by Nelle Engoron

The pornographic movie industry, in response to the Internet, is focusing even less on narrative arcs these days. Savanna Samson, an actress, says she favors scripts with more dialogue. […] “Getting it on in one hardcore scene after another just isn’t as much fun,” she added. (NY Times, 7/8/2009)

A New York Times article describes the way the internet is changing porn, which (as it wryly notes) “has long had only a casual interest in plot and dialogue.”  That interest has grown so casual as to be disappearing entirely, leaving actresses like Ms. Samson longing for the days of “character development,” when she used to “prepare studiously” for roles such as that of a psychotic exhibitionist in the 2006 film “Flasher.”  Now that most porn is consumed online, short scenes consisting almost entirely of just sex are becoming the norm.

“On the Internet, the average attention span is three to five minutes,” said Steven Hirsch, co-chairman of Vivid Entertainment. “We have to cater to that.” (NYT article)

Which leaves the unspoken question:  Whose attention span are we talking about?

Like white male Senators who assume that they operate in objective neutral reality while women and minorities have biases that affect and distort their judgment and actions, many in the porn industry continue to assume that the human sex drive comes in just one flavor:  Male (either straight or gay).

It’s not just porn films that are so myopic.  Hollywood executives who have the power to greenlight movies are still mostly men who choose projects that either appeal to them or to the fifteen year old boy they remember being (and may still be, inside).  They argue that women, especially middle-aged women, don’t go to movies, after all, so why spend money making films for them?

Of course, this reveals a simple and obvious gap in logic, which is that a lot of women don’t enjoy movies that solely cater to the tastes to boys or men.  They will, however, go to movies that appeal to them, such as “Sex and the City,” “First Wives Club,” “Mamma Mia,” “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” and “The Devil Wears Prada,” just as they did from the 1920’s to the early 1960’s, when “women’s pictures” were a solid Hollywood category akin to action films today.

Yet execs these days treat each “chick flick” that makes piles of money as a fluke, rather than the sign of a market starved for entertainment that appeals to them, and settling for the most mindless mainstream version of it (see above list).

When it comes to sex, women are even more neglected.  While there are certainly lots of women who like porn, and even women who make porn (some even oriented to female tastes), the majority of women want something porn doesn’t offer:  Sex with context.

Women like a story.  They like characters.  They want a female character they can relate to and a male character they can desire (and not just for his hot body).  They want the characters to interact, with some semblance of real feelings – and this means women often require a higher level of acting skill in their erotic entertainment.  They need professionals who may or may not know how to fake an orgasm (hello Meg Ryan) but who can definitely fake falling in love with their co-star even if they secretly hate them.

Men assume women find porn distasteful or objectifying, and often that’s true.  But many women simply find porn laughable, so ridiculous and stilted that they can’t take it seriously enough to get turned on.  And even when it’s done with a bit more skill, porn still generally shows sex from the male point of view, in ways both obvious and subtle.

I once joked to a male friend that real porn for women would show a man cleaning a woman’s house and then going down on her for an hour.  The guy visibly blanched and said, “I would have absolutely no desire to watch that!”  Uh, right.  Just as we have no desire to watch a woman with beachballs on her chest fake ecstasy at being penetrated without any semblance of an attempt to arouse or give her pleasure.

As the lovely Ms. Samson said so well, getting it on in one hardcore scene after another just isn’t as much fun for women — either in real life or on screen.

This neglect of the female libido leaves women in the position that gays have faced for most of cinematic history, as they avidly searched mainstream movies for small nods to their own desires, repeatedly viewing some movies just to see short scenes that spoke to them – often in part because gay artists in Hollywood were sneaking in their own sexuality in code.  (If you want to have your whole experience of pre-1970’s movies turned inside out by having the gay subtext illuminated, rent the fascinating documentary, “The Celluloid Closet,” by Vito Russo.  It’s arguable that gay male artists have actually held more sway in Hollywood so far than women have and that, coded or not, their desires have found their way onscreen more often.)

Ironically, for people who want sex in the context of a story, women still often have to get their thrills in short interactions in movies, many of which fulfill the romance half of the female desire equation while still giving short shrift to female sexuality, to what turns women on below the belt.

While we may now have more male beauty to gaze upon in movies than ever before, with many straight male stars buffed to a Chippendale’s sheen (hello Hugh Jackman), for most women, the sight of a handsome and muscled guy is fun but not enough.

