This was a fun read, especially as someone who grew up with those 80s and 90s movies.
That said, and as the author touches on, the action/super hero of today is a PG-13 one. Studios need to reach the widest audience possible to make the most money, so it's a safer bet.
Sure, back in the day studios had the same imperative, but the licensed toy game was still young, so they didn't realise that maybe if they made Die Hard PG instead of R they could sell some John McClane action figures to younger viewiers.
Nowadays, that's basically the starting point; what we can we sell outside of the movie? how can we milk the franchise for as much as possible?
And that's where a lot of the sex appeal is lost. Marvel movies can't be as raunchy as a result.
Another topic that the author touched on was the way the ideal aesthetic has changed in not just our bodies but where we live or what we do in our spare time.
I agree that more and more we are optimising for artifice; fitness classes, extra curricular activities, holidays, concerts and events we attend, just to keep up an appearance online or in person. And in those activities we often don't get the true value out of them because we're doing them for the wrong reason.
Anyway, it's a complex and interesting topic and I'd love to read more about this perhaps from even further back (50s or 60s) if anyone has something similar to this post?
The author misses the driving force behind most of this - Chinese censorship and the money behind the Chinese market. If you're making a modern blockbuster you'll double your take if you make sure it plays well in China - which you primarily do by making it sexless, ensuring that any gay representation is minor enough to be cut, etc.
Bingo! Shooting extra scenes and more CGI for the Chinese audience is way more expensive than just settling the for the LCD of safely not offending people. I also think that's why movies like Deadpool do so well. It's a good movie but it also attracts an audience that is starving for non PG13 movies.
Having an R-rating didn't mean a lack of toys. "Alien" came out in 1979 to an R-rating. Yet a friend at the time (we were both 10) received a 12" (30cm) xenomorph action figure for Christmas.
A more general rating can also cause people to lose interest. The original Star Wars would have had a G rating, Lucas added a severed hand scene to move it to PG rating making it seem more acceptable to adult audiences.
Because it featured all of those. People would justify it as "a gritty and realistic portrayal of historical attitudes", but any historian will tell you that's a load of bull; it was basically just porn. A good partial deconstruction of GoT's shallow relationship with reality can be found here:
You're probably not totally off. GoT was special in quite a few aspects, but I would not be surprised if it was true in the general case - in fact, I think GoT was popular exactly for breaking that mold, but this gives diminishing returns.
Hell yes they did, the Drogo sex scene would be hilariously uncomfortably outrageous if they even hinted at her being underage.
Game of Thrones was lauded for it's gritty shocking approach to sex and death, at least in the first couple seasons, but I don't think a TV show could ever touch the harshness of the world as described in books.
> Hell yes they did, the Drogo sex scene would be hilariously uncomfortably outrageous if they even hinted at her being underage.
I think it would have been outrageous for a different reason, but the show's scene was still uncomfortable for its lack of consent. One of the key points of that scene in the book was how cautious Drogo was to respect boundaries. In the show, the repetition of "no" was used as a command, as a denial of Daenerys' choices, and to state that her choices do not matter. In the book, the repetition of "no" was used as a question, not a command, in order to ask for consent despite a language barrier. This was used to draw a contrast between Daenerys in Westerosi society, where she had no choices of her own, and Daenerys in Dothraki society, where her choices were respected.
There are a lot of other children in that television show. They did not seem to shy away from implying they had sex with people for all kinds of horrific reasons.
> Sure, back in the day studios had the same imperative, but the licensed toy game was still young, so they didn't realise that maybe if they made Die Hard PG instead of R they could sell some John McClane action figures to younger viewiers.
Merchandising! Merchandising! Merchandising! Where the real money of the movie is made!" - Yogurt, Spaceballs (1987) Heck, most of the 1980's cartoons were designed to sell toys.
> I agree that more and more we are optimizing for artifice; fitness classes, extra curricular activities, holidays, concerts and events we attend, just to keep up an appearance online or in person. And in those activities we often don't get the true value out of them because we're doing them for the wrong reason.
Social media did this. Before narcissism became en vogue, gym rats and party people existed and no one else really cared because they were not visible. Now they show up in your social media feed every day. They make you feel small and less complete. Maybe you should go to the gym and more clubs to keep up otherwise you aren't cool or interesting. Meanwhile its all senseless, shallow peacocking and hedonism.
> That said, and as the author touches on, the action/super hero of today is a PG-13 one. Studios need to reach the widest audience possible to make the most money, so it's a safer bet.
I agree, this is the most likely explanation.
It's just like pop songs which are only ever about the one thing everyone on the planet understands. At some point companies decide to target the lowest common denominator in order broaden their audience and maximize profits. The results might still be good but the fact certain qualities were lost in the process cannot be denied.
