T03-P-04 Pilot research about sex scenes in motion pictures

Abstract

Objecitives The hypothesis is based on significant differences between films classified as “heterosexual” love stories and “homosexual” ones, in relation to length of the sex scenes, to the level of nudity of characters (during the sexual scenes) and to the kind of location where the sexual scenes take place. Materials and method We inserted in a database named “Internet Movie Database” a range of keywords distinctive for orientation, scene, location, degree of nudity of the characters. We decided to include only films made for the “big screen” and we ruled-out tv-series and cartoons. We examined 18 films considering the following independent variables: 1) the sex scene 2) the relationship. We also considered as dependent variables: 1) the length 2) the level of nudity 3) the location of the sex scenes. Results We realized that in a film classified as “homosexual” there are more heterosexual sex scenes than homosexual ones, compared to films classified as “heterosexual”; the average length of the scenes classified as “heterosexual” is undoubtedly bigger than those classified as “homosexual”; heterosexual characters are generally more uncovered than the homosexual ones. There are not remarkable differences between heterosexual and homosexual locations of the sex scenes. Conclusions It should be interesting to expand the research to a longer lapse of time and to consider as a new dependent variable the country of film's production.