How much sex is too much sex? On Euphoria, onscreen nudity, and the line between life and art

Hi there everyone! I’m your host Kinsey Grant and this is Thinking Is Cool, the show that promises to make your next conversation better than your last and to never bury the lede. Today, I want to talk about sex.

Truth be told, anyone who knows me in a personal context will tell you that I love to talk about sex. And not in a weird fail-the-Bechdel-test way. In a much more anthropological, sociological way. I find it so intriguing to interpret how people respond to honest conversations about sex and sexuality.

And if there’s one thing I love doing more than talking about sex, it’s dissecting pop culture and its innate ability to both shape and reflect humanity with nearly surgical precision.

So you can imagine my unbridled delight when I saw last week that some of my favorite podcasters and TikTokers had begun talking honestly and critically about the portrayal of sex in media, inspired by the very much anticipated and very much naked second season of the HBO show Euphoria.

The internet began asking, at long last, how many penises is too many penises? At what point does a director’s requesting full frontal go from arthouse to cheap gimmick? A podcast I love called Culture Club made an episode about this very idea earlier this week and titled it “Sex sells, but should it?”

Euphoria’s second season is only eight episodes long, but these questions are evergreen. When, why, and how does sex on screen become gratuitous? And whose fault is it when that happens? Is on-screen sex ever a truly indispensable mechanism for advancing plot?

That’s what we’re talking about today on Thinking Is Cool. And a couple of disclaimers:

1. Here, Euphoria is a proxy of sorts for all manner of so-called critically acclaimed film and television that include sex that makes second guess every single bedroom assumption you’ve ever made.
2. If you’re the kind of person who pretends to be on their phone anytime two characters so much as pass a wanting glance while you’re watching a movie with your parents? If you’re the kind of person who thinks of the hand flex in the 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice as peak sexy? You’re not alone.
3. Anyone who’s listened to this show knows I’m pro-porn, but porn and mainstream television and film are different. Here, I’m talking about mainstream media, not adult entertainment. If you want to hear about that, head back to episode 1 of TIC.
4. Fourth and finally, I’m going to talk about sex, both real and scripted, in a really honest way in this episode. Some of that sex portrayed on TV isn’t healthy. If you’re listening to this and it triggers any horrific memories, repressed or painstakingly remembered, please know that I stand with you however you need me to. There are resources in the show notes if you’d like to talk to a professional. And you can always talk to me too.

ALSO, I’M POPPING IN WITH AN EDITOR’S NOTE HERE. I MADE THIS EPISODE LATE LAST WEEK, BEFORE THE FIFTH EPISODE OF THIS SEASON OF EUPHORIA AIRED. THAT EPISODE CLEARLY DEVIATED FROM THE GLAMORIZATION I TALK ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE OF THINKING IS COOL. I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT. 

So…let’s talk about sex, yeah? Nothing is off limits. Everything is on the table. Take it anywhere. And remember…thinking is cool and so are you.

*Fade out intro music*

I’m watching this season of Euphoria with my boyfriend. We’ve made it this fun little Sunday night ritual to make an elaborate dinner, watch Euphoria, and then suffer through at least an hour of Euphoria-induced anxiety before we can fall asleep.

Now, the show is obviously not entirely realistic. It’s a series about a teenage drug addict who regularly references pills and powders I truly have never heard of—also when the F are any of these kids doing homework or thinking about their Common App essays? Do any of them have parents? Why did they steal White Claws instead of beer?

But once you look past the obvious plot holes in the show, you can see that Euphoria is a far-out experience crafted by the writer Sam Levinson to make us confront controversy. To make us uncomfortable with the possibility that it’s real. Once you understand the show to be a pastiche of high school’s very worst, you can see that there remains one looming question unanswered…

How much nudity is too much nudity?

Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a prude…but I’m not one. As long as I’m not with my parents, I’m usually pretty chill about on-screen stuff. Sex. Sex stuff. This season of Euphoria, I have had to cover my eyes on more than one occasion because the sex is so in your face. It feels as if Sam Levinson, who allegedly does not employ a writer’s room, decided that character arcs were less important than just lots and lots of boobs.

I think that’s part of why there’s been a change in tone from armchair critics this season. The temperature has changed online…and a lot of it has to do with what feels like gratuitous nudity and explicit sex.

