Hey back in the day, they knew it wasn't just enough to slap up all of their teen on a d v D. The people demanded more. They wanted to hear Ron Howard and Tom Hanks talking over the movie about how craft services was that day. Well that's us, baby, We're your DVD special features, bringing you commentary, deleted scenes, and maybe some half aspixelated storyboards if we feel like it. Welcome to Beyond the Scenes. I'm your host, Roy Wood Jr. And this is the podcast where we take a deeper dive into some of the most complex issues covered on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and speaking of Tom Hanks. Today we're talking about female orgasms on screen. A brief history history hurry you get it. This is a piece that originally aired on the show back on March. You know what year it is played a clip. It's no secret that women's on screen portrayals have evolved throughout history. We've gone from playing secretaries being saved by James Bond all the way to nuclear scientists being saved by James Bond. But I want to focus on one specific aspect of female depictions, the orgasm. It's when a woman is stimulated to the point of climax, causing a physical and neurological response that scientists referred to as fantastic. And over the years, depicting female pleasure on screen something that's changed more than the batteries in your vibrator. So today with me, I have Daily Show correspondent Desiltic and writer Amy nominated writer Cat Ratley to walk me through how this segment came together, and then we're gonna go beyond, because that's what we do. It's in the damn title what's going on? How you do? Roy? Let's say, Roy, don't assume people know what e're it is that is up for debate, completely lost. Track is from in March What does it Matter? So in this segment you all went through, you dug in the crate and you found basically a track record of just showing the misrepresentation of women's sexuality on film and television. How did that all come to catch um? One of our researchers in our Deep Dive department, Madeline qunes Um, she came up with this idea just from kind of organically noticing how different the portrayal is of female versus male orgasms. On screen and all that, and she just kind of went down the rabbit hole of looking through film pretty much over the past hundred years, and she just found so much great stuff that we were able to put it together for a segment. She went way down the rabbit hole and then back up the rabbit hole, and then down again a little bit deeper, and then she back up for air, just the right spot, and then she found the perfect spot. Yeah, and then it was a signif I'm not going to join in, you know, I have elks in my head that I could join in on that, but I just don't. I don't want to be the weird get because and then she stayed in that rabbit hole for three day? Did I art? I think I spend the euphemism card too early. I should have held onto it. There's so many more opportunities. Let's get into the actual nuts and bolts of this desert. As a correspondent, when someone brings you this piece, what was your first thought. I was so excited because I had this reaction like, oh my god, why haven't we talked about this before? And I think on a subconscious level, it's always bothered me that I feel like I haven't seen that many representations of female sexuality and like an honest, authentic or even really funny way. Um, but it didn't hit me the depths of it until I read the script. We're always, you know, trying to figure out what topics we want to dive into, and we look for things that are that feel like they've been under reported, some thing we want to shine a spotlight on, and they tend to be you know, we we go deep with the information and we go through the history of something and and are the trap is that it would be something that can feel a little dry, right, Well, this one immediately is like, oh, that's fun to talk about. That's like, this one was very wet. This was very wet. This was the opposite of dry. Thank you, Cat'll get them. We'll get them halfway through, but this was Um. I wrote it with Lauren, another writer who is amazing, and the two of us have written a couple of things for Desi, and it seems like it's just I mean, writing for Desi is super fun and we kind of knew like, all right, this can be like a a touchy, difficult subject and I mean, Desi totally nailed the performance, so I'm glad that she was as on board and excited about it as we were, because writing it was it was fun to actually, like, like as he was saying, for women's history months sometimes we do like, all right, let's look at you know, voting rights and the Suffragette movement, which is important and great, but not as fun as talking about you know, Barbarilla or Meg Ryan's aureasm. And when Harry met Sally, oh god, oh yes, yes, yes, yes, oh oh oh god, I'll have what she's having. We haven't really done a segment like this on the show before, so I feel like it was like a a fun aspect of women's history that wasn't as like serious and heavy as you know, having our rights taken away. But it also just the subject matter itself. It was something that I sort of like subconsciously knew in my brain that I wasn't saying a lot of this out there, but I really it wasn't. It didn't hit me until I read everything in that discussion, like, oh my god, yes, that is how women were represented that early on. I had no idea about the hetty lamar thing. The first known female orgasm on the silver screen was in the nineteen thirty three German film Ecstasy, when Hetty Lamar took the broad Worst Express all the way to pleasure Burg. Turns out the world wasn't ready for this. Everyone denounced it, from Hitler to the Pope. And if you ask me, the Pope has no place weighing in on sex scenes. He's celibate. I mean, when we need your opinion on the best stain removers for white fabrics, then we'll call you. I didn't realize that she was the first woman to have an orgasm on screen, and then not only that, but like she was basically came up with the start of what is WiFi now, so she was a genius. Like I had no idea about all of that until I read it. Yeah, but but they low key sex shamed her the most of her career for daring to be that open on camera. Do you all think that men being in control of the narrative of sex in the entertainment industry? I mean less so now, but definitely still more so than women. How much did that play into it? When you look at over the decades and decades of just the way women have been portrayed to just you are the male the men controls you, and it's never really connected to what a woman really wants in the bedroom or properly portraying what a woman wants in a bad room. The hety lamar Thin went back to the nineteen thirties, so that's like kind of where they started nineteen thirties films up till now. And yeah, when you think about it, it was mostly and still as mostly men writing and directing and producing these movies. So they're the ones who are determining, you know, what a female orgasm should or shouldn't look like on screen, because I because it didn't make you wonder like, okay, well why is this and you're like, oh yeah, because men control everything for all of the beginning of time. Um, so I do think that has a lot to do with it, just like who's writing these stories, who's telling these women and directing them how to act on the screen. Okay, so now in this next time, you're gonna really erupt with pleasure. I want you to just scream and bang the hitboard so that everyone can he all right, people, It's like ten seconds in and nothing has happened, and you're like, oh, that is that all it? Okay? Well, I guess that's how it works. It's just that simple. Huh. It's like almost like sounds like you're getting murdered, but not quite. There's like a fine line between the two. See the ego of the man, so he knows he's killing it. Yeah. So when we do race stories on the show, the question as always suits the intended audience, right because black people to a degree kind of already know some of the stuff we're talking about. So in a way, you're having to present new information to half of the audience that