let's not pretend that the largely conservative-leaning executives behind the big studios aren't concentrating just as much if not more on making sure they appeal to suburban Bible belt Americans.
Twice as much money was spent on movies in China just the weekend of February 22nd, 2021 (Lunar New Year) then the entire domestic box office of Avengers:End Game. Your “suburban Bible Belt Americans” are a rounding error, and even the entire US market is more of a “nice to have” than a main source of income.
posted by sideshow at 12:00 PM on March 7, 2021 [20 favorites]
Twice as much money was spent on movies in China just the weekend of February 22nd, 2021 (Lunar New Year) then the entire domestic box office of Avengers:End Game. Your “suburban Bible Belt Americans” are a rounding error, and even the entire US market is more of a “nice to have” than a main source of income.
posted by sideshow at 12:00 PM on March 7, 2021 [20 favorites]
Poltergeist has a scene where a teenage girl being sexually harassed is played for laughs; Terminator draws to a thudding halt at the way-too-long sex scene; Stripes has a shower scene out of nowhere that means my kids won't get to see the perfection of "Convicted? Never convicted" until they're much older; the blowjob in Ghostbusters is bizarre. I don't see how these are about the joys of being a human being in a physical body unless we define who gets to be human very narrowly.
I agree about the kitchens, though. That's weird.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:14 PM on March 7, 2021 [29 favorites]
I agree about the kitchens, though. That's weird.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:14 PM on March 7, 2021 [29 favorites]
Devoidoid,
I didn't mean anything negative about Terri Gar, in fact, the point was that she was realistically attractive. Her "looking a mess" in Close Encounters is a testament to the ability of the film to take an American heart-throb and make her look like the wife of an average dingus like Dreyfuss. Which is almost impossible to do in the modern world with the impossibly clean and clinical way we present "attractive" women. I literally cannot imagine Scarlett Johansson in a role that she looks... average. The nearest I can even think of is Charlize Theron in Monster in 2003, and that says a lot considering that was nearly 20 years ago. (also, in respect to Johansson, sure she isn't wearing a swimsuit through all the Marvel films, but if you're gonna tell me that her Black Widow outfit isn't built to show off her sexy bits, I've got a bridge to nowhere to sell you. It's still driven by the male gaze.)
Don't get me started on how everyone's hair is perfect, all the time, especially when it comes to women in modern film.
(Unrelated to anything, I actually can't freaking stand Close Encounters because Richard Dreyfuss's character is so awful to his wife and children, and the mother of the boy who is abducted never actually, I don't know, does any real mothering or paying attention to her kid or talking to him or stopping him? How can anyone... sympathize with these main characters? If you can ignore these aspects of the film, it's a really great film. I can't, I'm always busy cheering for Terri Gar when she takes the kids and gets the fuck out.)
posted by deadaluspark at 12:16 PM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
I didn't mean anything negative about Terri Gar, in fact, the point was that she was realistically attractive. Her "looking a mess" in Close Encounters is a testament to the ability of the film to take an American heart-throb and make her look like the wife of an average dingus like Dreyfuss. Which is almost impossible to do in the modern world with the impossibly clean and clinical way we present "attractive" women. I literally cannot imagine Scarlett Johansson in a role that she looks... average. The nearest I can even think of is Charlize Theron in Monster in 2003, and that says a lot considering that was nearly 20 years ago. (also, in respect to Johansson, sure she isn't wearing a swimsuit through all the Marvel films, but if you're gonna tell me that her Black Widow outfit isn't built to show off her sexy bits, I've got a bridge to nowhere to sell you. It's still driven by the male gaze.)
Don't get me started on how everyone's hair is perfect, all the time, especially when it comes to women in modern film.
(Unrelated to anything, I actually can't freaking stand Close Encounters because Richard Dreyfuss's character is so awful to his wife and children, and the mother of the boy who is abducted never actually, I don't know, does any real mothering or paying attention to her kid or talking to him or stopping him? How can anyone... sympathize with these main characters? If you can ignore these aspects of the film, it's a really great film. I can't, I'm always busy cheering for Terri Gar when she takes the kids and gets the fuck out.)
posted by deadaluspark at 12:16 PM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
Deadaluspark, you seem to have missed the whole "Mary Ann on Gilligan," "Bailey on WKRP," "Janet on Three's Company" phenomenon. Terri Gar's in that Hollywood hottie category, for your belated information. That's why she didn't look like Farah Fawcett but still got roles in movies.
That she was a Bailey doesn't mean you get to come back around forty years later and back over her with a bus with that uncalled for "looks a mess" horseshit. I'm looking at all these pictures from Close Encounters and cannot for the life of me see anything about her skin that would permit that calumny.
posted by Don Pepino at 12:17 PM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
That she was a Bailey doesn't mean you get to come back around forty years later and back over her with a bus with that uncalled for "looks a mess" horseshit. I'm looking at all these pictures from Close Encounters and cannot for the life of me see anything about her skin that would permit that calumny.
posted by Don Pepino at 12:17 PM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
the mother of the boy who is abducted
Melinda Dillon!
posted by fluttering hellfire at 12:21 PM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
Melinda Dillon!
posted by fluttering hellfire at 12:21 PM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
Excuse the fuck out of me for having an opinion, then, and one that isn't specifically saying "Terri Gar looked terrible" like holy shit what a read.
Apparently people got strong feelings about Terri Gar.
All I was trying to say is she looked a hell of a lot more like people I would meet in real life than the women in movies today, and I was trying to point out that a film like Close Encounters succeeded in making her look like a "normal" person, and not a Hollywood hottie. Sorry that "looks a mess" is apparently a much more serious turn of phrase to you folks than it is to me. Like, she was SUPPOSED to look a mess. She was a mom losing her mind because her husband had already lost his.
I don't understand what is controversial about that. This thread was about what modern movies fail at and what classic movies succeeded at, and this was merely an example, not me trying to say some nasty shit about Terri Gar.
Christ, she's in one of Mel Brooks' best fucking movies and she is knockout gorgeous in it. Is that enough for you people?
posted by deadaluspark at 12:27 PM on March 7, 2021 [26 favorites]
Apparently people got strong feelings about Terri Gar.
All I was trying to say is she looked a hell of a lot more like people I would meet in real life than the women in movies today, and I was trying to point out that a film like Close Encounters succeeded in making her look like a "normal" person, and not a Hollywood hottie. Sorry that "looks a mess" is apparently a much more serious turn of phrase to you folks than it is to me. Like, she was SUPPOSED to look a mess. She was a mom losing her mind because her husband had already lost his.
I don't understand what is controversial about that. This thread was about what modern movies fail at and what classic movies succeeded at, and this was merely an example, not me trying to say some nasty shit about Terri Gar.
Christ, she's in one of Mel Brooks' best fucking movies and she is knockout gorgeous in it. Is that enough for you people?
posted by deadaluspark at 12:27 PM on March 7, 2021 [26 favorites]
Evangelicals might hate Hallmark for making a gay Christmas romance, but they'll keep watching Hallmark movies anyways. In the absence of government censorship, the evangelicals are almost powerless on shaping culture.
And yet....there are no sex scenes in Hallmark movies. There are a ton of strict regulations about what can and can't go into a Hallmark piece, and one of those is: No nudity, sex, profanity, or graphic depictions of sexuality or violence will be accepted. Physical interaction must be limited to hugging and kissing. That rule didn't just come about accidentally in a vacuum.
posted by mstokes650 at 12:33 PM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
And yet....there are no sex scenes in Hallmark movies. There are a ton of strict regulations about what can and can't go into a Hallmark piece, and one of those is: No nudity, sex, profanity, or graphic depictions of sexuality or violence will be accepted. Physical interaction must be limited to hugging and kissing. That rule didn't just come about accidentally in a vacuum.
posted by mstokes650 at 12:33 PM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
I think TV (prestige TV) is doing a better job here. I feel like there is much better representation of middle aged women, for example. Homecoming nearly managed to make Julia flipping Roberts seem normal and almost a little frumpy. Wynona Ryder was a very believable middle-aged highly neurotic mom in Stranger Things. I feel like we see more body types, less makeup/perfect hair, and yeah...more intimacy, more sex.
posted by supermedusa at 12:44 PM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by supermedusa at 12:44 PM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
Isn’t hallmark very niche entertainment, though? Pop culture appears to have noticed that these movies exist about 5 years ago and they still feature relatively obscure actors.
posted by Selena777 at 12:45 PM on March 7, 2021
posted by Selena777 at 12:45 PM on March 7, 2021
BTW Angela Chase's house in My So-Called Life was also lived in and v middle class and they had a green fridge in their kitchen because you kept appliances like that until they died
posted by fluttering hellfire at 12:54 PM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by fluttering hellfire at 12:54 PM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
Debord in 1968:
Stars — spectacular representations of living human beings — project this general banality into images of permitted roles. As specialists of apparent life, stars serve as superficial objects that people can identify with in order to compensate for the fragmented productive specializations that they actually live. The function of these celebrities is to act out various lifestyles or sociopolitical viewpoints in a full, totally free manner. They embody the inaccessible results of social labor by dramatizing the by-products of that labor which are magically projected above it as its ultimate goals: power and vacations...posted by Fiasco da Gama at 12:55 PM on March 7, 2021 [9 favorites]
The author is biracial, and what got her on to the subject was realizing that everyone in GWTW was either very dark or definitely white-- the biracial people were written out of the setting so as to obscure sexual abuse.
OMG, that brings back a memory. Like I've said before, our parents made no attempt to censor or curate what we read as kids, and most of the books in the house came from unsorted "surprise boxes" that you got at auctions or thrift stores. One of these books was a memoir written by a white woman who had lived on her father's antebellum plantation in Mississippi as a child. She went on and on in the foreward about how she didn't intend it as a defense of slavery, but then every chapter was all, "Hey, wasn't slavery great?"
Anyway, one thing that completely went over my head as a small child but dawned on me in a horrified moment much later was the fact that all the enslaved people were described as being proud of having been born on the plantation instead of being bought or sold. But she also took great care to describe how many of them were light-skinned or "nearly white." Was she so naive she didn't realize what she was describing, or was it just so much a part of her world that she didn;t see anything wrong with it?
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:55 PM on March 7, 2021 [17 favorites]
OMG, that brings back a memory. Like I've said before, our parents made no attempt to censor or curate what we read as kids, and most of the books in the house came from unsorted "surprise boxes" that you got at auctions or thrift stores. One of these books was a memoir written by a white woman who had lived on her father's antebellum plantation in Mississippi as a child. She went on and on in the foreward about how she didn't intend it as a defense of slavery, but then every chapter was all, "Hey, wasn't slavery great?"
Anyway, one thing that completely went over my head as a small child but dawned on me in a horrified moment much later was the fact that all the enslaved people were described as being proud of having been born on the plantation instead of being bought or sold. But she also took great care to describe how many of them were light-skinned or "nearly white." Was she so naive she didn't realize what she was describing, or was it just so much a part of her world that she didn;t see anything wrong with it?
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:55 PM on March 7, 2021 [17 favorites]
Your “suburban Bible Belt Americans” are a rounding error, and even the entire US market is more of a “nice to have” than a main source of income.
