Although the emergence of explicit movies like Poor Things, Saltburn, and All of Us Strangers has been hailed as a resurgence of sexuality in cinema, there is almost 40% less sexual content in major Hollywood films than there was at the start of the millennium.
The emergence of explicit movies like Poor Things, Saltburn, and All of Us Strangers has been hailed as a resurgence of sexuality in cinema, despite reports suggesting waning interest from Gen Z viewers. However, a recent study indicates a rapid decline in the depiction of sex in Hollywood films: there’s nearly 40% less sexual content in major movies compared to the turn of the millennium.
Conducted by data analyst Stephen Follows on behalf of the Economist, the study analyzed the top 250 highest-grossing films annually since 2000. It revealed that films released in 2023 contained just over 60% of the erotic content found in the top 250 films in 2000. When categorized by genre, action movies saw the sharpest decline, dropping by about 70% over the same period, while romantic films experienced a less pronounced decrease, falling by just under 20%.
Simultaneously, there was a significant rise in the percentage of top-grossing films devoid of any sexual content, soaring from approximately 18% in 2000 to 46% in 2023. Follows concludes that this shift is primarily responsible for the reduction in sexual content – not only are there fewer instances of sex depicted on screen, but they are also concentrated in fewer films proportionally.
Swearing and violence at similar levels
The report also found that on-screen portrayal of other “vices” is not declining at the same rate: swearing and violence in films happen at roughly similar levels as they did in 2000.
Follows suggests a number of possible reasons behind the decline of the sex scene, including changes in audience taste with a “preference for content that either avoids sexual themes altogether or handles them with more subtlety”; concerns that sex scenes may impact on global release “result[ing] in more restrictive age ratings or censorship, hence reducing a film’s potential reach”; and the increasing influence of “intimacy coordinators”, reflecting actors’ discomfort at the amount of sex scenes they had previously been asked to do. An earlier analysis by Follows suggested that the use of intimacy coordinators had risen eightfold since 2020.
Source: The Guardian