LOS ANGELES – What’s the difference between Hollywood’s fall movie selection and what the adult industry has to offer? Maybe not so much.
Critics are dubbing the current Tinseltown movie season as perhaps the “porniest ever” given the amount of sexually-charged movies coming out, touching on everything from statutory rape and sex addiction, to incest and even a little bit of necrophilia thrown in there for good measure.
“Too many current movies for this fall are tinged, or rather stained, by too many studios releasing meaningless, empty stories that seem to be more porn-like than film-like. Making movies that glorify porn addicts, child molesters, necrophiliacs who kill in order to have sex later only contributes to the decay of the moral compass of society,” filmmaker and media educator Nicole Clark told FOX411. “Too many people in our society have become desensitized.”
Some of the films make this year’s controversial “Spring Breakers” appear tame. So where to even start?
Daniel Radcliffe has shed his “Harry Potter” persona for the upcoming “Kill Your Darlings” with an exploration of homosexuality, masturbation and picking up older men in bar, and “Blue is the Warmest Color” continues to stir controversy in the U.S. as it is released in more and more film festivals. The French lesbian movie, which won the Cannes Film Festival, is being hailed for its artistic elements and passionate love story, but has been slapped with a NC-17 rating and includes a very graphic, lengthy sex scene. Technically in America, the relationship would be considered statutory rape.
But according to human behavior expert Patrick Wanis, sexually explicit content is everywhere – and it is simply a logical progression that the business of Hollywood would cash in by taking the cultural movement to the next level.
“The cultural shift is not only about sex, it is about a general degradation of values,” he said. “Pornography and sexualization of girls are everywhere – in books, music, advertising and television. Porn has become completely mainstream – on computers and phones and now we have girls as young as 12 dressing up in really short skirts, stilettos and makeup.”
As far as films this season go, there’s also “Concussion,” which offers a character who transforms from a lesbian housewife to a hooker via a concussion; Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s recently released directorial debut “Don Jon,” which explores whether porn or romantic movies do more damage and James Franco’s “Child of God,” which follows a Southerner through his crazy necrophilia endeavors. Franco also stars in the upcoming “Palo Alto” – playing a soccer coach who seduces a student, and then there is “Afternoon Delight,” a film about married couples in strip clubs.
We also had “Adore” which featured two childhood best friends sleeping with each other’s sons, and “Thanks For Sharing” also added to the sex-saturated fall lineup with a tale about sex addiction. While the film’s star Gwyneth Paltrow did acknowledge to us that she had concerns about raising her kids in a raunchy-obsessed internet age, her co-stars Tim Robbins and Pink both suggested that in this country we grow up with unhealthy ideas of sexuality.
Clark pointed out that if wild/illegal/disturbing dalliances aren’t your idea of a fun night at the theater, there are other options.
“Fortunately there are films like ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,’ ‘Gravity,’ ‘Rush’ and several others that don’t need to repulse us,” she said. “If you had one chance to make a film for the world, wouldn’t you wish for it to be something that will inspire audiences, move them to tears, make them laugh or give them a new paradigm for the way they see things?”
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