This makes me think of a AAA game I was part of where, in early production, it was announced we would target an older audience to be able to stay true to what we were depicting. The art director said not to worry about sales because our actual fan base was adults, anyway.
And then, slowly over the course of the project, the targeted age rating kept decreasing because it was projected we would then sell more.
The History of Sexuality (French: L'Histoire de la sexualité) is a four-volume study of sexuality in the Western world by the French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault, in which the author examines the emergence of "sexuality" as a discursive object and separate sphere of life and argues that the notion that every individual has a sexuality is a relatively recent development in Western societies.
I find that "invented here first" of western society is nearly always flawed and incorrect. Just like people's claims that "romantic love" is a relatively recent "discovery" of western society when it is readily apparent in literature from civilizations from all over the world. We're all still humans with raw emotions that haven't changed much in probably 100K years.
I feel like a lot of 80s movies just a generic sex scene or topless woman inserted as a matter of course. Because it was expected whether or not it was remotely relevant to anything.
The infamous “Boob scenes” of 70’s and 80’s cinema always stuck me as a peculiarly pre worldwide web artefact.
ie with ready access to actual, proper porn teenage lads no longer need to see a random set of norks added to films like Police Academy, Porkies or Trading Places solely for titillation[sic].
The world was different back then.
To hook up with someone you had to actually speak to a random stranger, get shot down, deal with it and workout whatever goofy thing you’d said or done before plucking the courage to have another go.
That's because western families often have no problem with watching massive amounts of violence with each other but watching a graphic sex scene with memaw and pepaw is gonna make you squirm.
> And in those activities we often don't get the true value out of them because we're doing them for the wrong reason.
I've been hearing this sentiment lately and don't understand it. What gives one person insight into the psychology of another without an intimate relationship? How can one know another is doing something for "the wrong reasons"? It feels like a lazy stereotyping heuristic.
Actually, I do think I might understand it. It could be introverts failing to achieve full theory of mind about extroverts. Which itself might be a lazy stereotyping heuristic, but at least it has the virtue of reacting to an expressed state of mind, and not an implied one.
Marvel movies are also made to export to a global audience looking for family-friendly entertainment. I'm sure some countries' censors would balk at sexual content as much as they would disagreeable political content.
They already make special cuts for china, extended editions for BD releases, director's cut, ...
Couldn't they just make another cut for more conservative audiences that omits/tones down a few scenes?
Why would they do that when not spending any resources, time and money on having such scenes is more profitable as it doesn't appear to be hurting their viewership numbers?
I think PG-13 had more to do with it than anything else. If you’re coming from an R rating, reaching PG might destroy your movie. PG-13 is far more reachable. No one is trying to peddle serious quantities of Mean Girls merchandise.
It's now a "solved problem" though. We live in the endpoint where the formula to craft an optimally revenue generating movie is not only possible but expected, and studios are designed with that expectation as a baseline.
There are certainly fewer happy accidents out there now.
I would say it's been a solved problem for all movies. We all know what sells and have for 100 years. People claiming modern movies are all sequels, prequels, and unoriginal aren't really paying attention. We've been telling the same stories for the past 2000 years with the same archetypes, skeletal plots, and emotional presentations. 4 out of 5 times I can tell you what is going to happen at any point in a given movie. All the stories have been told. Critics like to act like this or that is original, but it's really not and they know it. What makes a good movie is acting, immersiveness, humanity, and coherence.
I'd guess this was always true, but to a lesser extent. Movies today are super expensive, and at least the movies discussed here are considered failures if they don't reach a huge ammount of people.
The risk was still there before, but may be not to this extent.
That is the game the studios have been playing. Larger investments, higher risk, but more calculated same-ness with high appeal to the 4 quadrants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-quadrant_movie
Netflix has turned this model upside down and releases films on its platform that are designed to target specific audience groups.
That said, and as the author touches on, the action/super hero of today is a PG-13 one. Studios need to reach the widest audience possible to make the most money, so it's a safer bet.
Sure, back in the day studios had the same imperative, but the licensed toy game was still young, so they didn't realise that maybe if they made Die Hard PG instead of R they could sell some John McClane action figures to younger viewiers.
Nowadays, that's basically the starting point; what we can we sell outside of the movie? how can we milk the franchise for as much as possible?
And that's where a lot of the sex appeal is lost. Marvel movies can't be as raunchy as a result.
Another topic that the author touched on was the way the ideal aesthetic has changed in not just our bodies but where we live or what we do in our spare time.
I agree that more and more we are optimising for artifice; fitness classes, extra curricular activities, holidays, concerts and events we attend, just to keep up an appearance online or in person. And in those activities we often don't get the true value out of them because we're doing them for the wrong reason.
Anyway, it's a complex and interesting topic and I'd love to read more about this perhaps from even further back (50s or 60s) if anyone has something similar to this post?