WHEN I was a girl, back before the Boer War, we had these things called X-films, which meant movies only adults were allowed to watch in cinemas.
But X marked the spot for teenage carnal curiosity and the first time we underage ravers gained entry to one was as exciting as the first time we sneaked into a non-school disco or were illegally served alcohol in a pub.
It was one of the great milestones of growing up — though so risqué were film directors in those days that even actual grown-ups couldn’t be guaranteed to leave cinemas unshocked.
When the forbidden X-film became the boring old 18-rated in 1982, it took a lot of the fun out of it — like “living in sin” being diluted down into “cohabiting”.
With this in mind, I’m torn over the recent trend towards less sex in the cinema.
From tongue scraping to saying no, here are 12 health trends to try in 2023
Of course, no one wants to go back to the bad old days when “actress” was synonymous with “tart”.
Is it really such a healthy development that, according to recent data from movie website IMDB, only 1.21 per cent of the 148,012 feature-length films released in the past decade contained depictions of sex — the lowest percentage of any decade since the 1960s?
In the wake of #MeToo and issues around what constitutes consent, it’s understandable that — rather than carry on as if the casting couch was an essential part of 21st showbusiness, right up there with veneers and a rescue-dog — Hollywood may be tending towards being “Hollyprude”, as some commentators are claiming.
But when even rom-coms show stars such as Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher miles apart in promotional posters for Your Place Or Mine — which might be better titled Your Safe Space Or Mine — there’s something odd going on, leading one film reviewer to refer to Hollywood’s new “hornophobic” streak, as they don’t come within petting distance of each other until the last four minutes.
This new trend is taking place not just in the cinema but at the behest of certain powerful actors who have leverage over streaming giants such as Netflix, which has just announced, along with the BBC, that actresses in period dramas do not have to wear corsets.
Netflix star Penn Badgley, who stars as a sensitive serial killer in the drama series You, has demanded fewer sex scenes on the grounds that they may affect his marriage, telling Variety: “That aspect of Hollywood has always been very disturbing to me — and that aspect of the job, that mercurial boundary, has always been something that I actually don’t want to play with at all . . . It’s important to me in my real life to not have them.”
Seeing that he’s staggered through three seasons of steamy action, this demure attitude seems somewhat deferred — perhaps he was getting earache from the missus for looking like he was enjoying himself too much with gorgeous You co-stars like Elizabeth Lail in season one and Victoria Pedretti in the second.
He’s not the first star to feel that less is more; Julia Roberts is one of many leading ladies with a no-nudity clause while, way back in the 1960s, the television actor Patrick “Prisoner” McGoohan had a no-kissing clause in his contract because of his Christian faith and married state.
The snog between Jonah Hill and Lauren London in new film You People comes courtesy of CGI — while even former wildchild Lindsay Lohan has a body double in her comeback vehicle Falling For Christmas, not just for the skiing scenes but allegedly for the kissing ones too.
Far from calling them out as wusses on this issue, Gen Z has been generally supportive of these stars on social media.
I want my girlfriend to try dirty talk but she won't do it
Is this because the young generation are hanging on to their virginity the way my lot hung on to the bong?
Perhaps growing up with free online pornography has turned them off, like a bulimic confronted with a horn of Cornucopia-like breakfast buffet.
Whatever the reason, it’s not unreasonable to think that we’re seeing a self-imposed reintroduction of the Hays Code, which from the 1930s through to the 1960s saw actors performing such contortions as keeping one foot on the floor during scenes set on a bed and refraining from dances featuring “movement of the breasts (or) excessive body movements while the feet are stationary”.
The mere thought of such namby-pamby regression makes me long for the wild, empowering ride of late 20th century mainstream cinema, wherein Demi Moore and Sharon Stone only ever had sex on their terms while running rings around endlessly baffled men, generally played by Michael Douglas.
These broads with — to quote Melanie Griffiths in Working Girl — heads for business and bodies for sin were far better role models for young women that the sexless simperers now being served up.
Ironically, the new film Babylon depicts the final wild days of Hollywood before the censors stepped in, while its star Margot Robbie made her breakthrough by getting her kit off in The Wolf Of Wall Street and seems unlikely to keep her clothes on unless the plot utterly demands it any time soon.
Similarly, on TV, be it terrestrial channels (Normal People) or streaming (Bridgerton) attractive young actors appear to believe that there’s no emotional crisis or historical wrong which can’t be solved by stripping off.
My generation were always warned about not sitting next to weird old men in cinemas but kids are far safer in public picture houses these days as the freaks are safely indoors perving over Game Of Thrones, fantasy fodder delivered direct along with fast food.
And of course, the easy accessibility of hardcore pornography has a lot to do with the demise of mainstream screen sex — how do you shock or titillate people with simulated sex scenes when they are used to viewing any real-life depravity they could imagine?
For many people, going to the movies is about escapism — and perhaps the cinema is becoming one of the few places left where we can go to escape from people getting it on.
But at a time when young people’s view of what consensual sex looks like is distorted as never before, surely playful and attractive Hollywood sex scenes — staged with the help of these new “intimacy coordinators” to make sure no frisky thespian makes a pest of themself — are a better way for teenagers to learn about sex than grim clips of slobs and yobs pleasuring randoms in alleyways behind Greggs?
By all accounts, young-sters are more alienated than they’ve ever been; the shared escapade of getting in to see films they shouldn’t would be a great bonding experience.
As a feminist, if this new prudishness protected those hopefuls starting out in the snake-pit of showbiz, I’d be all for it.
There are so many horror stories about the way dirty old men with their names on the director’s chair have exploited girls barely over the age of consent — Olivia Hussey in Romeo And Juliet, Maria Schneider in Last Tango In Paris or Lea Seydoux in Blue Is The Warmest Colour, who claimed the sex scenes made her feel “like a prostitute’ — in the name of artistic freedom.
I don’t believe for a minute that this trend will provide any protection whatsoever for lovely young nobodies — they’ll be treated as fresh meat, as always.
It will be estab-lished stars who will benefit, as if they weren’t privileged enough — the Pen Badgleys or the spoilt nepo babies like Kristen Stewart, who once famously compared having her photograph taken to “being raped”.
The Halle Berrys of this world — on top of their game and no one’s porn-pawn — will still be able demand an extra £300,000 on top of a £1million pay-packet for a five-second flash of breasts — as it suits them and no one will think any the worse of them — while hopefuls competing in a profession with a 95 per cent unemployment rate will still feel they have to turn a blind eye to being leched after.
Sexism is built into the film industry as it is in few other professions; in no other field of work do so many unattractive old men have power over so many attractive young women.
Hollywood’s habit of discarding actresses as soon as they find their first laughter line, while actors play romantic leads into their dotage, is incompatible with ideas of equality — think of 28-year-old Angelina Jolie playing 27-year-old Colin Farrell’s mother.
Fixing this type of sexist insanity would certainly make Hollywood a better place for women.
Making established actresses return to the coy, sexless stereo-types of the Hays days, while treating starlets as objects to be stripped at, will can only reinforce the old clichés about there being two kinds of women.
And women in general, on the screen and in the stalls, will all be the poorer for it.
