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Don't forget the gratuities.
My three words for them.
Boners are awesome.
Sometimes egregiously so.
And then they had sex.
It's not gratuitous without whipped cream and strawberries.
Life is...PAIN!
But no, really, I have no idea what you mean but it sounds smart, so I'll say I agree to appear wise.
G. Gordon Liddy coined the term "obligatory sex scenes" back in the 70's and National Lampoon promptly jumped on the remark by publishing about 30 or so "obligatory sex scenes" for well-known works including The Song of Hiawatha, Winnie-the-Pooh and the Oxford English Dictionary.
1571830 Okay, more words.
Calling a sex scene, or any scene in a story, "gratuitous", means (mostly) that it isn't needed. But what's "needed" in a story?
If the story has a purpose and a scene doesn't contribute to that purpose, it's gratuitous. If the scene feels like it doesn't belong with the rest of the story, it's gratuitous.
But very few people complain about anything other than sex scenes being gratuitous. Suppose there is a story in which the zebrican ambassador explains her objections to a proposed trading arrangement with Equestria, and someone feels like the trade agreement is a distraction from the story. They won't call it "gratuitous". They'll say "You could cut this" or something less judgemental.
The word "gratuitous" in "gratuitous sex scene" doesn't mean "gratuitous". It means "You got chocolate in my peanut butter, and I don't like chocolate." It means sex scenes are supposed to justify their existence by connecting tightly with the story and advancing the plot.
But we aren't as strict about this with other kinds of scenes. An author might put in a funny or contemplative scene that doesn't advance the action at all, but just changes the pace. An author might add humor to a story that isn't a comedy, and we don't call the humor gratuitous. The humor is a spice added to the story that makes it tastier.
The phrase "gratuitous sex scene", then, really means that sex scenes have no merit in themselves, and should be used only when sex is an action essential to the story. It is the claim that erotic fiction is worthless unless it's in support of something with more merit.
So what has merit? If somebody can write a sex scene that really turns you on, and that's not good enough or grand enough to constitute story, that means every sentence of the story should be about something more meaningful and interesting and stimulating than sex. And that's impossible, because there are very few things more meaningful, interesting, & stimulating than sex. If a person of the appropriate gender whom you were attracted to and comfortable with said to you, "I know we were going to do X, but can we have sex instead?", your story can only be about X such that your answer would be "No, I want to do X."
By "Life is gratuitous" I meant that there are no inherently meaningful, noble, worthy, sacred things in the world that we should write about instead of mundane, profane things like sex.
1571830
Better?
Edit: Had a bit of bad timing here. Bad Horse responded a couple minutes before I did, so this isn't really helpful at all now. If it was helpful in the first place. Meh.
1571889
I see what you mean, and that makes a lot of sense. Nothing else to say besides that I agree wholeheartedly.
1571892
Hey, that helped too.
Some of my favorite things are gratuitous!
Like Pinkie Pie!
I would strongly disagree that life is gratuitous, but then, I'm about as uncynical as people get about things like that. I suppose that's a flaw, though whose I can't say
I'd also disagree that sex can't be gratuitous in a story. For example, here's a one-paragraph tale that's got gratuitous sex in it:
Stories of a slightly longer and more detailed sort tend not to be quite so blatant in their gratuity, but the basic issues the same (and can apply to a lot more than just sex, obviously): when the author adds something to the story which doesn't fit thematically, doesn't advance the plot, doesn't add any meaningful amount of characterization, and basically serves no obvious in-story role, that thing is gratuitous. And as a (very) general rule, I don't like gratuity.
1572026
*Cough* Anyways, as seen in his follow-up statement above, Everything I have to say about "Gratuitous" sex scenes elaborated upon in 418 words, Bad Horse's picking bone isn't that stories can contain unnecessary and purposeless sections. 'Gratuitous sex scene' is a frequent complaint often used by readers who simply don't like sex scenes, and the use of the phrase implies that sex (scenes) in general are gratuitous.
1571889
See, this is better. It's just no good having a post about gratuitousness that isn't very gratuitous
.
