There’s Sex in Hollywood.

Seems like a fairly obvious statement, but no more so than the one that came out of a study by three researchers at Sydney University in Australia. Did you know that Hollywood films fail to show the consequences of unsafe sex and drugs/alcohol abuse? Shocking! Appalling! Surprising?

In their study of the top 200 post-1983 films, these brilliant geniuses, who no doubt spent good grant money to uncover this shocking truth, found that none of the movies promoted safe sex and only one referenced condoms. Of the 87 films that met their inclusion criteria, there were a total of 53 sexual episodes, 98% of which included no use or mention of birth control. None of them alluded to the possibility of disease transmission, or the concern of unwanted pregnancies. On the alcohol and tobacco front, 68% contained cigarette smokers, 32% got tipsy, and 15% took non-injectable drugs. The researchers say that these situations tended to be portrayed as positive, and without negative consequences.

The team’s main concern seemed to be a lack of acknowledgment of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and
the masking effect that Hollywood’s blind eye might have on a wider audience. Says Dr. Hasantha Gunasekera, the “movie industry influences the perception of billions of people around the world. With globalisation and the growth of home-based media technologies, movies are more accessible to a wider audience and there is convincing evidence that the entertainment media influences behaviour.”

The doctors, in other words, want Hollywood filmmakers to reflect the real consequences of unsafe sex and illicit drug use in their work. And tomorrow, pigs shall fly.