I am not a teen.
Here is the actual study if anyone is interested.
Makes me want Cosmere movies even more than I already did
“Uplifting fantasy about characters that ‘beat the odds’” is like
The entire thing.
I think movie is the wrong medium for most of the Cosmere. Too short form. Mini series or anime-style might be better?
I have a few problems with this and first and foremost is that their study is about teens yet they surveyed ten to twentyfour year olds about it.
Secondly is that the infographic says that teens would prefer more friendships over romantic relationships but this doesn’t account for the fact that there’s been a trope for the last decade where there is always some stupid romantic relationship shoehorned into any fucking story even if it makes no sense or distracts from the main story. For all we know, teens and twenty-somethings could be tired of romance being injected into movies and TV when the story doesn’t call for it but be otherwise fine with it when it enhances a story.
I agree with the teens. We already live in a dystopia, no need to have that in our movies and books anymore.
There’s a reason cottage core exists. And how popular bridgerton is, and that’s not because of the sex in the series, but the escapism to a world where war barely gets mentioned. And where costumed balls are all the rage.
If it does not serve a purpose for the plot, then it’s not needed. Simple as that.
Exactly this. A lot of media is atrocious about shoehorning in things even if they are jarring and dont make sense. Token characters (race, sexuality), token ideologies (veganism, feminism, religion, etc), stereotypes, you name it.
Edit: and famous celebrities for no apparent reason. Surprise! Your favorite character from the book this movie is based on is now played by Dwayne “The Eock” Johnson.
Yeah because everyone in media needs to be straight, white, and Christian. 🙄
Representation matters.
Sure, but I get what they mean. Sometimes you have a minority character that doesn’t very much seem to interact with the plot, nor has many discernable personality trait beyond being part of a minority.
Representation matters, but it should be done in a way that makes the characters actual people, not just a tick in a checkbox.
They’re saying that characters irrelevant to the plot having diverse roles feels forced. Wouldn’t you agree diverse roles should be in meaningful roles like leads?
People downvoting as a reactionary for making them feel bad, but I agree.
Having a stereotype as a character for the sake of “representation” is not representing anything good and is not doing justice to anyone who would be more than a single note character.
I’m tired of bad writing and gimmicks to get people to have a reaction to an otherwise bad story, but that doesn’t mean I want movies with none of the topics in it, I just want it to mean something when it’s there.
Exactly.
(Natural/Organic storytelling) The Boys: Maeve, Kimiko, and Starlight, beating the shit out of Stormfront
Vs
(Forced/jarring) That scene in Avengers Endgame, where every female character from across a massive battlefield appeared next to each other. As opposed to the scene in Infinity War with Proxima Midnight which felt fairly natural.
As I said here:
Why does it have to further the plot?! Why does sex/nudity have to justify itself when tons of movies have gratuitous action scenes and violence that add nothing to the plot? 90% of John Wick is gratuitous violence that added nothing to the story (but I still love it). Our culture celebrates violence and we’ll watch people get tortured to death without batting an eye - but if some tits show up on screen then suddenly everyone becomes a critic analyzing whether the story REALLY needed it or not.
It’s disturbing to me that we’re culturally encouraged to find fun in violence but sex needs to be cordoned off to a containment genre and excised from mainstream art. I’m not saying it needs to be in every movie - but its been obvious for a while they’re going out of their way to avoid it, even in places where it would make sense or be fun. I want art to stop awkwardly excluding a major part of life. I want out of this “Everyone is beautiful and no one is horny” Twilight Zone multiverse that all our modern movies seem to take place in.
Sex is too important to be left to porn.
The point of John Wick is the gratuitous violence. The plot of John Wick is in service to delivering gratuitous violence. The name for a movie whose plot is in service to delivering gratuitous sex is “pornography.” Tasteful, artistic nudity is one thing. Even sex, in service to the plot or purpose of the movie, is another thing. But sex just to sell the movie or check a box is not a thing: we’re now talking smut. Cheap, common, vulgar smut.
“Everyone is ugly and everyone is fucking” is just real life. If you want “Everyone is beautiful and everyone is fucking,” good news- that’s called porn already, and there’s so much of it. I like smut, and porn. Which is why I can recognize softcore in movies when I see it. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but if I wanted to watch porn I’d go home and masturbate.
I congratulate you on your personal sexual liberation. Please keep your jollies to yourself- in private- while we pitiful repressed twilight zone voyeurs awkwardly exclude sex from our public lives.
I’m not saying I want movies that have as much sex as John Wick has violence - obviously that would just be porn. My point is: why does sex have this obligation to move the plot forward when we give a pass to other gratuitous scenes (action, drama, violence, etc)?
If you want “Everyone is beautiful and everyone is fucking,” good news- that’s called porn already, and there’s so much of it.
