Hollywood's sex trade...hittin' the skids...

Interesting and telling article here that in which the hollywood elite complains that Americans just aren't slutty enough:

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - The last time "Basic Instinct" man-eater Catherine Tramell prowled the big screen, the studio erotic thriller was hitting box office heights. The first "Instinct" took the top spot when it debuted in 1992, with an opening weekend of $15.1 million, the equivalent of $20.45 million in today's dollars.

By comparison, "Basic Instinct 2" limped into 10th place upon its arrival this weekend, grossing just $3.2 million.

In the years between the two films, a string of high-profile flops, including MGM's "Body of Evidence," United Artists' "Showgirls" and Paramount Pictures' "Jade," have all contributed to the cooling off of the erotic thriller, a genre that had once sizzled at the box office.

Paul Verhoeven, director of the first "Basic Instinct" (which scored $353 million worldwide) as well as the widely ridiculed "Showgirls" (now regarded as something of a camp classic), attributes the genre's demise to the current American political climate.

"Anything that is erotic has been banned in the United States," (hmm... haven't seen any laws banning everything erotic in the U.S., have you?--ed) said the Dutch native. "Look at the people at the top (of the government). We are living under a government that is constantly hammering out Christian values. (Arrgh!!! Perish the thought!!!--ed) And Christianity and sex have never been good friends." (emphases added)

Scribe Nicholas Meyer, who was an uncredited writer on 1987's seminal sex-fueled cautionary tale "Fatal Attraction," agrees, noting that the genre's downfall coincides with the ascent of the conservative political movement.

"We're in a big puritanical mode," he said. "Now, it's like the McCarthy era, except it's not 'Are you a communist?' but 'Have you ever put sex in a movie?'"

That is one of the great paradoxes of the American Left. For years the NOW crowd and others in the American Left have drilled into the American psyche that women were not "sex objects" and that pornography degraded women (rightly so). But in the same breath they whine like so many spoiled children when America doesn't buy into their movies and overall culture that proclaim the very opposite message; saying in effect that "flyover" America is comprised of a bunch of prudish, "unenlightened" hayseed dolts.

From reading the above article, it would appear that these Hollywood elites are actually decrying the fact that more and more Americans are rejecting the "free sex" culture and Hollywood's celluloid sex trade; and are instead moving back toward the notion that sexuality is a sacred thing expressed in a loving relationship. This is especially remarkable, given that the "free-sex" culture is responsible for so many societal ills, including unplanned pregnancies, the rise of AIDS and other STDs among women, and the loss of innocence to precocious sex among those much too young to handle the consequences.

But I would tend to opine that the real reason for Hollywoods' lament here is that their celluloid sex trade just isn't bringing in the dollars that it used to. They're hitting the skids like some two-bit pimp whose town has been taken over by the Baptists.

And they don't like it.

Their vision and hope of a mainstreet "enlightened" America, with a hooker on every corner, combination candy store/adult video arcades, and where everything from underage orgies to sex with donkeys is commonplace and accepted (not to mention the "bling" associated with that vision) is fast falling to the wayside.

And as this unfortunate (for them) trend continues, look for their collective tantrums to do likewise.
 

(Filed under the fifth column)