Movies - TV
The Sandra Bullock Sci-Fi Love Scene We're Still Thinking About
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
The 1993 sci-fi action film “Demolition Man” follows John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone), a punished police officer from the year 1996, revived from "Cryo-Penitentiary" into the ultra-polite semi-utopian society of 2032 where things like physical touch are banned. Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock) acts as Spartan’s liaison to this future as she explains the changes that have occurred since his freezing.
Among the peculiar societal developments, Huxley reveals VR helmets that have replaced sex by simulating touch without having to come into physical contact with another. After Huxley bluntly asks Spartan to engage in intercourse, to which he agrees, she presents Spartan with the VR helmet that displays strobe lights and brief glimpses of a nude body.
The non-touching sex scene speaks to the film’s criticisms of a polite society run amok, pushed headlong into prudishness. Brambilla's comment seemed to be against a certain kind of political correctness that would eventually lead to a vital disconnect from what is real.
The awkward scene between Huxley and Spartan is played for laughs, but it ultimately serves as a clever criticism of certain political and sexual attitudes prevalent in American media in 1993. A future wherein sex has been removed from human interactions is a dystopian detail ripe for dissection and a theme that is still relevant nearly thirty years after the film’s release.