by Emily Measar, Staff Writer

It often feels like there’s nothing that encapsulates the teenage experience quite losing your virginity. Or not losing your virginity. Sex in general, but particularly your First Time, is often a big deal in movies, shows, and books about teens. Even if the story isn’t centered on it, it usually exists as a background element in some way. Which means that we’re gonna need to talk about social constructs and their control over society at large, but specifically teenage culture. Let’s rock and roll!

First, though here’s the part where I come at you with the contradictions! Yes, virginity is a social construct, but also… it’s not? Like, the idea of losing something because you have sex is batshit, sure, but sex is a new experience that comes with it’s own expectations, limitations, and emotions. As anything new might. It’s a big deal because you’re doing something new, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be life altering in the way a lot of teen media makes it out to be. 

I think we put this weight on the first time you have sex because of how society has framed the idea. However, I also think part of it subconsciously comes from the fact that deciding when to have sex, or even if, is often seen as the first real “adult” decision a teenager makes. So, the stories we tell about that time get to exist on the precipice between childhood and adulthood in a really visceral way. And because you’re doing something new, with other people who either haven’t done it or haven’t done it a lot, there’s an inherent comedy of errors that gets pushed to the front of many teens’ experiences with sex. 

Enter explicit teen sex comedies! They usually have two functions, especially in the 1990s and early 2000s when they were the most popular. First, they’re meant to be examples of how teen sexuality is, even if it’s exaggerated. It’s a “see, actually teens really do talk about sex all the time!!!” kind of thing. Secondly, they’re meant to shock the parental audience. If parents don’t approve of the blatant sexual content, real or imagined, then maybe more teenagers will flock to see the films that the adults in their lives are losing it over.

Directed by Paul Weitz and written by Adam Herz, American Pie is by no means the first in its genre - even tame-by-modern-standards films from the 1950s like Gidget are some degree of this genre - but it really put the modern teen sex comedy on the map in a big way. It came out in 1999, during what is considered by many to be the “Best Movie Year Ever.” It’s the year that saw cinema game changers like The Sixth Sense, American Beauty, and The Matrix. Among literally so many others, including a few other teen films we’ll talk about later this year. 

With the original tongue-in-cheek title of “Untitled Teenage Sex Comedy That Can Be Made For Under $10 Million That Most Readers Will Probably Hate But I Think You Will Love,” American Pie absolutely smashed at the box office and spawned many careers and countless spin-offs. Lots of people love to quote the fact that, relative to its budget, the film has technically made more money than absolute blockbusters like Titanic.

American Pie is the story of Jim and his group of friends (who are more like the people you hang out with because of the forced proximity of high school than actual friends, but whatever) who are tired of being virgins. They decide to make a pact to have sex for the first time, to lose their virginities as it were, before prom night of their senior year. The film progresses from there between parties, after school clubs, and the notorious pie fucking while Jim and company do their damndest to get it on before prom.

I don’t really think the cultural impact of American Pie can really be understated. There were lots, and I do mean lots, of sex comedies in the 1980s, but to a modern audience they might as well not exist at all. After American Pie came out, a slew of mostly forgotten sex romps like The Girl Next Door, EuroTrip, and Sex Drive followed it. Not to mention the flick’s four sequels and a five film “American Pie Presents” series that included a release in 2020. Plus, there are the films that smashed like National Lampoon’s Van Wilder, which has a sequel and a prequel of its own, and the ultimate of quotable teen sex comedies: Superbad.

Which isn’t even to mention the pop culture shift that occurred with both the pie fucking scene (which will be parodied until the heat death of the universe, I’m sure), the introduction of the term “MILF” into common teen (and then wilder) vernakular, and the forever quoted “this one time at band camp.”

So, when deciding on the second film for this month’s column, I knew there was a pretty wide selection of films to pick from. I was originally going to look at Easy A as my more “modern” sex comedy, but my boyfriend scoffed every single time I brought it up. Which… rude. But he also wasn’t wrong, in retrospect. Because then I remembered that Blockers existed!

Written by Brian and Jim Kehoe and directed by Kay Cannon, Blockers is the only film I’ve mentioned by name so far that was directed by a woman. It follows a similar plot, though, which is why nearly every piece written about the film talked about it as: American Pie… but girls! And while I don’t think it’s totally wrong, it’s about a group of friends who make a vow to lose their virginity on prom night. 

However, where Blockers differs from American Pie is that a) it’s actually pretty sex positive, at least in a modern way, and b) it’s more about the parents than it is about the teenagers. Which is kind of a head scratcher as far as a teen sex comedies are concerned, for sure. I think it’s a result of this film really wanting to have its cake and eat it too, as it relates to who the audience is. It’s at once parents dealing with the open sexuality of their kids and “kids these days are like this.” 

There is an unintended consequence, though, because of the choice to make it more about the adults. It’s a teen sex comedy that doesn’t the actual sex of the teenagers, but rather their general sexual experiences. Which… possibly a hot take? Is a good thing! 

Like, the thing about R-rated teen sex comedies is that they’re, more often than not, for adults. And you see how I get to that conclusion, right? An R-rating means you’re barring anyone under the age of 17 from the film without “adult” guidance, provided the movie theater is enforcing the rule. So, who’s left to see all these raunchy, explicit sex comedies about teenagers? Certainly not the teens!

So, you have these films with nudity, bodily fluids, and talks of stuff like masturbation with a flute, but they’re all actually aimed at adults. Because with all of those things present, which may or may not be reflective of teen life, the actual teenagers can’t see any of those films en masse. Instead, you have a bunch of adults who are seeing people they’re perceiving as teenagers be raunchy and explicit. Which feels… not great. Honestly, it feels a little fetishy - in the bad way. There’s a reason there’s always a “teen” category on porn sites.

But what’s so refreshing about Blockers is that it’s an explicit, R-rated teen sex comedy that doesn’t feel like that. It doesn’t feel like the audience is there to exploit the teenage characters, regardless of how old the actors actually are. And maybe part of that is because Kay Cannon didn’t necessarily want to actually make “American Pie… but girls!” 

I do think it’s also because the film focuses on the adults in more 60-40 split of the narrative, which leans towards the film being about the parents rather than the teens. In fact, the only really “raunchy” sex parts in the film are with some of the parents. It’s more about the experience of sex for the girls in Blockers, whereas American Pie is all about getting some no matter what. 

So, while the concepts are the same, I’m hopeful that whenever more mainstream teen sex comedies come out, they’ll continue in the modern slope that Blockers has laid out before us. Despite being more about the adults, the general ethos of the film is much more in line with how we view consent, sex, and sexuality as a whole in the present day. 

I know that society at large is going to make Stiffler’s mom jokes, pie fucking parodies, and sexual references that start and end with “this one time at band camp” until we all die and there are no more movies to be had. But maybe there will be a film that truly rises above it all and impacts teen sex comedies more than American Pie ever did. I just only pray that it doesn’t have an extended puking scene… because I’m so fucking over those.