Economic and moral anguish paves the way for sexless films

Sheet's placement in nudity and sex scenes in fiction has always been a fairly good gauge of the political and social moods that prevail in the society where the film is made.

But there is no straightforward development where we have constantly moved towards an increasingly relaxed attitude to the naked.

In all simplicity:

First came the "happy 1920s" that allowed more exposed skin than ever before (Josephine Baker's banana skirt), then the 1940s and 50s of Puritanism, then the 60s and 70s of sexual liberation, followed by a reactionary 80s talks with Thatcher, Reagan and AIDS-Noja who made sure the film had their hands on the sheets. But perhaps the most significant game change came with the TV series' triumphal tragedy that began last decade.

Complex intrigues, in-depth characters and fat budgets in all glory, but what really got the spin on HBO, Netflix and all the other actors' finances was the explicit sex. There are few things you can be sure of here in life, but we know so much that the earth is round and that six sell (and then there are people who doubt the former).

It is no coincidence that it was in the large pay-channel productions that the sheet was fluttering away altogether. The subscription form meant that broadcasters no longer had to relate to sipping and anxious commercial sponsors who over the decades made regular television channels into a genderless advertising market that did not run into anyone.

Suddenly everyone would show skin , creating global bestsellers such as True Blood, Vikings, Californication and of course the small-scale Game of Thrones (where men also released the togs).

Yes, every series of economic self-preservation drive now made sure to pepper with a hefty dose of sex and nudity; at least the first few sections to get viewers on the fork.

But lately something has happened. The most painstaking example is the big venture Westworld, which was released in late fall 2016, and would become HBO's new fat till after Game of Thrones.

This is a sci-fi series set in a future US where the rich can live out their dark desires at a theme park in the Western environment, and they do so with completely human-like humanoids (played by real actors), called hosts . The script wants to discuss the boundary between man and machine, consciousness and AI, but most attention was given to the series' glaring nudity that lay at the hardcore nudist level.

A large part of the series takes place in the laboratory where the hosts look closely who are taken in for service, and then sit completely naked, exposed to their creators - and us. The scenes themselves are de-sexualized, play out in a cold scientific environment and carry a nudity that we have not seen before. Some of the hosts rebelled and were even seen faking in just the brass and in other situations that Jerry Seinfeld would probably categorize as "bad naked". This applies to both women and men, but most full frontal screen time nevertheless receives the former.

As so often.

Then came the metoo , autumn 2017, with all that it meant with increased awareness of women's vulnerable position in the industry - and not least in connection with sexual situations (both on the canvas and behind the scenes). HBO and other film and television studios began using so-called intimacy coordinators to make sure no one gets hurt during the recording of sex scenes.

And when 2018 was the time to roll out season two of Westworld, all the hosts had put on their clothes again, and the sex scenes were reduced to a chaste minimum.

Filmmakers and TV makers are so afraid of being accused of telling the "male gaze", which is sometimes quite difficult to define - better then with no look at all.

Similar trends were seen in the last season of Game of Thrones, even in Vikings and - to go down to the detail level - the post-metoo-created Swedish series Sisters 1968 was a surprising decoration. A story that takes place in, and is partly about, sexual liberation ought to be equally liberated itself, but here the story's group sex is depicted as an innocent hug.

So back to the old honest ornament, and this - again - so as not to interfere with the current social-political trends.

The cinema film in the middle ridge has always been quite chaste, but even there you can see an increase in ornament but because of another - economically heavier weight - circumstance: the PG13 classification (simply expressed a 13-year limit). Thus, a kind of okay stamp, which basically means no sex and relatively little violence, and which is increasingly recommended by producers and financiers.

In recent years, the American cinema repertoire (just like the Swedish one) has been completely occupied by hyper-commercial superhero and toy-selling products, with small brains but gigantic budgets, and if the mega films are to go around, you can't afford to scare away a single possible ticket buyer. Thus, you make sure the films are so roomy so that the whole family can go.

Thus, two forms of anguish meet, the economic and the moral, and together they create a fiction that is well-combed and unsettling.

But everything goes in cycles. In a decade or so, the wind will turn, and then the trend-sensitive fiction industry will start showing some skin again.