I mean my point is more that blaming China/conservative international markets for media being conservative tends to read, to me, as a lazy way of ignoring the fact that the social mores of mainstream entertainment in America is largely dictated by a handful of conservative voices (Murdoch et al) and has been for a long long time. Not to mention it also ignores the whole.. let's say "lesson" we learned from 2016 onwards about how comfortable many Americans are with entertainment that doesn't contradict or challenge their largely white cis heteronormative perspectives.
Like when someone says "why aren't MCU characters openly gay" the answer isn't just "because China", it's "because casual homophobia is still a generally acceptable viewpoint for many people, even in the US".
posted by fight or flight at 12:56 PM on March 7, 2021 [5 favorites]
I mean my point is more that blaming China/conservative international markets for media being conservative tends to read, to me, as a lazy way of ignoring the fact that the social mores of mainstream entertainment in America is largely dictated by a handful of conservative voices (Murdoch et al) and has been for a long long time. Not to mention it also ignores the whole.. let's say "lesson" we learned from 2016 onwards about how comfortable many Americans are with entertainment that doesn't contradict or challenge their largely white cis heteronormative perspectives.
Like when someone says "why aren't MCU characters openly gay" the answer isn't just "because China", it's "because casual homophobia is still a generally acceptable viewpoint for many people, even in the US".
posted by fight or flight at 12:56 PM on March 7, 2021 [5 favorites]
Increasingly, I feel like Marvel superhero films are about people going to work. A genre that's ostensibly built on escapism feels more and more like a series of films about people who all share an office. There's no flirting because you can get fired for that, but there's also not much interiority because, ultimately, you're at work. Few of the heroes seem to worry about secret identities, because "Captain America" isn't a hidden higher self, it's a job title. (It's also a rank in the military, but let's not go there.) Being Iron Man isn't Tony Stark's personal apotheosis; he's just the head of a big corporation, and eventually his charismatic playboy persona gives way to a harried, worried bureaucrat who (spoiler alert!) shoulders his responsibility and takes one for the team.
If these people have interior lives at all, we mostly don't see them. That's a fascinating contrast to the Marvel comics of the Silver and Bronze Ages, which were lionized for precisely the reason that they took the notion of the superhero -- godlike, remote -- and humanized it.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 1:00 PM on March 7, 2021 [39 favorites]
If these people have interior lives at all, we mostly don't see them. That's a fascinating contrast to the Marvel comics of the Silver and Bronze Ages, which were lionized for precisely the reason that they took the notion of the superhero -- godlike, remote -- and humanized it.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 1:00 PM on March 7, 2021 [39 favorites]
Increasingly, I feel like Marvel superhero films are about people going to work.
This reminds me of a tweet I saw recently, to quote:
posted by fight or flight at 1:06 PM on March 7, 2021 [37 favorites]
This reminds me of a tweet I saw recently, to quote:
The Avengers are coworkersAnd this is why we need more X-Men movies, thank you the end.
The Fantastic Four are a family
The X-Men are messy queer network of found family units that all sleep with each other, turn looks, and fight
posted by fight or flight at 1:06 PM on March 7, 2021 [37 favorites]
That article had kind of a convoluted way of saying "I wanted to see Brie Larson's and Fall Godot's tatas on the big screen." This is concerning, because where are teens going to get their dose of sexualized objectification in this day and age?
posted by happyroach at 1:08 PM on March 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by happyroach at 1:08 PM on March 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
I nodded along with the idea that modern movies are less sexy, but perhaps there is an element of “films I watch now don’t seem to make me as horny as the ones I saw when I was a hormone-riddled teenager”.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 1:10 PM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 1:10 PM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
This is concerning, because where are teens going to get their dose of sexualized objectification in this day and age?
To the shock and horror of many, not Lola Bunny apparently.
posted by deadaluspark at 1:29 PM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
To the shock and horror of many, not Lola Bunny apparently.
posted by deadaluspark at 1:29 PM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
I thought expunging sex and sexuality from all public life was a good thing? If things are public then they are seen by people who didn't consent.
posted by poe at 1:47 PM on March 7, 2021
posted by poe at 1:47 PM on March 7, 2021
A movie you voluntarily pay to see is public life?
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:51 PM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:51 PM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
But it's not like when I see a more normal sized person in media I am able to forgo the total saturation of thin/swole beauty and appreciate it as easily. At this point I think I need Hollywood's help in retraining myself to see the beauty of normal-ish faces and bodies onscreen, because they so thoroughly trained me the other way.
For a few years, I've been trying to retrain my own eye (in several regards, not just this one) through specifically watching a lot of stories centering Black and brown people and communities of culture, plus following folks on Instagram who are from more diverse backgrounds. It helps a lot to regularly see people whose body standards widely diverge from the norms discussed here. So that's one way to work on this.
I think the normative unrealistic depictions are only going to get worse for a while, as everyday people start to regain hope of seeing other people and try to make over their bodies and spaces accordingly, after many of us have let that focus go for a while in the pandemic so far. I anticipate that's likely going to influence how aspirational movies' and TV shows' depictions of humans might become.
So many of us who have been locked away for months largely by ourselves are no doubt going to be experiencing some dysphoria when it comes to other humans and how our bodies (and spaces!) all look for a while. After being stuck inside for more than a year with media that includes the relentless gaze of self-improvement, personal fitness, and aspiration, I feel like it's hard to not second-guess my own body's physical mode of being when I'm around others, or even when I'm trying to present images of myself to others from afar. It was already hard and this has all just made that harder.
I see myself having internalized that gaze when I look at others too. When I haven't seen someone for months and we've all been inside a lot, even when I just see people on Zoom or for a drink, I find myself peering at them, noticing myself noticing the weight gain, the grown-out or shorn hair, what it's done to their jawline and neck and arms, whether their hair has gotten grayer this year (also might just be my thirtysomething cohort on the cusp of all that, too)...
It's almost irresistible right now, this internalized curiosity about the appearance of other people's bodies, though of course I keep it to myself—on some level, I think it's just me wondering, "Are you feeling this too?" and looking for signs that others have gone through or are going through what I've been experiencing, in terms of reckoning with my own physicality (and ongoing depersonalization from that).
posted by limeonaire at 2:07 PM on March 7, 2021 [8 favorites]
For a few years, I've been trying to retrain my own eye (in several regards, not just this one) through specifically watching a lot of stories centering Black and brown people and communities of culture, plus following folks on Instagram who are from more diverse backgrounds. It helps a lot to regularly see people whose body standards widely diverge from the norms discussed here. So that's one way to work on this.
I think the normative unrealistic depictions are only going to get worse for a while, as everyday people start to regain hope of seeing other people and try to make over their bodies and spaces accordingly, after many of us have let that focus go for a while in the pandemic so far. I anticipate that's likely going to influence how aspirational movies' and TV shows' depictions of humans might become.
So many of us who have been locked away for months largely by ourselves are no doubt going to be experiencing some dysphoria when it comes to other humans and how our bodies (and spaces!) all look for a while. After being stuck inside for more than a year with media that includes the relentless gaze of self-improvement, personal fitness, and aspiration, I feel like it's hard to not second-guess my own body's physical mode of being when I'm around others, or even when I'm trying to present images of myself to others from afar. It was already hard and this has all just made that harder.
I see myself having internalized that gaze when I look at others too. When I haven't seen someone for months and we've all been inside a lot, even when I just see people on Zoom or for a drink, I find myself peering at them, noticing myself noticing the weight gain, the grown-out or shorn hair, what it's done to their jawline and neck and arms, whether their hair has gotten grayer this year (also might just be my thirtysomething cohort on the cusp of all that, too)...
It's almost irresistible right now, this internalized curiosity about the appearance of other people's bodies, though of course I keep it to myself—on some level, I think it's just me wondering, "Are you feeling this too?" and looking for signs that others have gone through or are going through what I've been experiencing, in terms of reckoning with my own physicality (and ongoing depersonalization from that).
posted by limeonaire at 2:07 PM on March 7, 2021 [8 favorites]
Regarding the unattainable standards of Hollywood beauty, I keep noticing the nonspeaking extras in high-school and college settings. The "normal kids" filling all the other seats in the classroom or bleachers.
It feels like something changed in the early-to-mid 1980s, raising the bar of what's considered average.
posted by cheshyre at 2:30 PM on March 7, 2021 [5 favorites]
It feels like something changed in the early-to-mid 1980s, raising the bar of what's considered average.
posted by cheshyre at 2:30 PM on March 7, 2021 [5 favorites]
the mother of the boy who is abducted never actually, I don't know, does any real mothering or paying attention to her kid or talking to him or stopping him?
That was just how parenting was done in the 70s.
posted by LindsayIrene at 2:57 PM on March 7, 2021 [17 favorites]
That was just how parenting was done in the 70s.
posted by LindsayIrene at 2:57 PM on March 7, 2021 [17 favorites]
I thought expunging sex and sexuality from all public life was a good thing? If things are public then they are seen by people who didn't consent.
posted by poe
eyponysterical
Anyways, capitalism did this.
posted by Reyturner at 3:00 PM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by poe
eyponysterical
Anyways, capitalism did this.
posted by Reyturner at 3:00 PM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
That was just how parenting was done in the 70s.
So much this. Ask a Gen-X kid what they were allowed to do at age ten and try to find the parent of a ten-year-old today who would allow that.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:02 PM on March 7, 2021 [30 favorites]
So much this. Ask a Gen-X kid what they were allowed to do at age ten and try to find the parent of a ten-year-old today who would allow that.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:02 PM on March 7, 2021 [30 favorites]
Was she so naive she didn't realize what she was describing, or was it just so much a part of her world that she didn;t see anything wrong with it?
“The mulattoes one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children—and every lady tells you who is the father of all the mulatto children in [everybody else’s house hold], but those in her own she seems to think drop from the clouds, or pretends so to think.” (Mary Boykin Chesnut, Civil War diarist)
posted by ALeaflikeStructure at 3:14 PM on March 7, 2021 [11 favorites]
“The mulattoes one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children—and every lady tells you who is the father of all the mulatto children in [everybody else’s house hold], but those in her own she seems to think drop from the clouds, or pretends so to think.” (Mary Boykin Chesnut, Civil War diarist)
posted by ALeaflikeStructure at 3:14 PM on March 7, 2021 [11 favorites]
I found this article a wealth of eye rolling activity.
I haven't been a fan of superheroes since about 5th grade, and horny superheroes are unlikely to change that. That superhero movies have largely populated the action and sci fi genre output of big budget productions just leaves me more time to devote to better, smaller movies.
That the characters are sexless and perfect doesn't bother me in the least. They're superheroes, ffs. Perhaps one might find it somehow problematic, I find it more problematic that anyone would seek redeeming depictions of sexuality and body image in such media.
It's wild to think that Robert Pattinson might be the dad bod that's brings it back down to reality. C'mon...
And please, this isn't some kind of newfangled trend. It really isn't.
posted by 2N2222 at 3:40 PM on March 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
I haven't been a fan of superheroes since about 5th grade, and horny superheroes are unlikely to change that. That superhero movies have largely populated the action and sci fi genre output of big budget productions just leaves me more time to devote to better, smaller movies.
