The Beautiful and the Pointless

If sex scenes, or any other type of scene, don’t need to serve the plot, do they need to serve anything at all?

An essay by Esmé Holden

At a certain point in most every Marx Brothers film, all the building chaos and thinly spread drama suddenly comes to a stop – Chico sits down at a piano and Harpo picks up a harp and, for a few minutes, they just play. This might seem strange, especially in 1931’s Monkey Business when it comes a scene or two before the climax, and maybe it’s not surprising that their most acclaimed film is one of the few without a musical interlude. But Jonathan Richman, one of the first to recognise the genius of The Velvet Underground, thought they were worth dedicating a whole song to. In ‘When Harpo Played his Harp’ he asks the most important question: “if someone else can do it, how come nobody does?”

Every few months, someone, usually from outside of the online film space, will post about sex scenes. They will complain of their gratuity and how they do nothing to further the plot, as if projecting their disapproval to an uncomfortable parent sitting next to them. Then, naturally, everyone will dunk on them. The counter arguments — that thinking of art only in terms of functionality mirrors capitalism’s belief that there is only value in productivity — almost don’t bear repeating. But of course they will be the next time someone makes a similar post. It happened while I was writing this. It always loops back around, the arguments never go any further, few think to ask that if sex scenes, or any other type of scene, don’t need to serve the plot, do they need to serve anything at all?