Consider this from The Daily Beast’s piece called “Why Have Fans Turned on HBO’s Euphoria?” → “Season 2 started off with two exciting developments: a shocking hookup between Cassie and Nate and a flirtation between fan-favorites Fezco and Lexi. Levinson has been mostly interested in depicting the former, particularly Cassie’s obsession with Nate and explicit sex scenes of the two of them. This affair has outweighed other storylines, including the central character Rue and her struggles with sobriety.”

That’s what I’m thinking about so much this week. A show about a teen heroin addict is now a show about that teen heroin addict’s classmates having what I would describe as a seriously toxic, unhealthy, manipulative, dangerous sexual relationship. And doing it all on-screen.

There’s little implying sex. The sex just happens, right in front of you. There’s no poetic closing of the door, no shots of hands intertwined passionately, no inclusion of that tender moment afterward when all parties’ minds are racing and nerves spiking. It’s just…sex, often troubling sex, on screen, right there.

And as it turns out, Sam Levinson planned for more sex. The actor and Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney recently told The Independent this about her time playing Cassie on the show:

“Sam is amazing,” she says. “There are moments where Cassie was supposed to be shirtless and I would tell Sam, ‘I don’t really think that’s necessary here.’ He was like, ‘OK, we don’t need it’. I’ve never felt like Sam has pushed it on me or was trying to get a nude scene into an HBO show. When I didn’t want to do it, he didn’t make me.”

I include that quote because, frankly, it’s hard to imagine MORE sex on a show like this one. There were, and this is not an exaggeration, 71 penises shown in season 1 of Euphoria. There were at least 80 instances of nudity on Game of Thrones, a show with 73 total episodes. I have seen actor Sam Heughan’s butt more times than I’ve seen my own throughout five seasons of Outlander.

[Pause]

The question I have today…is any of that sex or gratuitous nudity or portrayal of assault or worse ever really necessary? Does the inclusion of explicit sexual acts on screen ever make a storyline stronger? Do we really need sex to drive plot, or do TV people just do it because they know we'll talk about it?

Is on-screen sex ever an indispensible mechanism for plot development? I could argue both yes and no, so I’m going to argue both yes and no.

Let’s start with yes. Humans often like to say we’re complex, but we’re really not. In many ways, we’re ruled by a few self-evident truths: Like I talked about last week, we seek abundance. Humans crave community and connection. And perhaps above all else, we think about sex constantly. 

Sexuality is an enormous driving force of culture, community, life itself. It shapes our actions and it’s something we are consumed by. There’s nothing wrong with that—casually thinking about sex is chill and normal and for the most part harmless.

For art to really mimic life and all its complexities, sex and sexuality have to be a component. I think portraying realistic sex—awkward, silly, happy, emotional, comfortable, uncomfortable, all of it—is inportant. When done right, sex on screen and in media can be a realistic reflection of one of the biggest elements of human nature.

So what does it mean to do sex right? In trying to figure it out, I did a lot of unsavory Googling. I wracked my brain for episodes of TV shows that the girlies group chat has *recommended*. I found, courtesy of editorial assistant Natalie, a podcast called Lacey & Flynn have sex during which, in every episode, the titular couple Lacey and Flynn have sex live on the show. I did the work…and I didn’t come up with a long list, but we all know it’s not the size of the ship but the motion of the ocean.

I think Normal People from the BBC did it right. That library scene in Atonement is famous for a reason and that reason is more than just Keira Knightley’s green dress. I think Titanic and the steamy handprint car scene did it right. It’s hard to define exactly what those works had that others don’t, though—I think any representation of sex that feels honest is doing it right. I think that feeling of “did I really need to see that” is doing it wrong. And you and I both know that feeling, because we’ve both felt that feeling.

Cersei’s literal walk of shame. That locker room scene in Sex Life that launched 1,000 is it fake or is it real debates. Most of the post-coital dialogue in Scenes From a Marriage.

I want to recognize the moment we’re in, because I think it’s important context for answering this question about sex as an irreplaceable plot mechanism → 

First, I’d be remiss not to mention the fact that we’ve been in the throes of a pandemic that meaningfully hamstrung physical interaction for two years. I went into the pandemic single, and I can tell you this much…the only action I was getting was the heat from my laptop sitting on my legs every single night.

Physical touch on television was a big part of remembering life pre-pandemic when we were in the worst of it…but I think at the same time, that very pandemic also changed the way we feel about watching people have sex onscreen after two years of being at home. 

