How fascism is hijacking our pop culture coping mechanisms
Sex scenes, 90-minute movies, and other curious hang-ups
What a time to be alive. After clawing our way through milestones like 9/11, the Great Recession, the blanket normalization of school shootings, Trump, and a global pandemic that everyone has decided is over, we’re finally on the other side. Awaiting us on this side, of course, is America’s swan dive into fascism. Fundamental things, like our ability to tell the truth about this country’s history, our right to raise children in safe, affirming environments, or our right to exist in the world—all of that is under siege. I have Private Hudson’s voice running on a loop in the back of my mind every day.
(Side note: the reason everyone always hates the Hudson character in horror/action movies is because, deep down, we know that’s who we’d be in that situation, not the Ripley.)
So, how do we cope?
As for me and my millennial house, we will consume pop culture. There’s always the self-soothing act of rewatching beloved sitcoms, the stars of which keep sighing that they “wouldn’t get made today.” Or the perpetual slate of requels (or, legacy-quels. Fans are torn on the terminology) that give us a hint of something new wrapped in the cozy dressing of something familiar. And of course, being online at every moment to consume and comment on everything together.
Being perpetually online ups our exposure to the most upsetting visuals and headlines about all the world’s ills, and our risk of strangers berating us for not caring enough about any one of those ills. Maybe all of that anxiety and guilt about having any ease or leisure time is part of why I keep seeing the best minds of my generation calling to “bring back the 90-minute movie.” (This is an interesting battle cry from thirtysomethings in particular, since the only genre that has ever reliably churned out 90-minute movies is Disney’s 2-D animation. But I digress.) In the face of the life-or-death stakes of every news item we see, we now want our movies to be efficient units of entertainment, rather than art to be experienced.
This also feels connected to the valorization of ~plot~ over everything else. Finding plot holes and carping over whether a given plot point “makes logical sense” has supplanted actual media literacy, analysis, or enjoyment. It feels like a resistance to giving yourself over to an experience. An unwillingness to suspend disbelief, to let anything take priority over ~the plot~, to give yourself over to a creator’s vision for a couple of hours. We can’t trust our surroundings enough to let our guard down in that way.
And in keeping with that efficiency mindset, the question “how does this further the plot?” has become a way for younger people to dismiss anything in a piece of media that is challenging, or subtle, or simply mood-establishing. Or, perhaps most childishly, anything that is overtly sexual.
The question of whether movies and tv need sex scenes isn’t a remotely new one. Hollywood has a long, well-documented history of censoring and exploiting sex with equal gusto. But thanks to, I don’t know, the utilitarian model of education taking over, and the cancellation of crucial VH1 historical programs like “I Love The ‘80s,” kids today don’t know this history. Instead, Gen Z is increasingly calling for the return of the Hays Code.
There are two different conversations about on-screen sex scenes that often get collapsed into one, and it’s worth detangling them. First, the conversation about consent and safety. Second, the conversation about relevance and utility to the plot. The safety and consent conversation is much more interesting, so of course it’s more often used as a shield for the less compelling argument — that sex scenes don’t advance the plot. Never mind that sex is a part of adult life, or that art is about life, or that sex scenes can be artistic, emotional, revealing, or just fucking enjoyable. Never mind that stories are meant to be more than an automated retelling of events. Never mind that not every piece of media needs to move and sound like it came out of the Disney/Marvel/Star Wars assembly line.
But the reason people keep smuggling the childish argument into the righteous argument comes down to a very Disney morality. When you’re under attack, you necessarily lose some capacity for nuance. Your primary job in that moment is to protect yourself from real or perceived threat. And in that mode, moral complexity is too much of a threat and excuses too many sins. We need to be unproblematically good, in contrast to our straightforwardly bad enemies. In this context, that need manifests in some truly puritanical impulses. It’s understandable, but it’s stifling.
This isn’t remotely the biggest or most important casualty in our neofascist era. But a full accounting of our losses has to include it. Art both reflects and affects how we see ourselves and each other. We may fee safer with things we’ve already seen, or with impossible moral binaries. But we don’t get any closer—to ourselves, to each other, or to anything that will move us up and out of this historically bad time.
I don't think a desire to have consistent stories be told is a bad thing. It should be the bare minimum for any film telling a story. Literature is now visual and is simply being held to similar standards as ancient print media. Lord knows this kind of consistency can scarcely be found talking to other people anymore. Do movies or tv shows that are "art" really have plots anyway?
Perhaps we are living in a time where new fictional universes are taking the place of old ones (religion) at an increasing pace and people are demanding these improvements because the old religions are so bad at it? Witness the thousands listing Jedi as their faith.
I also could do without gratuitous kissing scenes (that's really all that's shown besides occasional female naughty bits) in most movies where the romance is not the story.