The Bridgertons, Euphoria, Sex Education, Girls, Valeria, Cardo, Elite, Love… each and every one of these series have sexual content, high voltage scenes that raise the temperature of the audience and, what is more important, in which women enjoy, to prove it we refer you to the last episode of the first season of the nineteenth series of Shonda Rymes, and that someone dares to say that the protagonist, Daphne, is not enjoying as much as her duke and all of us with them. Is something changing for the better in the portrayal of sex in fiction? Or maybe it’s just posturing and unfortunately, like bad orgasms, it’s all faked. No matter where the sex takes place or with, an escort in Malta or female friends on a party.
“The non-new discourses (already existing, but silenced in the past and still, in the present) have opened the door to the debate on women’s representation and role in narrative, both within fiction, as well as in the creative process, in the dynamics of work pre, during and post-shooting. As Laura Mulvey exposed in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975), in classical narrative, female characters were (and still are, much to my regret) constructed as a function of pleasure by/for men. These words exemplify the conflict of the representation and construction of heteronormative and phallocentric sex scenes so present in our audiovisual. Granting the space, so necessary, to the feminine voices that little by little are occupying our gazes, I believe that the image of women as sexual objects is breaking the link with the classism that has educated us until now. Women are not there to please male desire as a Dubin escort that announces on sites like Escort-Ireland or SimpleEscorts.com. We decide how and when we relate and with whom. But, in a society like ours, there are still many barriers to be broken so that this ideal is really fulfilled”, begins the conversation the director of Ama, Júlia de Paz Solvas. Read about DL Sex Doll
“Those exclusive shots to show a woman’s breast or ass that used to be done before. It’s very strong if you think about it now,” recalls Ana Rujas, creator, director and actress of the series Cardo, who answers the phone during a break in the filming of the second season of this production. “No one would forgive one of those gratuitous sex scenes in which women were used as an object of desire,” continues the screenwriter and one of the voices that has most vindicated the role and vision of women in fiction. We can’t celebrate many of the changes that we optimistically predicted would happen in 2017, when #MeToo was at its peak and hopes were high, but some of them have. Five years later, many battles have been won, not all, but the one about safety inside a film set, because actresses were not always protected from sadistic directors and unscrupulous partners, because contracts were not always signed in which no was no, without discussion. Because women were not always treated like people and not like blow-up dolls. “Yes, it has changed. The #meetoo has had many positive consequences, such as the change of point of view on a thousand issues, among them, what concerns sexuality and how it is looked at and from whom those scenes are looked at”, confirms Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, director of the phenom Cinco Lobitos, big winner of the Malaga Festival, and continues: “Women and minors, who have traditionally been more vulnerable, are undoubtedly more protected. But in general they are more protected by changing the scenario, the protocols… I would say that anyone can develop a scene of a sexual nature from a professional, creative and safe place”.
“I think it has had a lot to do with the fact that women have started to be in charge of the shootings, as directors, as scriptwriters”, there is a different way of telling stories, Rujas recalls. “The truth is that I have seen a paradigm shift, I noticed it the other day when I was watching Sex Education. This new position takes more into account the world of women, I think it has to do with a change of collective consciousness, maybe we are more advanced than the rest of society, but we have the ethical duty to mark a change of trend. For example, I remember that in Al salir de clase (1997-2002) a homosexual relationship was shown for the first time without it being dramatic, and that was a big step”, recalls Clara Roquet, winner of the Goya Award for best new director for the film Libertad.
The change is generalized and global: “I see a lot of films from abroad and many series. In Euphoria it is very clear how this change is presented. There are a thousand ways to show sexuality that doesn’t have to be obscene or hypersexualized, there are reference series like Fleabag that have helped a lot. We don’t need to show anything, we don’t count on that anymore. We still have a long way to go, but young people are already facing a different reality,” adds Ana. “The reality shown in the series does not correspond to the social one, I think that in the second one machismo still persists more, although little by little it is changing”, Roquet qualifies and continues: “For example, I am very astonished with all the commotion that Lightyear’s kiss has caused. It worries me that there is a very retrograde trend, we see it in the fact of homophobic aggressions, all very Spain of the 50s. The rise of the extreme right, and the fact that now certain things can be verbalized, makes a part of society feel empowered to attack groups that I think had already earned respect, I have mixed feelings, although I think a very good job is being done in this regard.”
The key to this change of perspective is given to us again by the director of Libertad: “It has to do with the perspective in which you put yourself: if the woman in a scene is a subject or an object, if she is an active subject it is already a paradigm shift, it is very subtle”. Recent series like Conversations Between Friends, adapted from Sally Rooney’s book, lead us toward a more poetic, calm sexuality, as if built on quiet, endless silences. “That thing about women liking romantic sex is a lie, there has to be more women expressing their desire freely and that it’s not always the girl in a modest way, but that you see a girl taking the reins of the matter”, claims Roquet.
TAKING CARE OF THE TEAM ABOVE ALL ELSE
“Of course, even for casting, we explain how we are going to shoot, what will be seen or not, so that if they don’t want to do the test, because they won’t feel comfortable, they don’t do it. From the moment we write the sex scene, we specify what is going to be seen or not and we talk about it directly with the actors’ agents, it is true that we also ask to talk to the actors so they know how we are going to treat it, because it is different to get that information and not talk to us [Ana refers to her script and direction partner Claudia Costafreda]. It’s always complicated and you always have to explain it well to the interpreters, in this sense I’ve had so many experiences that I know very well how I want them to tell me. I think it’s very important,” shares Ana Rujas, her working method. In the case of Clara, who is already immersed in her new project with actress Elena Martín, she tells us: “I have written a script with many sex scenes, as I work directly with the actress, it has been very easy for me to know the limits because I have asked her. When I write, I do think that people are going to do it, unless sex is important in the dynamics of the plot, I don’t usually go into it, in this case it was important because it was about female sexuality”. For his part, Alauda adds more details about his way of working when he has to face an intimate scene: “With a lot of communication, naturalness and respect. We talk about how to approach it, what is happening at that moment in the life of the characters, what sense it has within their story…. We also talk about the degree of nudity, what clothes to wear or not. Then, it is choreographed. In the last production, we have the figure of the intimacy coordinator, who is very useful and accompanies these processes and ensures that everyone is comfortable”.
