When Do Cinematic Sexual Depictions Become Exploitation?
The greater the intimacy, the greater the concern
Over the years, Steven D. Greydanus is a film critic I have grown to know and respect. I have written elsewhere that “his film criticism is careful and nuanced, characterized by keen insight and a robustly informed Christian faith.”
Such a description applies to Steven’s film commentary in other mediums as well, including social media. Steven and I have been involved in numerous online discussions, some of which address the pornification of entertainment. For a while now, I’ve wished to republish some of his comments from one conversation in particular, as he brings up many points worth considering—points that overlap with what I myself have written.
What follows is a compilation of several comments made by Steven over the course of a couple days. Breaks in the vertical green line on the left-hand side indicate different segments of the conversation. I have made minimal changes to Steven’s original content (omitting a word/phrase here or there, reformatting words bracketed by asterisks into italics, eliminating references to other participants in the conversation, etc.). You can read the entire conversation here.
For years my Evangelical friend Cap Stewart has argued, citing specific cases and interviews with actors, that onscreen sexuality is always exploitative.
My opinion is at least convergent, though not as absolute as Cap’s, but he makes a lot of good points. . . .
I once read an interview with an actress who talked about actors becoming obviously aroused during sex scenes, and she was conflicted about it both ways. On the one hand, she said, it could be awkward or embarrassing; on the other hand, if they had no response, it could make her feel like she had failed somehow. That’s enough to illustrate that filming sex scenes can be a real sexual interaction in a way that filming fight scenes usually isn’t really violent.
Cap has documented interviews and comments from actors and actresses attesting the sexually fraught nature of screen intimacy for the people involved.
For example, Jennifer Lawrence was very upset and conflicted about kissing Christ Pratt, a married man, for Passengers. I remember seeing them doing press with a reporter who was pushing them for titillating quotes about their love scenes, which made Lawrence intensely uncomfortable.
Cap’s position is not that arousal itself is the problem…but it is one indication that simulated intimacy is not a completely different thing from real intimacy.
While arousal can occur in all sorts of circumstances, including getting a physical, there is a proper sense in which arousal is “accidental” to the nature of a medical exam, and not at all “accidental” to kissing and groping and grinding and so forth.
Again, the actress’s response is telling: A medical professional might or might not find a patient’s accidental arousal embarrassing; a medical professional would never, ever find a patient’s non-arousal in any way disconcerting, as the actress did.
Yet again, a medical trainee might experience anxiety before handling a patient’s genitals for the first time, but unless they were raised in some bizarrely scrupulous environment, they would not normally feel the kind of moral conflict that Lawrence felt about kissing Pratt being some kind of violation of or affront to his marriage. Most actors obviously don’t have that level of sensitivity to mere kissing, but Lawrence’s feelings are normal and understandable. On some level, kissing is kissing; as Arsenio Hall once remarked, “There is no stunt tongue.”
Speaking for myself: While I am not an actor and will probably never be an actor, I can imagine, in principle, a scenario in which I, being the person I am, would act on the stage or on camera. This scenario, however unlikely it may be, poses no absolute contradiction to who I am as a person.
I can imagine taking part in an action sequence and pretending to punch someone or be punched. This thought poses no contradiction to who I am as a person.
I can also imagine, hypothetically speaking, playing the part of a character who is in love with another character played by an actress who is not Suzanne — at least, with respect to dialogue and so forth. Actually kissing another woman in a passionate way is not something I could ever, ever consider doing — nor is it something Suzanne would ever be okay with me doing! Nor would I ever be okay with her kissing another man in a drama.
Of course we are not actors! And I don’t say that actors, even married actors, are necessarily wrong to kiss other people. But I think screen intimacy gets very fraught very quickly.
Sex in Christian anthropology and imagination is not just a matter of “intentions.” A person is their body, and when a person gives their body to another person in sexual intercourse, they give themselves to that person, whether in their mind it’s an act of lifelong love or a one-night stand.
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.
Not to see this — to flatten both types of activity to the same level — that is reductionism. Sexuality is different. I agree that it’s difficult to draw clear lines. I respect the consistency and clarity of Cap’s position, even if I don’t accept it myself. On the other hand, if someone tells me that an actor putting an actress’s nipple in his mouth raises no moral issues different in kind from Arnold Schwarzenegger pretending to shoot cops in the knees in Terminator II … well, I can only say that one of us would have a seriously reductionistic view of sexuality, and it isn’t me.
I do not agree that screen intimacy doesn’t involve “real” intimacy. Kissing is inherently intimate, to say nothing of more intimate interactions. . . . Most actors, probably the substantial majority of actors, report that sex scenes are uncomfortable to film. There is a reason that they are usually filmed with a minimal crew. Even when an actor professes no discomfort, it’s not usually a “business as usual” thing. I seem to recall one actress calling sex scenes one of the “perks” of the job. Even this, though, suggests that there is something of a real sexual interaction in the performance.
I think we need to recognize that the burden of sex scenes and nudity in general, whether anyone reckons particular examples to be gratuitous or artistically warranted, exploitative or otherwise, has historically fallen significantly harder on actresses, who have always been required to do much more nudity in general, and sexual nudity specifically, and who are and generally have been more vulnerable to sexual exploitation than men in all kinds of institutional and social settings, including Hollywood, on both sides of the camera.
We can talk all day long about having honest discussions about what is legitimately artistically required, but the reality is that there’s a long history of earnest explanations given to young women about the artistic necessity of showing their breasts while the male actors stay covered up. Godard wasn’t talking through his hat when he remarked that “The history of cinema is boys photographing girls.” Notably, too, pressure to undress for the camera or for sex scenes fall particularly hard on young actresses without much power. When women have more power, they often push back on this pressure.
Prescinding for the moment from Cap’s strong position against simulated intimacy generally, it seems to me fair to say “Women in Hollywood have on the whole suffered substantially and systematically from movie nudity and sexuality far more than anyone in Hollywood has suffered substantially and systematically from movie violence.” There is a very substantial disparity here.
All this is clear to me. What is much less clear is where or how to draw the lines. . . .
Is it always, in all situations, immoral/degrading/exploitative for performers to simulate sex acts? I think it is always morally fraught, always a real concern. Always immoral/degrading/exploitative? No, I don’t think so — but I think that the greater the intimacy, the greater the concern, and past a certain fuzzy point I can’t see justifying it to myself. . . .
I’ve thought a lot about these questions for decades. . . . You can contend that I’m shaped by my Puritanical American prudery. Say what you like. At some point, the depiction of exploitation is indistinguishable from the real thing.
Steven D. Greydanus is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, the creator of Decent Films, and a permanent deacon in the Archdiocese of Newark. Steven and his wife Suzanne have seven children.