How far will sex go on screen? Well, exactly as far as some actors say it is. Penn Badgley, for example, who plays the fiery psychopath in You (2018-) and before that the lover of the protagonist of Gossip Girl (2007-2012), recently revealed on the Podcrushed podcast that he’s “discomfortable” with “intimate scenes” and that it’s out of loyalty to his wife wanted to reduce the number of sexual interactions on the show. “My wish would be zero [intimate scenes]’ in the new series of You, were his exact words. A few days ago, in an interview with Ara, Quentin Tarantino said that sex was not part of his vision of cinema. “And the truth is, in real life, shooting sex scenes is tedious,” added the director of Pulp Fiction and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. “Everyone is very tense. If it was a bit of a problem doing it before, it’s even more so now.”
Badgley and Tarantino are far from alone. Following the rise of the MeToo movement in late 2017, if anything marks the contemporary audiovisual panorama (beyond the rise of streaming platforms) it’s the way its stars are rethinking sex. A growing number of celebrities, including Anna Kendrick and Keira Knightley, are rejecting nudity or sex as a narrative plot. The industry seems to have responded to the wake-up call after years of criticism of baseless eroticism and numerous allegations of abuse. And when there are scenes, productions have begun to strive for more communication and transparency about the boundaries of consent.
That’s where the intimacy coordinator comes in, “helping in any scene that feigns sex, nudity, or other aspects of an intimate nature” — says Heather Maria Ács, coordinator of productions like Fire Island (2022). “The priority is to make sure everyone is comfortable and agrees with the action and the content.”
According to Ács, intimacy coordinators have become indispensable for rising stars. “Younger generations are so familiar with consent culture that that’s the expectation,” she says. Ács doesn’t believe that on-screen sex is necessarily on the decline, as might appear from Badgley’s attitude or the sluggish sex lives of Marvel heroes, but rather that the industry is embracing a more inclusive sexual environment, which translates into stories featuring non-normative characters and Practices far removed from the hypermasculine vision (see the “black kiss” between Lukas Gage and Murray Bartlett in The White Lotus).
Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey in a scene from The Last of Us.
Jessica Bennett, who worked as intimacy coordinator on Lovecraft Country (2020), agrees that intimacy is changing in fiction and that productions now feature more complex stories where genitalia and passionate encounters are no longer the sole focus of sexual attention. “There’s a bigger narrative arc,” she says. “I keep getting more calls for relationship building than just simulated sex.”
All of this is likely a reflection of a broader paradigm shift. The sexual attitudes of younger generations have changed: Like Millennials, Generation Z claim less interest in sex. This trend goes hand-in-hand with an increasing online presence, says Lucas Hilderbrand, chair of the Film & Media Studies School of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine. Social networks have enabled new forms of intimacy, changing sexual culture in the process. “Norms around taking and sharing photos of yourself and being open about your nudity have changed radically and become more public than they were 20 years ago,” he says. “Whether it’s through sexting or sharing photos on Twitter, there’s more self-expression.” Without portraying fiction that involves the complexities of intimacy through social media, production companies risk alienating young people.
Hilderbrand, like Ács, doesn’t believe sex is doomed on screen, but the industry needs to reconsider how it intends to use intimate scenes in an increasingly diverse reality, particularly with regard to gender identity. In the US, 5% of the population between the ages of 18 and 29 does not identify with their gender assigned at birth (for example, two of the biggest TV stars of 2022: Emma D’Arcy from House of the Dragon and Bella Ramsey from The Last of Us , are both non-binary), challenging traditional conventions. “We will increasingly reconsider what sex is and how we can portray it, especially with regard to non-binary talent that does not fit into the existing sexual framework,” predicts Hilderbrand.
“It’s time to create the world we want to see and be more honest with the world we live in,” says Ács. “I’m very interested in the diversity of what sex is beyond being a cisgender missionary.”
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