The Porning Of Pop Culture

"Vagina's everywhere..."

Discretion used to be the better part of TV sex scenes. Even as portrayals of love and lust got steamier, the anatomical particulars were left to the imagination, off camera or under covers. Hollywood's old visual pun, the camera panning from a couple romancing in the foreground to fireworks exploding in the background, was updated over the years. Now the precise style, duration and heat register of sexual fireworks are enacted onscreen, notes Denver Post's Joanne Ostrow, and in cable and broadcast TV dramas, the sex scenes are gymnastic...

The first evolution in TV's approach to sex involved the quantity of the sex on screen. The next evolution, the one going on now, seems to be in the manner of the sex portrayed. No position is too acrobatic, no amount of skin too graphic to depict on television. The potential awkwardness of the act seems to fascinate TV directors. It's not just television: from the popularity of E.L. James' "Fifty Shades of Grey" to the ubiquity of kink on the Internet, from a recent New York Times story on the proliferation of S&M clubs to the nightly prime-time disclaimers (TV-MA, L, S, V), the porning of pop culture is upon us.

Thank cable for ushering more graphic depictions of sex, violence and sexual violence from the World Wide Web into the living room with a wealth of literate (and award-winning) adult dramas. Depictions of sex and sexuality of every flavor are on view, not least in otherworldly settings ( Battlestar Galactica) and fantastical comedic settings (Sex and the City). True Blood and Mad Men raised the stakes. Increasingly, athleticism is the hallmark of small-screen sexual encounters. A bed is often the last place you'd find a sex scene. The unlimited varieties of the act were explored by cable, where customers pay for the privilege of seeing sadistic sexual acts (Game of Thrones), humiliating sexual encounters (Girls), bodice-ripping sex (Spartacus), paid and disabled sex (Legit), beach-chair sex (Magic City), fee-based sex play (The Client List) and more.


Meanwhile broadcast TV showcased more and younger sex, especially on shows about high schoolers played by older actors. Parenthood, Bunheads and Glee toyed with adolescent sexual exploits. The tragi-sex-com Girls on HBO brings the current state of affairs into cringe-worthy focus. This season's penultimate episode "On All Fours," as graphic as its title, explicitly referenced porn imagery in the interaction of Adam and Natalia. First they had fun sex, then they had quasi-rape sex. The dynamics of the positions, the meaning of the physical relationships, the emotions that result from the encounter are meant to be pondered on this increasingly dark post-post-feminist comedy.

Now that graphic style is edging into mainstream commercial TV. Desperate to win audiences back from cable, the broadcast networks do what they can to mimic, imply and suggest. Even a political drama about the White House sneaks off for a quickie in the computer tech closet (Scandal), as parents in the audience scramble to clear the kids from the room. The raunchiest network comedies talk endlessly about "doing it" but don't show much. Jess (Zooey Deschanel) of New Girl on Fox is not nearly as sexually exhibitionistic or self-sabotaging as Hannah (Lena Dunham) of Girls on HBO. Two and a Half Men amounts to a decade's worth of sexual innuendo but actual sex is only implied.

Here's how we know we've arrived at a newly sexualized time in mainstream America, an awkward age of transition on matters of sex: The waitress Max (Kat Dennings) on the CBS half-hour Two Broke Girls recently complained that the word "vagina" has lost its power to shock. "Vagina's everywhere," she said. Cue the leering short-order cook Oleg: "Where!?!" Clearly, the writers share Max's lament about the difficulty of getting a laugh now that the word is commonplace, but they hope for some residual shock value. Ironically, TV's reality shows are the least graphic when it comes to sexual interactions. Series like Big Brother and Jersey Shore offer bad, obnoxious and unethical behavior on display, but the sex is usually blurred, in the dark or beneath the sheets. The TV genre that purports to be most authentic and uncensored turns out to be the least revealing in sexual situations.

The easy inclusion of graphic sex scenes in TV dramas in particular has challenged writers to play with the nature of intimacy in novel ways. This creative rethinking turns out to be good for dramatic character development. The power dynamic involved in sex is now a focus beyond the physical event.

* The husband and wife power-mongers in House of Cards on NetFlix like to share a cigarette in a window late at night, their version of intimacy. We never see them in a sexual encounter with each other; that's reserved for others, their inferiors in terms of rank and power. The result is subtle: The lack of sex between the leading characters (played by Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright) makes the viewer think harder about their intriguing intimate moments, as they borrow a page from "Macbeth."

* In the superior FX drama The Americans, the very idea of sex is fraught since the couple, played by Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, are actually an arranged covert spy team who have yet to develop a real romantic relationship. Can their work blur into a romance? Will things heat up in the bedroom while they pursue the Cold War? Meanwhile, views of Russell's character enduring demeaning, sadistic sex as a trade for information are intensely graphic. (As a lethal spy, she gets her comeuppance.)

