Specifically sex in fantasy novels.
I'm moved to blog partly by
this review of The Liar's Key, which contains the surprising line:
I now have a favourite literary sex scene!
Now, my own scene was probably the reviewer's favourite because it's funny and there are cows. But there are more general points to make - and here's George RR Martin making one:
“I can describe an axe entering a human skull in great explicit detail and no one will blink twice at it. I provide a similar description, just as detailed, of a penis entering a vagina, and I get letters about it and people swearing off. To my mind this is kind of frustrating, it’s madness. Ultimately, in the history of [the] world, penises entering vaginas have given a lot of people a lot of pleasure; axes entering skulls, well, not so much.”
And it must be said that George's books have more sex in them than many fantasy books do. Though far less than is on screen in the TV adaptation, and perhaps not very much on a per-page basis ... he just writes a lot of pages!
I'm sure that, as many people have said, the causes for the imbalance are several in number and prime amongst them are society's irrational prejudices and prudery. Violence (generally illegal, cruel, and destructive) is lauded and spot-lighted, sex (generally legal, kind, and productive) is considered shameful and hidden.
However, I have a couple of additional thoughts on the subject - not perhaps the prime causes but possibilities to be considered:
I wonder if one factor might not be that when it's violence we're reading about we're generally interested in the outcome - we want to know who will win, who will survive. The protagonists haven't just said, "let's have a spot of violence, shall we?" ... it's about something. Whereas sex is an end unto itself, and if you're not a participant, one might wonder what the point of being party to it is.
Another thought runs thusly: Most of us have sex and because real sex (as opposed to porn) is private, we have a particular and private experience of it. Very few of us kill people with swords or watch people burn. So when describing the latter the writer is leading - they are describing something about which the reader is unlikely to have strong expectations. When describing the former you risk running roughshod over the reader's expectations/sensibilities ... or giving them porn.
A sword-fight has to be pretty unrealistic before many of us complain because few of us have any real experience of sword fighting. Similarly with GRRM's axe-entering-skull - how many of us will be jarred out of the story by the sudden thought that 'no, the last time I put my axe through someone's skull it was rather different'? Sex, on the other hand, is more difficult to get right on the page - people have opinions, experience, and it's far more easy to lose them with a clunky line or an image that for them is unintentionally funny.
After all - get it wrong and you might find yourself starring on the
Worst Sex Scene lists that crop up every year!
