Hollywood Sex

In the same way that CPR is presented as Clean Pretty Reliable, sex in fiction has a tendency to gloss over the more awkward aspects. Sure, maybe it's explored if it's Their First Time to highlight the characters' inexperience, but most of the time sex is very different to how it is in real life. Issues like impotence, pregnancy, STD's (or not) can come up, but generally only when it's a plot point, deployed for drama. Realism is simply a lower priority than Rule of Sexy, Rule of Funny, Fetish Fuel, avoiding Fetish Retardant, avoiding Fan Disservice, and so on.

There are several possible reasons for this:

  1. A lot of this is due to The Law of Conservation of Detail (why waste time showing characters putting on condoms when we want to get to the good stuff?). If it's not important and progressing the plot, mentioning it would only distract the audience.
  2. Inexperience. This includes writers describing anatomy that they lack, and total virgins trying to describe sex at all. Those who don't know should refrain from guessing.
  3. Good People Have Good Sex, not just clean sex but skilled passionate sex. Realistic sex would make the characters look clumsy and unheroic.
  4. Giving too much detail about sex would upset the Moral Guardians. Even if those details are the kind of thing that might show that sex isn't always perfect and wonderful.

Bear in mind that it's not necessary that these aspects of sex never occur in fiction, just that they are shown much less frequently than in real life. Similarly, it doesn't need to be universal in the real world, just more common than is shown in fiction. If sex for you is always like it is in the movies, congratulations, but the fact is the experience is different for a lot of other people.

Also, note that this trope is not necessarily bad. Sometimes the audience might genuinely enjoy idealized torrid steamy sex. Hell, there's a multi-billion-dollar industry built around it: pornography.

For sexual variations such as sadomasochism, all of the above applies. But since these sexualities are less known, there can also be heavy doses of Did Not Do the Research, They Just Didn't Care, and sometimes also Acceptable Targets.

Compare Safe, Sane, and Consensual, Questionable Consent, Ethical Slut, and so on for more nuances.

For a list of ways sex acts are misrepresented in the media, see Common Hollywood Sex Traits. For outright impossible sex, see Anatomically-Impossible Sex.

If your example falls under one of the following subtropes, please make sure that it is added to that page rather than here

No real life examples, please; this is a trope about how sex is depicted in media.

Examples of Hollywood Sex include:

Hollywood Sex at its finest

As Hollywood Sex is so common, please only list glaring examples.

Comic Books

  • If the guys who wrote Preacher know anything about actual BDSM and fetishism, then they chose to hide it really well for the sake of Rule of Funny or whatever. Or it might just be that every single sadomasochist in the compic also just happens to be psychotic or similar.
  • Inverted in Small Favors: The BDSM is reasonably realistic, while the setting/premise of the comic is totally surreal. The protagonist is desperately trying to hide her Safe, Sane, and Consensual BDSM relationship with a physical manifestation of a part of her subconscious from a physical manifestation of another part of her subconscious - who doesn't catch them, because she's busy getting seduced by the protagonist's neighbor.
  • Lou Kagan's Perils Of Penelope contain many bondage scenes that pay no attention to gravity, skeletal structure, or any such pesky details.


