Sex seems to be a requirement for a movie to make it at the box 
office if it lacks a strong enough story. Incredibly enough, 
studios don’t seem to care much about how obvious the 
manipulative appeal of the element can be. Wedding Crashes begins 
with a frenzied introduction of the boys dancing like two enraged 
baboons in the middle of hundreds and jump cutting to them 
pushing naked girls onto the bed. Breasts are aplenty and every 
time, it gets a laugh out of the audience. 

Is there an easy way to get cheers than through violence or a 
sex? Probably not. The one film in recent years that kept its 
integrity and still had a solid entertainment and educative value 
was The Incredibles. Granted, it was an animation feature 
targeted towards kids and there wasn’t much room for any of the 
vices. Nevertheless, it proved once and for all that it is 
possible to make a great movie without having to use sex as a 
bouncing board.

Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill series focused mainly on violence, 
and not just any type of violence. Comic red heads flying off and 
blood pouring out as if it was out of a fountain of death kind of 
violence. It did great at the box office and in video stores but 
it wasn’t recognized for any awards. "The Academy tends to lean 
towards those films that make an effort to appeal to everyone in 
the family. While sex and violence are part of our stories, we 
want to make sure that they are not gratuitous. The academy 
wouldn’t have any problems with it, as long as it is truly 
necessary to the story," said Jim Friedman of Hollywood, CA, 
about the Oscars.

Crash and Machiavelli Hangman, although they don’t use sex or 
violence in excess, do nevertheless push the envelope when it 
comes to dialogue. "The characters are real and therefore they 
speak like real people and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with 
that. That’s why there’s a rating system. If it goes overboard 
then it’ll get an R rating, if it’s completely out there, it’ll 
get NC-17," says Cleveland Rogers of Miran Films, Inc; the 
studio that produced Machiavelli Hangman. 

When it comes to creating a sensual atmosphere in a scene, most 
often than not, less is more. For example, in Basic Instinct, 
Sharon Stone’s best scenes happened when she had some sort of 
clothing on as opposed to her nude scenes. The same should apply 
for the rest of the films that come out.

Midnight Cowboy was the first film to be rated X and win the 
Oscar for Best Picture. However, what was considered a X Rating 
in 1969 could barely be considered R today. With a couple of 
clips deleted, that film would fall under the PG-13 grouping. 

Jennifer De Rio is a full-time 
social sciences professor.
Machiavelli Hangman
http://www.hangmanmovie.com