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Notes -
Probably some combination of all those factors you listed. I do think there's something missing by taking away the sex scenes in movies, though, and it's not just about titillating people. The cheesy gratuitous nudity in 80s action movies made them fun in a shlocky way, adding to the sense of "ridiculous over-the-top male fantasy." Now the action movies are all dark, gritty, and joyous. The romance movies are weirdly chaste, like Twilight, as if sex isn't also part of romantic love.
Ironically, one place you can still kinda see this is in (some) Japanese hentai movies and games. They have sex scenes, but also real story and gameplay. It's a weird mix where you sometimes have to wait surprisingly long before it shows you a sex scene. But then even mainstream anime will sometimes have blatant fan-service, too.
I think the movies "Caligula" and "Showgirls" were going for something like that in the west, but they were both infamous flops, so maybe that scared away Hollywood producers from the idea of sex in movies forever.
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