already knows this topic while also presenting it like with CP time, it's stuff that black people may or may not have already known. But here's a couple of jokes and we go a little deeper on the issue. And if you are not black, then this is a whole wealth of new information. Because I'll be honest as a man, this is something I've never paid attention to. So who was the when you think about the intended audience, was it to serve a dual purpose or was it to educate meatheads like myself? I mean, I think it's always like, in my opinion, it's always about kind of starting a conversation across the board, right, and I the feeling that I felt when I read it for the first time was what I would hope that other women felt when they saw it, and that that they felt heard and seeing like, Oh, I've been feeling this way too. I've been missing this in TV and film, and we do have some more work to do, and then also to maybe perhaps educate a few viewers who maybe did not know some of this or thought about it in that way. Um and yeah, start a conversation about it. I remember growing up watching a lot of movies and stuff, and this is how like watching this segment it in my brain and I started thinking back. There's a scene in Waiting to exhale ship. Oh this is good. Yeah, good was good? Oh yeah, he can we say or I'll say orgasm. This is beyond the scenes and we're very tasteful show Yes, so he bust the way before the woman did. Does he think he just did something here? Shit? I could have had a V eight. I could have had a V eight was the line. It's a legendary. It's a legendary line. But women not in an orgasm is almost seen as ha ha, you didn't get any pleasure. Growing up, What was you all's personal experience and seeing female pleasure depicted on can I ask that? Let me ask that in a more hr way as you all were matriculating this young way, how much it's menstruating. It's called menstruating, come on, as you ministrate it to adults. But you know, what was your what was your experience seeing the way sex was depicted on screen? I think, like you said too, that it's funny that it was so often used as a punchline. And I feel like that's kind of something that became ingrained without me realizing, because it is, you know, it's either funny that she doesn't get pleasure, or like two of the movies we do is like a Katherine Heigel scene and Jennifer Anderson scene from Bruce Almighty, where like their pleasures like so over the top and um exaggerated that it's like it's the comedy, it's the butt of the joe. In the years that followed, female pleasure became more and more common on screen, but they were still often treated as punchlines, like Jennifer Aniston getting unexpected magic, high acts and glues Almighty, or Katherine Hygel accidentally orgasm me at dinner when a little boy grabbed her remote controlled vibrating underwear. Okay, there is so much wrong with this. It's non consensual, it's a kid doing it, and it perpetuates the dangerous myth that vibrating underwear gives you anything but a five alarm electrical burn. I was like, okay, like it's it's the way we do it is funny or like we're kind of used as a punchline as opposed to like taken seriously. And I don't really know how that affected me, because I feel like we're just kind of getting messages like that from all over. So I'm kind of like, a, well, this is the way it is until you kind of learned that it is different. That's in particular, I have so many mixed feelings about I feel like that because as as like an actor doing comedy, you when you get a scene as a woman, like you want to have the joke you want to get to do like the big performative joke in this set piece, and so and men get to joke about their orgasms all the time, like it's all over the place, literally, And how many are we at now? Three? Four? Still early but but like there were so many problems in that scene itself. Like Cat said, we were kind of like punching at the wrong thing. The punchline was aimed, it seemed in the wrong direction. And also, um, just like there was really no consent. It was kind of against their will. It was happening to them and they weren't participating in it, which felt kind of weird. And I think those movies were when Laura and I were writing it, we were like, wait, what years this. I want to say it was like two thousand nine, Like it was ten to fifteen years ago, when like consent was not like a term people were thinking about her throwing around, didn't probably like movie sets at all. And I'm like, oh yeah, like you are like giving Katherine Heigel this orgasm in a restaurant and it's funny. And I'm just like, oh man that they didn't even have the C word anywhere in their brain like at this point in time. So I was like, I was like, there's so there's so much wrong with this. And it was a kid right like it was like a kid, eight year old kid toy with it. You're like, no, stop, there's a lot of problematic old school sex scenes that you could go back and watch now and like, yeah, I can, I can remember. I just recently rediscovered the movie Young Frankenstein, which I is like a classic mel Brooks and Gene Wilder and so many funny performances in that movie. Terry gar and Matt Allen Cohn are comedic geniuses. And I remember seeing that scene of Madeleine Cohn with the Monster when he comes in to like take her and he drops his pants and then suddenly she's like very into it and they have this whole sex scene. Oh you can't be serious. I'm like, oh my god, Wolf, I'm I'm engaged and once, but I didn't. He was never all the oh my ha, mister live lot I phone. It is like a tour divorce in her comedic performance. It's hilarious. She should have won all the awards for this scene. And then it cuts to them sitting there side by side and they're smoking a cigarette. But in watching it in recent years, you go back and you're like, wait, he took her against her will. Wait, there was no he was kidnapping her. It was so problematic on so many levels. That is the implication that so Frankenstein has a big dick, Like that's what the complication was. I mean, I guess that would make sense. If you're able to piece together a human you're like, I guess I'll give him the going all out the biggest dead dick I can find. If young boys get weird science, we can at least have Frankenstein. Like I remember, the thing that I remember most about sexuality as a man growing up and just watching films like just you know, we're talking from that middle school through high school years was just how animalistic sex was, and a lot of black romantic films like you got to just get it, dominate the woman, like I remember Jason's lyric was one I won't detailed the scene, but they were banging in an alley, like it was just it was consensual, but it was just the dude just ravaging the woman. And then it was the same thing in Belli with DMX and whoever he had the sex scene with. Like that type of stuff was what informed me. The thing that really made it awkward, though, it was being in the movies and this type of stuff coming up with our parents. And I don't want to say that my parents failed me, but in those awkward sexual moments in cinema. I kind of wouldn't have knowing what I know now, it would have been dope for my mom or my dad to put them into cuncle Just so you know, that's not how sex. You don't do that. Women don't like being taken next to a dumpster. Just in that something this woman did, she was with it, and you wonder why dudes try you at a dumpster for the next twenty years, Because well, this has been great, what do you say? I take you out back behind the dumpster after the break, I want to talk with you all a little bit about some of the potholes in a story like this, because you know, as we do with the Daily Show, we juggle a little bit of dynamite, and so I want to talk a little bit about some of the things that you wanted to avoid and some of the things that you wish you'd had space to add to the story. This is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back. When you all were researching this story, what were some of the biggest things that you didn't know before the research We get like a giant file that has like