Apparently, Gen Z is the most sexually liberated and sexually repressed generation in human history. The internet cannot seem to agree on whether Gen Z is too into sex or not into it enough, and two major battlegrounds of these ongoing debates are cinema and literature. Both media forms have a long history of sexy content, and both have, in the past decade, been increasingly critiqued for their depictions of sex and sexuality with vastly differing outcomes. Audiences seem to want less sex in cinema and more sex in books, but why is there such a difference in how we talk about sex across different media and contexts? And, how is it Gen Z’s fault? I’m on a mission to find out why, on big and medium-sized screens, sex is disappearing, and on screens that you can hold in your hand, it is dirtier and more prevalent than you think.
Before I get started, a major caveat here is that Zoomers (around the ages of 12 to 27) are not necessarily the people behind most popular culture. This honour can instead be bestowed on millennials, Gen X and boomers. The people behind film production, especially at big decision-making stages, will be older than their late twenties. The most popular writers of BookTok smut, Colleen Hoover and Sarah J Maas, are forty-four and thirty-eight, respectively. Whilst Zoomers can and do drive culture in terms of paying for and engaging with media, it is ultimately up to the producers of culture to decide what they offer up to audiences.
Placing the responsibility for changes in cultural depictions of and discussions around sex and sexuality on a group that, across the generations, is undoubtedly still too young to have had more than a minimal impact feels like an effective way to sow divisions rather than an apt assessment of the cultural landscape. Much of what I've found from looking at sex in film and literature focuses on Gen Z as producers of culture, but it is more appropriate to consider them as a fictional audience imagined by marketers, who project their ideas of what Gen Z are onto real people, and then market media to them.
So, tackling this step-by-step, are films really less sexy than ever before? Research indicates that yes, fewer films than ever have sex scenes nowadays, even those that are reportedly hypersexual - take Challengers, for example, billed as one of the sexiest films of the year, which, as per all Zendaya’s films, did not feature her nude or engaged in anything other than heavy petting. Various reasons have been given for the decline in sexy cinematic content, including audience interest (if you can get your porn free online, why would you care about heavily censored Hollywood rutting?) and increases in safeguarding for actors, such as the hiring of intimacy coordinators.
Research indicates that there has been a concerted effort in cinema to make depictions of sex less gratuitous and more meaningful (combined with lots of online discourse about whether sex scenes are functional or just an opportunity to indulge in fantasy). A study conducted on films since 2000 shows that the number of sex scenes is falling year by year, but those scenes that make the cut tend to be more transgressive than in the past. We’re no longer getting so many heady, romantic scenes in missionary, instead, we’re getting period head and gay sex. These trends suggest that cinema is moving towards depictions of sex that are more carefully considered, more about creating narratives and breaking taboos than just showing hot actors in awkward positions.
However, when I look at recently released films with notable depictions of sex, I’m nothing if not disappointed. The sex in recent cinema does not seem to be more meaningful than in the past, and causes me to question what counts as meaningful sex, and who decides what qualifies as meaningful? Despite discussions of the male gaze in cinema that have been ongoing for decades, the increase in intimacy coordinators, the heightened focus on authentic depictions, cinema is still caught up in heteronormative and vanilla sex. Oppenheimer’s sex scene (and director Christopher Nolan’s first, and, hopefully, last) was a straightforward male power fantasy aimed at taking a good look at actress Florence Pugh; Poor Things featured multiple sex scenes through a male-centric lens thinly veiled with themes of liberation that were simply not realised; Saltburn’s homoeroticism fell short of what counts as truly transgressive in the world of the internet. Simply put, cinema cannot compete with the types of sexual content you can get online when it is held back by masculine notions of what is sexy, what counts as meaningful and for who, and a desire to depict empowerment and transgression without truly thinking through what that could look like on screen.
Whilst there may be less sex on screen than before and more thought going into what is there, this doesn't seem to be resulting in better sex, and it doesn't appear to be impressing Gen Z audiences. However, there has been a significant and palpable uptick in the popularity of erotica in the past decade, a trend that mirrors the decline of sex in cinema. Now, erotica has been a popular genre since the moment humans learnt to tell stories, and it has had a consistent and dedicated fan base across cultures and communities for centuries. However, and I hate to say it, since the publication of E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey in 2011, the genre hit new heights. Fifty Shades also demonstrated that fan fiction writers can gain legitimate publishing success, offering an avenue for those longtime smutty AO3 writers to hit the big time. Adding in the increased accessibility of self-publishing and self-promoting (we will get to TikTok shortly), all these factors have contributed to a huge smut boom unlike anything seen before.
Comparing the popularity of sex in literature to that of cinema, it wouldn’t be amiss to suggest that maybe authors approach fictional sex in more positive, authentic and interesting ways than directors. However, I would be hard-pressed to admit that, especially considering how the most popular examples of TikTok-famous smut follow much the same pattern of depicting sex as power play, abuse and heteronormativity. Furthermore, smut is saturating the book market, making its way into Young Adult fiction and every subgenre you can imagine. Much of the criticisms of smut is that those who do not need or want it in a book seem unable to avoid it. Furthermore, there have been several scandals regarding SmutTok creators objectifying and harassing men who bear similarities to their favourite fictional lovers (I recommend watching Book Chats with Shelley's video for a full summary of the controversies ongoing within the community).
What this does demonstrate, however, is that the idea that Gen Z is not interested in sex in popular culture is resolutely incorrect. A key difference between cinema and the literature popular on BookTok is that the latter is written by, and predominantly for, women, creating a kink community centred around women's sexuality. This doesn't discount the problematic aspects of portraying violence against women with rose-tinted glasses - women can and do pander to the male gaze and misogyny as often as men. However, it does indicate that perhaps what people are missing out on in depictions of sex isn't so much what sex is shown but who they can talk to about it, and what communities can develop from engaging with sexual content.
The immense level of discourse regarding portrayals of sex in media suggests that we are living in a watershed moment for how sex is perceived, one which might have a lasting impact on our future representations of intimacy. There is a greater concern than ever regarding ethical and authentic depictions, yet this is inconsistently realised in popular media, suggesting that people are not necessarily looking for ethical or authentic. What SmutTok shows is that people are looking for spaces to discuss sexual content in media, and, in particular, to enjoy it, which is perhaps where cinema is lacking. Maybe surprisingly, it seems that when discussing sex online, the more people the merrier, and certainly, SmutTok resolutely demonstrates that Gen Z is not any more or less horny than other generations.
Edited by Cormac Nugent
Image - Saltburn 2023 - Digital Spy
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