The storyline asks a familiar question: can two people have sex without the emotional complications? Can have sex with absolutely no strings attached? No Strings Attached, released in 2011, tackled this topic of causal sex, which was a popular topic for that year (a nearly identical storyline was released in Friends with Benefits in July of 2011). The movie follows the sexual adventures of Adam and Emma, he an aspiring television writer and her a resident doctor at a teaching hospital. The two first met at a summer camp as teens, meeting again while they are in college when Emma happens to go a party at Adam’s school. Several years go by until the pair see each other again at an open air California market where they exchange phone numbers. It is not until Adam is informed that his father is dating one of Adam’s former girlfriends, however, that the two have their first sexual encounter. The two agree to have casual sex, at any hour of the day or night, without any kind of emotional attachment. Adam breaks this agreement as he begins to fall for Emma, even convincing her to let him take her on a Valentine’s date. Emma does not want to handle to the pressure of commitment, so she breaks their undefined relationship off. However, at her younger sister’s wedding, Emma realizes that she cannot let Adam go and comes back to him, promising to commit herself to him a committed relationship.
This analysis will look at three excerpts from the film as well as its overall narrative to ascertain how sexual scripts are employed between Adam and Emma. Examination of the film shows that No Strings Attached rewrites some of the conventions of the classic heterosexual script of dominance and submission, but that its narrative will uphold the idealization of true love and the the idea that love finds a way.
The first scene under examination is the opening to the movie, labeled as “15 years ago.” It shows pubescent Adam and Emma sitting at summer camp, with a rack of canoes stacked behind them. The two are sitting uncomfortably next to each other, looking towards the camera. Adam says that he performs well at archery, which Emma mocks as a useless skill unless his time machine gets stuck in the middle ages. Emma then comments on Adam’s famous father, to which Adam responds that his parents are getting a divorce. He starts to cry, covering his face form Emma’s view. Emma attempts to comfort him telling him that love “isn’t meant to last forever.” Adam then asks if he can “finger” Emma, to which she succinctly responds “No” (Barber & Reitman, 2011).
In this scene, fundamental sexual scripts for puberty aged teens are supported. In their content analysis, Hust, Brown, and L’Engle (2008) looked to how sexual health messages were conveyed in media for young adolescents. The content analysis overwhelmingly showed that sexual health is represented as an embarrassing and funny part of sexual exploration during puberty, that “boys are obsessed with sex and sexual performance,” and that girls are responsible for teen pregnancy, contraception, and STD prevention (pg. 14). This opening scene at camp between Adam and Emma is a near perfect representation of these sexual codes. The scene between the two adolescents is clearly uncomfortable with Adam embarrassed to be showing emotion through tears and making it feel as though it is embarrassing for both Emma and Adam to explore the beginnings of their sexual desires. Emma is responsible for fending off Adam’s advances- she was the one to say “No” to the prospect of being intimate with Adam. This lends to the understanding that young Adam is very curious about sex and his sexual performance. He asks to “finger” Emma, which in theory would bring very little sexual pleasure to himself. Thus, his request implies that Adam was curious about his ability to perform for his female partner’s pleasure. This scene conveys that adolescent boys are to be concerned with how they show emotion, concerned with sexual performance, and that puberty will be embarrassing as well as confusing. Adolescent girls are shown that it is their responsibility to be responsible and to thwart male sexual advances.
The second excerpt pertaining to this analysis is one that shows Emma and Adam’s first sexual encounter. Adam, dealing with the emotional stress of knowing his father is dating his ex-girlfriend, has slightly too much to drink and wakes up naked in Emma’s apartment. Emma tells him that he did not sleep with anyone the night before in his drunken stupor but that he had come over to her apartment and fallen asleep. While Adam is getting dressed, Emma sits next to him and strokes his hair while Adam begins to untie her robe. Adam passionately begins to kiss Emma, moving her to the bed and underneath him. Emma remembers a condom, but a knock on Emma’s bedroom door from her roommate reminds the pair that they have time constraints as Emma needs to get to work. She tells Adam that he has “45 seconds to push it together,” yet the two, with muffled yelps of pleasure, manage to climax together (Barber & Reitman, 2011).