I agree that life is gratuitous, not so sure that this justifies stories being gratuitous. I think at the minimum an overall theme / intent for the story is needed, and if the sex, or comedy, or etc, fits with that theme and isn't so voluminous as to displace the main story, then great. If it actively disrupts that, then bad.
I'd like to mention, because no one else has yet, that many of the sex scenes that seem gratuitous are just bad -- just badly written, like 'I copypasted some porn in my story, so you guys would give it more thumbs up and favs, :P'.. especially if the rest of the story has thought put into it, it's no better than just writing "LOL dicks LOL" every 1000 words. it's just disappointing and laughable, dragging the whole story down.
If you put sex, or comedy, or whatever in your story, it should have the same level of quality and flavour that you put into the rest; it needs to be written seriously, even if it isn't serious in tone.
1572026 No; the part about eating is gratuitous, because it's more boring than the part about having sex.
What you're saying would be right, if people used the word "gratuitous" that way in practice. But they don't. If you have an opening chapter showing Spike waking up and getting ready for the annual toad-jumping contest, that chapter is probably "gratuitous", but no one would use that word for it. In many stories, the entire story is gratuitous, because it doesn't amount to anything. And everything is gratuitous in the end--there is no great truth which must be communicated in a story.
1572104
Well then... maybe I should read all the comments rather than just responding to the post itself.
1572336
I think there are lots of great truths, and even more small ones, that we all need to be reminded of from time to time, and that any story worth its salt will do exactly that--explicitly or not. For example, every story I've read of yours has done exactly that for me, even if such wasn't your intention (take that how you will, but I mean it in a complementary way).
Anyway, I read your other comment, and I see now that you're taking issue with people using "gratuitous" inconsistently, which wasn't what I got out of the post proper. I think we can both agree that it's annoying when people try to use language as a battering ram to justify or enforce their preconceptions.
You weren't reading this year's Bad Sex Awards when this crossed your mind, were you?
OK, I was wrong, it wasn't G. Gordon Liddy. It apparently was Spiro Agnew, William F. Buckley, and John Lindsay (in the conservatory with a lead pipe).
"Clearly, these writers, all men of the world, have seen fit to trim the sails of their creative integrity to the prevailing winds of marketing considerations, motivated not by greed but rather by the desire for their significant and redemptive fictions to reach a wider audience than your ponderous and semiliterate political potboiler usually does."
A partial reprint of the 1976 article may be found at...oh, fudge, I can't even link to NSFW material now, can I? Well, in that case, set your Intertubes for...
http://adversative.blogspot.com/2005/06/obligatory-sex-scenes.html
...and good luck.
Do you have a more correct word to use?
I personally use gratuitous because "stupid fucking horseporn" is less tactful.
1571889
I indeed do use the term, and have for some things - for instance, the changeling fight scene in ACW and the fight between Celestia and Nightmare Moon in PTS are both gratuitous fight scenes because in the former case it is a shaggy dog story and in the latter case it is never tied into the actual plot - the true purpose of the latter fight scene, for instance, is to establish that the Tree of Harmony is under the ruined palace in the Everfree Forest. Too bad the episode neither mentions this nor shows it, when it obviously could (and should!) have done so.
Indeed, gratuitous violence is often noted - it is the actual example in at least one dictionary.
I think the reason that these two things are noted as gratuitous when others are not noted as being gratuitous quite as often is because gratuitous does not mean merely "something which can be cut", but really something which was stuck in for no reason apart from prurient/mass appeal (or an attempt thereof). There is a context to the word "gratuitous" which is much more along the lines of "unjustified" than "unnecessary", even though both are (sort of) synonyms. A scene with a zebrecian ambassador or a random day at the market might be unnecessary, but it isn't gratuitous; generally speaking, said scenes were inserted for a reason to the author, but end up not actually contributing to the story. Random fight scenes or sex scenes, conversely, tend to be consciously added by the author for no reason other than to add said sex or violence to a story which otherwise does not require them.
This is not to say that other scenes cannot be gratuitous, simply that they are much less likely to be so. If, for instance, zebras were presently super popular, then that meeting with the zebrecian ambassador might actually be gratuitous - it was included merely to say "Hey look, Zebras!" An example of this in another medium was gratuitous appearances by Wolverine - a Deadpool cover even lampshaded it, possibly even calling it exactly that.
