Sex Doesn't Sell

Sex doesn't sell. Surprised? I was. But when you look at film ratings at screenit.com (a website that rates movies for concerned parents) and compare them against box office grosses, the more sex or nudity in films, the lower the average box office gross (table 1). In fact, there's a negative correlation of -31% (details). So why is it in the script?

In any job, it is illegal to make employment contingent on sexual behaviour. I don't think it makes any difference whether the boss wants you to make out with him/her off camera or with another coworker on camera. You'd still have to put out. Acting may be art, but it is still a job the way office or factory work is, and it is illegal to put any sexualized content in the job description - it is sexual harassment.

You did know you don't have to put out for the camera, right? And that they have no business even asking? It's the sort of thing most people wouldn't want to do on the job, so I expect there are a fair number of actors/actresses who don't want to, either. It doesn't matter whether sex sells or not - the boss can't make you do any of it in order to hold down your job. And as it happens, it doesn't sell, so why is it in the script?

It's a power trip. In many cases, it's probably a holdover from the old days when sexual harassment was rampant off camera too. Sex sold with management even if it didn't sell with audiences. Today there are probably still a few bosses like that, but it's unlikely attitudes are as bad as they were. Mostly likely it's just a bad habit people haven't dropped yet because they haven't thought of it.

In addition, people have gotten more sophisticated about psychological issues like boundaries and consent in recent years. The industry is still catching up.

Worker safety

This is a worker safety issue. This is not about public morality. This is about whether the talent is ok. Is the talent ok?

Acting is a psychologically dangerous field, and there seems to be no training whatsoever in how to keep it safe. Acting students are even told that if you feel safe you're not doing your job right. (You would never say that about stunts, right? Or physical safety in general?) But acting should be safe. "Safe" means you aren't crossing the line into stress that's too much for your system to handle. You don't want to be boring. You want to be in the zone, where you're stretching yourself, but remain in control. If you don't remain in control, if you become someone's puppet, you can develop psychological problems, even if you think surrendering to the script/director is good and you shouldn't have problems. People can develop posttraumatic stress disorder when they have control taken away from them. They can behave self-destructively. They can act out. You know, the sort of thing we see in tabloids. Are actors in as bad shape as the tabloids suggest? If the workplace is making people sick, don't you think we need to know?

Obviously everyone reacts differently. There were soldiers who had a good time in Vietnam and wanted to go back for more. Some people are much more vulnerable to psychological harm than others. This is about the overall pattern, not just specific individuals. Sexual harassment - including sexualized content in the script - is something that would harm many people. It doesn't need to harm everyone to be bad.

It is a pity that sexual harassment is usually considered a sex discrimination issue, when it is also a safety issue, because this is something that affects male talent as well as female talent. And psychological safety is much more than the absence of sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is just the most obvious problem. Boundary issues and consent in general are a nightmare in this field, from what I saw in my acting classes. Nobody has any training in these issues, and it shows!

But it's art!

Some people would say that it doesn't matter if sex sells or not, because sex or nudity in the script is art, and therefore sacred. Well, film may be art, but it is also an employment situation, and the law applies to art jobs just as much to non-art jobs. Sorry. (Performance art is different. If you want to put out for the camera, do it for free on your own time.)

In addition, it is not actually necessary to use sex or nudity to tell the story. I used to believe you had to until I saw Deepa Mehta's film Water. The film has romance, prostitution and rape in it but is completely chaste. That's when I realized we'd been snowed. It was actually strange watching two people on a first date just sitting at a respectful distance getting to know each other, without any sexualized content. Isn't that the way first dates are supposed to be??? But how often do we see it? Water is a very artistic film that tells the story effectively without prostituting the talent. So there.

But if we take the sex and nudity out, there won't be any jobs left for women!