That the characters are sexless and perfect doesn't bother me in the least. They're superheroes, ffs. Perhaps one might find it somehow problematic, I find it more problematic that anyone would seek redeeming depictions of sexuality and body image in such media.
It's wild to think that Robert Pattinson might be the dad bod that's brings it back down to reality. C'mon...
And please, this isn't some kind of newfangled trend. It really isn't.
posted by 2N2222 at 3:40 PM on March 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
Sorry to prolong a mini-derail, but I feel like someone needs to defend Melinda Dillon’s parenting in Close Encounters. There’s like two scenes with her and her son before the scene where he’s abducted. The first one takes place past his bedtime, so what kind of attention should she be paying to him before he sneaks out of bed to chase UFOs? The second scene is the next night when she’s allowing him to play with some other kids while the adults wait around to see if the lights in the sky appear again. She intervenes when some random guy tries to take a photo of him.
Their third scene together, the one where he's abducted, has aliens literally snatching him from her hands through the dog door after she's frantically barricaded every other possible entry to the house amid escalating chaos.
posted by theory at 3:42 PM on March 7, 2021 [10 favorites]
Their third scene together, the one where he's abducted, has aliens literally snatching him from her hands through the dog door after she's frantically barricaded every other possible entry to the house amid escalating chaos.
posted by theory at 3:42 PM on March 7, 2021 [10 favorites]
I find it more problematic that anyone would seek redeeming depictions of sexuality and body image in such media.
Given the fact that many of these movies are grossing near or over a billion dollars, and are featured heavily on streaming services, I don’t think it’s a question of anyone seeking these films out to choose to copy them. As is pointed out, a large percentage of the audience for these films is children and teens. This is the idealized body image they are growing up surrounded by. As others have pointed out, while older films still heavily featured attractive people, at least for the most part, their attractiveness was familiar, and not unattainable. I can’t imagine the pressure a young kid seeing nothing but thigh gaps and six packs in films, then mirrored again in Instagram and other places must internalize just by living and breathing in a culture dominated by these images.
Given the drastic consolidation of media outlets in the last ten years or so, you’ve essentially got a handful of distributors controlling most of the market, pushing these unhealthy images of what the human body is supposed to look like. No one has to seek it out. On the contrary, it’s becoming difficult, even for those who make the conscious choice, to find anything like a healthy body image portrayed in film.
As far as sexuality in comics to change topics a bit, having grown up reading Clairmont’s X-men and others around that time, there was intense horniness in comics. Not great stuff, a lot of it terrible cringe in service of male gaze, but yeah, sexlessness in comic movies is a pretty serious derivation from their origins. While there is the “ooh la la” of ogling Captain America in the first film, throughout Rogers’ entire story, much is made (jokingly) about how sexless he is, especially in the second film with people trying to push him into dating, which is all thrown aside the second “serious” things come up. It’s this weird affectation that people in the 40’s didn’t fuck, which, holy hell people, where do you think the baby boom came from?!
posted by Ghidorah at 4:18 PM on March 7, 2021 [14 favorites]
Given the fact that many of these movies are grossing near or over a billion dollars, and are featured heavily on streaming services, I don’t think it’s a question of anyone seeking these films out to choose to copy them. As is pointed out, a large percentage of the audience for these films is children and teens. This is the idealized body image they are growing up surrounded by. As others have pointed out, while older films still heavily featured attractive people, at least for the most part, their attractiveness was familiar, and not unattainable. I can’t imagine the pressure a young kid seeing nothing but thigh gaps and six packs in films, then mirrored again in Instagram and other places must internalize just by living and breathing in a culture dominated by these images.
Given the drastic consolidation of media outlets in the last ten years or so, you’ve essentially got a handful of distributors controlling most of the market, pushing these unhealthy images of what the human body is supposed to look like. No one has to seek it out. On the contrary, it’s becoming difficult, even for those who make the conscious choice, to find anything like a healthy body image portrayed in film.
As far as sexuality in comics to change topics a bit, having grown up reading Clairmont’s X-men and others around that time, there was intense horniness in comics. Not great stuff, a lot of it terrible cringe in service of male gaze, but yeah, sexlessness in comic movies is a pretty serious derivation from their origins. While there is the “ooh la la” of ogling Captain America in the first film, throughout Rogers’ entire story, much is made (jokingly) about how sexless he is, especially in the second film with people trying to push him into dating, which is all thrown aside the second “serious” things come up. It’s this weird affectation that people in the 40’s didn’t fuck, which, holy hell people, where do you think the baby boom came from?!
posted by Ghidorah at 4:18 PM on March 7, 2021 [14 favorites]
Like when someone says "why aren't MCU characters openly gay" the answer isn't just "because China", it's "because casual homophobia is still a generally acceptable viewpoint for many people, even in the US".
The scene that always comes to mind is from Thor: Ragnarok when Thor makes a big deal about the Hulk walking around naked with his big green dong flopping to-and-fro. It's like a mixture of homophobia and fears of sexual inadequacy against a literal monster dong.
I mean, weren't saunas invented in the "Norse" part of the world? Finald, right? Shouldn't Thor be totes cool hanging out in the nude in a sauna with other dudes?
posted by deadaluspark at 4:32 PM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
The scene that always comes to mind is from Thor: Ragnarok when Thor makes a big deal about the Hulk walking around naked with his big green dong flopping to-and-fro. It's like a mixture of homophobia and fears of sexual inadequacy against a literal monster dong.
I mean, weren't saunas invented in the "Norse" part of the world? Finald, right? Shouldn't Thor be totes cool hanging out in the nude in a sauna with other dudes?
posted by deadaluspark at 4:32 PM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
I feel like RS Benedict’s article is in a similar vein to Scorsese’s op-ed in the Times a year ago. And while I disagree with elements in both of them (I think Scorsese is wrong to say that a Marvel-type movie can’t be art, for example), each is making valid arguments that aren’t quite captured by the framing.
There’s also a parallel here to the (non) presence of politics in most big Hollywood movies. Outside of biopics, it’s rare to see a character in a blockbuster express a particular political stance or for a movie to endorse a point of view. There will be gestures towards vague ideas of justice, and corruption is always a safe topic, but anything too specific is dangerous when there's a billion dollars of potential profit and maybe the survival of a corporation riding on a single project.
This absence of politics —like the absence of complex desires and interior lives— is not exactly a new phenomenon in blockbusters. What is new-ish is the way that a handful of these movies and their associated franchises overwhelmingly dominate the movie landscape. Starship Troopers, The Lost Boys, and the old Batman movies didn’t determine the fate of an entire industry in nearly the same way that the next Marvel movie will.
posted by theory at 5:05 PM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
There’s also a parallel here to the (non) presence of politics in most big Hollywood movies. Outside of biopics, it’s rare to see a character in a blockbuster express a particular political stance or for a movie to endorse a point of view. There will be gestures towards vague ideas of justice, and corruption is always a safe topic, but anything too specific is dangerous when there's a billion dollars of potential profit and maybe the survival of a corporation riding on a single project.
This absence of politics —like the absence of complex desires and interior lives— is not exactly a new phenomenon in blockbusters. What is new-ish is the way that a handful of these movies and their associated franchises overwhelmingly dominate the movie landscape. Starship Troopers, The Lost Boys, and the old Batman movies didn’t determine the fate of an entire industry in nearly the same way that the next Marvel movie will.
posted by theory at 5:05 PM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
It's always been the mother in Poltergeist who troubled me the most. (That is, if I'm actually thinking of Poltergeist and not The Amityville Horror or some other haunted-house movie of the period.)
Dad says, we're leaving in the morning; if the kids happen to zonk out, let them sleep. Immediately after Dad leaves, she makes the kids go to bed, in the haunted room with all the creepy toys, then locks herself in he bathroom with the water running while she draws and prepares for a leisurely bath and a home hair color job. If those were my kids, we'd all be huddled together on a mattress in the most brightly-lit room in the house, fully dressed, in our winter coats, and ready to make tracks if anything happens.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:43 PM on March 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
Dad says, we're leaving in the morning; if the kids happen to zonk out, let them sleep. Immediately after Dad leaves, she makes the kids go to bed, in the haunted room with all the creepy toys, then locks herself in he bathroom with the water running while she draws and prepares for a leisurely bath and a home hair color job. If those were my kids, we'd all be huddled together on a mattress in the most brightly-lit room in the house, fully dressed, in our winter coats, and ready to make tracks if anything happens.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:43 PM on March 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
Skinny, yeah. Ripped in the middle, nah. If somebody's abdominal muscles are visible, they did something deliberate and extravagant to achieve that.
. . . This is just not true. Especially among physically active young men. And I don't mean "young men who are bodybuilders", I mean "young men who like to run/hike/play sports". Obviously not all young men, but I know plenty of guys who had abs in their youth because they were physically active and had raging metabolisms.
I am just another voice to the chorus, but when I watch old movies I am struck by how damn average background people look. They all look like normal people. Are directors only picking super-hotties to be extras these days, or are the only people trying to be actors the ones who are or can transform themselves to be super-hotties?
posted by Anonymous at 6:27 PM on March 7, 2021
. . . This is just not true. Especially among physically active young men. And I don't mean "young men who are bodybuilders", I mean "young men who like to run/hike/play sports". Obviously not all young men, but I know plenty of guys who had abs in their youth because they were physically active and had raging metabolisms.
I am just another voice to the chorus, but when I watch old movies I am struck by how damn average background people look. They all look like normal people. Are directors only picking super-hotties to be extras these days, or are the only people trying to be actors the ones who are or can transform themselves to be super-hotties?
posted by Anonymous at 6:27 PM on March 7, 2021
I think it’s not sexuality that’s missing so much as a sense of intimacy. I think the writer is correct that there’s no intimacy in an enormous sterile home or a body that’s been sculpted into a showpiece, because both are meant as display items. And what’s the intimacy in seeing something that was crafted and/or purchased specifically as an item for public display?
I really miss the sense of intimacy of lived-in looking houses and more naturalistic actor styling and character relationships.
I think hyper reality as a fad really took off in the late aughts... first entertainment became all about rich people in 2004 or so (the OC), and then it became about glamorous, hyper real rich people in 2008 or so (Gossip Girl). And now it’s not just about the super rich, it’s about the superhuman super rich, like Batman or the Avengers. “Mainstream” American culture is so weird.
posted by rue72 at 6:48 PM on March 7, 2021 [16 favorites]
I really miss the sense of intimacy of lived-in looking houses and more naturalistic actor styling and character relationships.
I think hyper reality as a fad really took off in the late aughts... first entertainment became all about rich people in 2004 or so (the OC), and then it became about glamorous, hyper real rich people in 2008 or so (Gossip Girl). And now it’s not just about the super rich, it’s about the superhuman super rich, like Batman or the Avengers. “Mainstream” American culture is so weird.
posted by rue72 at 6:48 PM on March 7, 2021 [16 favorites]
first entertainment became all about rich people in 2004 or so
May I point you to Dallas and Dynasty and Falcon's Crest back in the 70s/80s? And Beverly Hills 90210. And Robin Leach's Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous...
Shows about the rich did not originate in the 2000s. Not by a long shot.
posted by hippybear at 7:00 PM on March 7, 2021 [13 favorites]
May I point you to Dallas and Dynasty and Falcon's Crest back in the 70s/80s? And Beverly Hills 90210. And Robin Leach's Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous...
