I want to talk about Tuca and Bertie, the animated Netflix show, and how it uses a sex
scene to do everything that Fifty Shades wishes it could have done, but first I’m going
to just shove in a super short lukewarm defence of gratuitous sex scenes because I don’t
want to give the impression that this is, like, the only correct way to do things.
I have spent a prety substantial amount of time talking about the fifty shades franchise,
but in all that time I’ve not really spent much of it discussing most of the sex scenes
beyond acknowledging that they exist.
A big reason for that is that with few exceptions, the scenes don’t really do anything.
This is not a new criticism, of course, plenty of people have pointed out that the Fifty
Shades sex scenes largely exist in bubble space.
Things stop, sex happens, things move on.
They are scenes that can be pretty cleanly excised for different markets without having
a meaningful impact on the films.
They just don’t have a lot of purpose.
Now, this is probably something you’ve heard before, but let’s actually dig into that
for a second: what gives a sex scene “purpose”?
I’m going to argue, however briefly, a much more permissive interpretation of this.
Purpose is a narrative construct and exists in that context.
It is characterization, it is world building, it is theme, it is plot, but it’s also pacing
and aesthetic fulfillment.
Looking good and breaking up the action or drama for a couple minutes as a narrative
exhale are a good enough purpose.
Not every scene in every movie needs to be deep to justify its existence.
Fun is an acceptable aesthetic goal.
Where Fifty Shades ends up really falling flat is that the sex scenes are not only isolated
from plot and theme and character, they’re also repetitive, overly long, not particularly
good looking, and generally unmemorable.
Basically the nominal value as aesthetic or pacing are undercut by not having a good aesthetic
and killing the pacing.
Okay, so let’s talk about a sex scene that’s the complete opposite of all of that.
Tuca and Bertie is a 2019 Netflix original animated sitcom created by illustrator, writer,
and cartoonist Lisa Hanawalt.
The series revolves around the titular characters Tuca and Bertie as they navigate the complexities
of adulthood.
Tuca is a fun loving, carefree, directionless catastrophe living off her rich aunt’s goodwill
while dealing with hidden pain and trauma, and Bertie is a nervous, career-minded data
analyst and aspiring baker dealing with hidden pain and trauma.
The scene I want to focus on comes from the third episode, The Deli Guy.
Since her long term boyfriend Speckle moved in with her, Bertie feels like their sex life
has grown routine and uninteresting, which she catasrophizes as the seed of a chain reaction
of resentment that will eventually ruin her life.
Parallel to this Bertie has been developing a sexual interest in Pastry Pete, an authoritative,
dominating older celebrity pastry chef.
To spice things up she suggests they try something new.
“What if you, I don’t know, ordered me around?”
Speckle suggests a safeword, Bertie brushes the suggestion off because she wants to look
cool and strong, and the roleplay begins.
“Maybe something like: bend over you little tart!”
“Oh woah, okay”
At first things are going well but they quickly take a turn for the worse after Speckle calls
Bertie a “bad bird” triggering an intensely negative reaction.
As Bertie breaks down, Speckle uses his warm potato safe word to end things, and the two
of them agree to just go with the usual for the night.
“Usual way!
Usual way!”
This scene is brilliant.
While this specific interaction never comes up again in the season, the characters never
try again or really talk about what it means, the themes underlying this scene form a thesis
statement for the season as a whole.
Speckle crosses Bertie’s limits, pushes her boundaries, but doesn’t do so out of
neglect or malice or ego.
He crosses those lines because he doesn’t know they’re there, and he doesn’t know
where Bertie’s lines are because Bertie doesn’t know where Bertie’s lines are.
“I didn’t think I’d react this way.
What the hell?”
And it’s important to emphasize that these lines aren’t cleanly drawn.
When Speckle calls Bertie a tart and starts spanking her, she’s super into it.
“He he he he”
What Bertie doesn’t understand about herself is that she likes the idea of submission but
only in the context of validation and ends up confronting that about herself the hard
way: by accident.
“But I’m a good bird”
Speckle wants to respect Bertie’s boundaries, but he can’t do that if she doesn’t know
what they are.
