Comments on: Bare Breasts Don’t Beget Boffo Box Office

By: Garrin

Garrin — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 06:33:17 +0000

Bottom line … I don’t stand on the street corner and oogle at another man’s car … I wouldn’t use another man’s toothbrush .. I don’t grab at another man’s scraps … I also don’t find any pleasure in looking at another man’s wife, girlfriend, sister, daughter flopping her breasts across the screen. I don’t know how else to state it … but thought I’d add a line or two here after I found this article.

By: Curtis Carey

Curtis Carey — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:41:52 +0000

I have read the study that this article is referencing and it has some very big and fundamental flaws. First, is the MPAA ratings factor. It uses them as a statistical control. It compares PG-13 and R films against each other instead of taking each rating individually and comparing non-nudity and sexual content (the control) against films with nudity all of the same rating. The problem with the method they use is that since rating effects box office numbers, as they showed in the opening paragraph of the study, and the MPAA itself allegedly rates sexuality (especially aberrational behavior) harder than it does violence. So these two factors have in themselves skewed the box office numbers. The least flawed way of factoring out the flawed MPAA rating system is to compare like rated films. Which by the way no NC-17 film were even looked at in this study. The reason is because they only looked at widely released films in the box office. NC-17 rated films do not get widely released anymore.Also the concluding sentence in the study is very biased in motivation. “In light of these emperical results, we are compelled to ask, ‘Why is sex even there?’” I don’t even know where to begin with giving reason for it because so many reasons exist and are especially contingent on a case by case basis. Please do not consider this study either scientific or reputable for trying to accurately show the financial returns on nudity at the box office.Another factor that was not calculated is the market outside the theater. After all films from Scarface to Fight Club, both noted for the violence, lost money at the box office but have done great and made a lot of money on other formats.

By: Anonymous User

Anonymous User — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:32:52 +0000

I would say the article is not biased–its purpose was to see if sex sold movie tickets. Answer: it doesn’t. This is all kind of obvious, anyway. If people want to see sex they can use the internet without having to drive to the theater and pay a fortune for it. So rather than adding some viewers and removing others (like commenter #1 and myself), it’s far more strongly removing viewers. This is seemingly confirmed by the fact sex sells even less in the foreign market, where sex and nudity are more readily available. Of course, who knows what the real causation there is. As for other purposes of sex in movies, the study suggests sex doesn’t get good reviews (except from the coveted golden globes). So it’s being added for artistic purposes, but by bad artists? Those reviews do presumably correlate with Commenter #2′s strongly-written films despite their negative box-office performance.

By: Anonymous User

Anonymous User — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:50:32 +0000

This is article is just a little biased. Not everyone adds sexual content to a film to get more money in the box-office. There are probably an infinite number of artistic reasons to have graphic sexual imagery in a movie, and the most powerful reason would be because sex is NOT a bad thing, it is not a “crude” thing, and it is not a “sinful” thing. These are all completely subjective, societal conceptions of sex, so if we’re talking about assumptions here, there’s a whopper. Sex in itself is nothing but reproduction and giving into material desire. It’s really not much different than eating a burger and fries and pooping out a baby as a result.So when you get down to it scientifically, what is wrong with using sexual imagery in a film if there’s an artistic intent behind it? Nothing.Now if you’re using it to objectify women, I suppose that’s another concern that people will flip out over. I’m gay, and I don’t mind when men are sexualized in films. I don’t feel like sexual objectification is inherently an “evil” thing, considering it’s totally natural and generally harmless if it isn’t in excess. Personally, I prefer to watch 300 with the men scantily clad as they decimate Persian armies. I guess I’m a perv.Conclusion: you really need to account for audience demographics. A similar study would also show that strongly-written films don’t do as well in the box office. Does that mean good writing is useless? No. Box office results are so subjective that no reliable data can be drawn other than: people live by certain cultural and personal values, and those values reflect what movies they’re going to spend their money on. What percentage of human beings are religious and claim to abhor sexual imagery? Hmm…

By: Anonymous User

Anonymous User — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:53:55 +0000

I agree completely. I’m a 25 year old male and I avoid movie’s with sex/nudity. There are many movies I have not watched for this reason.