The decline of the gratuitous sex scene is killing Western birth rates
Spies, sex, Kings
Correlation is not causation, except for the purposes of comedy, so I put it to you that the decline of birth rates in the developed world is largely attributable to the decline of utterly gratuitous sex scenes in mainstream Hollywood cinema. Indeed, with the decline of mainstream Hollywood cinema per se.
Script doctors have of late concentrated on making scripts more inclusive while abolishing scenes of sex which in no way serve the story. Though well-intentioned, this is an error. It has forced couples to go home after their Saturday night trip to the multiplex with a head full of moral censure, rather than images of sudden winds ruffling blow-dried hair to the sounds of a honking saxophone. Orgasms and guitar solos.
These days what grown adults watch instead is other grown adults cavorting around in spandex, and no-one ever fucks or dies. Gone are the days of a movie like The Terminator, when despite spending the entire time in an intense chase situation, the principal goodies, Reese and Sarah Connor, still use the only few hours they have spare for a quick one. ‘Die Hard’, ‘Airplane’, ‘Jaws’, all threw in some breasts for the dads and the lesbians, a strong historical alliance.
The idea of peril and sex as intrinsically linked – that you’d break off from some kind of intense danger situation to start rampantly boning – seems to me essentially juvenile and masculine, and I can for my part only imagine war zones being an anaphrodisiac – but such writing did create a sort of general ambience of filmic horniness. It served at the least to send married couples home with thrumming private parts, and we all know what happens then given the challenge putting on a condom represents to a tired Saturday night heterosexual couple.
And now we face anaemic birth rates across the West. Many teenagers have never seen a tit in a cinema, let alone in real life. Heck, many of them have never seen a cinema.
Something needs to be done and posthaste.
Today, I suggest the creation of the National Gratituous Adult Titillation Executive Strategy (NGRATES for short). This body, headed by quorum of exceptionally horny teenage boys, 1980s’ genre experts and an actual real-life woman, will be responsible for finding spots to randomly shoehorn shagging into scripts. With the exception of kids’ films, all movies will be targeted, even Young Adult content; after all, teenage pregnancies are better than none.
Of course, we need to be aware of another contemporary movie scourge, narrative bloat, so the process of adding sex must accompanied by reduction of unnecessary backstory and the banning of all prequels. However, if our 1980s’ ancestors managed to get in and out – literally – in ninety minutes with two scenes of utterly superfluous rumpy pumpy and a perfunctory dream sequence we can pull it off in an age of unlimited digital film.
I expect every man and woman to sign up to do their bit. Go on the as-yet-non-existent NGRATES website and sign-up. Writers, write ‘They make love in a wave of dry ice and smoke’ into your drafts. Volunteer at your local hairdressers and get blow-drying those perms today. We must all do our bit to create a bit of blue for the dads – just enough to see him go home in a mood to fertilize his partner against his better judgement. Just enough to comprehensively puncture his and her dreams.
It doesn’t matter if Daddy needs to picture a buxom lass having sex on a speeding bullet train while Russian-accented goons bang on the door outside while a loud electric guitar sounds in the background in order to cum; I am reliably informed that the sperm works anyway.
And in case you think I’m being entirely facetious, tell me which national cinema has never abandoned the full-on sex scene? Why, it’s La France. Who also happen to have the highest birth rate of any large European country.