Paul Verhoeven, director of the first "Basic Instinct" (which scored $353 million worldwide) as well as the widely ridiculed "Showgirls" (now regarded as something of a camp classic), attributes the genre's demise to the current American political climate.The Puritan complaint is coming from people making sex-cinema in '87 through '95. Showgirls tanked in '95 the permissive Clinton Administration. Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction were great successes coming out of the "ultra-conservative" Reagan ('87) and Bush ('92) eras.
"Anything that is erotic has been banned in the United States," said the Dutch native. "Look at the people at the top (of the government). We are living under a government that is constantly hammering out Christian values. And Christianity and sex have never been good friends."
Why? Despite what Verhoeven and others are saying, scandal sells tickets and there is no bad publicity. Basic Instinct's explicit sexual content was one of the stories of the year in 1992. People protested. Clips were shown at the start of the evening news with good looking people, not at 11:29 with Gene Shallit. I had a friend in High School who saw it multiple times. Granted he only paid for one BI ticket. For the rest he snuck in from another the theater. But that just goes to show you how the original's impact is probably underestimated. You could make the same argument about the Passion of the Christ. All the protests saying Don't See This Movie just made people think "I want to see what is pissing these people off."
In comparison Basic Instinct 2 has largely received a gigantic yawn. Reviews are saying that the sexual tension isn't there on screen, but that isn't the only place it is lacking. That driving social sexual tension the original tapped into isn't there in real life either. Nobody cares. Perhaps the Reagan and Bush eras did have an undercurrent of repressed sexual tension. But that's gone now. If the studies are true, the horny high schoolers from my yesteryear are now largely sexually active and sated. As Donald Sensing once said, the sexual revolution is over and we lost.
Couple this lack of an sexual undercurrent with how easy it is to get sexual content today. If all I want is sex, I can download stronger stuff off the internet for free. If I just wanted to see boobs, I wouldn't pay $10 to see Sharon Stone's moldy oldies. I could download a whole porn film for free with bit torrent. Sex may still sell products, but as a bankable movie commodity it has been supplanted by star power and special effects.
Via Instapundit. Similar thoughts at Wizbang.
No comments:
Post a Comment