Sign of the times: Sex no longer sells in movies?

Posted Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 11:38 AM Central
Last updated Sunday, November 29, 2009 at 9:15 PM Central

by John Couture

Here's yet another sign that we are stuck in the middle of a horrendous economic situation. Apparently, sex no longer sells.

The age old truism was put to the test by a recent psychological study that was featured in this month's Psychology of issue of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. I was alerted to the findings of this report by the following article aptly titled, "Bare Breasts Don't Beget Boffo Box Office."

Obviously, someone's a big fan of alliteration.

Well, this article and the abstract (no, I'm not paying $12 to read the entire study, so my following rants might be unfounded) from the actual study got me thinking. I have a degree in psychology (Magna Cum Laude from Butler University, class of 1997. Go Dawgs!), so I'm used to reading articles like this and I'm also aware of some inherent biases that may have confounded the results.

I also spent eight years in high school and college doing debate, so naturally, I like to argue and as such, I offer the following rebuttal.

First, in case you're like me and don't want to waste your time actually reading the source material allow me to paraphrase their findings. Basically, they studied a bunch of movies and concluded that the inclusion of nudity (namely, the female body) did not translate into bigger box office gains and even had a negative effect at the Oscars. I assume that they only looked at the Best Picture category, because you know I'll get to that argument in a moment.

PERIOD OF STUDY

The first thing I did was scan the abstract of the original study and see exactly when all of these movies were released. You know, I wanted to ascertain what sample they were drawing these far-reaching conclusions from. It happens that what I found surprised me to a great degree.

"Analyses of 914 films released between 2001 and 2005 indicated that sex and nudity do not, on the average, boost box office performance, earn critical acclaim, or win major awards."

So, you took a subset of movies released in the first four years of the George W. Bush (arguably one of the most conservative Presidents to sit in office during the modern era of filmmaking) when W. joined in pal Jack Valenti's crusade against sex and violence in movies. Simply taking movies released in these four years alone would be enough to prove your point, but when you factor in outside events, it becomes a perfect storm of proving your theory.

On September 11, 2001, there was an unparalleled event that happened in the United States that completely turned Hollywood (and the rest of the world) upside down. It would be silly to discount the effects of 9/11 on both box office performance and critical appeal.

The events that transpired on that day caused a general shift towards more family core values and a rejection of the age-old truism that has been prevalent in Hollywood for years and is starting to recover recently. But more on that in a moment.

BOX OFFICE SUCCESS

The combination of 9/11, the rising cost of ticket prices and the general economic downturn has all conspired to dampen the overall draw of movies at the box office. However, there are few recent examples that prove that the market, and nudity in successful movies in particular, is on the climb.

Starting in 2006, here are the movies in the top 20 for each year based on box office that included female nudity. Borat, The Breakup (yes, Jennifer Aniston's back side counts - it was like the defining image of that movie), Failure to Launch, 300, Knocked Up, Rush Hour 3, American Gangster, Superbad, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Sex and the City, Wanted, The Hangover and Watchmen (and that doesn't include any of the many and massive blue penises in the movie).

So, that's 13 movies in the last four years in the top 25 annually in box office and one, The Hangover, that is arguably a movie that derived a great deal of its box office from its questionable content. Not that we can accurately predict what causes a movie to succeed or fail and that leads me into criticism number 3.

APPLES VS. ORANGES

So, if we understand that this small sample of time was one that produced films that were on average less obsessed with sex and violence, then it inevitably makes sense that the study's findings would discover what they were looking for. But, it does raise an interesting question. How do come about with objective criteria upon which to evaluate one movie against another?

Is it simply possible that movies that contained nudity during these four years weren't as good as those that did not contain nudity? Take a look at the four Best Picture winners from the period of the study (A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King and Million Dollar Baby) and realize that it's impossible to ascertain whether these movies rose to the top because they are simply great movies or because they didn't have female nudity in them.

Likewise, the reverse is also true. It's impossible to evaluate whether the inclusion of female nudity in these movies would have increased or decreased the critical and financial success of these films. In other words, how do you derive a control group for this study?

Interestingly, the Best Picture winner from 2005, Crash, did contain female nudity as did fellow nominees Munich and Brokeback Mountain, and lest we forget that in addition to seeing Anne Hathaway and Michelle Williams without their clothes, Brokeback Mountain featured a pretty taboo storyline about two cowboys finding love in their mutual isolation of their job.

However, a good way to actually gauge the differences between apples and apples and oranges and oranges is to take a look at the number of units sold at retail for DVD and Blu-ray when two versions are offered, a theatrical version and an unrated version (usually with excised nude scenes added back on the disc). If I weren't so lazy, I'd actually go and pull the data to support this argument. However, suffice it to say, when you pull grocery accounts out of the mix (because they never bring in unrated versions of films), there is a significant disproportionate number of unrated versions sold over the theatrical cut.

Now sure, that doesn't "prove" that sex sells, but I think it certainly lessens the impact of their argument that we've become so prudish of a society that sex is now a turn-off. If this were the case, there would be no demand for these unrated versions.

We can't go back and release Titanic in theaters for the first time with two different versions, one with Kate Winslet nude and one without, and see which one earns the most money. Although, if I were a betting man, I'd bank on the former one, saying as it's already the highest grossing movie of all time.

BARE OSCAR GLORY

Again, I am at a disadvantage from not being able to see the whole study, but I bet they based their critical acclaim and Oscar worthiness solely on the Best Picture category, when to be fair, it would make the most sense to look at the acting categories, specifically the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories.

Looking at the top two categories, the only winner that appeared nude on-screen in her winning role was Halle Berry in Monster's Ball. Of course, she didn't just appear naked, no she and Billy Bob Thornton provided one of the most graphic sex scenes in mainstream film and despite that, she still won the top acting award.

Since then, Kate Winslet and Marion Cotillard took down the top statue with bare skin. In the decade before 2001, four of the 10 Best Actress winners appeared nude in their winning role. So in the 17 year period since 1992, six of 17 actresses (35%) have picked up the top prize despite their less demure turns.

Update: Apparently, an astute reader pointed out that Marion Cotillard did not in fact get naked in La Vie En Rose. I thought I recalled a quick shot, but I suppose this is the only movie in which she did strip down to her birthday suit. That's sarcasm Andrew. But, in reality, I do think she and Kate Winslet have a secret bet between them to see who get naked the most in their movies. Since I don't have an intern to do my research and I'm pretty sure that I'd get fired for visiting Mr. Skin on company time, I relied upon my usually impeccable memory. I'm human. I make mistakes and I'm sorry. I still don't think it changes my point at all.

At the end of the day, this study might have found that during this brief moment in time, sex wasn't a key component in movies, it's nearly impossible to prove whether or not sex sells unless we were able to somehow conduct a large-scale experiment with a control group and whole nine yards.

What we do know is that making general assumptions based on a small amount of data can be a dangerous thing. I'm sticking by my guns that sex does sell, what about you?