Sex is not unfairly singled out - the truth is that sex scenes are very frequently gratuitous because they don't actually advance the story. There are stories which can be advanced by sex scenes - A Game of Thrones (the books, not the TV series) has several sex scenes and near-sex scenes, but they aren't intended to arouse the reader. The sex scenes exist to characterize the characters - the various sex scenes show what kind of people they are, as well as add to the generally depraved ambience of the world - the sex is mostly pretty horrible or horrifying, or at the very least messed up, and the least messed up sex scenes are between a 14 year old and a barbarian king who she was forced to marry, and a dwarf and a prostitute he cares for far more than he should. There are rapes and other horrible things, and the inclusion of sex in the story is deliberate - it is meant to illustrate things about the characters and the world, and because of the presence of the sex, the story gains a fucked-up feeling to it, like the world is terrible and messed up and complicated.
Other stories sometimes include sex scenes as climaxes, and that can work out okay and not feel horribly out of place. Other stories include it for similar purposes to a Song of Ice and Fire, but use it differently - The Glass Dragon has a sex scene in it which is meant to represent the close bonds between the three protagonists, and the fact that there are no longer any barriers between them.
Most stories don't need sex scenes, though, and don't really benefit from them structurally.
This is simply false. Sex isn't actually that interesting, mostly - it is mostly about stimulation, physical pleasure, like eating something really delicious, or listening to good music, or whatever else. Moreover, it is a fairly specific type of such.
There is no inherent meaning to sex, though, and it is a fairly common thing in the world.
But if sex was so amazing and important people would bang far, far more often than they actually do in real life - people have sex fairly frequently, but not nearly as often as they do many other things. If sex was truly so amazing, people would spend a lot more time banging and a lot less time browsing the internet or watching television or playing games or doing any number of other things. Indeed, as people get older, they have sex less and less, even though in many cases they are still just as capable of the act. It isn't merely because of lack of availability either - many married couples have a long-term decline in sex in their relationship just because it becomes less important to them than other things which they enjoy more.
As an emotional climax sex can indeed be important, but other things work just as well, if not better. Sex in a story may represent the achievement of something, but if it doesn't, then it just is two people boning - and really, the actual description of the act is frequently unnecessary, and it is very possible to achieve the same purpose without showing anything and leaving it to the imagination (which, in people with good imaginations, is far hotter than what you're going to write anyway, most likely).
Sex is very low on the hierarchy of needs and, indeed, doesn't really give much fulfillment - sex is an action, and the pleasure from it is relatively fleeting, while the warm fuzzies you get from having a significant other or a friend or similar is far more lasting. But even those things aren't as important as self-actualization.
So, yeah. If a sex scene is just about getting me off, then meh. If a sex scene is about me feeling warm and fuzzy about the people who are banging, that's more interesting to me. But honestly a story about getting two ponies to kiss is actually more interesting to me than a story about getting two ponies to bang because the real thing I guess I'm looking for in a story like that is emotional intimacy, and mere sex isn't that.
If someone says your sex scenes are gratuitous, it may very well mean that they're aiming for something higher on the hierarchy of needs. And let's face it - it is hardly difficult to find pornography on the internet. Why should they particularly care about yours when reading a story which they aren't reading for the purpose of wanking?
But seriously:
I agree completely that that's the reasoning behind a good deal of such criticism. Though I haven't seen the word "gratuitous" much used outside of old white conservative Christian circles, and the kind of people who...wanted to be academic feminists but could only audit the introductory course. For two weeks. And then had to quit because the bus schedules changed and they couldn't get home from the community college until after 11:00. Postmodern prudery is generally a much, much smoother article than the old-fashioned kind.
And then again sometimes a sex scene is, in fact, gratuitous. The criticism implicit in "Obligatory Sex Scenes" (published by those notorious prudes at National Lampoon in the notoriously pruderiffic 70's) is still valid: sticking in a sex scene is a great way for mediocre talent to attract attention to dull and uninspired work.