The screen isn’t our only portal to physical connection anymore, and when it feels as if writers rooms have missed that memo…I think that’s in large part what contributes to the ickiness.

And second, we’re living in a post-Only Fans world. Nudity and sexuality are interpreted differently today than they were just a handful of years ago, and for a whole lot of reasons…that’s amazing. We’re better understanding sex work, even if we have a ways to go. We’re celebrating sexuality when it’s healthy and believing survivors when it isn’t. These are all good developments, and they developed in lockstep with the HBO-ification of prestige TV.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Sesame Street needs to do a piece on pegging. Which brings me to the counterargument—is on-screen sex ever an indispensible mechanism for plot development? No.

Sex scenes—and we’re talking the kind of sex scenes that make you wonder if the actors didn’t just…you know…are usually deeply interesting. They’re sometimes memorable. They’re often stirring, whether for good or bad reasons. But they’re never necessary.

There are ways to imply that sex—whether positive or not—has happened without showing it. Viewers are savvy, and they know what a shadowy door closing means. They know what two feet at the bottom of a bed mean. They know what streaked mascara and smudged lipstick mean. Let’s give them more credit. 

It’s not like sex can’t be implied without showing something over the top. Again, I urge you to think about the hand on the steamy window in Titanic! Like I mentioned at the beginning, I listened to an episode of the podcast Culture Club about onscreen sex that heavily inspired this episode of Thinking Is Cool. I found the comments from hosts Maggie and Jasmine to be so insightful and honest…I asked them to chime in on this show, too.

Here’s what Maggie from Culture Club said about the fine line of including sex in media.

MAGGIE:  I think sex is a natural part of the human experience and emitting it completely from cinema would be stupid.

Doesn't make sense at all. But I do think directors and people involved should think twice about the reasoning behind this. Purely for aesthetics. Is it for the clicks? Is it for that voyeurism that audiences might crave or is it actually propelling the plot forward? And at times I think we mainly lean into the former category, but I definitely think there's space for it, for sure.

She continued to make an important point—there are people whose job it is to ensure that actors are safe and audiences are accounted for when sex scenes are shot onset: intimacy coordinators.

MAGGIE:  That's all to say that I don't think sex on screen should be bad at all. I definitely think that, um, it can co-exist with sex positivity. I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. For instance, I do appreciate the rise of intimacy coordinators on. Um, granted that euphoria does have one and Sydney Sweeney has mentioned that she has always felt comfortable because of that.

There’s a way to do onscreen sex right. Sometimes that involves an intimacy coordinator and an MPAA review. Other times, it involves no sex at all. There’s a way to communicate that sex was had, connections were established, plot was moved forward…without the full frontal.

And going without the full frontal forces writers and directors to focus on the plot itself, the story itself, instead of the cheap gimmicky headlines they know they’ll get for pushing a boundary that was actually just fine being unpushed. Here’s what Jasmine said.

JASMINE: Both Maggie. And I say in the latest episode of culture club, that onscreen sex can be a plot device, but quite rarely, sometimes sex can be insinuated through like the closing of a door or what someone's wearing the next day, which makes it easier on actors and intimacy coordinators.

But we also need to think about the portrayal of healthy sex versus unhealthy sex. So. In instances of sexual assault and rape on screen, most of the time that is simply Trump porn, it doesn't add anything to the plot device. And yeah, it's just trauma porn for both the viewers and the actors. I believe that if your book, movie or TV show needs to show the physical act to progress the plot, sometimes then perhaps it's just lazy writing.

You know what earns more viewers than taking advantage of the physical appearances of actors by playing into our collective horniness? Writing good scripts.

Side note…am I giving them exactly what they want by making this podcast episode inspired by a television show? Maybe, but I’ll be damned if I don’t take the opportunity to meet you at the intersection of pop culture and doing the dirty.

But I digress…regardless of my complicity, gratuitous nudity in mainstream television, however we define it, appears to be problematic. I’m pretty sure that’s where I land on the issue, and the reason why I’m pretty sure is because this next part of the podcast you’re about to hear? It came pouring out of me the second I decided to pursue this episode. I wrote it in like three minutes flat. 

Here it is:

These are minors. On Euphoria, most of the main ensemble of characters are supposed to be minors. Under 18.

I see the kind of sex that characters are having on Euphoria, characters who are supposed to be in high school, and I compare that to the kind of sex I was having when I was 16 or 17. There is no comparison, because I wasn’t having sex. And that’s not anything to do with morality, it’s just that I was a late bloomer. There’s nothing wrong with being sexually active as a teenager, so long as protection and consent and awareness of consequences are present.