all the research in it that our research apartment could find so more than what you saw in the segment, like plenty was left out because there was no way to do all of it. The one thing I was most surprised at was the stuff from like the mid twentieth century, like so the Hetty Lamar movie, which was like nineteen thirties. The fact that there was even a female female orgasm portrayal back then just shocked me. I was like, wait, they let the ship happen in the thirties, and then um, the stuff that was from the sixties and seventies that wasn't technically porn, some of it was born with like deep throat, but just how graphic it was in the sixties and seventies, I feel like I was like, Wow, I can't believe they actually like did this. It's weird because it's such a stark contrast because around the same time and sitcoms, they wouldn't even let the mom and dad be in the same bit. That's one thing we talked about, the Haze Code, which we mentioned briefly, but it was the you know, censorship guidelines that they used, which kind of came in place after the thirties and forties. This is a set of censorship guidelines that banned movies from explicitly showing or discussing sex. Even married couples had to be shown in separate beds, or as it's now called, the reverse chocolate factory. The four you bedridden for the past twenty years. It takes a lot of work to keep this family going. No one was getting off. Did they call it? Like one foot on the floor, Like you always had to have one foot on the floor at all times. If there was a scene in the bedroom that married couples couldn't even you couldn't even show them sleeping in the same bed. Sometimes one foot on the floor is even better too. I mean they didn't truly to be able to really um get some lemorability. Yeah, there in on Um from the thirties, like they show like they use a pearl necklace to like they show a pearl necklace being dropped on the floor that we assume is meant to symbolize the orgasm um. And then the there were a couple of the like a lot of symbolic things of like lots of like cigarette smoking, like the things they would do to try to get around it. Trains going through tunnels, like there was a lot of innuendo in these, like anytime you see a train film, like it's it's sex in the fifties and sixties, like, so just the dumb things they would do to try to work around it. We went from a pearl Nicholas falling on the ground to Cameron Diaz have any literal pearl nicklace in her hand? Yeah, and something about Mary. Yeah. So just the start contrast was like, how like we kind of boomerang back the other way. Um, but the Barbarella scene, I mean, we have to talk about that. My favorite America was embarking on a sexual revolution, so female pleasure came back on screen. Unfortunately, it was often treated as a novelty that existed for men's amusements. So you've got scenes like the one in nineteen Barbara Ella where evil doctor eyebrows over here traps Jane Fonda and a machine that's supposed to give her orgasms until she dies, except that she climax is so hard she breaks the machine. Goodness, at the time, it was considered a camp be sexy thing, but looking at it now, it's a violation. Remember everyone, if you're going to put a woman in a machine that orgasms her to death. You make he sent First we watched clip like we had it in our research file, and I watched it being like, what the fuck is this? Like how did people like? How was this made? And who was this for? But like and Jeane founda really sold it to I was like that woman committed, like she professional for that role. You're in a giant pipe organ and you're being pleasured to death, but you don't want to die, but you do want to be playing. There's a lot of conflict, internal conflict in the face. She played that scene very well. I have to just the face too, because the whole pipe organ orgasm machine covered her from the waist down or the neck down, so it was just her face, like that was the only indication. It was her face. And then like you know, shitty graphics of like sparks and smoke coming out of the machine. It's also really misleading for young women to watch that and to assume that you can only climax if there are sparks and smoke. How hard is it to find the right tone because you don't want to diminish the topic, Like we are on Comedy Central, which means we have to have some fucking comedy in there. Sometimes, What were some of the landlines that you all wanted to avoid? There are so many great representations of female pleasure or sexuality or something that might feel very authentic and uh and truthful and honest and a performance, but it might not be something that feels like it's appropriate to make jokes about. You want to feel like whatever we talk about is kind of fair game to make laughs about. A second later. One thing that we we also like fully acknowledge too as we were writing it. It's like a lot of the kind of the mainstream big touchstone moments in the film too tended to be you know, white women, sis women, hetero relationships, our sexual relationships. So we like don't have the representation we'd like ideally in this uh segment overall. Um, but we like san Leandzi, we noticed like, okay, if this is going to open up a bigger conversation about how does this very based on race, how does this very based on gender? How does this very based on you know, sexual orientation? And that was something we were like, we could write, we could make this a thirty minute piece, or we could do like, you know, a five part thing, but We're like, okay, this is one segment. So we're like, we're just gonna kind of touch on the mainstream you know, big moments like the one Harry met Sally, the Barbarella, um. But we fully knowledge that we were writing it. We were like, we know that this isn't fully inclusive of every aspect of these portrayals, but we want to make sure that you know, we aren't making light of something that is a more serious scene or more serious film. Um. We also talked about too, making jokes about the movies that are comedies, whereas like you know, most of these like when Harry met Sally, um, Bruce al mighty, like those are big comedies. So we're like, okay, well, we don't want to write jokes about jokes, um, but we could like make fun of the fact that it's used as a joke, because it feels weird sometimes to write comedy about something that is meant to be comedy. That makes perfect sense. So then to that point about the portrayal of nudity in comedy, why is it man naked, funny woman naked, or never? It's rarely hilarious, Like mm hm. The only thing that I even think comes close to a joke that would play the same for a woman as a guy in the comedy. Is Melissa McCarthy shipping her pants and Bride? No No, No Away, Megan, No look away? Such a double standard, and it's not It really isn't fair that you know. It seems like when when men are naked in a comedy, it's hilarious and it's maximized for comedy. But if a woman shows that naked in a comedy, it's we're objectifying her or it's uh, it becomes about sex instead of the laugh. I don't know if you guys remember Isla Fisher's performance in The Wedding Crashers I'm not wearing any pennies. Yeah, okay, hilarious, total breakout role for her. She was genius and it she maximized every second that she was on camera. And I believe she's she talked about this, and forgive me if I get it wrong, but she talked about there being a discussion. There was a sex scene in that movie, and there was a discussion about whether she was going to be topless and how much they were going to show, and I think they wanted her to be completely topless. And to see it all. And she basically was like, look, if you see my nipples, I lose my laugh and I'm going to protect my laugh. So you got to shoot it in a certain way because I want to I want to get the comedy. I don't want this to be about objectifying. And I think the problem is I'm not being adventurous enough for you. I'm pretty sure that is not what I've been saying to you. Baby. I'm gonna make Oh, your fantasy's come true. And it's like, you know, Will Ferrell probably would not have had to have that conversation, right. His