This, then, is the thesis statement that underpins the season, that we don't often know what
our boundaries are until we hit them, whether it be in matters of sex, family, friends,
co-living, or any other relationship.
Over the course of the season all the characters confront this realization, that they need
to get to know themselves better so that they can actually communicate their wants and needs
with the people who love them.
As the season goes on the stakes of these conflicts escalate.
Tuca needs to confront her history of substance abuse and her toxic relationship with her
aunt.
Bertie needs to confront the ways childhood abuse has echoed through her life.
Speckle comes face to face with the possibility that no matter how much he loves her, his
emotional needs, where he wants his life to go, might be incompatible with staying together
with Bertie.
The show does a really fantastic job of getting into the chaotic mess of being an adult and
the give and take required to navigate relationships where both people are willing participants
who have their own complicated wants and needs, where some boundaries are big and obvious
and others are really detailed and touchy.
Sometimes, between people, those needs line up, and sometimes they’re mutually exclusive,
and maybe we don’t even entirely understand them ourselves.
All of us need to compromise and in turn ask others to compromise for us.
Navigating that space between ourselves is not a clean process, and may in fact be deeply
painful.
There are things we’re willing to compromise on because it will make someone else happy,
and making them happy will make use happier than keeping the thing we compromised, and
there are lines that we have to ask others to never cross, spaces that we have to ask
others to give up.
And the worst part is that we may not even know where those lines and spaces are until
it’s too late and we’ve stumbled into them by accident.
All of this Tuca and Bertie manages to touch on in one ninety second sex scene.
And honestly, I don’t think you could do the same this efficiently without that aspect,
without it being a sex scene, and without the vulnerability that represents.
And that’s what I think really makes this scene stand out.
See, while I will defend the gratuitous and trivial for indulging in aesthetic satiation
above metaphorical pursuits, this type of interaction, one that doesn’t just have
sex as the backdrop for things to happen in front of, but uses the dynamics of intimacy
for their intrinsic qualities, it is exemplary storytelling.
This is a scene that couldn’t exist in another context.
Bertie’s relationship with her own sexuality, the frame of power dynamics, and the specific
boundary of being punished in that space, if you were to de-sex this scene the meaning
would change entirely.
This scene takes on heavy implications in later episodes, when Bertie begins working
with Pastry Pete who forces her into an uncomfortable situation with clear sexual undertones, a
moment that exploits Bertie’s own inconfidence in her boundaries, which spirals into Bertie
making terrible mistakes that place others in harm’s way.
To throw this back to Fifty Shades one last time, taken as a whole this effectively demonstrates
the difference between consenting adults exploring power dynamics and their own wants and needs,
and abuse, in a way that Fifty Shades never really managed to do, even when it tried.
At the end of The Deli Guy Speckle listens to Bertie.
She does want him to be in charge, but in the vein of a Victorian bodice ripper, to
sweep her off her feet with big, melodramatic declarations, to be adored.
But even this comes back later!
Late in the season Speckle and Bertie toy with the idea of buying a house and moving
out of their one bedroom apartment.
Bertie at one point has a major meltdown and disappears for several days out of town, during
which Speckle can’t get ahold of her because she refuses to answer his calls and then loses
her phone in a lake.
Speckle then buys a fixer upper house when a sudden opportunity presents itself.
While he thought that she would be onboard with this spontaneous move, the stress of
her vanishing and going incommunicado turns it into an argument.
“I can’t just be your rock all the time.
Sometimes I need you to be my rock.”
“And I bought a house” “Wait, what?”
Speckle needs to confront both Bertie and himself and admit that while he hoped it would
make her happy, he wants to move on with his life.
He hopes that she’ll come with him, but if she can’t, if their needs have diverged,
then it’ll be sad, but this is what he needs to move forward.
Managing relationships, navigating compromises, it’s a lot of work, and it is not easy but,
as Tuca and Bertie argues, it’s worth it.
We need that human contact, we need those support networks, flawed and human as they
may be, because we can’t make it alone.