Why sex sells

Friends thought I used the word voyeuristic too often here, but anyway:


The reason for the constantly escalating depiction in the media of sexually related material goes beyond artistic intentions, or a desire to thrill the audience. The audience itself finds pleasure in just looking at the human form in a sexual context. This trend is called scopophilia, or the pleasure of looking at sexually explicit material. For example, children have voyeuristic tendencies, which makes them want to look at the private regions of other individuals, mostly because of inherent curiosity about the genitalia. This voyeuristic tendency, in adults, escalates into a pleasure to perceive an individual as a sex object. When this escalation goes on unchecked, it produces extreme cases of perversion, where obsessive peeping toms who get sexual satisfaction by watching an objectified form of other individuals. However, this pleasure, exists to some extent in all individuals, and there exists a primal need to watch people performing sex-related activities. The media portrays such voyeuristic fantasies, under the broad umbrella of entertainment. Almost always, the viewer is separated from the actual activity. Whether sex is portrayed in cinema, movie clips, or even in print, the viewer is considerably separated from the subjects, and the media gives the same pleasure that voyeurs aim to obtain.
There also exists a contradictory theory explaining the phenomenon of widespread sex in media. The media can develop the inherent scopophilia into a narcissist bearing for the human psyche, whereby one not only looks at the portrayal as a voyeur, but gets drawn into the context, and plays out a fantasy, and satisfies one’s self-image. It seems that the first model is true amongst the younger generation, who are not as emotionally developed, and their curiosity is therefore restricted to voyeuristic portrayals. But the same material, when viewed by an older individual with developed emotions, the pleasure is acquired from fantasizing, relating to the portrayal, and satisfying one’s ego. Either way, the conclusion is that sex sells, and that sex is depicted so widely in the media is that people want to watch it, however little they might be inclined to accept this because of social reasons.