Shows about the rich did not originate in the 2000s. Not by a long shot.
posted by hippybear at 7:00 PM on March 7, 2021 [13 favorites]
to jump off on the point about hyper-unreal real bodies in mainstream blockbusters, my usual internet habit is watching youtube documentary/essay videos, and last week i discovered Insider's movie-related ones, which took a historical framing to the advances in movie production and technology. these two in particular: the evolution of filming techniques to create twins of a single actor in the last 100 years, and the evolution of the vfx in the last decade that was sparked by AND fed back into the movie costuming of Iron Man i feel is quite a relevant tangent here. Effects studios can now literally pick and choose body parts in a moving frame - media literacy is clearly now going to have to be a critical life skill because i shudder to think how plastic young minds take those in without any mental innoculation to understand the artistry. And eventually this kind of tech will be democratized for good and ill, even your standard awards circuit indie would be able to afford this (they already can have cheap background swapping techniques in their toolkit), so even a genre associated with verisimilitude won't really have much. (i mean, even on zoom i can have fairly clear skin, bigger eyes, thicker eyebrows with the built-in beauty filters).
and now that i'm typing it out, if your visual presentation is so manicured in real time, until they can figure out how to fix clipping issues when two bodies interact, then i expect the lack of intimacy will just be a natural consequence of contemporary staging on 'film' (it's not really film any more, is it?)
posted by cendawanita at 10:15 PM on March 7, 2021 [5 favorites]
and now that i'm typing it out, if your visual presentation is so manicured in real time, until they can figure out how to fix clipping issues when two bodies interact, then i expect the lack of intimacy will just be a natural consequence of contemporary staging on 'film' (it's not really film any more, is it?)
posted by cendawanita at 10:15 PM on March 7, 2021 [5 favorites]
Sex in the 80s movies started going away when the PG-13 rating gave film makers a middle path between PG and R. It let them say and do some grown up things as long as the very worst language was dialed back and the women put their shirts back on. The huge spike in post-release revenues just raised the cost of any scenes that might cause trouble later.
Sex started disappearing from many movies in the 90s when the internet arrived. Within a handful of years you could get an infinite amount ridiculously high quality porn for essentially nothing. It left no mystery, no more unanswered questions, just a lot of very detailed answers and a lot of collateral damage to people and relationships. But the reason sex left the movies wasn't necessarily a direct "I can get better sex elsewhere" so much as a more subtle, caustic realization by directors that "If sex is just a workout between two pretty people then why do I need it in my movie?" A lot of the time it had been pretty gratuitous, so the loss wasn't really felt at all. But in some cases stories and characters might have been better served by including some of these elements of the human experience.
posted by Cris E at 10:27 PM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
Sex started disappearing from many movies in the 90s when the internet arrived. Within a handful of years you could get an infinite amount ridiculously high quality porn for essentially nothing. It left no mystery, no more unanswered questions, just a lot of very detailed answers and a lot of collateral damage to people and relationships. But the reason sex left the movies wasn't necessarily a direct "I can get better sex elsewhere" so much as a more subtle, caustic realization by directors that "If sex is just a workout between two pretty people then why do I need it in my movie?" A lot of the time it had been pretty gratuitous, so the loss wasn't really felt at all. But in some cases stories and characters might have been better served by including some of these elements of the human experience.
posted by Cris E at 10:27 PM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
p.s. Is there a version of this article anywhere that is not white text on a black background? This sounds right up my alley, but I can't physically read it :-(
Aside from the helpful options already mentioned by others, depending on your browser you might be able to click "print" and then simply read the preview.
posted by xigxag at 10:48 PM on March 7, 2021
Aside from the helpful options already mentioned by others, depending on your browser you might be able to click "print" and then simply read the preview.
posted by xigxag at 10:48 PM on March 7, 2021
This reminds me of discussions about why there's such a dearth of teen sex comedies these days.I'm guessing because a) the easy availability of porn means sex doesn't have the mystique it once had and b) most of those movies were so predatory and would get destroyed on social media if released today.
posted by LindsayIrene at 11:12 PM on March 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by LindsayIrene at 11:12 PM on March 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
but they’ll do a lot to keep general distribution in China - which is probably also the only reason all of the villains aren’t Chinese the way they were East German/Russian in the 1980s.Very much this. For example:
China has become such an important market for U.S. entertainment companies that one studio has taken the extraordinary step of digitally altering a film to excise bad guys from the Communist nation lest the leadership in Beijing be offended.IIRC, China only lets something like 100 foreign films per year into its domestic market, all subject to political approval. They'll even boycott a studio if they're particularly miffed about some film they made, even if it was only indented for Western audiences. That gives Hollywood a huge incentive to self-censor.
posted by cosmic.osmo at 11:42 PM on March 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
Agree with the the worldwide distribution factor, adding:
An HIV/AIDS Timeline (starting 1981)
1992: AIDS becomes the number one cause of death for U.S. men ages 25 to 44
1994: AIDS becomes the leading cause of death for all Americans ages 25 to 44
Modern movie "sex" scenes became less appealing to audiences (and possibly to the actors on set), I think; filmmakers either would not or could not depict contemporary safer-sex practices while maintaining the 'sexiness' of simulated scenes. The article's "But there is hope" ending quotes Robert Pattinson, in a 2019 Variety interview: “In the last three or four movies, I’ve got a masturbation scene. I did it in ‘High Life.’ I did it in ‘Damsel.’ And ‘The Devil All the Time.’ I only realized when I did it the fourth time [in The Lighthouse].” If the future is solo sex scenes, internet pornography has that angle covered, too.
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:54 PM on March 7, 2021 [5 favorites]
An HIV/AIDS Timeline (starting 1981)
1992: AIDS becomes the number one cause of death for U.S. men ages 25 to 44
1994: AIDS becomes the leading cause of death for all Americans ages 25 to 44
Modern movie "sex" scenes became less appealing to audiences (and possibly to the actors on set), I think; filmmakers either would not or could not depict contemporary safer-sex practices while maintaining the 'sexiness' of simulated scenes. The article's "But there is hope" ending quotes Robert Pattinson, in a 2019 Variety interview: “In the last three or four movies, I’ve got a masturbation scene. I did it in ‘High Life.’ I did it in ‘Damsel.’ And ‘The Devil All the Time.’ I only realized when I did it the fourth time [in The Lighthouse].” If the future is solo sex scenes, internet pornography has that angle covered, too.
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:54 PM on March 7, 2021 [5 favorites]
Is there actually less sex in movies these days? Has any research been done? I would not be surprised if there is less unnecessary sexualization of women, but is that a bad thing?
posted by Anonymous at 4:29 AM on March 8, 2021
posted by Anonymous at 4:29 AM on March 8, 2021
Is there actually less sex in movies these days? Has any research been done? I would not be surprised if there is less unnecessary sexualization of women, but is that a bad thing?
The charge is more "superhero movies these days are full of gorgeous people who studiously avoid sexuality" than "movies these days have less sex in them".
And I agree with you: I think that thesis is rather muddy because the article really seems to be driving at how everything is plastic and what's studiously being avoided is realistic messiness. Sexuality seems to be this writer's chosen stand-in for realistic messiness. Which makes no sense!
Why on earth would sexuality necessarily imply messiness? So very many movies lean all the way into the plasticky, un-messy, utterly unreal sexualities of their plasticky, un-messy, utterly unreal-looking beautiful characters. Not even talking about blatant modern examples like 50 Shades, I mean, think about all the iconic smolderingly sexual "classic" movie scenes: all the Sharon Stones and Marylin Monroes etc., the legions of sexually objectified women. Sex was presented in a dehumanized and dehumanizing way, there was nothing realistically messy about any of it. Hell even when we had sexually charged pottery-making scenes it was all ghostly i.e. the clay never got in any inconvenient places!
No, I don't think we've ever had realistic sexuality depicted in big screen blockbusters. We did have slightly more "real", slightly less plastic-perfect people on the big screen, for sure, but that was solely because we had not the tech for it in those days, not because the big screen was somehow more ethical or more human-friendly. What we lacked in terms of tech for creating plastic-perfect looks, we more than compensated for in other ways. Nonwhite, nonmale, nonstraight, etc. people at least see ourselves exist on the big screen these days, ya know? Not that this excuses how these movies are infecting entire generations with serious body issues, obviously, I'm just saying let's not pretend the good old days were somehow better.
posted by MiraK at 7:06 AM on March 8, 2021 [12 favorites]
The charge is more "superhero movies these days are full of gorgeous people who studiously avoid sexuality" than "movies these days have less sex in them".
And I agree with you: I think that thesis is rather muddy because the article really seems to be driving at how everything is plastic and what's studiously being avoided is realistic messiness. Sexuality seems to be this writer's chosen stand-in for realistic messiness. Which makes no sense!
Why on earth would sexuality necessarily imply messiness? So very many movies lean all the way into the plasticky, un-messy, utterly unreal sexualities of their plasticky, un-messy, utterly unreal-looking beautiful characters. Not even talking about blatant modern examples like 50 Shades, I mean, think about all the iconic smolderingly sexual "classic" movie scenes: all the Sharon Stones and Marylin Monroes etc., the legions of sexually objectified women. Sex was presented in a dehumanized and dehumanizing way, there was nothing realistically messy about any of it. Hell even when we had sexually charged pottery-making scenes it was all ghostly i.e. the clay never got in any inconvenient places!
No, I don't think we've ever had realistic sexuality depicted in big screen blockbusters. We did have slightly more "real", slightly less plastic-perfect people on the big screen, for sure, but that was solely because we had not the tech for it in those days, not because the big screen was somehow more ethical or more human-friendly. What we lacked in terms of tech for creating plastic-perfect looks, we more than compensated for in other ways. Nonwhite, nonmale, nonstraight, etc. people at least see ourselves exist on the big screen these days, ya know? Not that this excuses how these movies are infecting entire generations with serious body issues, obviously, I'm just saying let's not pretend the good old days were somehow better.
posted by MiraK at 7:06 AM on March 8, 2021 [12 favorites]
There's a corollary here that the article doesn't touch upon: what happens when one person is into having some good sexy times but the other person isn't? Because in real life, that happens far more frequently than mutual sexual attraction and carefree fun sexy times.
If we really wanted to get "real" about sexuality, we'd have Captain America hitting on young girls at weddings and Doctor Doom bragging about grabbing them by the pussy.
posted by lock robster at 7:40 AM on March 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
If we really wanted to get "real" about sexuality, we'd have Captain America hitting on young girls at weddings and Doctor Doom bragging about grabbing them by the pussy.
posted by lock robster at 7:40 AM on March 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
What is it about film threads that tend to kick off 100+ comments in MeFi? I am so susceptible to these topics, but I'm also uneasy about the dozens of daily entries that languish with a dozen comments (or fewer).. like, thank god someone made a point about Thor's reaction to Hulk's enormous green dong, meanwhile the latest on climate crisis? crickets
Also I'm curious about two things: how would one create art from a Marvel superhero film adaptation, and what are some recommendations for the realization of interiority in film? I know what I've seen and liked, but I suspect some of you will have fantastic suggestions.
posted by elkevelvet at 7:41 AM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Also I'm curious about two things: how would one create art from a Marvel superhero film adaptation, and what are some recommendations for the realization of interiority in film? I know what I've seen and liked, but I suspect some of you will have fantastic suggestions.
posted by elkevelvet at 7:41 AM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Given the drastic consolidation of media outlets in the last ten years or so, you’ve essentially got a handful of distributors controlling most of the market, pushing these unhealthy images of what the human body is supposed to look like. No one has to seek it out. On the contrary, it’s becoming difficult, even for those who make the conscious choice, to find anything like a healthy body image portrayed in film.