Film

  • The hilarious Two-Person Pool Party in Showgirls is a particularly famous example.
  • The Room famously features writer/director/star Tommy Wiseau thrusting enthusiastically somewhere around his partner's navel.
  • In the movie Shoot'Em Up, the hero continues to provide flawless sexual pleasure to his multiple-orgasming partner even while shooting bad guys that break into the room during the act.
  • The same thing happens in the film Drive Angry. Though it is implied that Milton's partner is psychologically scarred by the experience.
  • Basically, all commercial pornography. This makes sense if you think about it: in real sex, the purpose is the participants' pleasure; in porn, it's for the viewer's pleasure. Unfortunately, it's also many people's first exposure to "real life" sex, which can lead to those people thinking Reality Is Unrealistic.
    • Especially bad in homemade and amateur porn. Leave it to the pros, folks!
      • Conversely, amateur/homemade porn also often totally disregard the presence of the camera(s) or eventual viewers, averting this trope entirely.
    • Averted in a recent[when?] release featuring mega-stars Lisa Ann and Zoe Voss that endeavored to show somewhat more natural sex. Still pretty hot.
  • The infamous tent scene in Brokeback Mountain. Not only did the scene have no natural build-up whatsoever, but anyone who has had anal sex knows you can't just spit on yourself and plow away. Just passionate dry-humping with the amount of preparation would have realistically ended in pain.
  • In The Island, Lincoln and Jordan are clones who have been raised separate from normal people, and have no concept of love or sex. Doesn't stop them from having passionate sex near the end of the movie without any problems. Though a major plot point is that Lincoln has been receiving memories from his original donor, so it might be handwaved in his case at least.
  • During the Wall-Bang Her sex-scene in Road House, the relative positions of both Patrick Swayze's and Kelly Lynch's bodies either means either Swayze's wing-wang is two-and-a-half feet long, or else they were dry humping. Still a hot scene, mind, but physically impossible.
  • Played for Laughs with the infamous "Fuck me, Your Majesty!" scene from American Beauty.


Live Action TV

  • Any of Samantha's sex scenes in Sex and the City count, though injuries are frequently shown in this instance. There's still a ludicrous amount of screaming, thrashing and athleticism.
    • There was once an episode where she was bent on performing the entire book of Kama Sutra. (Which, for the record, is a horrible idea.)


Realistic examples

Aversions or subversions where in one or more respect, the sex is presented more realistically than typical Hollywood Sex.

Advertising

  • This ad for a dating site called Zoosk.com includes an Imagine Spot of two people trying to have Hollywood Sex. They fail miserably.


Anime and Manga

  • Houkago no Himitsu by Nekota Yonezou is a BL short story with two high schoolers who don't know what they're doing. This ends realistically (there is some ripping). They promise to do more research next time they try.
  • Futari Ecchi, which seems to have "Deconstruct Hollywood Sex" as one of its goals, does indeed manage to be more realistic in its portrayal of sex—particularly the young, awkward-first-time sex only virgin newlyweds can manage.
  • In Fushigi Yuugi, Tamahome and Miaka decide to consummate their relationship knowing that this could very well be their last day together. Miaka's stomach grumbles, and they are both embarrassed by this awkward noise. (So much so that Tamahome can't continue!)
  • The first story of Millefeuille's Great Reaction in Ecstasy is about a girl who has awkward and terrible group sex.
  • In Kimi wa Pet, one of Sumire and Hasumi's aborted attempts to finally have sex after months of being a couple goes disastrously wrong when Sumire gets a leg cramp and then Hasumi loses his composure and sustains a head wound from falling into some furniture. Furthermore, because Hasumi or other partners urge her for verbal feedback during sex, Sumire admits she doesn't always enjoy it and fakes climax on at least one occasion. One night much later Hasumi has some problems keeping it up. Although he claims it's due to drinking too much alcohol, their relationship already seems to be falling apart and it really foreshadows their break-up.
  • B Gata H Kei portrays not only the (almost) sex itself as awkward and difficult, but the relationship leading up to it, too.
  • There's a Boys Love manga where one of the characters is a masochist. His friend, who's in love with him, gets mad at his friends confession about liking The Bully and practically rapes him. The rough sex turns on the protagonist, but after the sex his friend is surprised to see he's covered in blood; mostly coming from his injured anus. This harms their friendship and the story has a Downer Ending.
  • The French comic Dreamland mostly averts this when the protagonist and his girlfriend have their first time. While it "ends well" for both of them, the beginning is quite awkward, with Terrence putting his condom the wrong way at first for example.

Comic Books

  • Roberta Gregory averts this in her comics Naughty Bits and Artistic Licentiousness. She's great at depicting sex in all its awkward, sometimes unpleasant glory.


