Are The Oscars Afraid Of Gay Sex?

Normally, I always aim not to instantly view films through an awards lens when first seeing them. However, given how it was an Oscar contender, when I first saw Luca Guadagnino’s acclaimed period romance, Queer, I couldn’t help but analyze its awards prospects as I was watching it. Deeply affected by the two central performances and the technical elements as I was, I still left the screening with a lingering fear that it would have a rough road despite lead actor Daniel Craig having a legitimate chance at making the Best Actor lineup. 

While the film’s mixed-to-positive reception and disappointing box office returns were surely big hurdles along with it getting lost in distributor A24’s packed slate, I still feared that even Craig would get left out, which became an unfortunate reality, because it’s a movie about two queer men in love that actually shows the sex. 

One of the various discourses being thrown around this Oscar season is whether or not the Oscars have a sex problem. Given how Anora, a screwball comedy about a sex worker, is a top contender for Best Picture, that might not entirely be the case. I say not entirely because Queer being blanked fits a pattern of the Academy recognizing stories featuring queer people (especially queer men) as long as the act of sex is only suggested or if it’s shown as briefly as possible like the blink–and-you’ll-miss-it gay orgy scene in The Apprentice, which garnered two Oscar nominations.

We saw a similar pattern play out last season. Although Poor Things, which was surely a runner-up for Best Picture, featured a moment of physical intimacy between Bella (Emma Stone) and her companion Toinette (Suzy Bemba), it’s still briefer than all the prolonged graphic hetero sex shown in the rest of the movie. Furthermore, it was telling that Maestro, which garnered criticism for scratching the surface of Leonard Bernstein’s queerness, garnered seven nominations while Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers which is more explicitly queer in terms of themes and sexual content got goose-egged on Nomination Day. 

When Luca Guadagnino’s previous erotic masterpiece Call Me By Your Name was released, it did amass four Oscar nominations and garnered James Ivory an overdue win for Best Adapted Screenplay. Yet, during its pivotal sex scene between Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer), the camera controversially pans away to the bedroom window as the act takes place. Meanwhile, the French drama BPM (Beats per Minute), which came out the same year and is more explicit, failed to make the Best International Feature shortlist despite garnering immense critical acclaim, including the coveted Grand Prix prize at the Cannes Film Festival. 

Now, this isn’t to suggest that a film needs a sex scene to be queer-themed. It doesn’t always need a moment as heated as Paul Mescal licking Andrew Scott’s body fluids in All of Us Strangers for us to know that it’s about queer people. This is more about hoping that the shut-out of films like Queer and All of Us Strangers isn’t the Academy’s way of showing they’re more uneasy by the sight of a quick c*m-licking than all the violence in a Martin Scorsese crime drama, saying, “We’re fine with queer movies. Just as long as they’re not TOO queer.” Then again, one could argue the infamous Best Picture loss of Brokeback Mountain is proof enough of that theory.

After Moonlight made history as the first LGBTQ+ film to win Best Picture, one can only hope for the Academy to continue evolving and moving us further from the days of the bleak Brokeback Mountain loss, seeing queer-centric stories through a less narrow lens. 

The same should especially apply to the overall industry. Case in point: The Motion Picture Association (MPA).

For instance, when the Amazon rom-com Red, White & Royal Blue was submitted to the MPA, it was slapped with an R-rating despite being rather PG-13 in terms of its sex content. While its now-infamous male-on-male sex scene was a rare graphic moment in the entire film, Passages, which was released the same month, was still hit with a controversial NC-17 rating, resulting in director/writer Ira Sachs and distributor MUBI deeming it “a form of cultural censorship.” 

Consequently, the film was released unrated during its theatrical run, joining an ongoing list of similarly erotic gay dramas that have gone the same route such as not just BPM (Beats per Minute) but God’s Own Country, Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, Femme, Keep the Lights On, and the sex worker odyssey Sebastian which hits UK theatres in April. Films that haven’t gotten the same kind of mainstream exposure as even an A24 or Searchlight Pictures title due to having smaller indie distribution despite garnering strong critical acclaim. 

This is what made the release of the Oscar-winning biopic Rocketman feel monumental as it’s the first film made by a major studio to feature a gay male sex scene. Similarly, while it didn’t yield strong financial results, it’s laudable that Universal still took a chance on giving Bros, an uninhibited depiction of gay sexuality, a theatrical release while the studio rom-com genre remains in limbo. 

Since it still took years for Rocketman to make history and speciality titles like Queer don’t always have the luxury of being as unrestrained, conversations regarding what kind of stories get funded, acquired and recognized or what gets shown in them aren’t just limited to the Oscars. Because the Oscars are as much a reflection of the industry as they are about recognizing cinematic excellence, that’s why people ask questions like whether they have the same issue with sex that general society seems to whenever nominations are unveiled. But in the end, between rating systems, streaming services, and airlines aiming to censor queer sex as much as possible, may we not just limit this conversation to the last few months of the year.