In the old days society seemed to survive without endless depictions of bogus, badly presented sex in every movie or play.  Things were more subtle. You were given the hint, and that hint was sufficient to get across the idea that the couple on the screen would be having sex, but off-screen. It was left to the imagination, arguably more fun and, I would argue, more titillating (not that I need it personally!) Nowadays you cannot watch a Netflix movie without a sex scene, each instance very similar to the last, begging the question,”That looks very awkward.  Can  one really do that in real life and enjoy it?”

It seems that the market for sex scenes is so big that studios are employing “intimacy coordinators”.  These people try to assuage the anxiety of young female actors, who are naturally worried that images of them topless, and pretending to indulge in oral sex, will be there on the internet for the rest of their lives.  Intimacy coordinators have arrived owing to heightened Me-too concerns about consent, harassment and sexual assault, and to deal with the vulnerability of actors in the face of the market for ever more  explicit sex scenes.  It has to be said that some actors will do anything they are told to attract viewers and to make more money, but these must be in the minority.

The sad fact is that huge numbers of young American men have no girlfriends and are having no sex.  Is there a link here with the numbers of movies being produced with sex, if not porn, used by young men to substitute for tender, loving relationships?

There is no evidence about the marital status of Epicurus, but since he believed that pleasure was a major objective  in life, one assumes that he would look askance at the plethora of sex scenes in movies, with or without intimacy coordinators.  He would advocate loving marriage. (genders irrelevant), single-minded devotion, and a dedication to making one another truly happy.  There is little in the world more wonderful and exhilarating than that, if you can achieve it.