nipples are hilarious. His nipples are very funny, to the point where nudity enhances the scene. Kim Jong talks about this. He's talked about it on the record here and there, but he told me on another comedian friend of mine, the story of him coming out the trunk naked in the original Hangover movie. In that original the scene as it was written, he had clothes on, and Ken went to the director and said, hey, I should be naked, and they were like, would yeah, my character he should come out the trunk naked. I think it'll be more of a blah blah blah blah blah. And to his credit, he was ripe naked, literally catapulted. He stole that film. It held up the shoot for two hours because they had to get the clearances and the lawyers and whatever the hell else. I don't know what happens when Dix come out on set, but apparently it's a lot of paperwork. But were talking about women's breast too. I was thinking of, like, there's so much in uh, there's something about Mary, but isn't his neighbor, like the old lady who's like always tanning. They show her boobs but they're you know, like old Wrinkley Slopes and it's like and that is funny because they can mean, they made her look as you know, unsexy as possible in order to do it. And I'm you know, I give a lot of credit to that woman for you know, for bearing it all for that, but I mean that was funny, Like that was like one instance where women's boobs were funny. But they made them look as little boob like as possible, Like they're almost unidentifiable. They just have to keep sending her back to the makeup trailer. Nope, sorry, still a little too sexy. They look like road. I'm like, yeah, there we go. That's perfect. Now we can do it. As much as I would love to continue talking about breast and nudity and all of that stuff, we have to see where we're going towards the future. This is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back ken John. If I wasn't supposed to tell the stories, that's too late. It's been twenty years. Let that ship go. So we've talked during this podcast, ladies, just about how the portrayal of women in their sexuality and how that can inform and influence us from a very early age. But should the movies be where people are even learning about all of this? Yeah? I mean it it what what is seen on in the movies and on TV matters. It's certainly like carries a lot of weight. But I think it matters more because kids aren't really learning a lot about sex, said in a full, comprehensive, inclusive way, in school, so they're left to learn this stuff from seeing shows and movies. And that's like, to me, that kind of puts too much pressure on what's supposed to be entertainment to kind of like solve the world's problems. Yeah, I think if anyone needs these movies, it's Catholic school kids, because I can tell you right now they are not teaching them ship that they need, that they actually need to know. So I went to a Catholic high school, and I would think, like, you know, that was twenty years ago, that it would be better. But I don't. Like it's like does he was saying, it's not like sex education. It's still pretty bad at least in America, and most kids are getting their knowledge from TV movies and you know, unless someone has like a cool older brother. But other than that, like there's not really many resources to get like the real, like the real authentic stuff of what sex is actually like. Do you think also, in addition to the lack of sex ed, is there more sexual censorship in America that also keeps kids from learning about stuff like just I saw Mortal Kombat. Okay, I saw the new Mortal Kombat movie earlier this year, blood and guts everywhere. But then you can go overseas and they pardon my French, they got briss and just commercials nudity is just so regular, like it's just a commercial about buying shampoo and it's just a woman to get the show in a breastaurant. Wouldn't it be nice if Americans had more shame surrounding violence than shame surrounding the human body and all of its sexuality. It's so crazy. I mean even I have a five year old and the stuff that when I'm trying to look for something that is appropriate for him to watch, we are always stumbling upon stuff that's like, well, that's still violent, or there's a some like you know, weapons are being thrown around and there's some fight or there's some and I would much rather my son see naked boobies on screen, you know, than see like a full, full on, knockdown, drag out violent fight. As Americans, we probably don't even realize how much violence we're seeing every day because it's just something we've grown up with at this point. But yeah, I remember when I went to Europe for the first time, I think like as a teenager, I went as like a French exchange student, and I remember seeing like boobs on a billboard and I was like, do they know that those are up there? Like I was like, someone's gonna get fired because there's some hits just like at a department store. You have to act normal as an American? Yeah, boobs out, totally normal. Yeah yeah. Are things as a whole improving? Do you think you know when we have programs like say Pose, which is ending their run coming up now in ex does how does the sexuality heterosexuality in the portrayal of that, How does that fit into the wider discussion of bipocing LGBTQ sexuality on film and TV. I mean, I think definitely, I mean having more people behind the camera, but then also just seeing those relationships like um, like I May Destroy You was like, I feel like so revolutionary and how it portrayed sex and sexuality. Um, and that was one thing that that was in our research. But we're like, that's such a heavy show. I was like, that doesn't the tone doesn't feel right to include that. So I think more shows like that where it's no longer this big deal because it's revolutionary and like the only one of its kind that should be now our standard. Like most more shows, especially like the dramas, should be able to show those relationships of like people being more fluid with gender and more open to different sexual experiences, but also make sure consents always involved, because that's just something we've really started putting into film and television in the past like four years, which is not that long, seems how movies have been around for over a hundred. So those are like all things I think that revolve around the like kind of the same issues. They are, they're all connected. The way that Mikayla Cole was able to explore and dissect sexual assault and that whole experience that her character went through, and also the supporting characters in that story felt so like truthful and authentic and um you know, shocking. It was really, like hat said, revolutionary and also shocking because we have never seen it like that before, talked about in that way. Um So stories like that, stories like you know Ryan O'Connell's show Special and he has like there's a scene of him having sex with another man that was I've heard him speak about it on on the press tour before about it being like just a really authentic, honest interaction that he hadn't seen on camera before. Phoebe waller Bridge in Fleabag and the way she talks about sexuality and shame and you know, her her being able to tell that story and it being such a massive success, I think gives me hope that we're moving in the right direction. We're starting to get more diverse stories being told, and that's important. Well, the diverse stories are told because we have a wonderfully diverse cast of people working in the building. Thank you all so much for bringing me up to speed on women's orgasms. I will now go on the same deep dive that Madeline went on, and then two minutes later I will wait an hour and try to go on that deep dive again. There there's your sex you like. That's all the time we have for today. A special thanks to Cat Ratley and Daisyliddic. Hopefully now we've taken you beyond the scenes. Take care everybody. I'm sorry, Ken John, I love you. Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to go even further beyond the scenes. Check out the video version of Beyond the Scenes on The Daily Show's YouTube page.

