In the film industry, unsimulated sex is the presentation of sex scenes in which actors genuinely perform the depicted sex acts , rather than simulating them. Although it is ubiquitous in films intended as pornographic , it is very uncommon in other films. In the s, social attitudes about sex began to shift, and sexually explicit films were decriminalized in many countries.
With movies such as Blue Movie by Andy Warhol , mainstream movies began pushing the boundaries of what was presented on screen. From the end of the s until the late s it was rare to see hardcore scenes in mainstream cinema, but this changed with the success of Lars von Trier 's The Idiots , which heralded a wave of art-house films with explicit content, [ 7 ] [ 8 ] such as Romance , Baise-moi , Intimacy , Vincent Gallo 's The Brown Bunny , and Michael Winterbottom 's 9 Songs Some simulated sex scenes are sufficiently realistic that critics mistakenly believe they are real, such as the cunnilingus scene in the film Red Road.
Although it is common to discuss films for which the actors had sex on set using terms such as "real sex" or "unsimulated sex", [ 10 ] some film scholars prefer to speak of "visible sex", "explicit sex", or "hard-core sex". Linda Williams, for instance, proposes that "we eliminate the awkward term 'unsimulated sex' entirely".
In both cases, the actors performed sex acts on set, but they were visible only in the hardcore version. Moreover, there has been a huge blurring of the distinctions between the use of prostheses in Trouble Every Day , Blue is the Warmest Colour , Battle in Heaven , Holiday , actual genital contact between actors Intimacy , Baise-moi , The Brown Bunny , 9 Songs and genitals added in post-production Irreversible.
The idea of simulation also relates to questions about acting, unnecessarily denigrating pornography, and is too vague about what is being simulated. For instance, while an actor's penis may enter an actress's vagina on a porn set, this does not mean that each of their actions, emotions, noises, and so on, are not performed quite differently than they would be in the privacy of their own home: "it is both realβsomething that actually happens between peopleβand a fake, staged for the camera and sound equipment.
