#31: challengers
we’re bringing sexy back
Where have all the sexy movies gone? A recent UCLA study surveying teens on their media preferences was widely covered with the bombshell headline: “Gen Z Teens Want Less Sex on Screen”. Before we lay the blame at the feet of the youth, the actual data behind the headline clarified that “51.5% of adolescents would like to see more content depicting friendships and platonic relationships”. That’s not quite the same thing as not wanting to see a sexy movie— if anything, it’s a rebellion against stagnant romantic and sexual tropes.
Shows like Game of Thrones and Euphoria made the gratuitous sex scene an infamous and outsized staple of the mainstream media diet, but if you really consider it, we’re not exactly living in a golden-age of sexy film and TV. The iconic (if problematic) erotic thrillers of the 80s and 90s - Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, Indecent Proposal - have nearly gone extinct, and it’s not clear what’s popped up to replace them. For better or worse, the concept of the “sex symbol” is on life support. A friend and I recently had an extended discussion about the Hollywood “hunkidemic”— i.e., the complete dearth of current-day hunky actors (Michael B. Jordan and Glen Powell excepted). And this was before the New York Times’ viral article highlighting the “rodential nature” of our current crop of actors.
All this is to say that beyond the use of the sex scene as an attention-grabbing “gotcha!” (looking at you Sam Levinson), the past two decades have seen Hollywood slowly shutting off the tap of sexy movies. I don’t want to point fingers, but I think this is less a result of Gen Z’s industry-destroying proclivities and more a result of the ubiquity of the “four-quadrant movie”.
It might even be more fair to say that it’s a result of the corruption of the four-quadrant movie. Titanic is the textbook four-quadrant film despite having one of the most famous romances (and sex scenes) of all time. The sexless movies we have now seem more closely connected to how the four-quadrant movie became synonymous with the blockbuster, which then became synonymous with the superhero film.
One of the ironies of making superhero movies for grown-ups was that we didn’t make the movies more adult— we made the adults more adolescent. Superhero movies, specifically Marvel movies, exist in such a PG-13 bubble that it took 26 movies for Marvel to allow a sex scene. And when they did allow it, it was an entire news cycle, only for the actual scene to be completely banal, all perfume-commercial shots and no chemistry whatsoever. Whatever sexuality is in Marvel movies, it’s been so watered down that even an actual sex scene is completely unsexy.
The situation is desperate. It’s why I’m so grateful for Challengers, which has arrived like a tonic in a strained movie year. Trying to explain why something is sexy is like trying to explain why a joke is funny, but if I had to try, Challengers isn’t sexy because it contains sex scenes or is even about sex— it’s sexy because of its playfulness, like a twinkle in the movie’s eye.
To quote Adrian Lyne, maybe the director of erotic movies:
What I’ve always found very important is that within a ‘sex scene’ — and which again, I hate saying that — but it should be fun. It should be funny. There should be something for the audience to laugh at. Because if you don’t give them something, they’ll laugh at you. They’ll laugh and you’ll get a bad laugh
The first “date” scene in Challengers, when tennis star Tashi (Zendaya) goes over to Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art’s (Mike Faist) crappy hotel room to drink beer and flirt, is a testament to Lyne’s principle. Tashi holding the boys at bay and forcing them to compete for her is a setup that’s more comedic than dramatic. And when Tashi starts kissing Art, then Patrick, then both, until finally sitting back and watching the boys make out with each other, she’s laughing along with the audience.
The humor is fun, but it’s not limited to the truth that sex can be funny or that funny is sexy. Lyne uses the humor as an element of surprise, and Challengers wields it in a similar way. You know something is coming between these three people, and you know all the chemistry has to go somewhere, but the movie keeps you guessing as to how, when, where, and why. This isn’t just people going through the motions of attraction— it’s three planets, all orbiting each other, with no one able to predict which ones are going to collide. Even the stylistic elements of Challengers reflect its commitment to unpredictability. The thumping electronic soundtrack, the insane camera angles, the dedication to close-up shots of sweat are all surprises that make the movie, not just its stars, sexy.
A movie like Challengers has me asking: why are we not making more of whatever this is? I don’t want to pit superhero movies against this kind of movie when I love aspects of both, but the decline of the rom-com, the sex comedy, the erotic thriller, and all these genres feels deeply connected to Hollywood’s increasing disinterest in movies that fourteen year-old boys can’t watch. I’m not advocating for putting sex scenes in all movies or replacing family-friendly four-quadrant films with X-rated ones. All I’m saying is that watching a movie as sexy as Challengers reminded me just how much I missed watching movies for adults.
Culture Crumbs
A Clockwork Orange, showing at the IFC in the hottest theater I’ve ever sat in at 11:15PM— incredible viewing experience
The devastating revelation that this dress from Challengers was custom-designed for Zendaya and therefore will never be owned by me
via Femestella The Blank Check episode on Heat, which I’m savoring after a late-night rewatch— be prepared for a lot of Pacino imitations
This New Yorker review of a previously exclusive, no-phones-allowed restaurant called Frog Club
The delightful return of Claire Saffitz recreating mass-produced bake goods at home
That’s all for this month. Thank you for reading!
Essential reading and watching for sure. Bring back sex, Hollywood, let us (want to?) fuck!
The work shirt dress is sooo you-coded