‘Teens want less sex in movies and TV shows’: Yet again, we are having this annoying argument

I understand that not everyone wants to watch a sex scene. I get that and respect that. But yet again, we’re having one of the most frustrating conversations about media. Variety posted a new study that found that teenagers want less sex in movies and television shows. I’m tired.

There is this idea that sex scenes are just gratuitous and exploitive. I supposed that BAD sex scenes could have those labels but, for the most part, a sex scene is used as a way of expressing a number of things for a character. Their emotional relationship to each other, what a specific character needs in that moment, and more. To dismiss sex scenes as a whole and demand media has “less” of them is to deny a larger audience of the character development within a scene like this.

The report, titled “Teens & Screens” pulled from a sample of roughly 1,500 individuals aged 10 to 24. Through the study, they found that they wanted more stories about platonic relationships and less pieces of media with sex in it. On the one hand, asking for more movies and shows about friendship isn’t a bad thing but to dismiss sex scenes as a whole is beyond frustrating. Also why are we asking literal 10 year olds about this?!

Unfortunately, the numbers are going up. Last time this study was conducted, it was about 10% less than the current stats for what younger audiences want. One of the most frustrating pieces of the data for me is that 62.4% said “sexual content isn’t needed as a plot device.” That is actually dismissing the merit of a sex scene in regards to character development!

Sex scenes do work when done right

One of my favorite examples of how a sex scene can help you understand the thought process of a character comes to us in the form of Narcos. Javier Peña (Pedro Pascal) discovers that one of his informants has died after he desperately tried to protect her. When he finds this out, he finds comfort in a sex worker and the way he treats her is very different from how we’ve previously seen him with sex workers.

It is how we know that he is upset about the situation. Take a film like Hit Man which has what I would call a “sex montage” in it but it features a voice over from Gary (Glen Powell) talking about how when he is Gary, he’s too in his own head to be a “good” lover but his Ron persona doesn’t think, making him better in bed.

We get to see the contrast between Gary and Ron because of the sex scenes with Madison (Adria Arjona). Even a movie like Fair Play shows how a man like Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) would go from being labeled as a feminist in the bedroom with Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) to the darker man we see by the end of the movie.

My point is: If you just completely write off sex scenes without looking at the merit they do pose, you’re missing important character development. So they are, actually, important to the plot. Now can we PLEASE stop having this conversation?