Sex Is Violence/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Examples of Sex Is Violence in Live-Action TV include:

  • Oz: There's the Keller/Beecher relationship, conjugal visits in the first season, and transvestites strutting their stuff. Not to mention all the sexual slavery that goes on.
    • Jefferson Keane's execution also counts, what with the actual execution part interlaced with scenes of McManus and Wittlesey getting it on in the prison.
  • At times, it seems this trope is deliberately invoked or explored in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The series often presents a link between combat and the sexuality of Slayers and Vampires. When the characters discuss fighting, they sound like they're talking about sex. Notably, Faith gets off on both combat and sex, and tries to get Buffy to enjoy it like she does.
    • Also, many vampire attacks have extended rape metaphors. Most obviously done in "Bad Girls" and "Fool For Love."

Joyce: Honey, did you ... somehow, unintentionally, lead him on in any way? Uh, send him signals?
Buffy: Well, I ... I do beat him up a lot. For Spike that's like third base.

    • The first time Buffy and Spike have sex is in the middle of a fight. They go from bashing each other to pieces to kissing to have sex all in the same 30 seconds.
    • Spike fantasizes about fighting the Slayer while having sex with Harmony.
    • When Buffy and Riley have sex for the first time, the rather tender love scene is intercut with the two of them fighting a demon.
  • Angel. In "Waiting in the Wings" Angel and Cordelia are Kissing Under the Influence and are about to have sex when masked lackeys burst in on them. Angel kills them simultaneously, stabbing one while killing the other with a dagger thrown Offhand Backhand. Cordelia says they need to get out of there right away as, "You looked really hot doing that."
  • Spooks season seven: Lucas North has a brutal fight with a guy in a Moscow bar, which ends with him drowning the guy in the sink. During this fight, shots of a pole dancer upstairs appear frequently).
  • Supernatural: Most female demons, especially Ruby, Meg, and Dental Hygienist!Lilith, love macking on the boys while smacking them around.
  • The final filmed episode of Firefly has the crew transporting the supposedly dead body of one of Zoe and Mal's former squad mate. Jayne and Book end up talking about how everyone on the ship seems to act differently around the body, with Jayne admitting that seeing/being near a dead body makes him need to do something, work out, kill someone, get some tail (although he is quick to point out it's not because death makes him randy). And Book telling him it's a completely natural feeling, that the reminder of mortality, simply makes him want to experience life while he can.
  • Fiona, Michael Weston's trigger-happy Heroic Sociopath ex-girlfriend in Burn Notice.

Michael: "Violence may be foreplay for you, Fi. Not for me."

  • Elliot Spencer's fight with Mikel Dayan in "The Two Live Crew Job" episode of Leverage ends with them kissing.
    • In a different episode, Eliot begins to pound on the team's mortal enemy Sterling in a bar. What does Parker do? Stands there with a smile on her face. It was intended to be Parker enjoying watching Sterling get his comeuppance, but the Beth Riesgraf's smile was a little too gleeful (she's almost licking her chops.)
    • One episode of Leverage involves Eliot meeting, and then fighting, a Distaff Counterpart of himself. It was... well, insanely hot.
  • The first episode of Caprica contrasted scenes of a couple having sex to a violent mafia assassination.
  • The death of Marian in the second season finale of Robin Hood was described by the writers as "the consummation of Guy and Marian". The scene in question has her running up to him, declaring her love for another man, and then getting impaled in the lower abdomen. Guy draws her toward him, she throws her head back, and then slides down his body as a fountain in the background spurts water from his direction toward her.
  • The scene in Torchwood series 2 episode "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", where Jack and John Hart suck face and then, practically without pausing for breath, proceed to beat the hell out of each other.
  • True Blood: In "It Hurts Me Too" after Bill pins Lorena against a wall and tells her that he'll never love her, she kisses him. He does not react well to this, first going for her throat with his fangs, then responding to her urging him to make love to her by doing so extremely violently to the point that he leaves several cuts on her chest and twists her head around 180 degrees. Lorena loves every second of it, and dreamily says "Oh William, I so love you."
  • The first episode of Spartacus: Gods Of The Arena features a montage cutting back and forth between Gannicus having sex with two women and the other gladiators outside sparring. Then later in the same episode, Gaia and Lucretia's drug-fueled girl-on-girl action is intercut with Batiatus receiving a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from a rival.
  • King Henry had six beautiful wives as portrayed on The Tudors, but it was Anne Bolyn and Katherine Howard who were portrayed as the most sexualised, with plenty of nude and sex scenes. These are the two wives who are eventually beheaded. In fact, Katherine Howard goes so far as to practice putting her head on the block in the nude. Perfectly demonstrated here: [1] ( Not my video!)
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: Worf explains Klingon mating rituals.
  • A Bit of Fry and Laurie has a section where the pair apologise to the audience because Moral Guardians have banned them from performing a sketch involving sex and violence. Apparently it involved Stephen beating Hugh with a cricket bat very sexily, and ended with them going to bed together... violently.
  • A recent[when?] episode of Chuck has Casey fighting it out with Gertrude Verbanski, a business rival of the eponymous character's Carmichael Industries. Needless to say, the fight got a bit passionate and intense as it wore on, if you know what we mean.

Back to Sex Is Violence