One thing I've noticed among the younger Twitter left - everyone is obsessed with bodybuilding. And in general obsessed with appearance. That's not to say that you can't be obsessed with socialism or prison abolition at the same time, but it's a really marked change from when I was a young activist and punk type person. If you'd spent a lot of time talking to other activists about how you were working on your body, how pleased you were to have big arm muscles now and how you felt that you were now hot but had not been hot before, people would think you were really strange and would not take you seriously. Henry Rollins did bodybuilding and people thought that was strange and kind of risible and also sort of dubious on the gender front.
Obviously this isn't because we were better when I was a kid or something - it's because of the greater presence, sophistication and power of images, whether that's being able to distribute selfies to a few thousand like-minded radicals, the ubiquity of images of radicals and radical events (much scarcer in the 90s/early 2000s) or the way we're all bathed in a sea of images of consumption whenever we're online and we can't not be online.
There's also body positivity, a greater diversity of images, etc etc, and that's genuinely good, but because the "I am so happy that I am hot now" stuff is backed up by the rest of mainstream culture, it has a lot more force. I don't think it's good. I don't think that the way that left media is completely entwined with mainstream media has been good for the left.
I don't think watching a lot of superhero movies and in general mainstream garbage is a good idea, no matter how "critically" you consume it. It doesn't just affect you on the conscious level where you can unpack and reject it; it does reset your expectations about all kinds of things from body types to how conversations should go.
In many respects, younger leftists are better - they have huge advantages from social media, the times are different, etc etc. But if there was one thing that my generation got absolutely right, it was distrust and hatred of mainstream images and culture.
posted by Frowner at 7:51 AM on March 8, 2021 [17 favorites]
One thing I've noticed among the younger Twitter left - everyone is obsessed with bodybuilding. And in general obsessed with appearance. That's not to say that you can't be obsessed with socialism or prison abolition at the same time, but it's a really marked change from when I was a young activist and punk type person. If you'd spent a lot of time talking to other activists about how you were working on your body, how pleased you were to have big arm muscles now and how you felt that you were now hot but had not been hot before, people would think you were really strange and would not take you seriously. Henry Rollins did bodybuilding and people thought that was strange and kind of risible and also sort of dubious on the gender front.
Obviously this isn't because we were better when I was a kid or something - it's because of the greater presence, sophistication and power of images, whether that's being able to distribute selfies to a few thousand like-minded radicals, the ubiquity of images of radicals and radical events (much scarcer in the 90s/early 2000s) or the way we're all bathed in a sea of images of consumption whenever we're online and we can't not be online.
There's also body positivity, a greater diversity of images, etc etc, and that's genuinely good, but because the "I am so happy that I am hot now" stuff is backed up by the rest of mainstream culture, it has a lot more force. I don't think it's good. I don't think that the way that left media is completely entwined with mainstream media has been good for the left.
I don't think watching a lot of superhero movies and in general mainstream garbage is a good idea, no matter how "critically" you consume it. It doesn't just affect you on the conscious level where you can unpack and reject it; it does reset your expectations about all kinds of things from body types to how conversations should go.
In many respects, younger leftists are better - they have huge advantages from social media, the times are different, etc etc. But if there was one thing that my generation got absolutely right, it was distrust and hatred of mainstream images and culture.
posted by Frowner at 7:51 AM on March 8, 2021 [17 favorites]
What is it about film threads that tend to kick off 100+ comments in MeFi? ... like, thank god someone made a point about Thor's reaction to Hulk's enormous green dong, meanwhile the latest on climate crisis? crickets
probably because we're uncaring morally degenerate hedonists being controlled by our capitalist overlords hmmm maybe you can write a think piece saying "wake up sheeple"
posted by MiraK at 8:01 AM on March 8, 2021 [20 favorites]
probably because we're uncaring morally degenerate hedonists being controlled by our capitalist overlords hmmm maybe you can write a think piece saying "wake up sheeple"
posted by MiraK at 8:01 AM on March 8, 2021 [20 favorites]
In terms of the climate crisis:
What is there to say except variants "yes, that's very bad"? If this were, eg, a message board for climate scientists, people would have a lot to say. If we all lived in the same town and were able to organize a protest or political campaign, we'd have a lot to say. But we're located all over the place and have very different expertise.
Whereas most people, god help us, have seen a superhero movie. Even I have seen an X-Men movie. It was very loud. And of course, most of us have grown up with a general sense of the role of superheroes in pop culture - most of us probably read at least a few superhero comics as kids, saw some of the older movies, watched the cartoons, etc.
People are going to talk more about things they have some experience with. I'm not sure the world would be improved by my spitballing about Myanmar or ocean acidification, for instance.
Also, whenever we have a climate post that goes somewhere, it devolves into doomer versus bloomer, so to speak, and then people get mad about that.
posted by Frowner at 8:06 AM on March 8, 2021 [13 favorites]
What is there to say except variants "yes, that's very bad"? If this were, eg, a message board for climate scientists, people would have a lot to say. If we all lived in the same town and were able to organize a protest or political campaign, we'd have a lot to say. But we're located all over the place and have very different expertise.
Whereas most people, god help us, have seen a superhero movie. Even I have seen an X-Men movie. It was very loud. And of course, most of us have grown up with a general sense of the role of superheroes in pop culture - most of us probably read at least a few superhero comics as kids, saw some of the older movies, watched the cartoons, etc.
People are going to talk more about things they have some experience with. I'm not sure the world would be improved by my spitballing about Myanmar or ocean acidification, for instance.
Also, whenever we have a climate post that goes somewhere, it devolves into doomer versus bloomer, so to speak, and then people get mad about that.
posted by Frowner at 8:06 AM on March 8, 2021 [13 favorites]
What is there to say except variants "yes, that's very bad"?
You could start a fight over if it's ok to upset people by telling them how bad things are or not
posted by thelonius at 8:25 AM on March 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
You could start a fight over if it's ok to upset people by telling them how bad things are or not
posted by thelonius at 8:25 AM on March 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
Just taking a moment to appreciate Frowner's review of X-Men: It was very loud.
posted by Emmy Rae at 8:32 AM on March 8, 2021 [11 favorites]
posted by Emmy Rae at 8:32 AM on March 8, 2021 [11 favorites]
> Increasingly, I feel like Marvel superhero films are about people going to workReminds me of this classic comment by wuwei about James Bond compared to Jason Bourne as allegories for professional employees in different generations.
posted by mbrubeck at 8:35 AM on March 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
Mod note: A nudge to refrain from further derailing this thread by arguing about the importance and/or validity of certain issues over another ie: climate change derail. Please allow all to participate in this thread comfortably and let's get back to the intended discussions.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 8:37 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 8:37 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
The Terri Garr Defense Force and the parenting decisions of fictional 70's characters was the intended discussion? This is why I love MetaFilter.
posted by pseudophile at 8:57 AM on March 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by pseudophile at 8:57 AM on March 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
This essay is a lot of half-tied-together, baldly asserted opinions that seems backed up less by facts than by nostalgia. They aren’t opinions that I exactly disagree with In many cases, and I like the author’s style, but this is a bit longer than I like my hot takes to be. Gonna be fun rooting around this site for other good content, though.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:01 AM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Going To Maine at 9:01 AM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
There's some interesting observations in here about Hollywood's images of perfection, bodily and otherwise, bogged down by a fun twist on an old moral panic. Let's be clear: "Hollywood is corrupting the morals of the youth by showing too (much/little) sex" is the exact same argument born from exactly the same harmful desire for control. That's fake sex-positivity.
posted by skymt at 9:12 AM on March 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by skymt at 9:12 AM on March 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
I keep noticing the nonspeaking extras in high-school and college settings. The "normal kids" filling all the other seats in the classroom or bleachers.
I think there have been a few social 'technical' advances that have driven this:
1) people don't smoke anymore.
2) Immigration widening the gene pool - I'm serious dating your cousin used to be ok.
3) advances in dentistry and skin care
4) advances in healthier food. Whole Foods only started in 1978
5) stylistic differences -I watch movies from when I was a kid, and wilder head hair used to be high fashion.
6) CA getting more expensive, so the talent pool of actors is getting access to all of these.
the mother of the boy who is abducted never actually, I don't know, does any real mothering or paying attention to her kid or talking to him or stopping him? --That was just how parenting was done in the 70s.
And how parenting is still done in places outside the US. If you watch the Case of Madeline McCann on Netflix (about an abducted child - don't, boring) - the vacationing parents left their sleeping 4 year-old and 2 year old children in a unlocked villa 200 yards away while they ate dinner.
I also think the allusions to McMansion Hell are wrong - we may dislike mcmansions but they hold their value perfectly well and her occasional forays into historical mcmansions show that. She's also wrong about the maintenance effort and costs, except to the fact that they scale with larger homes, which may be a dreadful environmental cost, but no more outlandish than any unnecessarily large home.
"public school gym classes featured...throwing grenades". Maybe a few schools did (there literally hundreds of thousands of schools in the US) but generally, no they didn't.
Doesn't this also completely discount Deadpool? I mean, that's a modern superhero movie too. Personally the sex and swearing didn't add anything to it for me, but it certainly exists.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:25 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
I think there have been a few social 'technical' advances that have driven this:
1) people don't smoke anymore.
2) Immigration widening the gene pool - I'm serious dating your cousin used to be ok.
3) advances in dentistry and skin care
4) advances in healthier food. Whole Foods only started in 1978
5) stylistic differences -I watch movies from when I was a kid, and wilder head hair used to be high fashion.
6) CA getting more expensive, so the talent pool of actors is getting access to all of these.
the mother of the boy who is abducted never actually, I don't know, does any real mothering or paying attention to her kid or talking to him or stopping him? --That was just how parenting was done in the 70s.
And how parenting is still done in places outside the US. If you watch the Case of Madeline McCann on Netflix (about an abducted child - don't, boring) - the vacationing parents left their sleeping 4 year-old and 2 year old children in a unlocked villa 200 yards away while they ate dinner.
I also think the allusions to McMansion Hell are wrong - we may dislike mcmansions but they hold their value perfectly well and her occasional forays into historical mcmansions show that. She's also wrong about the maintenance effort and costs, except to the fact that they scale with larger homes, which may be a dreadful environmental cost, but no more outlandish than any unnecessarily large home.
"public school gym classes featured...throwing grenades". Maybe a few schools did (there literally hundreds of thousands of schools in the US) but generally, no they didn't.
