The critics were right to point the practice out, not that it was anything new (remember The Sopranos’ many Bada Bing! strip club scenes?). US blogger and critic Myles McNutt famously coined the term "sexposition" because of the show, a term Michael Hann of The Guardian describes as “the art of outlining all that tedious plot against a background of no-holds-barred sex”. Since Game of Thrones (or the “tits and dragons” show as guest star Ian McShane so reductively described it) hit our screens in 2011, there’s been a lot of wringing of hands about the show’s ample sex scenes and nudity. So what exactly drives hysteria over sex and nudity rather than violence on our screens? Is it a throwback to a puritanism of old, of the fire and brimstone Old Testament kind? Or is confronting sex and nudity more confronting than confronting violence? “Primetime violence” doesn’t exactly headline quite like “primetime porn”.īritish tabloid 'The Mirror' reduces 'Versailles' to “primetime 'porn'”.
Versailles is no more explicit than its historical epic stable mates Outlander and Game of Thrones.īuried in the tabloid exposés were mentions of Versailles’ violent scenes – torture, bludgeoning, dismemberment. Primetime porn? X-Rated? Er, pull the other one. Sam Burnett of lobby group Mediawatch UK said: "Dressing up pornography and violence in a cravat and tights doesn’t make it cultural," despite the fact that life at the time was indeed sexually charged and violent.Īnd earlier this year, heralded season two with the dubious claim that there were “buckets of X-rated material to come”.
“The programme about France's Sun King Louis XIV airs on BBC2 tonight and features no less than seven sex scenes which include frontal nudity and even a dwarf inside the Queen's skirt.” Quelle horreur!īritain’s conservatives agreed. When it eventually aired, The Daily Mail was out to sensationalise that point to the hilt: Before SBS’s sumptuous historical drama Versailles had even debuted in Britain last year, some media were branding it with variations of “primetime porn”.
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