Hey back in the day, they knew it wasn't just enough to slap up all of their teen on a d v D. The people demanded more. They wanted to hear Ron Howard and Tom Hanks talking over the movie about how craft services was that day. Well that's us, baby, We're your DVD special features, bringing you commentary, deleted scenes, and maybe some half aspixelated storyboards if we feel like it. Welcome to Beyond the Scenes. I'm your host, Roy Wood Jr. And this is the podcast where we take a deeper dive into some of the most complex issues covered on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and speaking of Tom Hanks. Today we're talking about female orgasms on screen. A brief history history hurry you get it. This is a piece that originally aired on the show back on March. You know what year it is played a clip. It's no secret that women's on screen portrayals have evolved throughout history. We've gone from playing secretaries being saved by James Bond all the way to nuclear scientists being saved by James Bond. But I want to focus on one specific aspect of female depictions, the orgasm. It's when a woman is stimulated to the point of climax, causing a physical and neurological response that scientists referred to as fantastic. And over the years, depicting female pleasure on screen something that's changed more than the batteries in your vibrator. So today with me, I have Daily Show correspondent Desiltic and writer Amy nominated writer Cat Ratley to walk me through how this segment came together, and then we're gonna go beyond, because that's what we do. It's in the damn title what's going on? How you do? Roy? Let's say, Roy, don't assume people know what e're it is that is up for debate, completely lost. Track is from in March What does it Matter? So in this segment you all went through, you dug in the crate and you found basically a track record of just showing the misrepresentation of women's sexuality on film and television. How did that all come to catch um? One of our researchers in our Deep Dive department, Madeline qunes Um, she came up with this idea just from kind of organically noticing how different the portrayal is of female versus male orgasms. On screen and all that, and she just kind of went down the rabbit hole of looking through film pretty much over the past hundred years, and she just found so much great stuff that we were able to put it together for a segment. She went way down the rabbit hole and then back up the rabbit hole, and then down again a little bit deeper, and then she back up for air, just the right spot, and then she found the perfect spot. Yeah, and then it was a signif I'm not going to join in, you know, I have elks in my head that I could join in on that, but I just don't. I don't want to be the weird get because and then she stayed in that rabbit hole for three day? Did I art? I think I spend the euphemism card too early. I should have held onto it. There's so many more opportunities. Let's get into the actual nuts and bolts of this desert. As a correspondent, when someone brings you this piece, what was your first thought. I was so excited because I had this reaction like, oh my god, why haven't we talked about this before? And I think on a subconscious level, it's always bothered me that I feel like I haven't seen that many representations of female sexuality and like an honest, authentic or even really funny way. Um, but it didn't hit me the depths of it until I read the script. We're always, you know, trying to figure out what topics we want to dive into, and we look for things that are that feel like they've been under reported, some thing we want to shine a spotlight on, and they tend to be you know, we we go deep with the information and we go through the history of something and and are the trap is that it would be something that can feel a little dry, right, Well, this one immediately is like, oh, that's fun to talk about. That's like, this one was very wet. This was very wet. This was the opposite of dry. Thank you, Cat'll get them. We'll get them halfway through, but this was Um. I wrote it with Lauren, another writer who is amazing, and the two of us have written a couple of things for Desi, and it seems like it's just I mean, writing for Desi is super fun and we kind of knew like, all right, this can be like a a touchy, difficult subject and I mean, Desi totally nailed the performance, so I'm glad that she was as on board and excited about it as we were, because writing it was it was fun to actually, like, like as he was saying, for women's history months sometimes we do like, all right, let's look at you know, voting rights and the Suffragette movement, which is important and great, but not as fun as talking about you know, Barbarilla or Meg Ryan's aureasm. And when Harry met Sally, oh god, oh yes, yes, yes, yes, oh oh oh god, I'll have what she's having. We haven't really done a segment like this on the show before, so I feel like it was like a a fun aspect of women's history that wasn't as like serious and heavy as you know, having our rights taken away. But it also just the subject matter itself. It was something that I sort of like subconsciously knew in my brain that I wasn't saying a lot of this out there, but I really it wasn't. It didn't hit me until I read everything in that discussion, like, oh my god, yes, that is how women were represented that early on. I had no idea about the hetty lamar thing. The first known female orgasm on the silver screen was in the nineteen thirty three German film Ecstasy, when Hetty Lamar took the broad Worst Express all the way to pleasure Burg. Turns out the world wasn't ready for this. Everyone denounced it, from Hitler to the Pope. And if you ask me, the Pope has no place weighing in on sex scenes. He's celibate. I mean, when we need your opinion on the best stain removers for white fabrics, then we'll call you. I didn't realize that she was the first woman to have an orgasm on screen, and then not only that, but like she was basically came up with the start of what is WiFi now, so she was a genius. Like I had no idea about all of that until I read it. Yeah, but but they low key sex shamed her the most of her career for daring to be that open on camera. Do you all think that men being in control of the narrative of sex in the entertainment industry? I mean less so now, but definitely still more so than women. How much did that play into it? When you look at over the decades and decades of just the way women have been portrayed to just you are the male the men controls you, and it's never really connected to what a woman really wants in the bedroom or properly portraying what a woman wants in a bad room. The hety lamar Thin went back to the nineteen thirties, so that's like kind of where they started nineteen thirties films up till now. And yeah, when you think about it, it was mostly and still as mostly men writing and directing and producing these movies. So they're the ones who are determining, you know, what a female orgasm should or shouldn't look like on screen, because I because it didn't make you wonder like, okay, well why is this and you're like, oh yeah, because men control everything for all of the beginning of time. Um, so I do think that has a lot to do with it, just like who's writing these stories, who's telling these women and directing them how to act on the screen. Okay, so now in this next time, you're gonna really erupt with pleasure. I want you to just scream and bang the hitboard so that everyone can he all right, people, It's like ten seconds in and nothing has happened, and you're like, oh, that is that all it? Okay? Well, I guess that's how it works. It's just that simple. Huh. It's like almost like sounds like you're getting murdered, but not quite. There's like a fine line between the two. See the ego of the man, so he knows he's killing it. Yeah. So when we do race stories on the show, the question as always suits the intended audience, right because black people to a degree kind of already know some of the stuff we're talking about. So in a way, you're having to present new information to half of the audience that