The fact that you only equate sex/nudity to porn reveals the problem. Seems like many young people today can’t associate sex/nudity on a screen as art, or even just fun, anymore - because in their minds sex/nudity is inextricably tied to porn. The reality is sex/nudity can be fun, dramatic, scary, or funny depending on the context. It can have a place in many kinds of stories, and comparing it to porn is like saying “we have war documentaries so we don’t need war movies.” They are completely different things!!
while we pitiful repressed twilight zone voyeurs awkwardly exclude sex from our public lives.
Who said it has to be part of your “public life”? I’m not saying we should all want to watch Wild Things with our parents, but not every movie needs to be a ‘family movie’ that you’d want to watch in polite company. Some movies are best watched with rowdy friends or an intimate partner - and I’m sad that those types of movies have been in decline. The younger generations seem far more prudish than I ever expected.
Its very simple. Sex is boring to look at. Even porn. Whats the longest you watched a porn movie? 5 minutes? 15? Let’s top it off at 30 minutes. Just to be safe.
Violence is not boring. Stuff like John Wick grabs you by the ass and puts you on a roller coaster.
Want proof? Look at gaming. How big are the dating sims? Now compare that with call of duty/etc.
So, me? Yeah, stop with the xxl steamy sex scenes in movies. Very rarely do they add anything more then an interlude. A time to get coffee. To look at your notifications. At best.
To be clear: I love sex. My sex.
No need for it as the internet is full of it….and whatever you want for free
Actual no holds barred sex of every sort you wish to see, as often as you wish to see it, a click away on the interwebz, the titillation found by past generations in R rated movies and late night Television, no longer computes, and is wholly unnecessary
Writing a story and having to make my characters not want to have sex because of the existence of an unrelated industry outside the context of their universe.
Striking out any gambling references in my stories because of the rise of online gambling.
Then I realize I’ve stupidly written scenes where my characters eat, having forgotten like a stupid hack how many restaurants there are in the real world.
Dude, there’s a difference between romance and full-on extended sex scenes. Fade to black and get on with the plot.
The sex scenes that most mainstream dramas have traditionally had are brief and not explicit.
Do you characters take big stinky poops? Because that’s a real thing too. Do they pop pimples on their body or on their partners? The list goes on. There’s an audience for everything, but it’s pretty obvious sex isn’t as much of a driver for movies anymore.
Sex is an important part of one’s life, bowel movements aren’t. (Hopefully)
As I said here:
The fact that you only equate sex/nudity to porn reveals a problem. People today can’t associate sex/nudity on a screen as art, or even just fun, anymore - because in their minds sex/nudity is inextricably tied to porn. The reality is sex/nudity can be fun, dramatic, scary, or funny depending on the context. It can have a place in many kinds of stories, and comparing it to porn is like saying “we have war documentaries so we don’t need war movies.” They are completely different things!!
It’s disturbing to me that we’re culturally encouraged to find fun in violence but sex needs to be cordoned off to a containment genre and excised from mainstream art.
Sex is too important to be left to porn.
Most of the (supposed) younger generation people I interact with online seem even more prudish and conservative about sex than my very religious parents were growing up. It’s super weird to be the older person who’s ok with sexual content. I don’t really get it.
And yes, I know people will claim it’s because it’s only when it’s not done right or when it feels shoved in, but honestly from the way they talk about anything dealing with sex, it feels like that’s just an acceptable excuse and they really just don’t want the content to exist at all, even if ‘done right’. It’s like a huge chunk of the generation is asexual or something.
I think it has less to do with their attitude on sex, and more to do with the availability of actual porn. I’m an older millenial, and even I’m of the opinion that full on sex scenes very rarely add anything to the plot. Implied sex is often more than enough to do the required plot advancement. If I wanted the sex specifically, I’d just go watch porn.
I tended to get the impression that implied sex (such as fade to black scenes) were also not appreciated. That effectively they just didn’t want their media to include references to sex pretty much at all.
Maybe most people are reasonable about it, but online at least it feels a bit like the old Tumblr days, except now these people are super anti sex everything and want to erase all mention of it.
I’m with you, and I’m worried about it because I see this sexual puritanism as both counter to good efforts of the sexual liberation movement and frankly as a trojan horse for future conservatism to take root.
I’m of the radical acceptance, not abstaining from the topic mindset on this topic, personally.
I think a huge part of the problem that not enough people are talking about are these kids grew up in heavily corporate controlled spaces and have begun to confuse advertiser-friendliness for social acceptability, and I think that is a huge problem.
I get it. Our generation was over exposed and so were they by proxy. They’ve also been listening to us telling them about stds, unwanted pregnancies and all the baggage that comes with sex. They also have so much other stuff to do, we didn’t have as many choices so we got bored, got underage drunk and boned. The younger people also see that it did to us and they don’t want to be like us I guess. A lot more pressure and stress these days to succeed and survive, they’re too busy trying to get educated or just survive
