Plus: Zoo animals, Padma Lakshmi, and 'Baby Reindeer'

View this email online by Linda Holmes Welcome! It was the week when musicians pushed back about ticketing. It was the week when TikTok was the subject of legislation. And it was the week when Gatsby was on Broadway. Let's get to it. Sex in the movies — it's complicated In one of our PCHH episodes this week, we talked about what makes a good sex scene. Aisha and I were joined by Christina Tucker and Ronald Young, Jr. to name some favorites and talk about what makes them good. (We didn't originally plan for this episode to run the same week as the one about Challengers, which is out in theaters now, but it's a happy coincidence, since that film has gotten a lot of attention — probably too much, relative to its other merits — for the sex scenes involving its three leads. It's really very good; our whole panel thought so.) Mike Faist, Zendaya and Josh O'Connor in Challengers. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures It's harder to talk about good sex scenes than bad ones. One reason is that it's often very obvious when a sex scene is bad, just like when a sex scene in a book is bad. It can get so uncomfortable to watch that you have to leave the room (and not in a way that feels true to the story). One of my personal tells for a bad sex scene is when all I can think about is how hard the actors are trying to persuade me that the characters are having a good time. For example, there has been much good discussion in recent years about Showgirls being a more interesting and competent project than it originally got credit for, but in that one pool scene (if you know it, you know it), all I can see is the effort. It's not always as clear which scenes are good. That's partly because they serve so many different functions, all of which look different, and all of which can be effective. Furthermore, you don't want to confuse whether a sex scene is used well in a film with whether it's hot to you personally, despite the fact that there is overlap between those considerations. Here's what I mean: When Aisha talks about the sequence near the beginning of Magic Mike's Last Dance, it's not irrelevant that the scene is, to her (and to me), hot. But it also makes sense in the context of the film and the franchise, partly because of the way it sets up the power dynamic between Mike (Channing Tatum) and Max (Salma Hayek Pinault). Mike is older now, he knows more, and the way he approaches a lap dance is actually different than in earlier movies. And not all good sex scenes are hot in the same ways. The one I mentioned in the episode, from the romantic drama Love & Basketball, is sexy, yes. But it's also a scene between young adults (the talented basketball players Monica and Quincy, played by Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps), and as such, it incorporates a tentativeness that's not present in Magic Mike's Last Dance, to say the least. As Ronald pointed out during our discussion, that sex scene is quite different from one that takes place later in Monica and Quincy's relationship, when they're older and know each other better. That certainly feels true to real life, but it's not always reflected in Hollywood films, where I would tentatively estimate that 90% of on-screen sex is more idealized and thus less intimate than real-life sex, in part because it isn't allowed to change over the course of a relationship. Even further from the hotness of the lap dance scene is Ronald's pick: the imagination of Kitty Oppenheimer (Emily Blunt) running wild in Oppenheimer. While her husband (Cillian Murphy) is being interrogated, she pictures him having sex with his mistress, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh). It goes by quickly enough that it might seem like a Christopher Nolan flourish for flourish's sake, but it serves the purpose of letting you feel her pain over her husband's affair. Her relationship with Robert doesn't look especially romantic in the film, let alone sexually charged; she finds herself consumed by the idea that he was having hot sex with this other woman, and she locks eyes with her vision of a naked Tatlock and finds herself tormented. It's not really the intent of the scene to titillate the audience, just to give specificity to the shape of Kitty's preoccupation with the affair. Christina raised another really important point, which is that sex scenes also collide with viewers at very specific moments. Her example from Bound, and the scenes between Violet (Jennifer Tilly) and Corky (Gina Gershon), touches on (among other things) her own history. It's an underappreciated aspect of the sex-in-movies discourse: representation matters in these scenes as much as anywhere else. I always wish I saw more sex scenes in movies that featured a broader variety of body types; it's still really rare to see ones that feature anybody who is even average sized. This is one of the reasons I'm curious about the upcoming season of Bridgerton, which places its focus on the gorgeous and curvaceous Penelope (Nicola Coughlan). Good sex scenes are like any other kind of good filmmaking, honestly: it comes down to execution with purpose and care, done relative to whatever the function of the scene might be. Whether that's spiciness or conflict or relationship growth or (as in the case of Bound) setting up a steamy neo-noir story that wouldn't be the same if it weren't hot as heck, form follows function, ideally. Newsletter continues after sponsor message We Recommend I wrote four years ago about my love of simulator games, including Planet Zoo, which I was playing on a PC despite my general preference for console gaming, because that's all there was. WELL. I am excited to tell you that Planet Zoo is now available for consoles (as of just a few weeks ago), and I am playing the heck out of it on my PS5. I love the orderliness of it, I love the cute little animals, and I love the part where I yell in my living room, "WHY ARE MY FLAMINGOS SO UNHAPPY?" The best. Real zoos may be controversial, but a conservation-oriented imaginary zoo is a delight. (Also out now: House Flipper 2, the new edition of my favorite game where you clean up and rehab houses.) I'm a big fan of both Padma Lakshmi and writer Helen Rosner, so I unsurprisingly enthusiastically recommend this terrific profile in The New Yorker. It's rare these days to have much that's good to say about the finances of a publication you treasure, but the surprise news that The Onion was sold to new owners who actually seem to like it was very heartening. Listen to the Podcast Sponsor-Free Support your favorite pop culture junkies AND listen without sponsor interruptions with a subscription to Pop Culture Happy Hour+! Learn more and sign up at plus.npr.org/happy. Learn More What We Did This Week The Tortured Poets Department is the latest album from Taylor Swift. Beth Garrabrant/Republic Records Stephen talked about Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department with Ann Powers of NPR Music and (I love it when we can do this!) PCHH producer Hafsa Fathima. With our producers, you hear their names in the credits; it's so much fun when you can also hear their voices and get a better sense of how much they contribute to our discussions, our planning, and our choices in general. When I first heard the rumblings of a historical drama called Mary & George on Starz, I said to our team, "Wait, is this sexy George Washington?" It is not sexy George Washington! Glen, Christina Tucker and Jeffrey Masters can explain to you what, in fact, it is. It's daunting to think about whether there's anything new under the sun to say about sex in the movies, but as discussed above, Christina Tucker and Ronald Young, Jr. joined me and Aisha to talk about what makes a sex scene work. We covered acrobatic foreplay, the shyness of inexperience, hot crime stories, and a very unexpected sex scene in the middle of a historic interrogation. Our great pal Daisy Rosario and brand-new-to-us panelist Ryan Mitchell joined me and Stephen to talk about a movie we all really loved: the Zendaya-led tennis movie Challengers. It's hot, sure, but it's also a weird, funny, uncomfortably intense character study in the very best way. We'll be covering Netflix's Baby Reindeer on the show soon, but in the meantime, check out Glen's review for NPR. What's Making Us Happy Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: Daisy Rosario: Playing retro video games on an Anbernic console Ryan Mitchell: Baby Reindeer, on Netflix Stephen Thompson: Chappell Roan's Tiny Desk Concert Linda Holmes: The podcast Who Killed the Video Star: The Story of MTV Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+. Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free episodes. 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