Film

  • Nite Owl and Silk Spectre's first sex scene in The Movie of Watchmen has Dreiberg reacting like the extremely awkward man he is, nervously tugging at Spectre's clothing, bumping into her and apologizing profusely. Also the music.
  • Averted in Kinsey when the main couple must go to a doctor to enable them to have sex.
    • Everything afterwards follows this trope perfectly.
  • Knocked Up. The two main characters, Ben and Allison, are quite drunk, and Ben struggles with a condom. He doesn't use one, and she becomes pregnant.
    • And then a later scene shows the two of them trying to have sex while she's pregnant. Ben is just a wee bit hesitant about doing it with their unborn child inches nearby. They struggle with different positions before finally giving up in frustration.
  • Comical subversion in A Fish Called Wanda—Otto makes some utterly hilarious O faces.
  • Eminem and Brittany Murphy have fairly unglamorous sex during a cigarette break in Eight Mile.
  • One adaption of The Three Musketeers has D'artagnan and Constance Bonacieux having a bit of implied trouble getting into position (they were just off-camera at the time).
  • The Cooler. Pretty short scene, but, umm... not due to editing. Even shows cellulite; for which they had to shoot in Nevada due to possession carrying a mandatory minimum 10 year sentence in Los Angeles.
  • Enemy at the Gates had a realistically awkward sex scene between the main protagonist and the love interest. It's awkward because they do it in the subways below Stalingrad, surrounded by sleeping people because it's being used as a bomb shelter, and so they have to try to not wake anybody up and don't have much room for themselves. So they just kinda roll over each other, try to take off each others' clothing and try to get his penis into her without waking up a guy sleeping a foot away.
  • The honeymoon scene between Bernard and Lydia in Four Weddings and a Funeral.
  • Pretty much any scene that is presented in such a way that it has sparked genuine debate as to whether the two actors actually had sex on camera. Some examples include Mickey Rourke and Carre Otis in the Unrated/NC-17 version of Wild Orchid, Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie in Don't Look Now, the opening scene of Betty Blue, Tony Leung and Jane March (who was underage at the time of filming) in The Lover, and Bruce Dern and Maud Adams in Tattoo.
  • There have also been a growing number of mainstream films in which the realism of the sex scenes is unquestioned since the actors are.. um... "method acting" (Shortbus, All About Anna, Baise Mois, 9 Songs, etc.). However it can be debated whether the "Hollywood Sex" trope applies since as of 2010 no major mainstream "Hollywood" production has featured such explicit material, with the possible exceptions of the "reality TV movie" The Real Cancun and the heavily-censored swingers scene in Bruno.
  • The Brown Bunny features an unsimulated act of oral sex between its stars Vincent Gallo and Chloe Sevigny. Ironically, this scene is actually a fantasy of Gallo's character.
  • In Innocent Blood, they not only use a condom, but the man faced with the reality of being about to have sex with a vampiress has a degree of trouble... rising to the occasion.
  • Played for Laughs in MacGruber, where the sex scenes start out very Hollywoody, before abruptly switching to a view of the proceedings filled with silly but not wholly unrealistic noises and movements.
  • Blue Valentine features a depressing and realistic sex scene.
  • The "Any = all" variant is discussed in The SM Judge: While Magda's masochism makes her enjoy pain, she's not at all into roleplaying or submission or humiliation or anything like that. Of course, the authorities fail to understand this distinction, maybe on purpose.
  • In Friends With Benefits, Dylan and Jamie have pretty realistic sex, with stuff such as them listing their weird quirks about sex, Dylan needing to pee halfway through, him wondering why she's screaming, etc.


Literature

  • In the Ben Elton book This Other Eden, the Hollywood star Max and his actress wife agree to have one last roll in the hay before their divorce. The narration specifically compares their perfect movie sex scenes with their real sex, complete with fanny farts and awkward elbows.
  • John Green's book Looking for Alaska has a girl performing oral on the main character. They exchange some awkward dialogue ("should I bite it?") then go to their more experienced friend to explain it to them.
  • Played with in the Slave World novels: Many Hollywood Masochism stereotypes are lampshaded and justified with Applied Phlebotinum. In the first few books, this include the stereotype that all real submissives enjoy everything in the kinky spectrum. This is backpedaled in the later books, where it's established that most people have some things they just can't handle, much less enjoy, no matter how many smilies you paint on their soul.
  • Very common in works by the Des Anges sisters; sex is at best a pain in the ass to clean up after, and will often feature fumbling, awkwardness, pain, and swearing at inanimate objects.
  • Anatomy of a Boyfriend by Daria Snadowsky is fairly realistic. It discusses the teenage characters first times, fooling around (and trying to clean it up), and the funny noises they would make.


