Explicit Sex and Drama Don't Really Mix
Check this out. HBO is announcing a new series called Tell Me You Love Me. As near as I can figure from the LA Times story I just linked to, the reason to watch will be explicit sex. The first episode ends with a handjob. But at the same time, they say, it's really about relationships and intimacy. Interesting. I'll be interested in seeing if this can actually work. I'm not sure it can. Why?
Because drama and explicit sex operate on very different "entertainment" parts of the brain.
To be sure, titillation is very much a part of mainstream entertainment. Endless programs have proven that. Showing breasts sells tickets and HBO has always pushed the limits from way back when Brian Ben Ben was Jack Trippering around an army of implausibly hot and naked girlfriends in "Dream On" (a great show by the way). But explicit sex hasn't fared nearly so well. The Brown Bunny was a big Brown Bomb. Romance, likewise, went straight to the back of your locval video store. Short Bus became very popular at the cult level but even in that case the producers pointed out that they put most of the explicit sex at the front of the movie so it wouldnt get in the way of the later dramatic developments.
Near as I can figure - it works like this. People who want to watch explicit sex will find the relationships to be a distraction. People who want to watch the drama will find the explicit sex to be a distraction. This is (one of the reasons) why mainstream cinema has gone pg with far less "racy sex scenes" these days (the other is that if teenagers can't get in that's a lost revenue stream), and why the san fernando valley has pretty much given up on writing cutesie plots and parodies. The customers are focussed in one direction or the other and they dont really need the tween to meet. In addition, actors who agree to have explicit sex on camera tend to feel compromised at some point (generally once the tsking starts at the LA parties).** So keeping the cast happy ought to be quite a tall order.
With the Sopranos gone, HBO could really use a new hit. And if this gives them one great. But they're playing with fire.
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** I have absolutely NO evidence for this statement whatsoever, but I bet I'm right.
1 comment:
Perhaps people are also seeking to decouple explicit sex and drama in their personal lives, with more and more of them using Internet dating services to find one-time or short-term partners, emphasis in couples literature on marriage as a business, that sort of thing?
Maybe we have been trying to get these things decoupled since the Stone Age?
However European films seem to have much less trouble mixing explicit sex and drama. It's almost certainly a cultural thing.
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