I mean, can you imagine any other reason why someone would want to read a novel by Spiro Agnew?
(Agnew? Oh. Uh, he was a politician famous for, among other things, giving fabulously dull speeches. Like Al Gore only more corrupt and less fat).
I certainly have to disagree with you there: people complain about gratuitous violence, and they complain about it a lot (there's this new game called Grand Theft Auto... ). And very often they do so with the same duplicity of purpose that features in the complaints about "gratuitous sex scenes."
But dishonest people would not be able to exploit the concept of "gratuitousness", if the bar for acceptable sexual and violent speech were not in fact set rather higher in our society than it is for other forms of speech. And I tend to think that's not so much a bug as a feature.
Because look: In part it's rational-- violence and, as you point out, sex, are profoundly consequential acts and we should--ideally-- always be thinking of purpose and reason when we discuss them. And in part it's because different people have different levels of comfort with these subjects: you shouldn't have to walk on eggshells but you have to recognize that what you may find acceptable, innocent, even virtuous, may really bother another person.
I'm not saying such writing should be censored--even if it is prurient (though I realize a lot of non-Americans would disagree with me there. Tough). I'm not saying you should even self-censor: write what you want, write it boldly and if you do in fact err through gratuitousness--well, who said all experiments, endeavors and enterprises need be wholly successful? Life, to me at least, is experimentation. And authors have the right (by God) to say and create as they please, even if they offend. Even if they fail.
But understand that not everyone will love you for it. No, not even all the good people.
Because every so often, with the best will, the highest motives, the most innocent intent, you will write something so clean and true and perfect that it seems to sing itself right off the page, and your dear lovely golden child will toddle off and proceed to punch some random stranger right in the nutsack of bad memories.
And they will say, with perfect reason, OUCH GOD DAMMIT I DO NOT LIKE WHAT YOUR SPAWN JUST DID TO ME.
And you know what? You will both just have to accept this. You will have to accept that writing boldly will offend some people, and your reader will have to accept that reading boldly will result in the occasional nutpunch.
This is the understanding that ethical and literate adults must reach in a free society.
Mind, it does not preclude you from being sorry that you hurt someone's feeling, and in fact some authors have been known to alter their writing based on the hurt feeling of someone they valued. Charles Dickens did this in David Copperfield with Miss Mowcher, the dwarf. She was just going to be a stock villain but his wife's chiropodist, a woman who was also a dwarf, was following the series and felt wounded by the way the character was portrayed. Dickens responded by changing the character by way of a "reveal" , and in the end she becomes one of the most fascinating and likeable characters in all of Dickens, which is saying a lot.
And now I have gone on too long so I shall stop here and I'm sorry about the Dunsany I can kinda see why it bugs you and I don't plan on doing it again
1572479 I did not know about the bad sex awards. The winners & runners-up they quoted... sound better than most sex scenes I've read.
1572867 I think the reason that these two things are noted as gratuitous when others are not noted as being gratuitous quite as often is because gratuitous does not mean merely "something which can be cut", but really something which was stuck in for no reason apart from prurient/mass appeal (or an attempt thereof)... Random fight scenes or sex scenes, conversely, tend to be consciously added by the author for no reason other than to add said sex or violence to a story which otherwise does not require them.
Yes, and that's what I'm complaining about. The idea that everything else in a story has some higher justification than "prurient/mass appeal". The idea that making someone sad or excited is inherently nobler than making them horny.
Stories are made up of pieces of life, & sex is a big & important piece.
>There is no inherent meaning to sex, though, and it is a fairly common thing in the world.
Right; but I could say the same about everything that a story can be about. There is no such thing as "inherent meaning". Attacking sex scenes as lacking meaning is just a covert attempt to say that the equally-pointless things we pursue do have "meaning", whatever that is.
1572417 I think there are lots of great truths, and even more small ones, that we all need to be reminded of from time to time, and that any story worth its salt will do exactly that--explicitly or not. For example, every story I've read of yours has done exactly that for me, even if such wasn't your intention (take that how you will, but I mean it in a complementary way).