Live Action TV

  • Mad TV has this sketch on sex faces.
  • Sex in The Sopranos is pretty realistic.
  • The Shield: Sex is usually portrayed as ugly as possible - either as cheap rutting or heat-of-the-moment IKEA Erotica. When it isn't, it involves one or more parties the audience, by and large, doesn't like (See any love scenes between Shane and Mara).
  • Parodied in Reno 911 where a brothel calls the police on a customer who refuses to pay because the place has nowhere for him to wash off all the whore's juices.
  • The first sex scene between Leckie and Stella in The Pacific was refreshingly realistic. It's brief, slightly awkward, they both have reasonably odd o-faces, and you can even see him use his hand to guide himself in (it's under the blankets, but it's obvious what he's doing).
  • Misfits comically averts this during any sexual situation involving Nathan - actually, very few sex scenes in the show play this trope remotely straight, but if Nathan's involved you know you're in for something particularly disastrous. He's been shown to suffer from premature ejaculation, has got his finger stuck in a girl's vagina during foreplay, and has displayed an o-face so off-putting and bizarre that his partner started laughing hysterically when she saw it. He also has a famous habit of "tripling" himself during sex - yes, kids, that's when you ejaculate, puke and shit yourself all at once - although luckily for everyone this one happens off-screen.
  • As well as showing quite a considerable amount of Hollywood Sex between the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Lizzie Siddal and various prostitutes, Desperate Romantics does at least depict Lizzie encouraging Gabriel to abandon the prophylactics they have apparently been using prior to their marriage. There is also some awkwardness shown between Millais and Effie the first time they're in bed together, though they get over it later in the series.
  • The John Adams miniseries averted this every which way with John and Abigail's bout of reunion sex in France; it's fast, clumsy, and a little bit sweaty. And still leaves viewers gazing dewy-eyed at the screen from the palpable emotions surging between them.


Music


Stand-Up Comedy

  • One of Bill Engvall's most famous routines involves how Hollywood Sex is different from real sex...which he knows from personal experience.
    • "Well thanks for the wedgie, Romeo..."
  • Australian comedian Josh Thomas notes that for him, sex never involved loud moaning and thrashing, but more often, "Mm... mm... oh, gosh... mm... OH SHIT are you alright?! ... and then it takes you a while to get back into the rhythm..."


Video Games

  • Sex in A Dance With Rogues is very...realistically...described. The game even tracks an integer for how experienced your character is, and varies the descriptions depending on that (though it is more often used to determine if you can use the 'if I have really good sex with this guy he will give me what I want' tactic). Most possible sexual partners are quite experienced, so acting like it makes sense for them, but Anden is understandably awkward.
  • The Sagara Family proves that even an H-game can ground it's sex scenes in reality and still do it's job. While idealized, the narrative goes to lengths to avert or lampshade many Common Hollywood Sex Traits:
    • The necessity of foreplay is frequently mentioned and seen to, especially with anal sex.
    • One scene has the mother giving some (factually correct) contraceptive advice to her daughter.
    • The "a virgin always bleeds" myth is averted at least once, when the protagonist takes his time getting the girl turned on first and then penetrates so gently it doesn't even hurt. Both of them were still expecting the myth so much they're both a little confused when it doesn't happen.
  • Sex in Katawa Shoujo is also more realistically depicted than you'd expect from a Visual Novel. Emi's anal sex scene and Lilly's bath sex scene are notable examples. Furthermore, Rin, Hanako, and Misha all have H-scenes where not only is the sex very awkward, but designed to make the player feel uncomfortable.


Web Original

  • The College Humor video "Realistic Hollywood Sex Scene" parodies this trope. It's awkward, gross, creepy, and pathetic... and it still manages to seem just a teensy bit sweet and romantic.
  • Averted in Tales of MU. Mack has no clue what she's doing during her first several encounters, and as such, it's not terribly enjoyable.
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