Real actors, real sex - porn or art?

As reality continues to move to the mainstream, and no, I do not mean reality TV shows (IMHO, that is not reality). There is a trend in Hollywood movies to come closer to reality in their depiction of sex. Ty Burrs article in today's Boston Sunday Globe explores this trend and the recent move to the edge as seen in the film "9 Songs". Ty writes:

Since the breakdown of the old studio system in the late 1950s, commercial movies have danced closer and closer around representations of sexuality. Barriers to nudity and behavior have slowly fallen, but sexual activity has remained simulated, even if with increasing frankness. Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider weren't really making love in ''Last Tango in Paris," but the film was extreme enough for viewers to temporarily think so.

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One reason for this state of affairs, obviously, is porn. The emergence of hard-core sex movies from the underground in the early 1970s, their explosion onto home video in the 1980s, and their metastasization onto the Internet in the late 1990s essentially gave Hollywood the escape clause it needed. Since the ''real thing" was readily available if you so chose -- and on increasingly private terms -- the pressure was off commercial movies to compete in prurience. In fact, the pressure was on for them not to. The dirty secret about dirty movies is that audiences feel uncomfortable watching them in a theater full of strangers (or worse, unexpected acquaintances). Home video and the Internet took porn back to the bedroom where it belonged.

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Because it's product rather than storytelling and has to adhere to the demands of a paying audience, mass-market hard-core has a ritualistically defined beginning, middle, and end. Plus there's all that cheeseball music. Faithful only to baseline anatomy, porn is in many ways more repressive and repressed than mainstream culture.

So it makes sense that movies -- ''real" movies -- are beginning to experiment once more with real sex: If you can show it all and it still doesn't mean anything, what needs to be added for it to have any weight? Art? Plot? Theory? Believable characters? A personal perspective?

I think it needs to meet the appropriate "content in context" criteria. This draws from a story Tom Asacker told (and he references in his book A Cleareye for Branding). Tom, I am not sure if you ever considered this as a natural extension of the message you wanted to convey but here goes.

Tom's story starts with a picture. A hand written sign propped up along a country road. The sign reads: "Fresh fruit and vegetables". The country road, the hand written sign, the text about "fresh" is reinforced by the wholeness of the package. These are likely to be as fresh as they can be. The content in the context works. Second picture, similar setting, similar hand written sign along a country road. The text this time reads: "Free flying lessons". Now, is this something that would convey a warm and fuzzy feeling that this might be the best deal on flying lessons you can obtain? Or does this similar send off alarms as probably not a good thing to do? The content in the context does not work so well as the fresh vegetables.

If the content fits the context, adds to the story line, helps to deliver the message, then this is the kind of "reality" that movie directors should strive for. Otherwise, leave it well enough alone.

What are you thoughts?