But I do have to wonder what today’s teenagers think they’re supposed to be doing when they see characters engaging in sexual activity that could only really be described as manipulative warfare, if not predation. Kids are smarter today than they used to be, but let’s not forget that 1) they’re kids and 2) television and film are models.

It’s a pretty universal experience: Before I became sexually active, television and film were the only places I saw sex happening. The shows and movies informed what I thought sex would be like before I knew what worked for me. Movies and TV have a duty to represent real life and its trials and tribulations, yes, but at the same time…art shapes culture and culture shapes actions.

If the sex that’s modeled for young people in media today is brutal and harsh and transactional and maybe even illegal…it worries me.

The closest thing I had to a Euphoria when I was a teenager was Gossip Girl. At the time, that show was read the riot act for its glorification of sex, drugs, deceit, and gilded age excess. But for all the times Chuck Bass employed sex workers or Serena Van Der Woodsen banged a stranger…we never really saw the deed being done. It was all put a little more delicately, and it was very obvious that I, smalltown Homecoming Queen straight A student in Florida, was not living the life Serena or Blair were.

There was an element of conjecture that allowed me, a high schooler when the show aired, to let my imagination fill in the gaps. Today, that’s gone. There is nothing left to the imagination. And perhaps most concerningly, Rue’s drug addiction is really the only major lifestyle differentiation between the average high schooler in America today and the Euphoria ensemble.

I sound like a boomer, I know, but I can’t believe that there won’t be ramifications of my teenage cousin watching a show like Euphoria before she’s had a chance at adulthood. Before she’s realized what good, passionate, fun, consensual, healthy sex can be. I don’t want her to think that Nate Jacobs is the norm. I don’t want her to think that sex is a tool for getting what you want out of somebody. I don’t want her to think that sex is damaging or dangerous. 

And there you have it—my idea of why not just suggesting but flat out showing the character of Cal Jacobs having and filming underage sex is just not worth it.

That’s my way of putting it, but I think Jasmine from the Culture Club podcast put it even better when I asked her about teenagers interpreting sex from media. Here’s what Jasmine said.

JASMINE: On one hand, it's a realistic portrayal of how teenagers and boys in particular think about sex. The manipulation mind games slut-shaming and immaturity is really similar to things that I myself experienced in high school. On the other hand of euphoria, the sex does feel quite grown up from cat experimenting with online sex work and casual seemingly unsafe sex to friends with benefits.

I do think that it's a fine line between showing the reality of teens. And then glamorizing it. I read it in a study by the university of agriculture and technology, Kenya that just over a quarter of adolescents surveyed said that they get information about sex from television and 37.9% reported that they first learned about sex while watching TV, which is obviously huge.

So in the same way that porn doesn't represent real life sex TVs, TV shows and movies should go in the same boat.

[PAUSE]

I think now would be a good time for a little self-reflection. Back when I was in college, my six (yes six) roommates and I would gather in the living room on our big gross sectional couch on Sunday afternoons to watch something together. It was bonding, it was hangover curing, it was blissful. 

But usually, we would choose to watch something especially steamy. We were 21-year-old girls living in a house of seven 21-year-old girls…it is what it is. We watched episode 7 of Outlander with an almost religious intensity. We paused, ogled, and rewound the airplane hangar scene of Pearl Harbor on more than one occasion. We once had a movie marathon for which we all had to choose the film that was our sexual awakening.

We played right into the nudity on screen trap. Took the bait, hook line and sinker. While my experience watching television and films today is very, very different…this reflection makes me wonder if we’re part of the problem. 

We can decry the gratuitous use of sex and graphic scenes in media…but do they exist because we’re all so collectively horny? Ratings for shows like Euphoria, Game of Thrones, and more show that we’re lapping it up, boobs and bums and all.

[Pause]

So what does that say about us? That’s what I want you to think about this week. We’re all thinking about sex and that’s normal, but are we the ones hand-carving space for the worst kind of sex scenes? How can sex scenes not be the worst—what makes some of them feel so good and natural and honest? Are any of them really necessary? At the end of the day…should sex sell? 

I’ll be thinking about it, and I hope you will be too. Thank you so much for listening to this episode—I’ll be back next week with another fun one. In the meantime, I’m Kinsey Grant and remember…thinking is cool and so are you.