Childhood trauma re-enacted through BDSM. A kinky affair with a colleague in an office bathroom. Incest bookended by gruesome murders. Where has the straightforward, vanilla sex on television gone?
Take Euphoria creator Sam Levinson’s series The Idol, which concluded last weekend in a hail of terrible reviews. In place of competent actors and well-written storylines, Levinson seemed to lean on gratuitous torture porn to draw in viewers, subjecting the series’ protagonist to abusive, disturbing sex scenes – all presumably based on the belief that extreme sex sells. Viewing figures aside, it’s fair to say it’s backfired: critics have been horrified by what has been called “the worst TV show of the year” or “ever”, depending on who is reviewing it.
The past decade has seen a normalisation of kink-driven, extreme and violent sex on TV. From 2011 until its finale in 2019, HBO’s Game of Thrones churned out rape scenes and plotlines featuring incest; and its current prequel series, House of the Dragon, has proved equally barbaric.
Euphoria – which showed porn and statutory rape from its first episode – and The Idol both appeared on HBO, too. As a cable network, HBO, alongside streaming services, doesn’t have to stick to the same rules on nudity and sexual content as network TV does in the US. As the streamers grow, make more original content and jostle for position, they are behind an ever-greater proportion of TV releases. Extreme sex scenes can drum up coverage and viewers in an increasingly crowded market.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with explicit sex on screen – acceptance of a wide range of preferences has been a long time coming. But it depends what that sex is being used for. The sexologist Jenn Gunsaullus told pop culture site Decider in 2018 that these scenes in TV shows should be in service of the characters and storylines: “If there really is no good plotline that’s engaging folks, then, yeah, it’s just going to be like porn.” When a graphic scene is added just to shock or titillate, it lets down the show – and the audience.
It also leaves certain types of sex under-represented. With fetishes and sexual violence playing out on TV and extreme online porn easily accessible, young people are being given a limited view of sexual desires and preferences, skewed by these platforms’ need to shock and entertain. Meanwhile, sex education is failing to even scratch the surface: in one study, nearly half of the students surveyed said they had been taught nothing about sexual pleasure; and teenagers told researchers in 2020 that they turn to porn as an educational tool because schools don’t teach them “what to do”. A fifth of British 14- to 18-year-olds have watched porn on multiple occasions.
This combination of sensationalised sex in culture and the lacklustre national curriculum could help explain why more than a third of women under the age of 40 have experienced unwanted choking, slapping or gagging. Psychotherapist Steve Pope told the BBC that non-consensual violence during sex has become a silent epidemic, and people do it because they see it as the norm.
All this can lead to a continuing conflict between what you see and what you personally want. If anything, stigma has started to be applied to those who prefer things plain. “Vanilla-shaming” has dethroned “kink-shaming”. TikTok’s “KinkTok” has fostered a community in which shame is eradicated and anything goes – unless of course, you’re into “vanilla” sex. Others have called out this trend – as one video noted, “you all have turned vanilla into an insult”. More than a third of women prefer missionary sex over any other position, but we rarely see that on screen – unless it’s used to imply that the sex is boring or forgettable.
Sometimes series get it right. A later BDSM storyline aside, the sweaty awkwardness of Marianne and Connell in Normal People holds the closest mirror to how losing your virginity on a school day might actually go. No glamour. No instant orgasm. No five-hour endurance marathon. But both characters enjoying themselves all the same.
Maybe missionary sex doesn’t grab headlines. Maybe consensual, straightforward sex won’t win the desperate battle for gen Z eyeballs. Maybe two people in bed without some sort of harness or metal handcuffs isn’t what modern audiences want to see. But I can’t be alone in wanting to see some straightforward sex once in a while.
Larissa Hurt is a freelance writer
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