We all know the theory: If you wanna make a big blockbuster film these days, you need to throw in some sex, even if the film doesn’t necessarily require it—a little nudity, perhaps, or a salacious scene, or at the (ahem) bare minimum, a cleavage-revealing appearance by Megan Fox.
Turns out, though, that’s not necessarily so. In fact, a new study suggests just the opposite.
Researchers for the study, verbosely titled “Sex Doesn’t Sell—Nor Impress! Content, Box Office, Critics, and Awards in Mainstream Cinema,” examined films released between 2001 and 2005 and found that the biggest blockbusters—Spider-Man, Shrek 2, and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, among others, contained very little sexual content.
Go figure.
Craig Detweiler, director of the Center for Entertainment, Media and Culture at Pepperdine University, told CNN that some youth might actually be turned off by silver-screen sex, and that they’re rebelling against their baby-booming parents by “not doing drugs, not sleeping around and not getting divorced.” He notes the surging popularity of the relatively chaste (thus far) Twilight series and Jane Austen adaptations. “These stories are really about sexual separation,” he told CNN. “They are all about wooing, not winning.”
What next? Megan Fox starring in Emma?
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