Sex scenes in movies are in rapid decline, despite rise in sex-scene discourse

polygon.com:

There has been so much time committed to yelling online about sex scenes in movies and TV — whether they’re gratuitous, whether they’re fundamental to a realistic portrayal of life, whether they’re titillating fun, and whether they offend Penn Badgley’s wife — that the discourse has now entered meme territory. But passionate defenders of hot-and-heavy drama might be right to make a ruckus over what they deem culturally valuable: According to a new study, the depiction of doin’ it in mainstream Hollywood movies has fallen dramatically over the last 20 years.

In a study conducted for The Economist, data researcher Stephen Follows looked at the 250 top-grossing films of each year since 2000 to plot out the amount of sex featured in major studio output (with a focus on positive encounters versus acts of sexual violence). What he found was a 40% drop in sexual content over the last two-plus decades. Another breakdown illustrates that the stat is directly linked to the amount of sex in major releases, rather than a shift by studios to dial down nudity and be more suggestive. Follows’ data-crunching found that nearly 50% of films released between 2019 and 2023 were void of sexual content, compared to around 20% in the early 2000s. The drop, he found, was particularly notable in action movies and thrillers produced in the window.

Sex hasn’t disappeared from the movies — Emma Stone just snagged an Oscar and stuck it to prudes everywhere for her role as the sexually awakened Bella in last year’s highly explicit Poor Things. The film was even a hit by arthouse standards, grossing $34 million in the United States and $117 million worldwide. But that total doesn’t even put it in the top 50 highest-grossing films of 2023. Sex in movies is becoming an indie pursuit. (Though kudos to Oppenheimer for both being a gargantuan hit and including a scene in which its main character utters “I am become death” as he is mounted by his lover.)

What’s behind the apparent tightening up of