Ration Reality

It can hardly be news to any cinemagoer that the movies are failing to represent sex and drugs responsibly. Condoms aren't shown and characters are moreover not depicted suffering the general consequences of unprotected sex. They can also smoke without getting cancer, eat and drink without needing to go to the lavatory and have exciting car chases without ever accidentally running someone over.

So why no condoms? Well, in art as in life, they are a bit of a downer. They can be used for broad laughs, as in the recent comedy The 40-Year-Old Virgin, or for ostentatiously edgy sexiness, in Jane Campion's erotic thriller In The Cut. But smelly, fiddly, rubbery condoms are not part of the cinema's lexicon of love, and if you're trying to get laughs or thrills out of drug use, then a finger-wagging lecture is surplus to requirements.

Jonathan Ross tells the urban myth about the man who found himself watching the adult channel in his hotel room, remembered he had a camcorder, and thought that by filming the TV he could make his own porn film. When he watched the film at home, he was horrified to see that the clearest image was his own reflection in the TV screen, enjoying an activity which, however sexy it must have felt at the time, looked horribly unattractive. On the screen, reality is just like sex or drugs. It must be carefully controlled.