Simulated Sex or "Soft-Core"?

Imagine walking onto a film set in 1992.

The lights are hot. The crew moves with practiced efficiency. The cameras are carefully positioned to hide as much as they reveal. Two actors stand in robes, quietly reviewing the scene they've been asked to perform. In a few minutes, they'll remove those robes, simulate sex for the camera, and trust that everyone around them will treat them professionally.

Now imagine walking onto the set of Game of Thrones twenty-five years later. Different costumes. Different cameras, different technology, dfferent distribution platform.

But in many ways, the work itself is remarkably familiar. The actors are still creating an illusion. The audience still believes they are watching something real. The camera is still doing what it has always done, convincing us to believe something that never actually happened.

So what changed?

Surprisingly, not as much as most people think.

One of the greatest misconceptions about Hollywood is that explicit intimacy is somehow a modern invention. It isn't. Filmmakers have spent generations perfecting the illusion of sexuality. Camera angles, body positioning, editing, lighting, choreography, performance, and visual storytelling have been creating believable intimate moments for decades. What changed wasn't how simulated sex scenes are filmed, it ws the conversations surrounding it.

During the late 1980s and throughout much of the 1990s, many productions featuring simulated intimacy were marketed as erotic thrillers or late-night cable entertainment commonly referred to as "Soft-Core". Because of those labels, actors who accepted those roles were often judged personally for the work they performed. The assumption was that appearing in those films somehow reflected the actor's own morality or personal life. Audiences, even other actors and filmmakers, assumed the sex wasn't being simulated.

As someone who worked in the industry during that era, I remember that stigma well. It wasn't simply attached to the films, it also followed the performers. Years later, audiences enthusiastically embraced series like Game of Thrones, Outlander, Sense8, Normal People, and countless other prestige dramas with similar levels of nudity and simulated intimacy. But these shows were no longer dismissed as "soft-core." They were discussed as sophisticated storytelling, award-worthy performances, and meaningful explorations of the human experience.

The actors hadn't suddenly become more professional. The filmmaking techniques hadn't suddenly become more artistic. Society had simply changed the label because better scripts with bigger budgets were now being filmed. They included as much nudity and simulated sex, if not more, than the old late night cable TV.

That realization raises an important question. If the work itself remained fundamentally the same, why were the performers treated so differently?

As intimacy professionals, we have a responsibility to ask questions like this because labels influence perception, and perception influences how performers are treated.

An actor portraying intimacy is not inviting judgment. They are doing what actors have always done, simply telling a story. Whether that story appears in an independent film, a premium cable drama, or a blockbuster streaming series, should never determine the respect that performer receives.

Our industry has become better at celebrating stories that explore sexuality. Now we must become equally committed to protecting the artists who bring those stories to life.

Because the illusion has never been the problem. How we treat the people creating it has always been the underlying issue.