• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, November 10, 2021

A sex scene about five minutes into the first episode of the new Showtime drama “Yellowjackets” has me wondering if the actors and the actresses in scenes like this ever feel exploited.

The scene is certainly not graphic in the manner of pornography, but there is little doubt about what this couple -- one male, one female -- are doing under the covers.

The characters are high school teens. The show is about a girls’ soccer team on their way to a national tournament whose plane crashes in a remote area, leaving them struggling for survival.

The people who made this show and felt this particular sex scene was necessary would no doubt defend it as one of many scenes that “develop” these characters and help us to understand their subsequent behaviors and motivations.

But I often think there must be some other means of developing characters than to ask an actor and actress to simulate a sex act. 

I realize that professional actors are trained to do what they are told and act as directed. But in this particular instance, the scene seems gratuitous.

A few minutes later, a woman is seen engaged in her own solo sex act, which was likely staged to help us understand how lonely and neglected she feels. The point is taken, but again, it feels worth asking: Was this really necessary?

These scenes in which an actor and two actresses were asked to act in this way reminded me of a nude scene I saw in another series recently that had nothing to do with plot or character development and therefore came across as completely gratuitous.

The series, streaming on Hulu, was “Only Murders In the Building” starring Steve Martin, Martin Short, Selena Gomez and Amy Ryan as residents of a New York City apartment building who undertake an amateur investigation of a possible murder.

Steve Martin is credited as one of the show’s two co-creators. He is also listed as a writer and producer.

For some reason, in Episode One, Gomez, 29, was seen nude in the act of taking a shower. This seemed to serve no discernible purpose whatsoever. 

It was not as if she was being threatened in this vulnerable location like Janet Leigh in “Psycho.” Instead, Gomez was just showering. Why she was asked to appear nude in this shower remains a mystery.

We live in a world where a whole host of behaviors that were once unfortunately commonplace are being rethought and discarded.

One of them would be the exploitation of women, particularly young women. Hollywood luminaries often air their support of these efforts, most notably in speeches delivered at high-profile, televised awards shows.

And yet, the industry in which they work often sends a very different message.