* It's not spoiling anything to note that the only really romantic, loving expression of sex in recent TV memory occurred on ABC's Red Widow, just before the central character was widowed. Now that true love seems to be out of the way, the doors are open to more dramatic, aggressive or conflicted expressions of sex.

* FX's Bates Motel finds its starting point as a contemporary prequel to "Psycho" with a Twin Peaks vibe. The sexual tension here is novel for television: mother and son, played by Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore, are intertwined in unhealthy, incestuous ways. The sexual hints are subtle at first as the audience witnesses the psychological implosion of teenager Norman Bates.

We can only hope the sexual tension in that case remains more subtle than gymnastic.
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Sex Scenes And TV

"Can I be the woman who screams 'I'm squirting!'?..."

Any discussion entitled "Changing Rules for Women and Sex on TV" was bound to include mentions of a certain HBO comedy series, notes Alison Willmore. Reporting in Indiewire, she states the always provocative Girls was certainly a central topic at Saturday's SXSW panel, which was moderated by ThinkProgress' Alyssa Rosenberg and populated by fellow journalists Noreen Malone (of The New Republic) and David Haglund (of Slate), as well as Sarah Shapiro, the writer/director of "Sequin Raze," a short making its world premiere at the festival, and Anna Camp (The Mindy Project, True Blood), the film's lead. The group dug into Lena Dunham's young career and the portrayals of sex, relationships and nudity in her show, along with the power dynamics of the intimacies of House of Cards and what constitutes a good sex scene. While the panel covered a lot of interesting ground, some familiar to anyone who follows the work of the writers on it, the most interesting viewpoint may have been that of Camp, who as an actor has participated in her fair share of sex scenes and who has to navigate them as part of potential roles.

Camp spoke about scenes in Mad Men ("I feel like competing to prove myself worthy of him sexually," she said of the blow job her character Bethany Van Nuys gave Don Draper in a cab) and in House of Lies (she auditioned for the role that ultimately went to Kristen Bell, leading her to ask if instead "Can I be the woman who screams 'I'm squirting!'?"). Actors have to give their trust to the directors, writers and producers in charge of the project, which she noted can be frustrating or frightening. "I want to be picky for when I do that," she said of sex scenes, noting that many of them were just the "same male fantasy" and that it was often taken for granted in films and TV that attractive characters would have great sex, but that she was interested in getting beyond the usual depictions.


The scenes that dominated the conversation included Dunham's several with Patrick Wilson in that much-debated recent episode of Girls (he was an "idealized male figure instead of an idealized female figure," noted Haglund, who was actually not a fan of the installment); and the Melissa Leo segment from the past season of Louie thanks to his depiction of sex and desire, particularly a scene that treads the line between consensual interaction and forced reciprocation. Camp cited as noteworthy the scene in Mad Men involving Jessica Paré's Megan Draper and the white carpet. Shapiro brought up the scene in the pilot of Girls in which Hannah (Dunham) refuses Adam (Adam Driver) when he goes off to get lube ("to be grounded in your own body enough to say 'I don't want that'" was striking to her).

Cable is, for obvious reason, the home for most of the shows that were discussed, but the freedom to be explicit wasn't always, for the panelists, a good thing. Haglund spoke of how quickly Homeland managed to show a nude Morena Baccarin, saying that the cable-style rush to that made him distrust the series at times, Malone noted that it's often the lead-up to sex that's more interesting ("I want a good buildup") and Shapiro said that for her, "the sexiest thing in the world is the closed door."

Network TV has generated discussions of its own in how it's dealt with one of the consequences of sex -- pregnancy, including how some characters have dealt with fertility crises. Rosenberg pointed out Robin Scherbatsky's (Cobie Smulders) learning that she can't have children in the past season of How I Met Your Mother and Cece's (Hannah Simone) finding that she only has a limited window in which to conceive on New Girl. Watching the latter development, Malone said that at first "I was angry that one of my favorite TV shows was inciting this personal panic in me," but then realized that it was a natural part of the conversation. As these characters approach or begin their 30s, it's something they would think about, because "sex is not divorced from childbirth." It may not be as audacious as Hannah Horvath's hookups, but shows "would be leaving rich territory unexplored if they didn't" go there.

Writing in The Horn, Emily Kausalik agreed that one of the most contested and fascinating developments in television over the past few years has been the changing scope of female representation and sex on TV, but admitted disappointment that this very frank dialogue about shows challenging age old questions of double standards and female desire existed entirely within the male/female, heterosexual binary and didn't explore same-sex and LGBTQ relationships and desires. Though that may be a telling reflection on American television in general.
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Is The New TV Season Sexist?

