Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I am the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs Magazine.

I am joined today by R.S. Benedict,

those dangerous woman in speculative fiction, host of the Right Good podcast.

R.S. Benedict could be found at rsbenedict.com, which is here today

because she's the author of an essay published a couple of years ago, but of enduring relevance,

called Everyone is Beautiful and No One Is Horny, published in Bloodknife.

One of the most fascinating things I've read in a while,

and I'm so excited for R.S. Benedict is to join us today on Current Affairs.

Hello.

Hello, thanks for having me on.

So, this essay, everyone, is beautiful, and no one is horny. You draw attention to what you describe as a

trend in cinema, a trend that I don't think I had consciously noticed until reading your essay,

until you pointed out what had happened. But the moment you pointed it out,

I realized that you were right and it was true. So perhaps you could tell us the particular trend

that you're calling attention to in this essay. Well, what I'm calling attention to is this very

strange, I don't know if convergence is the right word, of two things that I noticed in cinema, particularly in big budget American cinema, which is that while beauty standards have gotten more and more freakishly inhumanly unattainable and perfectionistic for men and for women. Movies have gotten less and less

sexy, less and like sexualized, and I don't just mean a lack of sex scenes, but a lack of any

kind of desire. Even during the Hays Code, there was a sense of desire. Hitchcock very famously had

that train going into the tunnel in the West.

Filmmakers, even during times of very strict censorship,

were still able to approach human sexuality and discuss it and allude to it despite limitations.

And here it's just gone.

...