Nope, teens polled literally do not want romance whatsoever to be shown to them in their pop culture or entertainment media. They are so porn-brained that they have basically created a compartmentalized part of their life where sex is OK, and outside of that it's completely unacceptable. Not only should sex not be shown, romance in general should not be shown. They want the further marvel/disneyfication of all popular culture in a nation that was already prudish and sex negative to begin with.
This is an outcome of a sick porn-brained society. It's not the fault of Gen Z that they were the first generation to grow up with unfettered fast internet access mostly without restrictions, it's warped their brains to think of sex as something dirty and outside of normal life instead of an essential component of social life. For them, sex is something you do alone and it's sinful and shameful because of how degrading porn is. Public pop culture should be "good" and moralized, completely sterilized and separated from that sinful and shameful time alone.
This describes all romance, queer and heterosexual. Gender expression =/= sexuality and libidinal eroticism. Just because someone's comfortable being queer doesn't mean they will be comfortable with eroticism in general because gender isn't inherently sexual. Teens don't want any of it because they already get their libidinal sugar hits from porn so much that they have connected sex as identical to abusive exploitative objectifying pornography. Their shame and self loathing regarding their participation in this sort of "sex" their entire life has poisoned actual sexuality as a concept, made it dirty and evil. Everyone watches porn but everybody pretends they don't, and if they do it's only ethical porn (lmao yeah right, ever been to pornhub?) - then they scold everyone else in society for being so bad (and this scorning includes admonishing pop culture for sexuality, trying to remove reminders of sexuality).
This is the modern contradiction and dialectic of sexuality. Before we had the Madonna-Whore complex where all women were slotted into being pure virgins or sluts, this dialectical tension shows the contradiction in a society that demands women be hyper-sexual but also punish them for complying with that demand. Nowadays we have the Porn-Disney complex where all entertainment should either by porn and degrading, or completely de-sexualized and moralized, nothing in between. We demand porn to satiate our libidinal urges but then punish popular culture when it complies. Mormons exemplify this well, they outwardly oppose pornography and focus on its evils quite heavily but Utah consumes the most pornography per capita in the nation. The Mormons are excellent at this compartmentalization and projection.
The solution to the Madonna-Whore complex is to allow women to exist within that spectrum without judgment or labels, women are neither madonna nor are they whore - they just are what they are and contain complexities and different desires and moods, all of which are valid. Just like this, the solution to the Porn-Disney complex is to allow entertainment to exist within that spectrum without judgment or labels, allow entertainment and culture and art that has sexuality and complex themes without it becoming "pornography". American culture has always been sex negative, has always tried to strictly segregate sex from public life and public culture. There's never been a point in American culture where existing freely on this spectrum without labels was tolerated., and Gen Z here wants to retreat further into that American tradition and not transcend it
Hence the solution isn't to "remove bad sexual b plots" from film. It's to create more sexualized art and be OK with that existing. We need to ween our society off the degrading porn we consume and back to more healthy and pro-social sexual outlets that aren't hidden away in shame closets.
All that study you linked says about this topic is that "47.5% of adolescents said that sex isn’t needed for the plot of most TV shows and movies" and that they want to see more platonic relationships.
https://www.scholarsandstorytellers.com/css-teens-and-screens-2023
Nope, teens polled literally do not want romance whatsoever to be shown to them in their pop culture or entertainment media. They are so porn-brained that they have basically created a compartmentalized part of their life where sex is OK, and outside of that it's completely unacceptable. Not only should sex not be shown, romance in general should not be shown. They want the further marvel/disneyfication of all popular culture in a nation that was already prudish and sex negative to begin with.
This is an outcome of a sick porn-brained society. It's not the fault of Gen Z that they were the first generation to grow up with unfettered fast internet access mostly without restrictions, it's warped their brains to think of sex as something dirty and outside of normal life instead of an essential component of social life. For them, sex is something you do alone and it's sinful and shameful because of how degrading porn is. Public pop culture should be "good" and moralized, completely sterilized and separated from that sinful and shameful time alone.
This describes all romance, queer and heterosexual. Gender expression =/= sexuality and libidinal eroticism. Just because someone's comfortable being queer doesn't mean they will be comfortable with eroticism in general because gender isn't inherently sexual. Teens don't want any of it because they already get their libidinal sugar hits from porn so much that they have connected sex as identical to abusive exploitative objectifying pornography. Their shame and self loathing regarding their participation in this sort of "sex" their entire life has poisoned actual sexuality as a concept, made it dirty and evil. Everyone watches porn but everybody pretends they don't, and if they do it's only ethical porn (lmao yeah right, ever been to pornhub?) - then they scold everyone else in society for being so bad (and this scorning includes admonishing pop culture for sexuality, trying to remove reminders of sexuality).
This is the modern contradiction and dialectic of sexuality. Before we had the Madonna-Whore complex where all women were slotted into being pure virgins or sluts, this dialectical tension shows the contradiction in a society that demands women be hyper-sexual but also punish them for complying with that demand. Nowadays we have the Porn-Disney complex where all entertainment should either by porn and degrading, or completely de-sexualized and moralized, nothing in between. We demand porn to satiate our libidinal urges but then punish popular culture when it complies. Mormons exemplify this well, they outwardly oppose pornography and focus on its evils quite heavily but Utah consumes the most pornography per capita in the nation. The Mormons are excellent at this compartmentalization and projection.
The solution to the Madonna-Whore complex is to allow women to exist within that spectrum without judgment or labels, women are neither madonna nor are they whore - they just are what they are and contain complexities and different desires and moods, all of which are valid. Just like this, the solution to the Porn-Disney complex is to allow entertainment to exist within that spectrum without judgment or labels, allow entertainment and culture and art that has sexuality and complex themes without it becoming "pornography". American culture has always been sex negative, has always tried to strictly segregate sex from public life and public culture. There's never been a point in American culture where existing freely on this spectrum without labels was tolerated., and Gen Z here wants to retreat further into that American tradition and not transcend it
Hence the solution isn't to "remove bad sexual b plots" from film. It's to create more sexualized art and be OK with that existing. We need to ween our society off the degrading porn we consume and back to more healthy and pro-social sexual outlets that aren't hidden away in shame closets.
All that study you linked says about this topic is that "47.5% of adolescents said that sex isn’t needed for the plot of most TV shows and movies" and that they want to see more platonic relationships.