Exception: put a naked Robert Downey Jr. in anything, and I’ll buy it.If you’ve been reading my Chronicle column for a while, you’ll remember back in late 2008 when I did a piece illustrating that the maxim “sex sells” is an outdated notion — a sex-negative one — that no longer holds true. Sexualization hasn’t got staying power for sales, unless the sexualization is interesting for another reason — it requires context, humor and layers. I wrote,
Any sex writer who’s had a bit of success has heard it enough times to make them choke on their gummi boobs: “Well, of course your book/movie/blog/podcast is a hit, ‘sex sells’.” Right?
Wrong. (more, sfgate.com)
Well, here’s an interesting news item of the same flavor, but seen from a curious angle. CNN writes, Does sex sell movies? Uh, not really. It’s an article about a study in which movies have been evaluated for sexual content versus popularity and sales, and concludes that sex does not sell at the theater. What’s most interesting is that halfway through the article, we find out that the women who co-midwifed the study wanted to do the evaluation out of distaste and unease in regard to sex. And that she, from her sex-negative perspective, was shocked to see the findings. So was her male colleague. Their assumptions about sex and media consumption were wrong. Check it out:
When it comes to movies, it may be that sex doesn’t sell. A recent study concluded that nudity and explicit sex scenes don’t translate to success for major motion pictures.
“Sex Doesn’t Sell — nor Impress! Content, Box Office, Critics, and Awards in Mainstream Cinema” examined more than 900 films released between 2001 and 2005.
The study found that, contrary to popular belief, sex and nudity failed to positively affect a film’s popularity among viewers or critics and did not guarantee big box office receipts. One of the study’s co-authors, Dean Keith Simonton, said theirs was the largest sample of its kind used for film research. The results surprised him, he said.
“Sex did not sell, whether in the domestic or international box office, and even after controlling for MPAA rating,” said Simonton, who is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. “In other words, even among R movies, less graphic sex is better.” (…read more, edition.cnn.com)
I don’t agree that sex doesn’t sell. Nudity and sex are things that naturally attract us and advertisers for centuries have banked on this. The issue with movies, especially recently, is that there has to be appeal for the general market, of which a large percentage is children and adolescents. Obviously, sex and nudity would be a negative for selling to this market. But if you look at advertisements, and also do a little self-examination about where your attention is drawn to with ads and images, I think you will find that sex does sell. It’s natural.
http://ReclaimYourSexuality.blogspot.com
My immediate first question was: What does sell movies, then? If you look at the movies that they mention in the article as being top-grossing, what they all have in common is lots of action scenes or violence. I think that Mark, above, is probably right, it’s easy to find sex on the internet. What still looks good in a movie theater though is epic action (car chases, good CGI, big battle scenes, etc.). The internet can’t quite manage that, yet.
Not a surprising finding, actually, since we now can obtain all the prurient jollies we like via the ‘net. The general public no longer has to go to the movie theatres to be titillated, thus movies need more than skin to attract our hard-earned popcorn dollars. What I think this study tells us is that the generally uptight general public is finding more visual stimulation online than many uptight folk would care to admit.
He appears to be not only naked, but tied down Oh, my, I think I’ve got the vapors.