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Comment by joker_minmax | Hacker News Reader

Personally I feel like the reason behind the change is obvious. Pornography is everywhere. People don't get their kicks from 1970s movie love scenes anymore because hardcore fetish videos are a few clicks away. The same way boys no longer lust after the lingerie section of the Sears catalog. But the culture carries this at-will objectification as bleedover into everything else. And I think it's also why the youngest generation right now is fixated on knowing their exact, granular label for sexual identity and orientation, even though young people are having less sex than they've ever had.

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Your explanation relies on the idea that any nudity in movies is exclusively for the purpose of gratuitous titillation. I don't think that's true, nor does it explain the decline in portraying the non-physical intimacy in relationships.

>The same way boys no longer lust after the lingerie section of the Sears catalog.

The Sears catalog wasn't replaced by porn, it was replaced by insta/tiktok thirst traps.

> The Sears catalog wasn't replaced by porn, it was replaced by insta/tiktok thirst traps.

imo there was a span of about twenty years of online erotica in between before the user-generated variant became ubiqutious on mainstream platforms.

but i agree that "thirst" or "desire erotica" is a different beast than explicit pornography

Yup. And there's a similar theory that both big comedy movies and comedy sitcoms have been largely disappearing because people are getting their comedy fixes from YouTube and TikTok now.

So when they go to the movies or pull up Netflix, almost all the new stuff being produced is drama. (Comedies haven't died out completely, but proportionally they're far, far less than they used to be.)

I agree but I also think that comedy is too risky for Netflix. Look at the Chappelle shitshow, and that was over something that was agreed on by ~100% of America 10 years ago.

There's always someone willing to crybully, so why bother? And, counter to that, if there's always someone offended, why not be Sam Hyde? Offend everyone, fuckit.

Drama is offensive too. Cuties raised an uproar.

This. Instant porn is the elephant in the room. Some refuse to acknowledge it, some don't dare.

idk. althou the instantaneousness is a newish thing, erotic art is definetly not and jacking off is not even exclusive to humans.

thou i cannot see how internet porn could go away w/o also taking free speech along with it.

> thou i cannot see how internet porn could go away w/o also taking free speech along with it

For some reason, very few of even the most vehement "n-word and genocide advocacy are free speech" advocates think that porn is free speech.

so what?

The elephant in the room might actually be US-American prudery. But to confirm, we'd have to check if prudery became stronger in the last 20 years and if non-US movies have still the same (or more) amount of sex in it.

But it's actually a well-known meme in the rest of the world that entertainment from the US has no problem depicting violence, but god beware you see the nipple of a woman...

Game of Thrones was extremely unique and "Non-American" for the nudeness and many sex scenes.

MPAA is still controlled by a vague group of older christian people and the movie ratings reflect that.

Like the fact that a PG-13 movie (IIRC) can get a single "fuck", not two. Just one.

Violence is fine, you just can't show its effects (no blood no matter how much you get beaten, bloody scrapes seem to be A-OK).

Sex and sexuality are absolutely banned in every way.

In MPAA-land, hacking a breast off with a machete is R-rated, but kissing it earns you an instant X (well, NC-17).

I heard a funny clip of the actors who played the Hobbits in LoTR where, precisely, the best place to drop their one-and-only f-bomb; they’d limited themselves to the whole franchise, maybe? Funny stuff.

> Game of Thrones was extremely unique and "Non-American" for the nudeness and many sex scenes.

Really? My feeling is the other way around - that say HBO shows (made by Americans) always have gratuitous nudity and sex scenes. Even the great ones, like "The Wire" or "Sopranos" had plenty of them. It's as if there's a person at HBO responsible for checking scripts if there's enough sex/nudity in them, because research shows they increase viewership.

CollegeHumor had a famous parody bit where they showed the story of young actors/actresses landing big roles, but when they explain to their peers what is it they do at the job, it sounds like they've been hired by the porn industry. but no, "it's not porn, it's HBO!" Then everyone cheers and is happy for them.

This is a joke, but it's also an important factor: actors and actresses can now push back against being made to film these scenes in ways that range from "uncomfortable" to "actual sexual assault". So there are fewer such scenes, because it's more expensive and requires more planning than just "bully lead actress until she takes her top off".

How does that relate? HBO still makes these scenes.

The Chinese Communist Party are also a bunch of prudes, so we're in good company!

What's US-American? You mean American?

Is this one of those weird things where Germans try to dunk on Americans by calling us USians?

Europeans love to think when people say America they are referring to the continent, despite everyone knowing they mean the USA. I think it's an inferiority complex/dislike of US thing

Its a pretty common reaction anytime something is perceived as being overly self important. Its normal to us but I can see that perspective.

Please refer to us with our chosen demonym, it’s just basic manners.

I could dunk on Germans by referring to them as Nazis then acting indignant when they protest, but I won’t, because that would be bizarre and make me look insane

Well, you're right that would be bizarre and make you look insane.

You know that isnt what we do right? German is our word for them, it isnt what they call themselves.

That would make sense if we were speaking German. But we, and they, are not

What? You're talking nonsense now.

It's less ambiguous. It's the name of the country. It's not a weird dunk to acknowledge that "America" is two continents (and that one them is in fact not called "Mexico"). What's weird is someone who lives in a country called USA being so insecure about being called USAn.

It's a South Carolina colloquialism. Maybe to distinguish from Confederate Americans. https://youtu.be/lj3iNxZ8Dww

I think it's that and a sort of equal-and-opposite prudishness reaction - those sex scenes no longer fly in mainstream movies, they are generally described as exploitative of the actors (particularly women) and inappropriate in various ways.

To paraphrase something I read on the daily mash - OK, sure, you young folks feel free to shame us gen Xers for getting our teenage kicks from a glimpse of breast in 'that scene' in an action movie... but in the 80s and 90s we didn't have a device in our pocket that could show us the most extreme filth at the touch of a button.

(That all said, nudity does seem to have had a big resurgence in tv in recent years)

Filth is an interesting word.

British colloquialism!

One of John Waters' favorites.

Queer movies aren't afraid of romantic sex.

Yeah. I feel like Western cinema right now could use a movement like the Pinky movies of 80's/90's Japan - cheap, titillating, often thoughtful art movies that were also basically softcore pornography.

I agree, there's no mystery or effort needed that builds up lust any more.

That's a genre problem, porn is by its definition explosive, too fast to develop anything emotionally, erotica however builds up but it is harder to fund, there is an outlier though, 50 shades, however, for 50 shades to get funding it had to be a best seller for a while, released as an ebook at first. So unless you reach such a level you probably wont be funded, which only exacerbates current puritanical trends.

I find this odd, considering the success of 50 shades and the huge amount of female erotica written in books, there should be a large incentive for pouring money on shows for all of that readily available material. I'm a man and even I find the books more alluring than 99% of what's on TV/Movies.

I don't think those two are connected. Yes, we have access to directly sexual targeted imagery , so there's no need to cram it into everything else. That's good.

But that's not related to today's super specific and fluid sexual identities. People aren't sampling the gullt buffet of sexuality and making their precise choice of their perfect blend. They are making guesses, guessing more wildly now that they have more than 2 options to pick from, and now that it's not taboo to explore, so teens being teens, who are constantly searching for an identity, now can include sexuality in that search.

Doesn’t explain the lack of romance though - which sex (or at least the expression of desire for) usually comes with.

I can understand holding back on the PDA if you are making an evening TV shows watched together by families. But in PG-13 movies?

Porn and beautiful women in movies are very different things.

For example, look at Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls or Alicia Silverstone in Clueless.

That, and porn are very differently appealing, and almost surely have very different audiences.

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