Why Sex Scenes are Now Cringe

Hollywood's Cult of Safetyism

Behold the Hollywood Development Executive.

Blonde bob, stringy like a mop. Cat-like, curled up in the corner of the coffee shop draped in a broad grey scarf. The $300 Screen Safe™ coating on her horn-rimmed glasses bounces an indigo sheen off her brand new Macbook Pro. She looks weathered, but she always has. Even in college she looked this way. Popular. In control. But always aloof. Never totally there—like an adult playing at youth. Now, two decades later, her features relax in a perma-pout. She blinks vacantly at a screen full of faces. She clicks off mute.

“That sounds disturbing,” she says, pointedly. “We need more research.”

This woman is now in charge of what we used to call Hollywood. And it is through her eyes that we view on-screen sex.