Doesn't this also completely discount Deadpool? I mean, that's a modern superhero movie too. Personally the sex and swearing didn't add anything to it for me, but it certainly exists.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:25 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
The Terri Garr Defense Force
This is hilarious. And I am by no means calling you out specifically, pseudophile, just pasting this most recent mention as part of invoking a classic movie trope and dragging my tired hide out of retirement: Her name is Teri Garr. T-E-R-I. Underrated actor, and a professional dancer before the acting career took off, so yeah, she was slender.
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:04 AM on March 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
This is hilarious. And I am by no means calling you out specifically, pseudophile, just pasting this most recent mention as part of invoking a classic movie trope and dragging my tired hide out of retirement: Her name is Teri Garr. T-E-R-I. Underrated actor, and a professional dancer before the acting career took off, so yeah, she was slender.
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:04 AM on March 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
interesting that the animated Batman films DO show the Bat hooking up--the animations are much edgier than the star-studded movies. also, sexy vampire sax solos are still alive and well, thank goodness: tim cappello on sax, blood soaked half animated vampire anthem by Gunship.
posted by th3ph17 at 11:10 AM on March 8, 2021
posted by th3ph17 at 11:10 AM on March 8, 2021
No, I believe the writer. Movies are less sexy! Part of that has to do with marketability, fine -- if you want to make PG/PG-13 films that will appeal to all markets then maybe cutting sex and nudity is the easiest way to do it. But of course Hays Code movies were frequently VERY horny, even without explicit sex and nudity, and you can come up with horny Bollywood films, too. American movies just aren't sexy anymore. One of my fervently held, possibly unpopular opinions is that the Magic Mike movies are fun and nice to look at, but they don't have a scene as hot as Footloose. (And that stripper convention is the least sexy thing! Put-you-off-sex-and-convention-halls-forever thing!)
When I try to think of "sexy" American movies, they really taper out by the mid-90s. And they get...specific. Like with Bound or Secretary or Eyes Wide Shut, the sex part is pretty integral to the movie. Compare that to sticking a sexy paranormal pottery scene in the middle of (whatever genre we're calling) Ghost. You could easily do the movie without the pottery scene, and maybe even be happy with the trade off (losing the intensity of the couple's emotion, but also losing A Silly Thing). The movie would be weaker in its absence.
Barring queer movies -- which are still pretty hot tbh -- what's the last sexy, English-language movie I can think of? Mr and Mrs Smith? Atonement? I'm starting to think its safer to just think of actresses who are still cast in sexy roles -- Helen Mirren? Mary-Louise Parker? Eva Green? Nina Arianda? I don't know. It does seem strange that at a time when so many of our biggest stars are strategically revealing more of their bodies than ever, they're rarely doing anything sexy with that partial nudity. I just watched Coming to America 2. Afterwards, I watched the first Coming to America. (This is the order I recommend, if you MUST watch the sequel.) And...guys, it brings me no pleasure to report this, but the goofy Eddie Murphy comedy from the 80s was sexier than the 2021 version. I don't know if I "missed" it -- the movie has other problems -- but yeah, in aggregate, over an entire film industry, maybe I do miss it. Modern movies just seem a lot blander than they could be.
posted by grandiloquiet at 11:45 AM on March 8, 2021 [8 favorites]
When I try to think of "sexy" American movies, they really taper out by the mid-90s. And they get...specific. Like with Bound or Secretary or Eyes Wide Shut, the sex part is pretty integral to the movie. Compare that to sticking a sexy paranormal pottery scene in the middle of (whatever genre we're calling) Ghost. You could easily do the movie without the pottery scene, and maybe even be happy with the trade off (losing the intensity of the couple's emotion, but also losing A Silly Thing). The movie would be weaker in its absence.
Barring queer movies -- which are still pretty hot tbh -- what's the last sexy, English-language movie I can think of? Mr and Mrs Smith? Atonement? I'm starting to think its safer to just think of actresses who are still cast in sexy roles -- Helen Mirren? Mary-Louise Parker? Eva Green? Nina Arianda? I don't know. It does seem strange that at a time when so many of our biggest stars are strategically revealing more of their bodies than ever, they're rarely doing anything sexy with that partial nudity. I just watched Coming to America 2. Afterwards, I watched the first Coming to America. (This is the order I recommend, if you MUST watch the sequel.) And...guys, it brings me no pleasure to report this, but the goofy Eddie Murphy comedy from the 80s was sexier than the 2021 version. I don't know if I "missed" it -- the movie has other problems -- but yeah, in aggregate, over an entire film industry, maybe I do miss it. Modern movies just seem a lot blander than they could be.
posted by grandiloquiet at 11:45 AM on March 8, 2021 [8 favorites]
Metafilter: a lot of half-tied-together, baldly asserted opinions that seems backed up less by facts than by nostalgia.
posted by happyroach at 11:57 AM on March 8, 2021 [10 favorites]
posted by happyroach at 11:57 AM on March 8, 2021 [10 favorites]
the sex part is pretty integral to the movie.
Is it though?
Maybe I'm just burned out by relentless and compulsory sexuality being literally everywhere... but IMO even if we forget about the obvious problems (misogyny, etc) of movie sexytimes in bygone eras... even then... would we actually lose anything ito plot of characterization if we erased every sex scene ever and replaced them with sanitized PG-13 levels of, like, eye-fucking? Are there any movies in which showing hetero sex on screen was actually essential to the plot or characterization? Aside from 50 Shades I can't quite think of any.
Hetero sex scenes seem to exist in the way that sometimes we see someone shaving: just to acknowledge it's a thing people do. Or kind of like food scenes: to make us want a bite of that strudel for a moment or two. I can't think of a hetero sex scene which does anything that couldn't be accomplished by two people simply standing next to each other while one of them talks to someone else on the phone.
My hot take is that if sex was genuinely part of the plot, the sex scenes would have a real arc, just like there is a progression to the ballet scenes in Black Swan or the game scenes in a sports movie.
(Bound, on the other hand, justifies its sexiness because it's about lesbians. The tension between who are protagonists are and what they must do to earn their ending makes even the hetero sexual scenes in the movie an integral part of the story. Now *there's* a movie that would be diminished without sex.)
posted by MiraK at 12:40 PM on March 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
Is it though?
Maybe I'm just burned out by relentless and compulsory sexuality being literally everywhere... but IMO even if we forget about the obvious problems (misogyny, etc) of movie sexytimes in bygone eras... even then... would we actually lose anything ito plot of characterization if we erased every sex scene ever and replaced them with sanitized PG-13 levels of, like, eye-fucking? Are there any movies in which showing hetero sex on screen was actually essential to the plot or characterization? Aside from 50 Shades I can't quite think of any.
Hetero sex scenes seem to exist in the way that sometimes we see someone shaving: just to acknowledge it's a thing people do. Or kind of like food scenes: to make us want a bite of that strudel for a moment or two. I can't think of a hetero sex scene which does anything that couldn't be accomplished by two people simply standing next to each other while one of them talks to someone else on the phone.
My hot take is that if sex was genuinely part of the plot, the sex scenes would have a real arc, just like there is a progression to the ballet scenes in Black Swan or the game scenes in a sports movie.
(Bound, on the other hand, justifies its sexiness because it's about lesbians. The tension between who are protagonists are and what they must do to earn their ending makes even the hetero sexual scenes in the movie an integral part of the story. Now *there's* a movie that would be diminished without sex.)
posted by MiraK at 12:40 PM on March 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
I don't love the psychosexual thriller genre, but yeah, I think the "sexual" part is necessary. I guess Secretary isn't really about sex, but a BDSM dramedy is also not not about sex.
Sex isn't necessary in every movie, but I have found myself missing it in a lot of movies!
posted by grandiloquiet at 12:48 PM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Sex isn't necessary in every movie, but I have found myself missing it in a lot of movies!
posted by grandiloquiet at 12:48 PM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'm glad there's no longer the seeming obligation to put a topless (and let's be real, it was always just an excuse to show a starlet's boobs) scene in all the movies. Did Sixteen Candles need the scene of a teenaged girl showering naked at school? (Amongst MANY other things Sixteen Candles didn't need in hindsight...).
I'm also glad the Superhero Movie genre seems to have realized it can make fun movies without needing to shoehorn in a romance subplot every time. (That's what Ao3 is for, yo.)
Plus, it seems like TV is where you go if you want the horny content nowadays. We don't need to see it to know Wanda and Vision were totally going to bone town every night. And uh, did anyone else spend Christmas week watching Bridgerton? Its sole purpose for being is horniness.
posted by lovecrafty at 1:18 PM on March 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
I'm also glad the Superhero Movie genre seems to have realized it can make fun movies without needing to shoehorn in a romance subplot every time. (That's what Ao3 is for, yo.)
Plus, it seems like TV is where you go if you want the horny content nowadays. We don't need to see it to know Wanda and Vision were totally going to bone town every night. And uh, did anyone else spend Christmas week watching Bridgerton? Its sole purpose for being is horniness.
posted by lovecrafty at 1:18 PM on March 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
I don't expect to see any superheroes get butt naked (except, I guess...for Deadpool?), but it is interesting how little sexual tension exists in Marvel movies. Tony and Pepper are cute together, but they're certainly not hot together. A lot of fans see a sexual subtext with Cap and Bucky, but I at least don't see anything that looks like chemistry (maybe I'm just too straight, but I feel like this is fans wanting to see a queer relationship -- just one! -- badly enough to read a lot into their dynamic). T'Challa is way too pure to have sexual interests in anyone. Thor and the Valkyrie spent two hours being preposterously sexy in each other's presence, totally in vain; if anything, she had more chemistry with the Hulk, who is a cartoon. The only recent character I can think of who seemed to have any sexual inclinations at all was Jeff Goldblum in Thor: Ragnarok, played for laughs as a weird, vaguely pervy creep.
These are children's films, ultimately (again, except for Deadpool). But so was Batman Returns, a film about Michelle Pfeiffer carrying a whip and licking people's faces. I feel like if her Catwoman walked into a Marvel movie everyone else on screen would be scandalized. Anyway, I agree with the author's conclusion.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 1:27 PM on March 8, 2021 [11 favorites]
These are children's films, ultimately (again, except for Deadpool). But so was Batman Returns, a film about Michelle Pfeiffer carrying a whip and licking people's faces. I feel like if her Catwoman walked into a Marvel movie everyone else on screen would be scandalized. Anyway, I agree with the author's conclusion.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 1:27 PM on March 8, 2021 [11 favorites]
These are children's films, ultimately
Exactly. You can't make your action figures fuck in your toy commercial.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:31 PM on March 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
Exactly. You can't make your action figures fuck in your toy commercial.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:31 PM on March 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
Also, I recently listened to the How Did This Get Made podcast episode on the 1995 movie Jade (you know, the one David Caruso left NYPD Blue for thinking he was going to be a big time movie star too good for TV?) and the hosts brought up the idea that it was the death knell for the big budget erotic thriller genre. It cost SO much money to make, was SO confusing and terrible, and made nothing at the box office.
And now we can just stream the sexy content from home, without having to sit next to strangers. Check the Netflix top ten, every so often there's a movie I've never heard of in the top three that turns out to be a 50 Shades-esque horn fest.
posted by lovecrafty at 1:39 PM on March 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
And now we can just stream the sexy content from home, without having to sit next to strangers. Check the Netflix top ten, every so often there's a movie I've never heard of in the top three that turns out to be a 50 Shades-esque horn fest.
posted by lovecrafty at 1:39 PM on March 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
I don't expect to see any superheroes get butt naked (except, I guess...for Deadpool?)
