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For the past two years, two movies have been nominated for an Academy Award (the Oscars) for best picture. Those films are Titanic the 1999 winner of the award, and American Beauty, nominated this year and winner of five Academy Awards including Best Picture. For more information on previous winners visit OSCAR.COM.
While Titanic did not use sex to advertise it's rise to the top of the highest grossing film list, American Beauty did use sex in it's advertising. Did the use of sex in American Beauty's advertising sell the movie? Looking at the award for Best Movie, it seems like Hollywood thinks that way.
As mentioned above, Titanic is the highest grossing film
of all times.
TOP 25 MOVIES
Titanic was a love story and during the portrayal of the love between the two main characters, there was a love scene. This scene was not revealing in nature, but was it necessary? Titanic the love story probably would have made hugh sales even without the sex and nude art scene.
In 1999, American Pie was released. Teens and others flocked to see this movie about four sex crazed high school seniors attempting to have sex before graduation. Without the sexual advertising in the previews and posters for this movie, this movie would have most likely failed. Thus, people might not have flocked to see this movie.
Another film was released in 1999 and met with different results. It was a non sexual advertising movie called the Omega Code. It was about a secret code discovered in the Bible, and was used by evil forces to rule the world. It didn't sell to greatly with the general public, but did have some good results. For example, on opening weekend, Omega Code went up against The Fight Club starring Brad Pitt. Fight Club was number one overall, but Omega Code was number one in sales per screen. Fight Club also had about 2000 more screens, thus it made more money.
Top Gun is another movie that did not use sex to sell. It did have a sex scene in it, but could have gone with out. This adrenaline pumping movie made an estimated $177 million and could have been about two minutes shorter, had the sex scene been cut.
George Lucas's epic saga of the life and death of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker is another set of movies without the use of sex in order to sell. There are pokes at sex, such as Princess Leia's slave costume in Return of the Jedi, and kissing between the main characters. However, these four movies have been largely seen around the world, and account for over one billion dollars in ticket sales.
Who decides what is appropriate in films? The Motion Picture Association of America judges movies and rates them on a scale from any audience to only 17 years and above. There is also XXX ratings, but those are films that are shown in mainstream theaters.