already knows this topic while also presenting it like with CP time, it's stuff that black people may or may not have already known. But here's a couple of jokes and we go a little deeper on the issue. And if you are not black, then this is a whole wealth of new information. Because I'll be honest as a man, this is something I've never paid attention to. So who was the when you think about the intended audience, was it to serve a dual purpose or was it to educate meatheads like myself? I mean, I think it's always like, in my opinion, it's always about kind of starting a conversation across the board, right, and I the feeling that I felt when I read it for the first time was what I would hope that other women felt when they saw it, and that that they felt heard and seeing like, Oh, I've been feeling this way too. I've been missing this in TV and film, and we do have some more work to do, and then also to maybe perhaps educate a few viewers who maybe did not know some of this or thought about it in that way. Um and yeah, start a conversation about it. I remember growing up watching a lot of movies and stuff, and this is how like watching this segment it in my brain and I started thinking back. There's a scene in Waiting to exhale ship. Oh this is good. Yeah, good was good? Oh yeah, he can we say or I'll say orgasm. This is beyond the scenes and we're very tasteful show Yes, so he bust the way before the woman did. Does he think he just did something here? Shit? I could have had a V eight. I could have had a V eight was the line. It's a legendary. It's a legendary line. But women not in an orgasm is almost seen as ha ha, you didn't get any pleasure. Growing up, What was you all's personal experience and seeing female pleasure depicted on can I ask that? Let me ask that in a more hr way as you all were matriculating this young way, how much it's menstruating. It's called menstruating, come on, as you ministrate it to adults. But you know, what was your what was your experience seeing the way sex was depicted on screen? I think, like you said too, that it's funny that it was so often used as a punchline. And I feel like that's kind of something that became ingrained without me realizing, because it is, you know, it's either funny that she doesn't get pleasure, or like two of the movies we do is like a Katherine Heigel scene and Jennifer Anderson scene from Bruce Almighty, where like their pleasures like so over the top and um exaggerated that it's like it's the comedy, it's the butt of the joe. In the years that followed, female pleasure became more and more common on screen, but they were still often treated as punchlines, like Jennifer Aniston getting unexpected magic, high acts and glues Almighty, or Katherine Hygel accidentally orgasm me at dinner when a little boy grabbed her remote controlled vibrating underwear. Okay, there is so much wrong with this. It's non consensual, it's a kid doing it, and it perpetuates the dangerous myth that vibrating underwear gives you anything but a five alarm electrical burn. I was like, okay, like it's it's the way we do it is funny or like we're kind of used as a punchline as opposed to like taken seriously. And I don't really know how that affected me, because I feel like we're just kind of getting messages like that from all over. So I'm kind of like, a, well, this is the way it is until you kind of learned that it is different. That's in particular, I have so many mixed feelings about I feel like that because as as like an actor doing comedy, you when you get a scene as a woman, like you want to have the joke you want to get to do like the big performative joke in this set piece, and so and men get to joke about their orgasms all the time, like it's all over the place, literally, And how many are we at now? Three? Four? Still early but but like there were so many problems in that scene itself. Like Cat said, we were kind of like punching at the wrong thing. The punchline was aimed, it seemed in the wrong direction. And also, um, just like there was really no consent. It was kind of against their will. It was happening to them and they weren't participating in it, which felt kind of weird. And I think those movies were when Laura and I were writing it, we were like, wait, what years this. I want to say it was like two thousand nine, Like it was ten to fifteen years ago, when like consent was not like a term people were thinking about her throwing around, didn't probably like movie sets at all. And I'm like, oh yeah, like you are like giving Katherine Heigel this orgasm in a restaurant and it's funny. And I'm just like, oh man that they didn't even have the C word anywhere in their brain like at this point in time. So I was like, I was like, there's so there's so much wrong with this. And it was a kid right like it was like a kid, eight year old kid toy with it. You're like, no, stop, there's a lot of problematic old school sex scenes that you could go back and watch now and like, yeah, I can, I can remember. I just recently rediscovered the movie Young Frankenstein, which I is like a classic mel Brooks and Gene Wilder and so many funny performances in that movie. Terry gar and Matt Allen Cohn are comedic geniuses. And I remember seeing that scene of Madeleine Cohn with the Monster when he comes in to like take her and he drops his pants and then suddenly she's like very into it and they have this whole sex scene. Oh you can't be serious. I'm like, oh my god, Wolf, I'm I'm engaged and once, but I didn't. He was never all the oh my ha, mister live lot I phone. It is like a tour divorce in her comedic performance. It's hilarious. She should have won all the awards for this scene. And then it cuts to them sitting there side by side and they're smoking a cigarette. But in watching it in recent years, you go back and you're like, wait, he took her against her will. Wait, there was no he was kidnapping her. It was so problematic on so many levels. That is the implication that so Frankenstein has a big dick, Like that's what the complication was. I mean, I guess that would make sense. If you're able to piece together a human you're like, I guess I'll give him the going all out the biggest dead dick I can find. If young boys get weird science, we can at least have Frankenstein. Like I remember, the thing that I remember most about sexuality as a man growing up and just watching films like just you know, we're talking from that middle school through high school years was just how animalistic sex was, and a lot of black romantic films like you got to just get it, dominate the woman, like I remember Jason's lyric was one I won't detailed the scene, but they were banging in an alley, like it was just it was consensual, but it was just the dude just ravaging the woman. And then it was the same thing in Belli with DMX and whoever he had the sex scene with. Like that type of stuff was what informed me. The thing that really made it awkward, though, it was being in the movies and this type of stuff coming up with our parents. And I don't want to say that my parents failed me, but in those awkward sexual moments in cinema. I kind of wouldn't have knowing what I know now, it would have been dope for my mom or my dad to put them into cuncle Just so you know, that's not how sex. You don't do that. Women don't like being taken next to a dumpster. Just in that something this woman did, she was with it, and you wonder why dudes try you at a dumpster for the next twenty years, Because well, this has been great, what do you say? I take you out back behind the dumpster after the break, I want to talk with you all a little bit about some of the potholes in a story like this, because you know, as we do with the Daily Show, we juggle a little bit of dynamite, and so I want to talk a little bit about some of the things that you wanted to avoid and some of the things that you wish you'd had space to add to the story. This is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back. When you all were researching this story, what were some of the biggest things that you didn't know before the research We get like a giant file that has like