Hugh Jackman was quite literally butt naked as Wolverine in Days of Future Past.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 1:59 PM on March 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
Hugh Jackman was quite literally butt naked as Wolverine in Days of Future Past.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 1:59 PM on March 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
Check the Netflix top ten, every so often there's a movie I’ve never heard of in the top three that turns out to be a 50 Shades-esque horn fest.
In the video game world, it’s a bit weird to connect to Steam and see that the “The Community Recommends” section will include some famous big budget stuff, some indie stuff, and some content that’s very obviously straight-up porn. With the idealized bodies, I might add, that the author assumes aren’t getting it on in ye movies. It’s very disturbing.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:46 PM on March 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
In the video game world, it’s a bit weird to connect to Steam and see that the “The Community Recommends” section will include some famous big budget stuff, some indie stuff, and some content that’s very obviously straight-up porn. With the idealized bodies, I might add, that the author assumes aren’t getting it on in ye movies. It’s very disturbing.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:46 PM on March 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
Are there any movies in which showing hetero sex on screen was actually essential to the plot or characterization?
I see this idea kicked around a lot—that anything that doesn't advance a film's plot or enhance its characterization is somehow superfluous or indulgent—but I don't buy it. Films have themes and ideas and motifs that are expressed visually and through editing that don't necessarily manifest in story or characterization and I'd argue that very often those are the elements that makes films most distinctive as art and most rewarding in the watching.
As far as hetero sex scenes go, my favorites include the one in Don't Look Now where a relatively explicit scene between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland is freely intercut with clips of the two characters getting up and preparing to leave home in the morning (getting dressed, brushing teeth, etc.). It has little to do with the film's plot and I don't know if it builds characterization, but it certainly tells me something about Nicolas Roeg's point of view on the easy intimacy of married life. I like Danny Boyle's sex scene in Trainspotting that had to be edited to get the film an R rating in the U.S. because it includes a fleeting moment where Kelly Macdonald's character can be seen reaching down to (gasp!) pleasure herself while having intercourse with Ewan McGregor's character. The one between Harvey Keitel and Holly Hunter in Jane Campion's The Piano really is story- and character-driven, largely because the performances are so strong. And there's a brief but hilarious sex scene in Mary Harron's American Psycho that paints the title character as just an incredible asshole. In every case, whether or not those scenes communicate anything specific about the characters in the film, I think they do tell me something about the people who made the film.
posted by Mothlight at 3:44 PM on March 8, 2021 [13 favorites]
I see this idea kicked around a lot—that anything that doesn't advance a film's plot or enhance its characterization is somehow superfluous or indulgent—but I don't buy it. Films have themes and ideas and motifs that are expressed visually and through editing that don't necessarily manifest in story or characterization and I'd argue that very often those are the elements that makes films most distinctive as art and most rewarding in the watching.
As far as hetero sex scenes go, my favorites include the one in Don't Look Now where a relatively explicit scene between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland is freely intercut with clips of the two characters getting up and preparing to leave home in the morning (getting dressed, brushing teeth, etc.). It has little to do with the film's plot and I don't know if it builds characterization, but it certainly tells me something about Nicolas Roeg's point of view on the easy intimacy of married life. I like Danny Boyle's sex scene in Trainspotting that had to be edited to get the film an R rating in the U.S. because it includes a fleeting moment where Kelly Macdonald's character can be seen reaching down to (gasp!) pleasure herself while having intercourse with Ewan McGregor's character. The one between Harvey Keitel and Holly Hunter in Jane Campion's The Piano really is story- and character-driven, largely because the performances are so strong. And there's a brief but hilarious sex scene in Mary Harron's American Psycho that paints the title character as just an incredible asshole. In every case, whether or not those scenes communicate anything specific about the characters in the film, I think they do tell me something about the people who made the film.
posted by Mothlight at 3:44 PM on March 8, 2021 [13 favorites]
I feel like many of the commenters here are getting caught up on "does the movie have a sex scene in it" and that's absolutely not the point here. I can think of a lot of movies with sex in them that aren't sexy, and movies without sex in them that are very sexy.
TFA does a good job in referencing Verhoeven's Starship Troopers... as a European, Verhoeven is attuned to how America has pursued plasticized, factory-stamped eroticism over messy, unique, lived-in intimacy. Which is why his Showgirls has tons of sex and yet it's one of the most unsexy things I've ever seen. Its Vegas MC character's proclamation of "very, very sexy" is supposed to ring hollow to the audience, because his thesis is that American capitalism will productize every part of us and leave us grasping for real connection.
I agree with kittensforbreakfast, while there is plenty of This Is the Canonical/Fanservice Romantic Pairing in superhero films, I'm hard pressed to find any that match Batman Returns' horniness of two damaged people who have much in common but find their alter egos at odds. Kids' movies shouldn't have graphic sexuality in them, but that doesn't mean they can't present desire and longing for intimacy.
And aside from the more sexual side of intimacy, the "closeness" angle of intimacy depicted in the married couples in Poltergeist and Jaws is a big deal too. I can think of some slightly more recent versions of this: Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson in Easy A, Frances McDormand and John Carroll Lynch in Fargo. You don't see them having sex but you understand why they think each other are attractive through the tiny details of their life together. In those same two movies you do see other characters having sex (or pretending to) and it has 0% of the intimacy of Tucci and Clarkson being goofballs in their kitchen or the Gundersons in their morning routine.
posted by JauntyFedora at 5:05 PM on March 8, 2021 [11 favorites]
TFA does a good job in referencing Verhoeven's Starship Troopers... as a European, Verhoeven is attuned to how America has pursued plasticized, factory-stamped eroticism over messy, unique, lived-in intimacy. Which is why his Showgirls has tons of sex and yet it's one of the most unsexy things I've ever seen. Its Vegas MC character's proclamation of "very, very sexy" is supposed to ring hollow to the audience, because his thesis is that American capitalism will productize every part of us and leave us grasping for real connection.
I agree with kittensforbreakfast, while there is plenty of This Is the Canonical/Fanservice Romantic Pairing in superhero films, I'm hard pressed to find any that match Batman Returns' horniness of two damaged people who have much in common but find their alter egos at odds. Kids' movies shouldn't have graphic sexuality in them, but that doesn't mean they can't present desire and longing for intimacy.
And aside from the more sexual side of intimacy, the "closeness" angle of intimacy depicted in the married couples in Poltergeist and Jaws is a big deal too. I can think of some slightly more recent versions of this: Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson in Easy A, Frances McDormand and John Carroll Lynch in Fargo. You don't see them having sex but you understand why they think each other are attractive through the tiny details of their life together. In those same two movies you do see other characters having sex (or pretending to) and it has 0% of the intimacy of Tucci and Clarkson being goofballs in their kitchen or the Gundersons in their morning routine.
posted by JauntyFedora at 5:05 PM on March 8, 2021 [11 favorites]
Are there any movies in which showing hetero sex on screen was actually essential to the plot or characterization
Already mentioned in this thread: Y tu mamá también, The Piano, Don't Look Now. Les Liaisons dangereuses film adaptations. Perhaps movies with sex worker central characters? Belle de Jour, American Gigolo, Pretty Woman...
Re characterization: In Klute, Jane Fonda's Bree Daniels, a failed actor and a successful sex worker, moans and groans as she checks her watch behind an oblivious client's back during sex [image] and later insults the titular character (played by Donald Sutherland) after they've gone to bed. [These scenes are described in this difficult 2005 essay, Hooker with a Heart of Darkness, which praises the film whilst disparaging Fonda as a person: Fonda’s life is high comedy. Bree Daniels is high tragedy. It is Bree who haunts us. Here's another piece, also difficult but in a different way, from 2017: Bree Daniels has two performance careers. In one she gets the part every time. In the other, she never does. One is supposed to be exploitative, dehumanizing; the other actually is.]
On preview: yes, I think non-sex-scene depictions of intimacy are missing, too.
posted by Iris Gambol at 5:14 PM on March 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
Already mentioned in this thread: Y tu mamá también, The Piano, Don't Look Now. Les Liaisons dangereuses film adaptations. Perhaps movies with sex worker central characters? Belle de Jour, American Gigolo, Pretty Woman...
Re characterization: In Klute, Jane Fonda's Bree Daniels, a failed actor and a successful sex worker, moans and groans as she checks her watch behind an oblivious client's back during sex [image] and later insults the titular character (played by Donald Sutherland) after they've gone to bed. [These scenes are described in this difficult 2005 essay, Hooker with a Heart of Darkness, which praises the film whilst disparaging Fonda as a person: Fonda’s life is high comedy. Bree Daniels is high tragedy. It is Bree who haunts us. Here's another piece, also difficult but in a different way, from 2017: Bree Daniels has two performance careers. In one she gets the part every time. In the other, she never does. One is supposed to be exploitative, dehumanizing; the other actually is.]
On preview: yes, I think non-sex-scene depictions of intimacy are missing, too.
posted by Iris Gambol at 5:14 PM on March 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
Are there any movies in which showing hetero sex on screen was actually essential to the plot or characterization?
yes. a quick look at the top ten grossing movies of 1971 reveals at least three titles where hetero sex is almost the entire point of the movie:
Summer of 42
Carnal Knowledge
Last Picture Show
But that was then. Nudity and overtly sexual themes had only recently really become something you could depict (certainly to an American audience) without ending up in a courtroom. So yeah, even standard hetero sex was new, it hadn't really been explored in the context of cinema. Even something as banal as Summer of 42 felt fresh, at the time anyway. Which for me is what felt so absurd about so much of the stuff you got in 80s movies and beyond. The freshness was long gone
posted by philip-random at 5:19 PM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
yes. a quick look at the top ten grossing movies of 1971 reveals at least three titles where hetero sex is almost the entire point of the movie:
Summer of 42
Carnal Knowledge
Last Picture Show
But that was then. Nudity and overtly sexual themes had only recently really become something you could depict (certainly to an American audience) without ending up in a courtroom. So yeah, even standard hetero sex was new, it hadn't really been explored in the context of cinema. Even something as banal as Summer of 42 felt fresh, at the time anyway. Which for me is what felt so absurd about so much of the stuff you got in 80s movies and beyond. The freshness was long gone
posted by philip-random at 5:19 PM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
I mean perhaps one reason that we don't see a lot of interesting romantic tension in Marvel movies is because men receive the bulk of screen time and character development compared to women, and they don't depict openly queer characters, so yes romantic scenes are going to feel bland and generic. Note how they just tried to create sexual tension between Black Widow and every male lead of the movie she was appearing in.
posted by Emily's Fist at 5:20 PM on March 8, 2021 [11 favorites]
posted by Emily's Fist at 5:20 PM on March 8, 2021 [11 favorites]
We're also losing intimacy because the relationships are based on which characters(properties,brands) will be profitable as a pairing.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 5:20 PM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by fluttering hellfire at 5:20 PM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
I'm hard pressed to find any that match Batman Returns' horniness of two damaged people
I think it's telling just how much Batman Returns comes up in this discussion. A while back it was on cable, and if I ever got around to my weird idea of making a mixtape of perfect movie scenes, the moment at the costume ball where they suddenly understand who each other is, with Michelle Pfieffer asking Michael Keaton if they have to start fighting now while tears start falling down her face is one of my favorite moments in any movie, anywhere. It's such a powerful moment where two people who are clearly falling for each other are right at the cusp of finally getting together, of each of them being the person that might actually be who the other person so desperately needs, and having that promise of solace and love ripped away.
