Word: sexualizing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Dole should have tipped us off. When even the stoic standard-bearer of the Greatest Generation is discussing male plumbing problems in public, you know sexual dysfunction has permeated the culture. And when two of the season's most talked-about films, Summer of Sam and Eyes Wide Shut--the latter a gothic sexual hell that would do a medieval allegorist proud--center on orgies that go terribly wrong, a horny romp like American Pie seems quaint. So it's only fitting that TV, long charged with glamorizing lust, is airing images of sex that are not just unglamorous...
...studio audience. A girl loses her virginity to her boyfriend--who turns into an evil vampire. Sex on TV is still plentiful. A study this year by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that 56% of 1,351 sampled shows, and two-thirds of prime-time ones, had sexual content. But when TV turns a critical eye on the subject, it's often anything but sexy...
...Hill v. Thomas, the Spur Posse and impeachment, sex is war. How appropriate, then, that MTV should get the director of The Killing Fields to offer a take on young love and sex. Roland Joffe's Undressed (weeknights, 11 E.T.), premiering this week, ambitiously interweaves 23 story lines of sexual confusion, selfishness and experimentation--it's Lust, American Style. Shot almost entirely in interiors--the insides of vans, apartments, bunk beds--it has a stuffy, caged-heat vibe, sharing with Eyes the suggestion that if you leave two people alone in a room, they'll be tempted to start rutting...
...Sohn, sex columnist and author of the novel Run Catch Kiss, suggests TV's new sexplorations offer a safe outlet: "Sex is scary for a lot of people. These things don't require that we leave the house." And perhaps the audience, surfeited with sexual fairy tales, is ready for reality. How else to explain Darren Star, father of the giddily ludicrous Melrose Place, creating a show that's a tour de force of sexual honesty...
...hoppers, however, have no monopoly on sexual angst. TV has also become obsessed with virgins, from Felicity, Buffy and Dawson to next season's Popular and Wasteland. The medium loves titillating and moralizing, and virgin dramas allow both, a situation that has changed little since the 1978 controversy over NBC's James at 15. Dan Wakefield, who created James, says NBC then balked not at James' deflowering but at his using birth control: "They said that if James has sex at age 16 and is not married, he must suffer and be punished." Just so, Buffy can lose her maidenhead...