Is HBO Producing Porn Now? Here's How The Streaming Service Took Its "Daring" Subject Matter Too Far

When HBO was first founded as a cable TV company in 1972, it was America’s first subscription network. We may be used to paying monthly fees for our favorite streaming services in 2024, but this model of television was a novelty 50 years ago. Unsurprisingly, the channel struggled to amass the huge audience it has today. Its big break came with the advent of original programming featuring the likes of Sex and the City and The Sopranos – shows that stood out to viewers for their daring subject matter and explicit themes. In the words of Euro News, HBO shows “dealt with adult themes in a way that shows on other networks wouldn’t dare.”

Thirty to fifty years ago, this did indeed differentiate HBO from its competitors. Yet even today, when nude shots and sex scenes are everywhere, HBO still feels the need to go above and beyond. Recently produced shows like Euphoria and The Idol continue to shock audiences who probably believed they’d seen everything already. Longtime Downton Abbey fans were startled to discover that the show’s new sister series, The Gilded Age, featured nudity when the original was always family-friendly. At what point does storytelling get swapped out for shock value? When does suggestiveness become voyeurism? 

Why Does HBO Love Nude Scenes?

There are moments in HBO’s shows when it can be argued that nudity is used as a device for storytelling. For example, in season 6, episode 4 of Game of Thrones, Daenerys Targaryen emerges unscathed from a burning building with her clothes scorched away. This scene is significant because it shows the audience that although other people and other objects (like her clothes) are subject to burning, Daenerys’s unique powers make her own body immune to fire. However, does that mean it’s necessary for the show to continually use prolonged close-up shots that leave nothing to the imagination? Or for Emilia Clarke, who played Daenerys for eight seasons, to feel pressured to go nude on set more often than she was comfortable with? The actress confessed in a podcast interview that when she fought to do fewer nude scenes after Game of Thrones, rather than having producers tell her that nudity was vital to a project’s story, she was told “You don’t want to disappoint your Game of Thrones fans.”

Fans of Game of Thrones did indeed come to expect nudity over the show’s eight-year run. When Lena Headey opted to use a body double for a nude scene as Queen Cersei, she faced backlash for being “less of an actress” because she didn’t want to “get [her] tits out.” On a show where it seems like every significant female character has been naked at one point, the idea that an actress would opt out of that felt to some viewers like a slight to the show’s premise. But if seeing every member of the cast naked was really so important to creating “realism” in the fantasy world of Westeros, how come no one ever demanded that any of the show’s male actors drop their britches against their will? 

With a show like Game of Thrones, which depicts a brutally violent, medieval-inspired world, it’s easier for producers and viewers to justify the frequent inclusion of graphic scenes. However, even the most ardent HBO fans have their limits. Sam Levinson, the writer and director behind the hit series Euphoria, collaborated with The Weeknd to produce a show called The Idol that arrived onto HBO Max last summer. The show, which tells the story of an aspiring pop star who becomes entangled with a perverted and possessive nightclub owner, was likened to a “rape fantasy” of “sexual torture porn” by anonymous sources on set. It’s not hard to see why – rather than exploring sexual exploitation in the music industry from a meaningful angle, The Idol sensationalizes it. 

It’s also alleged that The Weeknd, who created the show, brought Levinson onto the project because the original female-directed version was too sympathetic to women for his liking. The show was mocked online after premiering and was eventually canceled by HBO after just five episodes. As it turns out, forgoing an actual plot or theme for the sake of pornographic aesthetics isn’t all that appealing to most people.

Levinson has quite a checkered history with female nudity in his projects. Euphoria, for which he remains the only writer credited on every episode, was raunchy from the beginning, but for its second season, Levinson apparently wanted to take things further than many on set were comfortable with. Actresses Sydney Sweeney, Chloe Cherry, and Minka Kelly all recounted having to ask Levinson to alter scenes from the script where they were supposed to be naked and felt uncomfortable doing so. Sweeney spoke out in Levinson’s defense, saying that when she told him a topless scene written into the script felt like too much, “He was like, ‘OK, we don’t need it.’” She went on to say that “When [she] didn’t want to do it, he didn’t make [her].” But the question that arises is this: If Levinson could admit that nude scenes he wrote into the series were unnecessary to the narrative, why did he write them in the first place?

Art vs. Borderline Pornography

Let’s get real: We know why so many HBO shows include nudity as frequently and graphically as they do, and why so much of that nudity is female. It’s voyeurism for a generation so porn-addled that some audiences can’t even enjoy an episode of TV if it doesn’t resemble pornography. There’s a pronounced difference between portraying nudity in an artful way, like classical statues do, versus making up fictional scenarios in order to watch naked women being battered or humiliated (Game of Thrones is the worst offender of this; they added several rape scenes to the show that never occurred in the original book series).

The tides of viewer preference, however, are changing. Nudity may have made HBO stand out in the ‘90s and early naughts, but now they’re only one of many equally voyeuristic streaming platforms. Audiences are tired of how sex-saturated the market is, with nearly half of Gen Z adolescents believing that onscreen sex and nudity are unnecessary to most shows and movies. This exhaustion isn’t prudish; it’s desperation for something more interesting. The failure of The Idol, even when it boasted A-list stars like Jennie Kim and Lily-Rose Depp as part of its cast, undoubtedly proves that. 

Closing Thoughts

So, how can HBO avoid similarly wasting a huge budget and star-studded ensemble in the future? Maybe by investing more into actual stories than greenlighting series that would fall apart if the people in them stopped taking their clothes off. These shows may generate significant social media buzz, but at a certain point, people outside the porn-obsessed target audience stop tuning in. 

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