Is "Jiggle TV" making an unfortunate comeback? asks Salon's Nik Leshi. In the old days of television, when Three's Company and Baywatch dominated the airwaves, the spotlight on many female characters was focused simply on their looks. Even shows like Star Trek, which aimed to show the progressive strides of human beings in the future, arguably displayed some sexist depictions by today's standards. Yet, maybe today's standards haven't really changed much at all, as some might say, judging by the new shows coming our way this season.

September is here and new television programming is on our doorstep, ready to come into our living rooms. TheWrap.com joined some other critics who have been pointing fingers recently at the networks for their new shows that seem to emphasize "T & A" instead of showing their female characters in what they profess should be a more positive and well-rounded light.


ABC has a remake of Charlie's Angels, the poster child (no pun intended for the late, great original angel Farrah Fawcett) of 1970s "Jiggle TV." Is the super-model-looking crimefighting trio actually an example of the empowerment of women, or are they merely serving as nothing more than eye candy for a male audience?

ABC also has a show about 1960s airline stewardesses (before they were called flight attendants) titled Pan Am. NBC, likewise, has a drama set in the '60s with ladies in skimpy bunny outfits -- the highly hyped new series The Playboy Club. Are these just retro chic shows aiming to capitalize on nostalgia and the success of AMC's Mad Men, or is the period setting just an excuse to be sexist and misogynistic with a built-in excuse that they're not actually showing women in a poor light?

In their defense, both Pan Am and The Playboy Club seem to have plots that center on other dramatics beyond the bedroom. Feminist icon Gloria Steinem, however, is calling for a boycott of The Playboy Club and some network affiliates across the country are refusing to air it.

Even the first teaser for NBC's remake of the highly acclaimed British series Prime Suspect was mildly gratuitous, showing Mario Bello in her police locker room, strapping on her gun and donning her police uniform. I don't recall a similar closeup butt shot of the original actress Helen Mirren whenever I saw an episode on PBS.

I haven't seen full episodes of any of the shows mentioned above, so it would be unfair of me to take a stand on either side of the debate at this time. Nevertheless, I do hope that the new television season provides some good characters, regardless of gender, and avoids relying too heavily on stereotypes. The human body is a beautiful thing and should be celebrated, but not at the expense of objectifying women for the sake of television ratings.
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Bunnies And Stewardesses

Here's some good news about the upcoming fall TV season: There will be a marked increase in the number of actresses populating new series! Now, the other news: They appear to have packed pretty light when it comes to wardrobe, states Tim Kenneally in The Wrap...

From the tight uniforms sported by the stewardesses on ABC's "Pan Am" and the Alphabet Network's sexy re-commissioned "Charlie's Angels" crime-fighters, to the fluffy-tailed servers of NBC's "The Playboy Club," the fashion trend of the season appears to be flesh, and plenty of it. Call it the resurgence of Jiggle TV, a titillating genre that briefly blossomed in the 1970s with the original "Charlie's Angels," before giving way with the exit of "Baywatch."


Though none of the series have yet to debut, the trend of new shows featuring female leads in little clothing and subservient positions has already been met with criticism. Gloria Steinem, who gained notoriety by going undercover as a bunny at the Playboy Club in New York in 1960s and writing an exposé about the working conditions, has said that she's hoping for a boycott of NBC's "The Playboy Club," claiming, "It normalizes a passive-dominant idea of gender. So, it normalizes prostitution and male dominance."

Christine Baranski, co-star of "The Good Wife," has similarly chimed in, telling New York Magazine, "I'm rather appalled that they're now making television shows about Playboy bunnies and stewardesses ... I think, 'Really? Haven't we gone past that, well past that?'"

Apparently not. But why now, in particular, does there seem to be a resurgence in flesh-centric TV fare? Certainly, AMC's "Mad Men" seems to have loosened the jar lid with its highly successful exercise in flesh-friendly, misogyny-laced nostalgia. And it might be no coincidence that the upcoming series -- like "Mad Men" -- all have retro elements to them. ("The Playboy Club" and "Pan Am" are both set in the 1960s, while "Charlie's Angels" is a revamp of a 1970s Jiggle TV progenitor.)

Martha M. Lauzen, Ph.D., the executive director for Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, suggests that, particularly in dour financial times, male viewers -- not to mention the overwhelmingly male decision-makers at the networks -- might be looking to retreat into less complicated, more comforting times.

"In times of economic and social upheaval and difficulty, nostalgia and a longing for an era when life seemed simpler tend to bloom," Lauzen said. That could be especially true in an era when men -- at least the ones not on TV, anyway -- find themselves losing economic and social ground to the fairer sex. "As women continue to gain economic, social and political power, there is always some sort of backlash, a desire to put women 'back in their place,'" Lauzen adds.
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