Some people probably worry that taking the sexualized content out of the script would reduce the number of jobs available for women, since that's often all they're hired for. It is true that there are twice as many speaking parts available for men than there are for women (table 2), but this is also illegal discrimination. Employers would need to make a strong case that women are not as much of a box office draw as men in order to exclude them, but they cannot do this. It is true that the more women in a film, the lower the average box office gross (tables 3 and 4), but it is also true that there are more women in films with more sex (table 5), and sex reduces box office gross (table 1). In addition, violence does sell (table 1), but violent movies have fewer women in them (table 5).

When you control for sex and violence, the relationship between box office gross and the percentage of women disappears. details

There is no excuse for not hiring women in acting roles. Women make up 46-47% of the full time workforce (in Canada) and probably about 2/3 of the people in acting classes, so it is reasonable to expect employers to hire just as many women as men. It's not as if men are twice as interested in acting as women. Any production company or studio that does not bring its hiring of women up to 50% of talent (averaged over a representative sample of films) could be subject to a class action lawsuit (for illegal discrimination in hiring) someday. I have no idea how you would increase the number of speaking parts (or lines even) to 50%, but somebody's going to have to figure it out at some point, because it's illegal not to. (It would make a good comedy: watch the studios scramble!) It doesn't have to be all chick flicks either, it just has to be more roles for women in general. And for those that don't like chick flicks and think they don't sell well, the top grossing film in the US from 1939 to the present, controlling inflation, was a chick flick: Gone With the Wind, which significantly outgrossed the runner up, Star Wars (http://www.boxofficereport.com). Surprised? I was.

If men are worried about losing jobs to women, think about how removing sexualized content from the scripts could increase overall box office and the overall number of jobs. We could all win.

Legal remedies

For adults, the usual legal remedy for this sort of thing is to file a complaint of sexual harassment against your employer with a human rights tribunal. In the case of minors (under 19), it may be possible for the police to lay charges, though I don't know of any cases where they have. Filing a sexual harassment suit is stressful under any conditions, and would probably be much worse for a public figure like an actress or actor. The other legal remedy is for unions to insist that no sexualized content be in the job description for any union shoot. Non-union actors would still have to go through a human rights tribunal, but union action would probably significantly reduce the need for this, making non-union cases rarer through public education and changes in industry attitudes.

I strongly discourage individual people from taking a stand by filing individually with a tribunal or by making a public statement. It is far too easy to get hurt in a backlash. It is much better for people to act as a group, preferably a large one (like a union), so that they make a poorer target for hostility, and so that their privacy is better protected. Privacy is essential to mental health and should never be sacrificed for a cause unless not sacrificing it would be even worse. Even then I do not think it is ethical for the law to require people to come forward and make individual complaints when employers put sex or nudity in the job description. I would prefer that it be made a criminal matter so that the police can just go in and lay charges when it happens. It's just that that's the way things are right now.

Other remedies

• Every film production should have a psychological safety officer, to vet the script, monitor rehearsals for problems, and be available should later problems arise. It is unrealistic to expect producers, directors and talent to be experts on psychological safety. Films have physical safety officers, don't they?
• Unions need to poll their members (in confidence) to see how they really feel about this issue. I suspect that most actresses would be relieved if sex and nudity were taken out of scripts forever, so long as they didn't have to be the ones to speak out. This is what unions are for, to speak for their members collectively.
• Researchers need to study actors to see how they are doing. War veterans often have posttraumatic stress disorder. People who are bullied or sexually harassed at work may also have posttraumatic stress disorder. It's normal for prostitutes to have severe posttraumatic stress disorder. Do actors have elevated levels of posttraumatic stress disorder? Is the dysfunction seen in the tabloids a product of reporting bias or is it a real problem? Is the workplace making actors sick? We need to know.
• Researchers need to take acting classes and mini film productions into the lab to study processes and interactions, and make recommendations on how to make the environment safer. If I'm going to produce something someday, I'm going to want guidelines. I don't trust my judgement all by itself - no one has so much management experience that they can't benefit from general guidelines on how to make things safer.

Anemone Cerridwen
September 12, 2007