We need to see him interact and seduce a woman, and not in a cheesy way, but with real warmth (and if we’re lucky, humor).  The visual isn’t primary for us, after all.  Most women need to be physically touched to get turned on, and the cinematic equivalent of physical touch is a felt interaction, not just the sight of a sexy body.

What follows, therefore, isn’t a list of sexiest men, but more of a “contextiest” list:  15 moments in films that have turned me and a lot of other women on, as a peek into the female libido. This list isn’t by any means comprehensive (even for me!), so I invite other women to share their own favorites in Comments.

(I’ve numbered these simply to make it easy for people to refer to them in Comments – the ordering is fairly arbitrary.  Because that’s the way we remember them, I’m using actor rather than character names for almost all.)

#1

A criminally seductive Brad Pitt teaching Geena Davis about armed robbery and orgasms in Thelma & Louise.  Sporting a stunning six-pack of abs (before anyone knew what that was), Pitt shot to stardom after his devilishly sexy performance in this uber-chick flick.  Yes, he’s a bad boy, through and through, but his tender and realistic seduction of Thelma in a cheap motel room made women swoon.  Notice how the camera lingers on his beautiful face and sculpted body rather than focusing on hers, as almost all movies do.  Although directed by a man, T&L was written by a woman, and that sensibility shows throughout, especially in this scene, which actually represents the all-too-rare-in-cinema female gaze of desire towards a man.

#2

“I’m looking at you, Miss.”  The whole of The Last of the Mohicans is a squidge-a-thon for most straight women, what with Daniel Day Lewis running around in buckskins with his long hair flying, heroically saving people left and right.  But many women find his smoldering look and response to the woman he’s staring at to be the single most sizzling moment in the film.  Being intensely desired and letting the sexual tension build makes the eventual consummation that much hotter.  (Trust me – it does.)  Guys, if you want to get your woman in the mood, rent this movie – and you’ll like it, too, since it’s got plenty of action.

#3

A teenage Laura Dern getting her hair, neck, back and shoulders sensually caressed while making out with a young guy she just met in Smooth Talk. As Pauline Kael wrote in her review of the movie, Has any young man ever been better at foreplay?  If you want to get a sense of how important touch is to a woman, watch this scene.  Trivia:  The director, Joyce Chopra, choreographed the scene after asking female members of the crew what turned them on the most.  (Want to know what turns a woman on?  Ask her!)

#4

Robert Redford and Meryl Streep consummating their love in Out of Africa while out on safari.  The sexual tension that has been building up through lion shootings and hair washings culminates in a love scene that is surprisingly real-feeling for a romantic epic. After she silently touches his hand to tell him what she wants, he follows her into her tent, sees her undressing and says softly, “I’d like to do that,” and then asks if her lip (bitten when she shot a lioness) will hurt before he kisses her. I don’t even like Redford or find him attractive, but the tenderness of this scene melts me every time.

#5

The equally gorgeous Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward making sweaty muscle-y desperate forbidden love in the ruins of Chichén Itzá, in Against All Odds. In this remake of an old film noir (Out of the Past), Ward plays a classic femme fatale with a ferocious and unapologetic sexuality, while Bridges has never been sexier, portraying a bearded and rather befuddled football player, being played from each end, both of them tight.

#6

Jimmy Stewart realizing he’s desperately, passionately in love with Donna Reed in It’s a Wonderful Life when they share a phone receiver.  The wordless expressions of love and lust on their faces say more than the dialogue in a thousand other love scenes.  If you never thought of Stewart as a sexual being, think again.  When he realizes that he wants this woman so much he’s going to give up all his dreams just to be with her, the effect is heartbreaking and erotic as hell.  Every woman wants a man to feel that way about her.

#7

The desperate long-delayed kiss out in the field by the birdhouse gets all the praise, but for my money, there are two moments even more erotic in Witness:  the sweaty forbidden dance in the barn, which is half innocent, half lustful, and the scene in which Harrison Ford sees Kelly McGillis bathing in her room and she turns to reveal herself fully to him.  Ford has never been a better actor than in the moment when he takes her in, silently showing us that he is seeing not just her body, but her whole self, her soul – the essence of what every woman wants in a man’s desire.