all the research in it that our research apartment could find so more than what you saw in the segment, like plenty was left out because there was no way to do all of it. The one thing I was most surprised at was the stuff from like the mid twentieth century, like so the Hetty Lamar movie, which was like nineteen thirties. The fact that there was even a female female orgasm portrayal back then just shocked me. I was like, wait, they let the ship happen in the thirties, and then um, the stuff that was from the sixties and seventies that wasn't technically porn, some of it was born with like deep throat, but just how graphic it was in the sixties and seventies, I feel like I was like, Wow, I can't believe they actually like did this. It's weird because it's such a stark contrast because around the same time and sitcoms, they wouldn't even let the mom and dad be in the same bit. That's one thing we talked about, the Haze Code, which we mentioned briefly, but it was the you know, censorship guidelines that they used, which kind of came in place after the thirties and forties. This is a set of censorship guidelines that banned movies from explicitly showing or discussing sex. Even married couples had to be shown in separate beds, or as it's now called, the reverse chocolate factory. The four you bedridden for the past twenty years. It takes a lot of work to keep this family going. No one was getting off. Did they call it? Like one foot on the floor, Like you always had to have one foot on the floor at all times. If there was a scene in the bedroom that married couples couldn't even you couldn't even show them sleeping in the same bed. Sometimes one foot on the floor is even better too. I mean they didn't truly to be able to really um get some lemorability. Yeah, there in on Um from the thirties, like they show like they use a pearl necklace to like they show a pearl necklace being dropped on the floor that we assume is meant to symbolize the orgasm um. And then the there were a couple of the like a lot of symbolic things of like lots of like cigarette smoking, like the things they would do to try to get around it. Trains going through tunnels, like there was a lot of innuendo in these, like anytime you see a train film, like it's it's sex in the fifties and sixties, like, so just the dumb things they would do to try to work around it. We went from a pearl Nicholas falling on the ground to Cameron Diaz have any literal pearl nicklace in her hand? Yeah, and something about Mary. Yeah. So just the start contrast was like, how like we kind of boomerang back the other way. Um, but the Barbarella scene, I mean, we have to talk about that. My favorite America was embarking on a sexual revolution, so female pleasure came back on screen. Unfortunately, it was often treated as a novelty that existed for men's amusements. So you've got scenes like the one in nineteen Barbara Ella where evil doctor eyebrows over here traps Jane Fonda and a machine that's supposed to give her orgasms until she dies, except that she climax is so hard she breaks the machine. Goodness, at the time, it was considered a camp be sexy thing, but looking at it now, it's a violation. Remember everyone, if you're going to put a woman in a machine that orgasms her to death. You make he sent First we watched clip like we had it in our research file, and I watched it being like, what the fuck is this? Like how did people like? How was this made? And who was this for? But like and Jeane founda really sold it to I was like that woman committed, like she professional for that role. You're in a giant pipe organ and you're being pleasured to death, but you don't want to die, but you do want to be playing. There's a lot of conflict, internal conflict in the face. She played that scene very well. I have to just the face too, because the whole pipe organ orgasm machine covered her from the waist down or the neck down, so it was just her face, like that was the only indication. It was her face. And then like you know, shitty graphics of like sparks and smoke coming out of the machine. It's also really misleading for young women to watch that and to assume that you can only climax if there are sparks and smoke. How hard is it to find the right tone because you don't want to diminish the topic, Like we are on Comedy Central, which means we have to have some fucking comedy in there. Sometimes, What were some of the landlines that you all wanted to avoid? There are so many great representations of female pleasure or sexuality or something that might feel very authentic and uh and truthful and honest and a performance, but it might not be something that feels like it's appropriate to make jokes about. You want to feel like whatever we talk about is kind of fair game to make laughs about. A second later. One thing that we we also like fully acknowledge too as we were writing it. It's like a lot of the kind of the mainstream big touchstone moments in the film too tended to be you know, white women, sis women, hetero relationships, our sexual relationships. So we like don't have the representation we'd like ideally in this uh segment overall. Um, but we like san Leandzi, we noticed like, okay, if this is going to open up a bigger conversation about how does this very based on race, how does this very based on gender? How does this very based on you know, sexual orientation? And that was something we were like, we could write, we could make this a thirty minute piece, or we could do like, you know, a five part thing, but We're like, okay, this is one segment. So we're like, we're just gonna kind of touch on the mainstream you know, big moments like the one Harry met Sally, the Barbarella, um. But we fully knowledge that we were writing it. We were like, we know that this isn't fully inclusive of every aspect of these portrayals, but we want to make sure that you know, we aren't making light of something that is a more serious scene or more serious film. Um. We also talked about too, making jokes about the movies that are comedies, whereas like you know, most of these like when Harry met Sally, um, Bruce al mighty, like those are big comedies. So we're like, okay, well, we don't want to write jokes about jokes, um, but we could like make fun of the fact that it's used as a joke, because it feels weird sometimes to write comedy about something that is meant to be comedy. That makes perfect sense. So then to that point about the portrayal of nudity in comedy, why is it man naked, funny woman naked, or never? It's rarely hilarious, Like mm hm. The only thing that I even think comes close to a joke that would play the same for a woman as a guy in the comedy. Is Melissa McCarthy shipping her pants and Bride? No No, No Away, Megan, No look away? Such a double standard, and it's not It really isn't fair that you know. It seems like when when men are naked in a comedy, it's hilarious and it's maximized for comedy. But if a woman shows that naked in a comedy, it's we're objectifying her or it's uh, it becomes about sex instead of the laugh. I don't know if you guys remember Isla Fisher's performance in The Wedding Crashers I'm not wearing any pennies. Yeah, okay, hilarious, total breakout role for her. She was genius and it she maximized every second that she was on camera. And I believe she's she talked about this, and forgive me if I get it wrong, but she talked about there being a discussion. There was a sex scene in that movie, and there was a discussion about whether she was going to be topless and how much they were going to show, and I think they wanted her to be completely topless. And to see it all. And she basically was like, look, if you see my nipples, I lose my laugh and I'm going to protect my laugh. So you got to shoot it in a certain way because I want to I want to get the comedy. I don't want this to be about objectifying. And I think the problem is I'm not being adventurous enough for you. I'm pretty sure that is not what I've been saying to you. Baby. I'm gonna make Oh, your fantasy's come true. And it's like, you know, Will Ferrell probably would not have had to have that conversation, right. His