Whether it's advertising pork mince or making a multi-million-dollar TV franchise like Game of Thrones, it's no secret that sex sells.
But the graphic nature of simulated sex scenes and nudity can come at a cost.
In the last few years, high-profile actors, including GoT's Emilia Clarke and Frida star Salma Hayek, have said they were pressured (in Clarke's situation) or threatened (in Hayek's) to expose their bodies and partake in gratuitous simulated sex scenes.
And this doesn't just affect the actors involved. It can warp audience's perspectives of the realities of sex and consent.
That's something intimacy coordinator Ita O'Brien is fighting to change.
"With the intimate content, it's your personal and private body that's at play," she points out.
"An injury can go from purely physical, to emotional and psychological — when someone's body has been handled and touched in a way that is not suitable for that person and is not within their agreement and consent."
O'Brien likens her role to a stunt coordinator — only she applies choreography and a consent-based framework to sexual content and nudity, rather than action sequences.
Some of her most recent work can be seen on Normal People, the BBC and Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney's 2018 book of the same name, which focusses on a teen romance in Ireland. (And involves quite a bit of sex.)
"There's a scene in episode two, the first time making love, and for Marianne it's her experience of losing her virginity. That scene took all day, so I'm not saying that by choreographing a scene you're not going to make it exhausting.
"But the intimacy coordination work is about everybody being in agreement and consent ... and absolutely every detail serving character, serving storytelling."
Depicting sexual violence
The ethics of on-screen sexual content can be further complicated when violence is involved.
O'Brien says she has heard horror stories from sets without intimacy coordinators.
"An actress talked about working in a series where she was playing a character in a domestic abusive relationship," she says.
"In the middle of the scene, she would end up physically bruised, her clothes actually torn, and crying on the floor to such an extent that she couldn't get up between takes. The director had to surreptitiously place a towel over her to protect her modesty."
These situations not only harm the actors involved, they may also have negative impacts on audiences, says Emma Jane, a senior lecturer in the School of the Arts and Media at UNSW.
Dr Jane says that sexual violence on-screen can represent important stories and raise awareness, but the nature of the depiction is key.
"Is it being depicted in a way that presents it as the horrendous act of violence that it is? [Or] is it being depicted in a way that invites viewers to kind of enjoy the depiction in some way? It might sexualise it or over-linger — and that's what I felt about GOT."
Who has the power?
Film and TV productions are not mandated to employ intimacy coordinators, but shifts in the industry are taking place.
Late last year, Directors UK issued guidelines for "directing nudity and simulated sex" and, in January, the US Screen Actors Guild published its own guidelines intended to regulate simulated sex scenes and nudity — part of a broader effort to prevent sexual misconduct in the industry.
Closer to home, Screen Australia now has a code of conduct they're working with the industry to implement, and Ita O'Brien is training a group of Australian-based practitioners to be intimacy coordinators.
According to Amanda Coles, a lecturer in the department of management at Deakin Business School, it's impossible to talk about the ethics of sex on screen without questioning the traditional hierarchies of power — on the production side — that have contributed to inequality, even harm.
But that doesn't mean it's time to return to the Hays Code — the Motion Pictures Production Code, published in 1930 — that prohibited nudity, sexual perversity and even lustful kissing on screen.
Dr Coles believes sex on screen can be crucial in driving complicated and important stories forward.
"A really popular example is Brokeback Mountain," she notes. "That wouldn't be made under the Hays Code.
"This is a movie that complicates the genre of the western, that complicates notions of masculinity, and you needed sex scenes in it to tell stories about the gay community, to drive that forward."
Necessity, not gratuity
Dr Jane agrees that a reimagining, rather than curbing, of sex and nudity on screens would benefit audiences.
"It's important to depict sex in our popular entertainment because it's a big part of people's lives ... but I do feel extremely strongly about how it's depicted."
As codes of conduct for on-screen intimacy are adopted, and enforced, across the world, coordinators like Ita O'Brien will play an increasingly important role in shaping the relationships we watch.
"My job isn't to say, 'You have to do intimate content like this.' I'm reading the production, meeting the director, looking at their designs and supporting that production to have the best intimate content possible — be it beautiful, loving content ... or a kitchen sink drama," she says.
What she's not interested in is nudity and sexual expression "that actually is just there for titillation or objectification".
"I'm not about helping [a production] to up their naked body count."
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https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiZmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTA1LTAzL25vcm1hbC1wZW9wbGUtZ2FtZS10aHJvbmVzLXNleC12aW9sZW5jZS1ldGhpY3MtZmlsbS10di8xMjIwNTkxNNIBJ2h0dHBzOi8vYW1wLmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvYXJ0aWNsZS8xMjIwNTkxNA?oc=5
2020-05-02 22:09:52Z
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