"Action: Sex and the Moving Image" Exhibition

The Museum of Sex

Permanent event

We live in a visual culture. Everywhere we look we are bombarded with images often to the point of sensory overload. Images shape our desires, the way we think and the manner in which we connect and interact with the world around us. Images serve as the driving force behind decisions about what to buy, what to believe, what to value, where to go and which people and relationships are worth our time and energy. These images come flying at us in commercials, music videos, television shows, mainstream film and in Internet spam. It is impossible to ignore the sensuality and sexuality of these images…and why should we?

Action: Sex and the Moving Image opening at the Museum of Sex in March 2007, traces the way sex and sexual imagery have impacted film, television, advertising and more contemporary outlets like the internet while simultaneously creating the multi- billion dollar porn industry and influencing popular art such as film, social standards, mores and behaviors.

Sex on film propelled the development of video technologies such as beta players, VCRS, and DVD players that have brought movies of all types into our homes. The Internet, the latest of this stream of technologies, has made sexual imagery more accessible than ever. No matter how much it is discussed, denounced, and demonized sex on film, sex on our televisions, sex on our computer screens and now sex on our mobile devices is here to stay.

Sex, nudity, and innuendo have always been a source of controversy and topics of public discourse and debate. Throughout the history of moving images legislation has affected not only what filmmakers could create, but also what people were “allowed” to see. Sex on film has been banned, censored, edited, and destroyed by those deeming the content to be obscene or immoral. Action: Sex and the Moving Image surveys the history of sex and the moving image over more than 150 years, featuring everything from sex symbols to “sexploitation” films of the 1950s to “porn chic” to contemporary celebrity “home-made” porn. The exhibition aims at providing the tools to become literate in the barrage of sexual driven images in our society.