#8

Harvey Keitel crawling under the piano to put a finger in a hole in Holly Hunter’s stocking in The Piano, as well as the scene in which he appears full frontal before they make love.  Keitel reached his, um, peak with this role in several ways, becoming a belated sex symbol at the age of 54.  Three anecdotes about the power of Keitel in this movie:  1) On Actor’s Studio, when asked about the awkwardness of filming the sex scene, Holly Hunter said with relish, “Oh no, I loved getting in that big bed with Harvey!”  2) A New Yorker magazine cartoon at the time showed a trendy couple entering a party with the woman saying to her husband, “If Harvey Keitel’s there, you’re on your own.”  3) My therapist, who was always consummately professional and non-self-disclosing, upon being told that I’d had a Piano-esque dream in which Harvey Keitel was her lover, raised her eyebrows, smiled and said, “Mmmm!” in a very satisfied fashion.

#9

Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon going at it in the bathtub in Bull Durham, splashing water and dousing the candles even as their own fire heats up.  Tied with the scene in which they go for seconds or thirds or fourths on the kitchen table, after he knocks everything off it. Tied with the scene when she tells him, “I want you” while he irons a shirt half-dressed while drinking Scotch (an image that perfectly blends both male and female roles).  Like Last of the Mohicans, this is the rare romantic movie that appeals equally to men and women, because it gives equal weight to the desires of both, as Sarandon openly admires Costner’s beauty and asks for what she wants.

#10

Paul Newman snuggled up in bed with Melinda Dillon in Slapshot. Newman was one of the great sex symbols of movies, and yet he’s strangely unsexy in most of his films – too remote and cool, perhaps in part due to the restrictions in both style and content in American films during his early career.  But in Slapshot, one of his own favorite films, he has a lovely scene in which he talks about understanding why a woman might decide to have sex with another woman, because after all, women are so much softer and more appealing than men, all the while snuggling up with his head on Dillon’s chest, as much like a child as a lover.  Every woman has had an endearing moment like this with a man, yet they’re rarely depicted on screen, because they reveal men’s secret vulnerability.

#11

A quickie:  Jeremy Irons pulling a fully-clothed Patricia Hodge down the bed to make love one afternoon in their charmingly tiny London love nest in Betrayal.  Irons was called a “thinking woman’s sex symbol” in his prime and this mannered but mesmerizing 1983 movie shows why. Adapted by Harold Pinter from his own play, it tells the tale of an affair a man has with the wife of his best friend (a rather terrifying Ben Kingsley) — with the twist that it’s told backwards, starting with a meeting in a pub long after the affair is over and culminating with the moment it started, a shattering scene that reveals that beginnings can also be climaxes, when you know what they will set in motion.

#12

Rhett carrying Scarlett up the stairs in Gone With the Wind.  Although they’ve been married for some time, by this point (3+ hours into the movie), we’re dying for Rhett and Scarlett to have a real consummation scene, in which she faces the fact that she loves and desires him, not that simp Ashley.  The result is the all-time champ in the “all women love semi-rape” school of titillation.

#13

The camera sweeping down to show Billy Dee Williams seeing Diana Ross for the first time in Lady Sings the Blues, stunned by her beauty in a butter-yellow silk dress and hat.  It’s a complete steal (albeit in reversed direction) from the famous shot in GWTW when Rhett Butler first sees Scarlett, but it still works, because Williams was at the time one of the sexiest men alive, his silken voice and sharp appearance catnip for women of any race. (Everyone thought he’d have the career that Denzel Washington ended up having, but roles for African-American leading men were even scarcer then.)  The swooping camera in both films is a stand-in for the inner swooning feeling women get when the right man looks at them with frank desire (as Scarlett said of Rhett at that moment, “He’s looking at me like he knows what I look like in my shimmy (underwear)!”)

#14

Ethan Hawke’s face and voice at the end of Before Sunset when he says the simple phrase, “Oh yeah.”  Hawke becomes increasingly naked, not physically but emotionally, in each scene of this movie, as he reveals that he’s been nursing a love for Julie Delpy’s character for the entire 10 years since they had one night together.  Earlier in the film he has shown us his soul as he speaks with aching vulnerability about his dead marriage and feeling like he’ll fly apart if anyone actually touches him again.  But by this final scene, he’s a man looking forward to being shattered by love once again.  (To see how this love story began, watch the first chapter, Before Sunrise, one of the best love stories ever made, in which two people fall in love not in the ridiculous way they usually do in movies (by crashing into each other’s cars, etc) but the way they do in real life, by talking and learning about each other with increasing fascination.)

#15

In a masterfully constructed scene, Clooney and Lopez’s yearning but realistic conversation about their hopeless cop-meets-criminal romance is intercut with the consummation of their desire, all to the background of silently falling snow and a perfectly evocative musical score.  The fully-clothed conversation that serves as foreplay is sexier than the sex.  Out of Sight, indeed.