Why does Hollywood keep inserting sex scenes into Christian-themed movies?
Matt Lamb
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Hollywood ignores its conservative Christian audience when it needlessly inserts sex scenes into movies with otherwise good themes.
Consider the movie Wildcat by Ethan Hawke, starring his daughter Maya as conservative Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor. The movie contains several sexual scenes, as Maya also plays characters in O’Connor’s stories. The scenes were described as “graphic” by other media outlets (but father Hawke said he “couldn’t care less” about directing his daughter in that context).
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There’s no need for this. The movie is about O’Connor’s efforts to get her first book published. As a single Catholic woman who lived with her mother and peacocks, O’Connor’s own romantic life would not be much to portray. So, of course, Hollywood had to find a reason to shoehorn in some sexual content. While Wildcat’s sex scenes come from O’Connor’s stories, her words are not really graphic, which makes the explicit scenes totally out of step with O’Connor’s work.
The presence of these scenes also puts Christians such as myself in a bind. We may want to see the few rare Hollywood movies that have positive themes but are stopped by the knowledge we will be exposed to nudity or other graphic sexual content, which is harder to forget. The visual nature of sex scenes is one reason pornography can be addictive.
Hollywood erred in the same way with the movie Padre Pio last year. The movie, starring Shia Labeouf, tells the story of St. Padre Pio, a Catholic priest. It reportedly includes a scene in which a naked woman tries to tempt the holy priest on behalf of the devil. The movie caught my interest for several reasons. Padre Pio had a love for the Latin Mass and even received permission to say only that liturgy, not any of the changed versions. The movie also played a role in Labeouf’s conversion to Catholicism. But I did not see it because I did not want to be exposed to nudity.
The creative experts in Hollywood could have found ways to show the saint facing temptation without using nudity. For example, the movie could have used a fully clothed woman exhibiting clearly flirtatious behavior with him. Hollywood can make it look like Robert Downey Jr. can fly around the world and even into space — it can figure out a way to portray temptations without tempting the viewers themselves.
The audience for conservative Christian movies is substantial. The Passion of the Christ made $612 million in 2004. The movie Gosnell about late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell had a successful run as well, particularly compared to its small budget. The anti-trafficking film Sound of Freedom was a surprise box office hit this summer, grossing nearly $175 million.
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Hollywood needs to remember the buying power of conservative Christians and seriously examine whether sex scenes are truly needed in a film. The insular bubble of Hollywood may lead producers and directors to think everyone is OK with sexual content on screen.
But the pushback against sexualized content in libraries and schools, from both Christians and non-Christians, should remind movie companies they have a broader audience, as long as they don’t turn them off with unnecessary nudity and sex.
Matt Lamb is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an associate editor for the College Fix and has previously worked for Students for Life of America and Turning Point USA.