To those who do not know, Sexposition is a technique used to provide exposition on screen against the backdrop of sexual activity or nudity. The term came into prominence after an (in)famous scene in ‘Game of Thrones’ (GOT) where the character of Petyr Baelish (portrayed by Aiden Gillen) explains his childhood and motivations while he watched two prostitutes engage in sexual activity.
Game of Thrones has been one of the few shows to use this technique frequently with relative success and less backlash. Plus sex on-screen has always attracted people to the screen, though it is particularly catered to the heterosexual male audience. But recent times have shown “progress” and it has become a filming technique employed among shows in recent years, particularly in the fantasy genre. Shows like ‘Westworld’, ‘Vikings’ and ‘Watchmen’ have followed the footsteps of GOT and tried out various types of sexposition with varying degrees of success.
$250 million have been spent by Amazon to acquire the rights for The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) television series. An additional $1 billion is going to be spent for the development of five seasons, for the series. So besides what many netizens or twitterati may say, “pointless sex-scenes or nudity” is going to be… well, pointless (excuse the pun). Sexposition would be one of the “acceptable” ways to introduce it in the LOTR series (which is debatable).
Sure the OTT giant will be doing all it can to create a massive fan following for the series; hopefully (for them) around the size of GOT and nudity is a way to garner attention from the viewers. But LOTR and Tolkien have both stayed away from nudity and sex for a reason, and it has worked really well for both so far. ‘Lord of the Rings’ is a pure fantasy genre, which is rich with numerous cultures, beings and stories, so the addition of sexposition would be both an insult to the late author’s brilliance and a shattering of an innocence within the LOTR world (of sorts).