While we all key on the words sex and horniness in the article, there's also the utter lack of intimacy in all of these films. It's hard to think of other major (like blockbuster, tentpole, cultural touchstone level) films that have anything matching that level of intimacy. Just thinking about it for a second, the closest I can come to is maybe Mission Impossible: Fallout, where, for a brief second, Tom Cruise reconnects with Michelle Monoghan, his ex, and there's a moment of what feels like true happiness that she has found happiness after leaving him. It's a rare, grown up feeling in the middle of all the explosions, and, of course, only lasts for a second before more hijinks ensue.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:28 PM on March 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
I think it's telling just how much Batman Returns comes up in this discussion. A while back it was on cable, and if I ever got around to my weird idea of making a mixtape of perfect movie scenes, the moment at the costume ball where they suddenly understand who each other is, with Michelle Pfieffer asking Michael Keaton if they have to start fighting now while tears start falling down her face is one of my favorite moments in any movie, anywhere. It's such a powerful moment where two people who are clearly falling for each other are right at the cusp of finally getting together, of each of them being the person that might actually be who the other person so desperately needs, and having that promise of solace and love ripped away.
While we all key on the words sex and horniness in the article, there's also the utter lack of intimacy in all of these films. It's hard to think of other major (like blockbuster, tentpole, cultural touchstone level) films that have anything matching that level of intimacy. Just thinking about it for a second, the closest I can come to is maybe Mission Impossible: Fallout, where, for a brief second, Tom Cruise reconnects with Michelle Monoghan, his ex, and there's a moment of what feels like true happiness that she has found happiness after leaving him. It's a rare, grown up feeling in the middle of all the explosions, and, of course, only lasts for a second before more hijinks ensue.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:28 PM on March 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
Even bad movies tried at one time for intimacy. Ben Affleck and animal crackers.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 6:10 PM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by fluttering hellfire at 6:10 PM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
It did take wandavision for a vision that was textually horny for wanda. In the mcu movies tho, while i much prefer the collegial, non-harassy vibe of not having to brace myself for a hookup everytime a hetero combo presents itself, the lack of desire or longing feels apparent. Flirting doesn't quite exist anymore unless it's coded for a creep or intrusive so when the we're reminded that the canonical partners are such (Sharon & Steve; Tony & Pepper outside of his IM movies tbh) it does feel strangely sexless. But if there's no desire there's at least longing, so unfortunately the same yearning Steve shows for Peggy (his actual endgame) he shows for Bucky so it gets coded as the same imo. But it does make the canonical partners frankly unbelievable to watch when they're at the phase of active new love (eg Wanda & Vision).
I've still mostly written off DCEU so my viewing isn't up to date, but fwiw, Snyder's Lois & Clark are plenty horny for each other, and loving and intimate with each other (in a movie i can barely rewatch the bathtub scene and anytime they're at the Planet, whew), one of the actual good bits in his Superman take. Or how about Matthew Vaughn's X-Men movies? First Class especially is just randy.
MCU often is the stand-in for blockbuster movies and a lot of the sexlessness can be attributed to them.
posted by cendawanita at 6:32 PM on March 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
I've still mostly written off DCEU so my viewing isn't up to date, but fwiw, Snyder's Lois & Clark are plenty horny for each other, and loving and intimate with each other (in a movie i can barely rewatch the bathtub scene and anytime they're at the Planet, whew), one of the actual good bits in his Superman take. Or how about Matthew Vaughn's X-Men movies? First Class especially is just randy.
MCU often is the stand-in for blockbuster movies and a lot of the sexlessness can be attributed to them.
posted by cendawanita at 6:32 PM on March 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
Moonlight was quite intimate; it was hardly big budget but it got its Oscar. Ditto Parasite. It would be silly to argue that the norms of filmmaking haven’t changed since the seventies or eighties, but it might be reasonable to argue that the industry and the public now internalize attempts at portraying intimacy as Oscar bait. MCU-style banter, which harkens back to screwball comedies and The Thin Man, is for having fun.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:40 PM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Going To Maine at 6:40 PM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
[tiny voice, without tiny text] sex is fun
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:59 PM on March 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:59 PM on March 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
While we all key on the words sex and horniness in the article, there's also the utter lack of intimacy in all of these films. It's hard to think of other major (like blockbuster, tentpole, cultural touchstone level) films that have anything matching that level of intimacy.
The last real moment of intimacy between Wanda and Vision before everything goes to hell is in Avengers: Infinity War, and it's just the two of them in a hotel room in Edinburgh--Vision is in his human disguise--and it's sweet and lovely. Again, like the MI scene that you mention, not very long, but the Russo Brothers make room for it.
I'm also a fan of scenes where sex doesn't necessarily end up being sexy or fun, because that's the way it is, sometimes. The discussions above about sex and/or intimacy in non-superhero films reminded me of the criminally underappreciated Booksmart, in which one of the girls, who has just seen her girl crush get frisky with a dude, tries to hook up with another girl in the bathroom, only to get sick all over her. That's been known to happen IRL.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:19 PM on March 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
The last real moment of intimacy between Wanda and Vision before everything goes to hell is in Avengers: Infinity War, and it's just the two of them in a hotel room in Edinburgh--Vision is in his human disguise--and it's sweet and lovely. Again, like the MI scene that you mention, not very long, but the Russo Brothers make room for it.
I'm also a fan of scenes where sex doesn't necessarily end up being sexy or fun, because that's the way it is, sometimes. The discussions above about sex and/or intimacy in non-superhero films reminded me of the criminally underappreciated Booksmart, in which one of the girls, who has just seen her girl crush get frisky with a dude, tries to hook up with another girl in the bathroom, only to get sick all over her. That's been known to happen IRL.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:19 PM on March 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
I think the energy of the Addams Family script is on a level that is missing these days.
posted by dominik at 11:06 AM on March 9, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by dominik at 11:06 AM on March 9, 2021 [6 favorites]
Mel Gibson and Michelle Pfeiffer were always going to get mostly naked and stop the plot for a while for bit of soft focus fucking in a hot tub while a bad yacht rock song played
I just rewatched Tequila Sunrise and this is totally true.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:56 PM on March 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
I just rewatched Tequila Sunrise and this is totally true.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:56 PM on March 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
Skinny, yeah. Ripped in the middle, nah. If somebody's abdominal muscles are visible, they did something deliberate and extravagant to achieve that.
One of my children had a visible nascent six-pack as a preschooler. Eventually he did go on to do deliberate extravagant things—he was a competitive gymnast for years—but he had some kind of genetic predisposition to putting on muscle that absolutely astonished us. During the deliberate, extravagant era he was a pre-pubescent boy with an eight pack, pecs, and amazing biceps.
I'm not making any kind of wild claim, except that any time you say, "X does not exist among humans, therefore I can make assumptions about this person I'm looking at based on what I can see about their body," there is always a chance you're wrong. I think it's better to hold off on making assumptions.
posted by Orlop at 5:13 AM on March 10, 2021 [4 favorites]
One of my children had a visible nascent six-pack as a preschooler. Eventually he did go on to do deliberate extravagant things—he was a competitive gymnast for years—but he had some kind of genetic predisposition to putting on muscle that absolutely astonished us. During the deliberate, extravagant era he was a pre-pubescent boy with an eight pack, pecs, and amazing biceps.
I'm not making any kind of wild claim, except that any time you say, "X does not exist among humans, therefore I can make assumptions about this person I'm looking at based on what I can see about their body," there is always a chance you're wrong. I think it's better to hold off on making assumptions.
posted by Orlop at 5:13 AM on March 10, 2021 [4 favorites]
Generalizations and assumptions are not the same thing. You can frequent a public pool in N. America for one month and the generalization that six-pack abs are the result of a deliberate regimen is perfectly valid. Especially nowadays, the guts of N. Americans are fairly accurate indicators of the foods we've been eating for a few generations.
posted by elkevelvet at 7:40 AM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by elkevelvet at 7:40 AM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
I said "visible abdominals" when I should have said wackass abdominals, as exemplified in the Hugh Jackman Wolverine pictured in TFA and described in the "never again, JFC" statement by Jackman himself. Visible abs are all over the place in our world, of course, as everyone's quite sensibly pointed out. Here's a fantastic example!
In conclusion, outliers excepted, of course, if you're training yourself to do a thing, you might very well end up with visible abdominals, but you won't end up with wackass abs unless you're training to look a way for whatever reason. Win a hugeness contest; get producers to quit with the endless notes about how you could more effectively use your instrument to sell plastic crap to children; achieve "them gains" that allow you to go on youtube and make hilarious vids in which you point out "the feathering" and "the striations;" whatever.
posted by Don Pepino at 9:49 AM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
In conclusion, outliers excepted, of course, if you're training yourself to do a thing, you might very well end up with visible abdominals, but you won't end up with wackass abs unless you're training to look a way for whatever reason. Win a hugeness contest; get producers to quit with the endless notes about how you could more effectively use your instrument to sell plastic crap to children; achieve "them gains" that allow you to go on youtube and make hilarious vids in which you point out "the feathering" and "the striations;" whatever.
posted by Don Pepino at 9:49 AM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
Very rare exceptions don't disprove a general rule.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:08 AM on March 10, 2021
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:08 AM on March 10, 2021
I just don't think visible abdominals are all that rare if you're talking about active young people who eat reasonably healthy. Especially among guys.
I agree though that wackass abdominals are generally associated with either bodybuilding or a higher level of athleticism than most people can casually achieve (or even not-casually achieve).
posted by Anonymous at 8:11 PM on March 10, 2021
I agree though that wackass abdominals are generally associated with either bodybuilding or a higher level of athleticism than most people can casually achieve (or even not-casually achieve).
posted by Anonymous at 8:11 PM on March 10, 2021
Before this thread is closed, I would like to both apologize for, and exult in, my accidental creation of The Teri Garr Defense Force. My initial comment replying to the slightest of slights against Ms. Garr was meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, being as it was a repurposed quotation from The Young Ones, which originally had been in defense of a perceived slight against "bloody Felicity 'Treacle' Kendal," and I am a bit saddened that no one caught it.
posted by Devoidoid at 10:14 AM on March 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Devoidoid at 10:14 AM on March 22, 2021 [3 favorites]
I am forever thankful to you for that comment, which allowed me to discover my Teri Garr partisanship and bring it at long last into its full, glorious bloom. I'm sorry we all missed the reference. In gratitude and as penance I am watching The Young Ones.
posted by Don Pepino at 1:57 PM on March 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Don Pepino at 1:57 PM on March 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
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That essay's given me a lot to think about, though. And not just my horror at what modern dad-bod looks like, but how we relate to life. Thanks for sharing.
posted by ambrosen at 4:30 AM on March 7, 2021 [9 favorites]