What You See is Not Always What You Get

Positive testimonies of onscreen sexuality, part 7: conclusion

Photo by Max Harlynking on Unsplash

Hollywood’s history is littered with testimonies from mainstream actors (primarily women) who have shared their fear, discomfort, apprehension, and tears at having to sexually act out for the camera. I’ve spent over a decade writing about this issue.

Still, a legitimate question can be raised: what about all the positive testimonies actors have given about filming hypersexualized content? Don’t their experiences negate, or at least weaken, my point?

To answer the first part of that question, positive testimonies don’t negate my point because I’ve never claimed negative experiences are universal—merely that they are prevalent. There’s a difference between “many” and “all.” I’ve never pretended that my findings represented the experience of all thespians everywhere.

Five Good Reasons

So, if positive testimonies don’t negate my point, don’t they still weaken my point? That is the main question I have attempted to address in this series.

In short, my answer is this: “Those positive testimonies need to be taken with a large boulder of salt.” Of course, such an answer requires more explanation. And in the past few months, I’ve attempted to give five reasons as my explanation. I’ll sum them up below (each point having its own clickable link).

1. The role of conscience

For many actors, filming their first nude or sex scene is the most traumatic. As is the case with any moral compromise, the second occurrence will be a little easier—as will the third and forth times. And if you continue down the slope of compromise, you’ll eventually get to the point where you are comfortable with—and even positive about—what you once considered unacceptable. That does not negate the reality of your compromise, only your awareness of and sensitivity to it. One example of a conscience hardened over time is Margot Robbie.¹

2. Hollywood flattery culture

A highly transient and competitive field like the entertainment industry encourages the use of ingratiatory behavior—that which is designed to please others and curry favor for oneself. In Hollywood, disingenuous praise (i.e., flattery) is exchanged like COVID in a mosh pit. This makes it incredibly difficult to air complaints and concerns about one’s experiences with coworkers, employers, and overall working environment.

3. Industry peer pressure

As more accolades, nominations, and awards are handed out to actors who sexualize themselves for the camera, it reinforces industry-wide hypersexualized norms that MeToo was supposed to help dismantle. If A-list actors are lauded for disrobing and sexually acting out, it sends a clear message to the tens of thousands (at least) of others in the Screen Actors Guild: “If you want to be acknowledged for your acting chops, your clothes and inhibitions need to go on the chopping block. These are the kinds of performances we regard, respect, and reward.” Thus, some of the positive testimonies of onscreen sexuality don’t represent an actor’s true sentiments, but rather a succumbing to the pressure of the status quo.

4. The context of actor interviews

Imagine an actress being questioned about the filming of a sex scene in which she felt violated by, say, the director. Imagine further that cameras are rolling while the interview is taking place—with the knowledge that hundreds or thousands or millions of people will be watching. Imagine further that the interview’s purposes is to promote a piece of work the victim is involved with, and that negative press could hurt the project’s success—and, thus, the success of everyone involved. Imagine even further that, while the recorded interview is taking place, the director is going to see the footage later—or maybe he’s even in the same room while the interview is being recorded, or participating in the interview as well. In such a situation, how likely do you think it would be for the actress to effectively and transparently and honestly communicate her experience?

5. Contradictory testimonies

With discussions on any given nude or sex scene, one participant might make it sound benign, whereas another might put the scene in a different light. One actor might use the phrase “very comfortable,” whereas his scene partner might confess to feeling “absolutely terrified.”² Another consideration is that Hollywood stars are the main focus of actor interviews, whereas we rarely hear from background actors (who are treated with much more disrespect on set). When an actor who professes complete and total comfort with a sexualized scene they had to film for a project, remember that even if they are telling the truth, you’re only hearing a small fragment of a larger story.

The Body and Soul Keep Score

It would benefit us to end this series with one more testimony—that of Emma Stone for her sexually explicit and Oscar-winning film Poor Things. Stone had both the starring role and a producer credit, giving her a lot of creative control over the project. In fact, she has defended the film’s hypersexualized content against critiques that she was a victim of exploitation:

There’s been a lot of questions about, “Oh, this was a male writer and a male director, the male gaze in this situation – how does that feel?” I think it takes away my agency here. . . [b]ecause I am a producer. This is the story that we wanted to tell in the way we wanted to tell it.