nipples are hilarious. His nipples are very funny, to the point where nudity enhances the scene. Kim Jong talks about this. He's talked about it on the record here and there, but he told me on another comedian friend of mine, the story of him coming out the trunk naked in the original Hangover movie. In that original the scene as it was written, he had clothes on, and Ken went to the director and said, hey, I should be naked, and they were like, would yeah, my character he should come out the trunk naked. I think it'll be more of a blah blah blah blah blah. And to his credit, he was ripe naked, literally catapulted. He stole that film. It held up the shoot for two hours because they had to get the clearances and the lawyers and whatever the hell else. I don't know what happens when Dix come out on set, but apparently it's a lot of paperwork. But were talking about women's breast too. I was thinking of, like, there's so much in uh, there's something about Mary, but isn't his neighbor, like the old lady who's like always tanning. They show her boobs but they're you know, like old Wrinkley Slopes and it's like and that is funny because they can mean, they made her look as you know, unsexy as possible in order to do it. And I'm you know, I give a lot of credit to that woman for you know, for bearing it all for that, but I mean that was funny, Like that was like one instance where women's boobs were funny. But they made them look as little boob like as possible, Like they're almost unidentifiable. They just have to keep sending her back to the makeup trailer. Nope, sorry, still a little too sexy. They look like road. I'm like, yeah, there we go. That's perfect. Now we can do it. As much as I would love to continue talking about breast and nudity and all of that stuff, we have to see where we're going towards the future. This is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back ken John. If I wasn't supposed to tell the stories, that's too late. It's been twenty years. Let that ship go. So we've talked during this podcast, ladies, just about how the portrayal of women in their sexuality and how that can inform and influence us from a very early age. But should the movies be where people are even learning about all of this? Yeah? I mean it it what what is seen on in the movies and on TV matters. It's certainly like carries a lot of weight. But I think it matters more because kids aren't really learning a lot about sex, said in a full, comprehensive, inclusive way, in school, so they're left to learn this stuff from seeing shows and movies. And that's like, to me, that kind of puts too much pressure on what's supposed to be entertainment to kind of like solve the world's problems. Yeah, I think if anyone needs these movies, it's Catholic school kids, because I can tell you right now they are not teaching them ship that they need, that they actually need to know. So I went to a Catholic high school, and I would think, like, you know, that was twenty years ago, that it would be better. But I don't. Like it's like does he was saying, it's not like sex education. It's still pretty bad at least in America, and most kids are getting their knowledge from TV movies and you know, unless someone has like a cool older brother. But other than that, like there's not really many resources to get like the real, like the real authentic stuff of what sex is actually like. Do you think also, in addition to the lack of sex ed, is there more sexual censorship in America that also keeps kids from learning about stuff like just I saw Mortal Kombat. Okay, I saw the new Mortal Kombat movie earlier this year, blood and guts everywhere. But then you can go overseas and they pardon my French, they got briss and just commercials nudity is just so regular, like it's just a commercial about buying shampoo and it's just a woman to get the show in a breastaurant. Wouldn't it be nice if Americans had more shame surrounding violence than shame surrounding the human body and all of its sexuality. It's so crazy. I mean even I have a five year old and the stuff that when I'm trying to look for something that is appropriate for him to watch, we are always stumbling upon stuff that's like, well, that's still violent, or there's a some like you know, weapons are being thrown around and there's some fight or there's some and I would much rather my son see naked boobies on screen, you know, than see like a full, full on, knockdown, drag out violent fight. As Americans, we probably don't even realize how much violence we're seeing every day because it's just something we've grown up with at this point. But yeah, I remember when I went to Europe for the first time, I think like as a teenager, I went as like a French exchange student, and I remember seeing like boobs on a billboard and I was like, do they know that those are up there? Like I was like, someone's gonna get fired because there's some hits just like at a department store. You have to act normal as an American? Yeah, boobs out, totally normal. Yeah yeah. Are things as a whole improving? Do you think you know when we have programs like say Pose, which is ending their run coming up now in ex does how does the sexuality heterosexuality in the portrayal of that, How does that fit into the wider discussion of bipocing LGBTQ sexuality on film and TV. I mean, I think definitely, I mean having more people behind the camera, but then also just seeing those relationships like um, like I May Destroy You was like, I feel like so revolutionary and how it portrayed sex and sexuality. Um, and that was one thing that that was in our research. But we're like, that's such a heavy show. I was like, that doesn't the tone doesn't feel right to include that. So I think more shows like that where it's no longer this big deal because it's revolutionary and like the only one of its kind that should be now our standard. Like most more shows, especially like the dramas, should be able to show those relationships of like people being more fluid with gender and more open to different sexual experiences, but also make sure consents always involved, because that's just something we've really started putting into film and television in the past like four years, which is not that long, seems how movies have been around for over a hundred. So those are like all things I think that revolve around the like kind of the same issues. They are, they're all connected. The way that Mikayla Cole was able to explore and dissect sexual assault and that whole experience that her character went through, and also the supporting characters in that story felt so like truthful and authentic and um you know, shocking. It was really, like hat said, revolutionary and also shocking because we have never seen it like that before, talked about in that way. Um So stories like that, stories like you know Ryan O'Connell's show Special and he has like there's a scene of him having sex with another man that was I've heard him speak about it on on the press tour before about it being like just a really authentic, honest interaction that he hadn't seen on camera before. Phoebe waller Bridge in Fleabag and the way she talks about sexuality and shame and you know, her her being able to tell that story and it being such a massive success, I think gives me hope that we're moving in the right direction. We're starting to get more diverse stories being told, and that's important. Well, the diverse stories are told because we have a wonderfully diverse cast of people working in the building. Thank you all so much for bringing me up to speed on women's orgasms. I will now go on the same deep dive that Madeline went on, and then two minutes later I will wait an hour and try to go on that deep dive again. There there's your sex you like. That's all the time we have for today. A special thanks to Cat Ratley and Daisyliddic. Hopefully now we've taken you beyond the scenes. Take care everybody. I'm sorry, Ken John, I love you. Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to go even further beyond the scenes. Check out the video version of Beyond the Scenes on The Daily Show's YouTube page.