I take that as a great compliment. I'm thrilled to hear it from you. I said that life is gratuitous half out of despair, because the more I try to grasp meaning with words, and in the actions of my life, the less-solid it becomes. Meaning is relative. What has meaning to me doesn't have meaning to others, and vice-versa. I know someone for whom motorcycle racing is one of the most meaningful things in life. I can't claim that anything I do is more meaningful. The things I thought were meaningful years ago seem more like entertainment now, and entertainment seems more meaningful. The only possible contender for the title of "meaningful activity" is love and having a family, but I know too much about how these things work theoretically, mechanistically, & molecularly to be able to use them as magical mystery meaning-stuff.
1572871 Thinking about "gratuitous violence" casts some light. Men naturally enjoy violence and being violent. In a "state of nature", it's to a man's advantage to be good at violence. So we have instincts to enjoy it, and we enjoy acting it out in games or in literature. Like sex, it's an activity that has benefits to the genes but can have a high cost to society, so instinct (rules enforced by the genes) tells us to do it more, and society tells us to do it less. The label of "gratuitous" expresses social mores.
So I guess I object to sneaking morality into literary arguments disguised as literary theory.
>I'm sorry about the Dunsany I can kinda see why it bugs you and I don't plan on doing it again
Don't let me ruin Dunsany for you!
They are mostly sex scenes, but I think the phrase can be boiled down farther to "Gratuitous X Scenes." Some directors are (in)famous for having a scene in the middle of the movie with something in it that has absolutely *nothing* to do with the story, does not progress the plot, does not describe the characters, or even look pretty. I used to refer to them as the "Obligatory bedroom scene" or the "Because I have final cut in the contract scenes."
I'm normally a pretty flexible movie watcher. I can watch really badly made movies strictly for the entertainment value. I *liked* Waterworld. But the most what-in-the-hell movie scenes I've ever watched were in Starship Troopers. Giant bugs, automatic weapons, lots of guts, something you can actually take the kids to go see. Had a relative once rent the movie for the kiddies to watch while the adults were talking during the family reunion. It's sitting there playing away, and I walk over and ask her, "Has it gotten to the naked co-ed shower scene, or the part where there's a nookie scene in the middle of the battle yet?" She moved like a gazelle, cleared the table in one leap and had the eject button on the VCR mashed right down to the bottom before I could blink twice. I love my family.
Not much to contribute, but the comments section of this blog is the best reading I've done in a month.
1572479
Oh lord those excerpts are hilarious. Though I thought the "winner" was actually the least cringeworthy of the eight.
1574377
> "Has it gotten to the naked co-ed shower scene …"
Now see, I would argue that's approximately the least gratuitous scene in that movie. There are naked men and women taking showers together, and there is a very specific point to its inclusion, which is that there is no inherent sexual content to it.
It's sister to the rape scene in A Clockwork Orange — both are on the far end of the scale from gratuitous, for opposing yet similar reasons. ACO's scene was graphic sex, but it was integral to the characterization of the protagonist and drives forward the plot of the rest of the movie. It was explicitly sexual, and implicitly revolting, challenging our expectation of onscreen sex as prurient. In ST, we saw nudity which contributed nothing to the plot nor offered any insight on any individual character. But that nudity was treated with total indifference by everyone in the scene. It had no sexual meaning beyond that which the viewer themselves added via expectation. That not only told us volumes about the setting in which the story took place (in stark contrast with the modern military and its many sexual misconduct scandals), but implicitly challenges the expectation we took into the film of nudity being sexual.
1573123
> I said that life is gratuitous half out of despair, because the more I try to grasp meaning with words, and in the actions of my life, the less-solid it becomes.
Be careful staring into that abyss, man.
I do not believe there is a universal model of meaning, but I do believe that there are ways to find meaning which result in more utility for more people (even those for whom the model does not fit). I'm reminded of this, for reasons I'm hard-pressed to be specific about but it intuitively seems similar by analogy.
1572336
See, I take this stance, but then I ask myself: If there is no great truth to be communicated, that means we can put things where "great truth" was supposed to be. We can make great truths, like when Roger Ebert said his religion was kindness, or that Buddha said life is suffering and we should try to make it less filled with suffering.