In an interview with NPR, Stone’s testimony about the film’s nude and sex scenes is definitely positive:

Having [intimacy coordinator Elle McAlpine] there felt like having both a safety net and a choreographer and a handhold. . . . And it was just this really beautiful relationship that I found extremely, extremely meaningful.

And yet, in that same interview, Stone also had this to say:

I remember reading something once, that an actor on stage doing a very dramatic scene, and having meltdowns and doing monologues for 90 minutes a night just in theater, your body feels like it’s the equivalent of going through something like a car crash, because your heart is racing, you’re having these big physical reactions to these emotions that you’re kind of asking yourself to go through. And I think even when you know you’re acting, when you know none of this is real, there’s no real sex happening, this is all choreographed ... you sometimes underestimate what your body is going through separately.

Note, she’s not talking about sex scenes filmed twenty years ago, with slimy producers salivating over their monitors. She’s talking about sex scenes in the MeToo era, with the involvement of intimacy coordinators to make sure everything is handled professionally.

As a society, we have tried to parcel out the various stages and acts of the sexual response cycle, as if we can isolate and desexualize some of them. For example, we act like libidinous kissing and amorous groping of private parts can be dissected from their sexual context, as long as it’s “just acting.” But as much as we tell ourselves these things, deep down in our hearts and souls—and our bodies—we know better.³

Stone’s testimony is telling: it is a tacit acknowledgement that certain actions are inherently and intrinsically sexual, no matter how elaborately you choregraph them and seek to distance your mind from what your body is doing. We have underestimated the human psyche’s resilient dedication to honestly respond to sexual acts because of their inherently sexual nature. What God has joined together, we cannot separate.⁴

We Can’t Handle the Truth

Considering all we have seen in this series—starting with Keira Knightley’s testimony, working our way through five considerations, and ending with Emma Stone’s statements above—it seems safe to say that many of the positive testimonies of onscreen sexuality represent a sort of Jedi mind trick, a form of perpetual self-deception, a denial and rejection of reality.⁵

Sex acts taken outside the context and covenant of marriage represent a violation of how human relationships—and human bodies—were designed to work. These violations do violence to the human soul, whether that violence is felt or not, whether it is acknowledged or not. As a writer friend of mine once put it, “naked bodies grinding on each other pretending to have intercourse crosses a line — both for the viewer and the actors.”

Actors can put a positive spin on it all they want. They can tell themselves a lie often enough that they believe it. But the truth is still the truth. And no amount of positive affirmations to the contrary will change that.

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Previous entry: “Actor Experiences: When the Stories Don’t Line Up”

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1. Another example, which I did not delve into in this series, is that of Jennifer Lawrence, as evidenced by the following two blog posts: “A Tale of Two Sexual Assaults on Jennifer Lawrence,” and “Jennifer Lawrence’s Tragic Sexual ‘Empowerment.’”

2. These exact phrases are taken from separate interviews with Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Ruta Gedmintas.

3. To quote my friend and film critic Steven D. Greydanus, “Screen intimacy does not, of course, usually involve actual sexual intercourse, but it can involve acts that are typically part of foreplay — that is, which two people would not normally do unless they were planning to have sex. The self as gift is in some way brought into play. It raises emotional stakes that are different in kind from pretend violence.”

4. This reality is seen in some of the positive actor testimonies of onscreen sexuality. For example, Mindy Kaling has written, “Obviously, on-screen sex is not actual penetrative sex, but as any religious high-schooler will tell you, simulating sex can be pretty damn enjoyable as well.” (This quote is taken from a chapter entitled “I Love Sex Scenes!” in her book Why Not Me?)

5. I’m borrowing language here from an article in The Week entitled “The last word: ‘It’s just actor sex” (with the subtitle stating, “Even for Hollywood veterans, says Los Angeles magazine, seeing a spouse make a love scene is never routine”). Here is the full paragraph from which I am borrowing some specific verbiage: “It seems that the most successful relationships between actors thrive by maintaining a sort of Jedi mind trick of perpetual disbelief. How else can an actor spend the day in bed with a stranger—limbs entangled, lips locked—and then later slip under the covers with his or her real squeeze? How else could that squeeze banish thoughts of those hands groping another? It’s weird for everyone.”