A Naked Eve is a Poisoned Apple

A thought-provoking must-read from Edward Jay Epstein on the economics of sex in movies:

In the early days of Hollywood, director Cecil B. DeMille famously made bathing scenes an obligatory ingredient of his biblical epics on the grounds that nudity--or at least the illusion of it--was necessary to the commercial success of movies. In those days, almost two-thirds of the adult population went to the movies weekly. But today's entertainment economy, dominated by at-home younger viewers, is a very different animal. ... Sex in movies, especially if it results in an "R" or “NC-17" rating, is now a triple liability: It hurts first at the theaters, then at the video store, and finally on broadcast TV.

...

In the after-market of home entertainment, where today's profits are almost entirely made, nudity is even more of a liability. Consider DVDs. In 2003, most DVDs were sold by mass merchandisers, who frequently use them to build storewide traffic for other products, such as plasma TVs, game consoles, and toys. Most of these merchandisers restrict their more prominent shelf space to DVDs that will not offend the family-oriented consumers whose business they seek. For example, Wal-Mart, by far the largest seller of DVDs (and videos), reserves strategic shelf space for DVDs that conform to its "decency" policy on nudity. DVDs that do not hew to these guidelines rarely, if ever, attain multimillion-copy sales. On the other hand, DVDs that pass the Wal-Mart shelf test can sell more than 10 million copies, as did, for example, Shrek, Finding Nemo, and Harry Potter.

As usual, the economics approach ignores the fact that Shrek, Finding Nemo and Harry Potter were good family movies. Brown Bunny, Alexander and Striptease were not good movies. But even allowing that good movies will be made with and without sex scenes, there truly is a smaller-than-one-would've-expected audience for mature movies -- adults just don't go see movies (without their kids) anymore. The highest-grossing Rs are gross-out and/or date movies aimed squarely at teens wiley enough to find a way to see them. It's kind of like cigarrettes that way.

Read more...Meanwhile, Frank Rich is still on his soapbox about decency in entertainment:

Rupert Murdoch's Fox, always a leader in these hypocrisy sweepstakes, made pious hay out of yanking the second scheduled broadcast of the GoDaddy.com commercial after its initial Super Bowl appearance. But Fox Sports promptly plastered the "GoDaddy girl" alongside Playboy bunnies and other pinups on its "Funhouse Fox of the Week" Web site, where every adolescent teenager could ogle it to his libido's content. No less a bellwether is the decision of Adelphia, a cable giant known for its refusal to traffic in erotica, to change its image radically now that its moralistic founder and former C.E.O., John Rigas, has been convicted of looting the company. Shortly after President Bush's inauguration Adelphia acknowledged that it is offering XXX, the most hard-core porn, to some subscribers - a cable first, outdoing even the XX porn on Mr. Murdoch's DirecTV in explicitness. "The more X's, the more popular," an Adelphia spokeswoman told The Los Angeles Times.

I think Epstein rightly leaves porn out of the equation and brings in the FCC's vice-grip on television. If there's no chance of a kid seeing it, people generally don't get too upset. Woe to the person who tries to keep adults from getting what they want. And as for what kids want, or more often, adolescents -- well when I was a horny teen, it seemed like a vindictive conspiracy. Of course, teens don't vote.

My corrolary: I'd like to see Epstein crunch the numbers on violence in movies. That seems to offend no one these days.