THE NATURE OF SEX IN MEDIA

THE NATURE OF SEX IN MEDIA

Definitional Issues

Whenever we speak of sex in the media, we must clarify what we are including. There is a class of media (at least in the United States) explicitly labeled erotic, pornographic, or sexually explicit, which comprises magazines, videos, films, and Internet web sites. These materials have typically been marketed separately from nonsexual media and have been at least somewhat restricted from children, although this is becoming increasing difficult to do, especially with the Internet. A 15 billion dollar annual industry in the U.S., pornography brings in far more money than professional sports, performing arts, theater, or all other Internet commerce. Video porn alone brings in $4 billion per year, with 11,000 new titles released annually (compared to only 400 from Hollywood), with 750 million video/DVD rentals per year (“Naked Capitalists,” 2001, May 20). An estimated 100,000 adult pornographic web sites take in around one billion dollars annually, and porno films are ordered by business travelers in hotel rooms ten times as often as standard films (Sigesmund, 2003).

Traditionally, these media have been recognized as being for sexual purposes only and without recognized literary or artistic merit, although there are signs that pornography is becoming more mainstream (Sigesmund, 2003). Porn film stars are becoming more widely known, and several recent feature films have dealt with the porn industry (The People vs. Larry Flynt, Boogie Nights, Wonderland), and TV series like Fox’s Skin and Showtime’s Family Business feature porn producers as the major characters. More than anything else, however, the widespread private availability of pornography on the Internet has spread its influence. Interestingly enough, as the new technology has spread sexually explicit media in unprecedented ways, some traditional sex media, notably magazines, have fallen on hard times. Most porn magazines have lost 10% circulation per year since the mid-1990s. For example, Penthouse has fallen from 5 million copies a month to under 1 million (Sigesmund, 2003).

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Scholars have found it. helpful to distinguish between sexually violent material, which portrays rape and other instances of physical harm to persons in a sexual context, and nonviolent sexual material, which may or may not depict degradation, domination, subordination, or humiliation. Nonviolent and nondegrading material typically depicts a couple having vaginal or oral intercourse with no indication of violence or coercion. Research has consistently shown more negative effects from viewing sexual violence than from the nonviolent, nondegrading material, with intermediate results from the nonviolent degrading material. Child pornography portrays minors and, although illegal to produce in the United States and many other places, still circulates widely through foreign magazines, personal distribution, and the Internet. For obvious ethical reasons, there has been little scientific research on its effects.

Of course, sex occurs in many other media outlets besides these explicitly sexual materials. For example, it is rampant in advertising, particularly for products like perfume, cologne, and after-shave, but also for tires, automobiles, and kitchen sinks. Sex in media is not limited to explicit portrayals of intercourse or nudity, but rather may include any representation that portrays or implies sexual behavior, interest, or motivation. However, the major focus in this chapter is on the more explicit materials, although not necessarily limited to what is generally called pornographic. Some of these other issues were discussed in chapter 4 on advertising. Because the term pornographic is highly value-laden but scientifically imprecise, we instead generally refer to such materials as sexually explicit.

History of Sex in Media

Sexual themes in fiction have been around as long as fiction itself. Ancient Greek comedies were often highly sexual in content, such as Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, an antiwar comedy about women who withhold sex from their husbands to coerce them to stop fighting wars. Literary classics like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew are filled with sexual double entendres and overtly sexual themes, some of which are missed today due to the archaic language and the classic aura around such works. Throughout history, the pendulum has swung back and forth in terms of how much sexual expression is permitted in literature and how explicit it may be.

Since the advent of electronic media, standards have usually been more conservative for radio and television than for print, because it is easier to keep sexually oriented print media from children than it is radio or TV. With the advent of widespread cable and videocassette technology, a sort of double standard has arisen, with greater permissiveness for videocassettes and premium cable channels than for network television, on the logic that

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premium cable and rented movies are invited into the home, whereas network programming is there uninvited whenever a TV set is present. Of course, the most difficult access issue is the ready availability of sex on the Internet and how to restrict its access to minors. Pornography filters have some success, although they raise free speech issues and sometimes restrict unintended sites (e.g., breast cancer information); also, porn site owners are often one step ahead of the screeners in designing sites to avoid the filters.

Media Sex Today

Content analyses show that sexual innuendoes and, less often, behaviors are rampant, very frequently occurring in a humorous context. In 2000, 68% of overall U.S. TV programming (75% of prime-time) contained sexual content, with higher rates in movies (89%), comedies (85%), and soap operas (80%) (Kunkel, Cope-Farrar, Biely, Farinola, & Donnerstein, 2001). More of the programs contained talk about sex (65%) than actual sexual behavior (27%). Only 1.1 % of these instances referred at all to abstinence, birth control, or consequences of sex like pregnancy and STDs (Strasburger & Donnerstein, 1999). Media references to premarital and extramarital sexual encounters far outnumber references to sex between spouses, by at least 6:1 (Greenberg & Hofschire, 2000) and as high as 32:1 in R-rated movies (Greenberg et al., 1993). A 1995 content analysis of soap operas showed some increase since the seventies and eighties of themes of negative consequences of sex and rejection of sexual advances (Greenberg & Busselle, 1996).

Sex in media is one area where we clearly accept some limits on freedom of speech, and that fact is generally accepted. The sharp differences of opinion come in deciding just where those limits should be. Few are arguing that a network sitcom should show frontal nudity or child prostitutes, although it is highly unlikely that the producers would ever care to do so. One important issue in discussion of where the limits should be is the age of the viewer or reader. There is far more concern about the effects of sexual media on children than on adults. Even a highly libertarian person might not want their 6-year-old surfing porn sites on the Internet or reading Hustler, whereas even a morally very conservative person would be less alarmed about adults viewing X-rated videos than about children seeing them. The whole area of the effects of sexual media on children is a difficult area to study for ethical reasons; however, there are some ingenious ways to probe their effects without actually presenting children with stimuli that many of their parents would object to (see Box 10.1).

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BOX 10.1