You can all but set your watch to it, every time a new and potentially challenging film is released: the careful, often context-free evaluation by a group of self-appointed Internet moralizers. Are there any immoral, or even amoral, actions that aren’t explicitly condemned within the narrative? Or worse, does the film commit the ultimate crime of showing sex in any way that isn’t completely sanitized or cut away from entirely? The anti-sex-in-cinema discourse seems to rear its ugly head every few weeks, operating on the flawed twin assumptions that a.) films have an obligation to depict an unambiguously moral world where problematic behavior is unimpeachably denounced, and b.) personal taste and individual comfort levels with certain narrative subjects should dictate the types of films that get made. This puritanical attitude creates the impression that cinema is perpetually moving towards a sexless future, where films are made without a scrap of potentially objectionable content for fear of upsetting the most prudish amongst us. But the truth is, cinema has always operated on a pendulum, swimming between sexually permissive and restrictive, often as a reaction to whatever came before it.
This begins as early as cinema itself. The birth of Hollywood was a largely unregulated affair – in fact, part of the point of setting up shop on the opposite side of the country from Thomas Edison’s monopolistic attempts to control the burgeoning film industry in New Jersey. Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, films often capitalized on audience’s interest in scandalous topics: fallen women, drug use, crime, violence, and even sex trafficking were all on the table. The increasingly permissive atmosphere of post-WWI society, combined with the introduction of Prohibition (banning alcohol in the United States and resulting in an explosion of organized crime around the country) meant that some topics were not as forbidden as they once were.
But then the Hays Production Code was established, forcing films to conform to their standards of morality and good taste or risk losing lucrative distribution deals. The Code arose out of a backlash against several high-profile Hollywood scandals, as well as a widespread belief amongst the conversative religious community that films were simply going too far. The new rules for filmmakers were myriad: They couldn’t depict suggested nudity, the drug trade, homosexuality, profanity, mocking of religion – the list goes on and on. Furthermore, films were given the responsibility of shoring up the moral order. If a character committed a crime, for example, audiences could expect him to be punished by the film’s end; it would not do for someone acting immorally to be portrayed in a positive light.
This system of censorship persisted to varying degrees of strength through the 1950s, and was finally shaken off for good in the 1960s. At this point, audiences were tired of having anything unseemly only vaguely alluded to on screen, communicated through delicately placed visual and verbal codes. The cinemagoers of the 1960s lived in a society going through tremendous upheaval. The films of this period often reflect a rejection of traditional values and a counterculture sensibility, one that operates in direct opposition to the comparatively clean-cut cinema of the 1950s. Even movies that weren’t overtly political were freer in their depictions of sex, nudity, and drug use. This would continue through the late 1960s and 1970s, as cynicism over the Vietnam War and political scandals created a desire for cinema that reflected all the grittiness of real life.
With the rise of the “New Hollywood” filmmakers, men and women who grew up in a different world than their older counterparts, the rules of what was acceptable to show on film irrevocably changed. In 1972, the infamous adult film Deep Throat premiered in New York City: It earned $3 million on a $25,000 budget, was reviewed by critics as mainstream as Roger Ebert, and is often credited with ushering pornography into the light, taking it from seedy urban theaters to middle-class audiences. But even outside the adult film subgenre, filmmakers were pushing boundaries. Mainstream studio films featured nudity, even previously taboo male nudity, and simulated sex.
Nothing lasts forever, though. In 1975, Jaws came out. Then Star Wars came out. Then Raiders of the Lost Ark. Then E.T. The Extraterrestrial. And studios realized that family-friendly blockbusters would make them more money than erotic prestige pieces or edgy films aimed at disillusioned youth ever would. The 1980s were dominated by commercialism and a regression to supposedly good old-fashioned family values, so it’s no surprise that the cynicism that dominated the industry in the late 1960s and early 1970s would inevitably give way to lighter, inoffensive cinema fare. The introduction of the PG-13 rating in 1984 made it less appealing than ever to build a film around adult material – with a middle ground that would allow you to almost show sex, why would a studio bother to limit their audiences any further than they had to? The nation was satisfied with their characters kissing and falling over onto a bed before a tasteful fade to black, and that, it seemed, would be what they were going to get for the foreseeable future.
Until the 1990s hit, that is, sparking a renewed interest in the sort of erotic thriller that had been out of fashion for over a decade. And suddenly, it was a brave new world. If Basic Instinct (as troubling as its on-set atmosphere may have been), with Sharon Stone famously uncrossing and recrossing her legs, wasn’t a signal to the world that Hollywood was tired of squeaky clean cinema, it’s hard to imagine what could be. And it became clear fairly quickly that there was a market for films that catered to…well, grown-ups.
The pendulum always swings back again, though, which brings us to the present day, in as sexless and prudish a cinematic landscape as we’ve seen in quite some time. Part of this is a result of the grand proliferation of superhero films, with Marvel and DC dominating cineplexes worldwide, based on comic books that, for better or worse, rarely contain adult content except for violence; it’s clear that these megacorporations are not interested in rocking the boat and settling for anything less than an audience share of “everyone.” Furthermore, they’re hugely dependent on international box office returns, especially in the Chinese market, which is more conservative when it comes to sex on screen.
But something else has defined this shift in recent years, and it goes beyond a lack of interest in sexy movies – it seems that among many younger audiences, there’s a desire to actually prevent films that feature nudity and sex from being made at all. In the minds of some advocates for the desexification of film, showing anything along those lines is inherently exploitative of the actors and, incredibly, the audiences, who may not have been expecting to see a sex scene unfold before their eyes. They seem to believe that if they personally are uncomfortable, everyone else is, and more frustratingly, that cinema exists in the first place to provide comfort to its viewers. Movies were never intended to serve as a well-worn copy of the Bible or Aesop’s Fables, with a clear cut list of “Dos” and “Do Nots.” They’re engaging precisely because of their ability to stray from the light and offer not just idealistic purity, but ambiguity, even apathy, in all its shades of grey. Life, after all, does not always conform to the proper, civilized, and sanitized way of things, so why then should films? But with a righteously tiresome group of vocal moralists advocating for censorship and unwilling to engage with art on its own terms, we are perhaps not as far away from the Hays Production Code as we might think. 