Maybe it's just my science fiction background talking here, but we write things, and then make them real in some way. We create fictions that inspire realities. Artificial sweeteners, moon landings, instant communication, watching a movie in your home, cooking in your home (instead of a communal oven) -- all these things were imaginary once and became real over time because people imagined them first.
We are as gods, and we might as well get good at it.
Regarding sexuality in specific: I got a few comments about the first chapter of Sonatina that said Octavia's masturbation scene was gratuitous. I disagree entirely, because it sets up that she's a hypocrite as well as sets the tone for her later issues (i.e., masturbation is how she gets to sleep). She gets a taste of sadism and suddenly nothing else will do for her. The folks who read the rest of the story seemed to get it, and overall it's been one of my better received pieces.
In The Apple's Ransom, I knew that fade-to-black was a convention of noir films and decided that was a better solution than going explicit. Even in the noir stories I've read, frequently they get lurid and then cut off, and I knew that was going to be the better path for the tone of the story. It's not really about nice people doing nice things to each other, or even nice people doing hot things to each other. It's about the kidnapping, and sex would have dragged the focus away. (Twilight is still quite a ladies' mare, but that is also a convention of noir, and I felt it was appropriate.)
1575719 One of the purposes of a movie is to carry you off to a magic land where you say, "Yeah, that's possible. I can see how that would work." (Suspension of Disbelief, or SD) Alien race attacks earth, spaceships full of soldiers fighting back *without* armor... Um. Ok, got knocked out of that SD thing, oh look, they have guns. Much better. Basic training. Co-ed, ok, that's possible. Co-ed showers without any grabass. WTF? Ok, knocked out of my SD mode again. Reset. Redo from start. SD starting back up, lots of guns and exploding bugs, cool. And a nookie scene. SD gone. Poof. To be honest, the cartoon version was so much better than the movie that I tend to blot it out. At least I didn't see the sequels, or I would be scarred for life.
1575997
I am willing to grant for purposes of debate that the shower scene is a bad scene (though I personally don't feel that way; clumsy as it might be, it's literally the only movie I've heard of that's been daring enough to assert a sci-fi future with co-ed showers, much less a sexual-harassment-free one, and that's worth something). If it's snapping your suspension of disbelief, it is failing on some level.
But I think that's orthogonal to my point, which is that it wants to tell us something compelling, and that it was a conscious choice of the filmmaker to include it to make a point, rather than as a mere ploy to grab eyeballs. It's not gratuitous in the sense described in this thread.
There's a cartoon version of Starship Troopers?
1575978 That's Nietzsche's view, and sorta compatible with mine on a meta level, but incompatible in that Nietzsche sees no restrictions at all on the "truths" you might create--slavery and suffering seem to be okay with him.
1576425
I've never been a fan of the dog-eat-dog nature of the beliefs Nietzche seemed to ascribe to an ultimate human. However, I don't think anything's as cut-and-dried as people like to think it is. I think there are an infinity of ways to Do Good, in the superhero sense, just as there are an infinity of ways to Do Evil. (Mother Night was particularly poignant for me on that last part, because of the itchy question I felt it posed: What evil is one willing to commit in the service of good?)
Personally, I try to help people and otherwise leave them alone. I don't see it as my place to infringe upon others, but if they're in obvious distress then I help, partly because I think it encourages them to do the same, and partly because I want to see less suffering in the world.
I don't think excelling at something, or even competing, has to mean stepping on the heads of others. I think it requires being willing to give of yourself, in body or time or mind, towards an end -- and being capable of that goal in the first place.
1574377 That was a great book, too.
Seriously, check it out, it's only about 90k words, and a really quick read. There's also no sex in the book at all. (except when he says that girls are wonderful in the abstract)
1573844
Which is now everything I have to say about the subject of gratuitousness. I learned something today.
1576336 Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles, much closer to the book than the movie. (suppresses snarky comment) Google an episode or two on Youtube. The CGI for that point in time isn't bad.
1576839 I wore the cover off that one growing up, as well as The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and various Anne McCaffrey books (which did have the occasional fade-to-black nookie scene, but they related to the plot.)