Pop Stuff: Sex, Power and The Fifth Wall

‘Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.’ – Oscar Wilde

- Soleil Nath Wani

Celluloid sex has almost always told a story of power. Intimate onscreen relationships are equally a means of exploring sexuality as they are a reflection of the societal structures and boundaries that determine the way we process it. This has not boded well for us. Television and cinema have spewed forth portrayals of intimacy that are hackneyed at best and harmful at worst. Romantic storylines that lean on the idea of a man giving chase to a woman are only now being relabeled as verging on stalker territory. Scenes in which missionary style intercourse, preceded by zero foreplay, that magically results in perfectly synchronized orgasms, with just a few breathless puffs of communication, owe us reparations for lifetimes worth of bad sex. And a preponderance of heteronormative couples that don’t reflect the reality of gay people or the growing appeal of gender fluidity has signaled that our storytelling is barely keeping pace with our lives. All this without even elaborating on porn which reflects real sexual dynamics the way video games reflect real life.

Most of these sexual tropes are rooted in a dated male gaze and a heavily male greenlighting process that has dominated content. In 1972 we lauded Bernardo Bertolucci’s twice Oscar-nominated