Kim et al. agreed from their analysis that feminine courtship strategies were next in line as the most prevalent demonstration of the heterosexual script. This part of the script was characterized by women objectifying themselves, women as being valued primarily for their physical appearance, and women using “passive and alluring” strategies to win men’s affection (p. 151-152). While Adam is rehearsing the male component of the sexual script, Emma is rejecting some of the female script lines. Emma appears in this scene mostly covered in a bath robe, the viewer assuming she had just woken up. Emma is not overly sexualized and dressed fairly simply. She is not objectified, either, with neither character discussing her body as sexually attractive. Emma is also responsible for partly initiating sex. Emma sits down next to shirtless Adam and starts to stroke his hair, giving Adam the cue to begin taking off her clothes. Emma’s character is therefore one that does not exactly rehearse her part of the sexual script, rejecting the code that she needs to objectify herself and be completely passive to win Adam’s attention. This scene demonstrates that, while the young adult male needs to be dominant, the young adult female does not have to be sexually objectified or overtly sexually dressed to initiate sex with a man. This scene shows that the woman need not be the dominant initiator but that it is her role to give the man a cue that sex is desired, as Emma does when she comes toward Adam and starts to stroke him.
The final excerpt under examination is the Valentine’s day date that Adam plans for Emma. Emma reluctantly agrees to go with Adam on the date, warning him not to bring her flowers. Adam, following directions, shows up with a bundle of carrots and an itinerary for Emma of the date that will follow. They go to a mini golf course and share a milkshake, and Adam starts to tell Emma that he is falling in love with her. Emma cuts him off and then confronts the situation at the light display that Adam has planned next. While fighting, Adam yells that he is completely in love with her and that it would be okay for her to feel something for him. Emma yells that she does not need anyone else to take care of her, that “she takes care of herself.” Emma finally tells Adam that they should not see each other anymore and asks him to take her back to the hospital (Barber & Reitman, 2011).
This scene is one that majorly disrupts the heterosexual script. Kim et al. (2007) found that masculine commitment and feminine commitment scripts were a key component of the heterosexual script. Their content analysis found that within this sexual script, men want independence while women want relationships, that women want boyfriends or husbands, and that “men prefer sexual fulfillment over emotional intimacy” (p. 153). Adam and Emma, on the other hand, nearly reverse these roles. Emma is the one that wants to be detached from commitment while Adam is the one that wants to confess his feelings for Emma and wants to be in a relationship with her. Emma wants to formulate ground rules to keep her relationship with Adam strictly sexual while Adam is the one to look for any opportunity to forge a deeper emotional connection with Emma. While Adam does take the dominant role in courting Emma with their Valentine’s day date, which supports the part of the sexual script that says that “men use active and powerful” means to win female attention, he does not do so with the goal of having sex with her but with the goal of making their relationship something more than just sex. This scene demonstrates that while the male and female commitment scripts might be reversed, that it is acceptable for men to want commitment and women to want independence, there will always be friction between the two different scripts being recited. Whether on the part of the man or the woman, this scene shows that love will face the obstacle that one partner wants freedom rather than a commitment, that one person will have to do the convincing or face rejection as Adam does.
The narrative of this film overall shows that, despite these disruptions to the traditional heterosexual script, the film defends the romantic idealism that love with always find a way. Lippman, Ward, and Seabrook (2014) found that participants in their study who had higher levels of exposure to romantic themed and sub-themed media had stronger endorsement of the romantic ideal “Love Finds A Way” (p. 135). This finding is justified as the script that Adam and Emma follow in No Strings Attached continually supports the ideal that love will always find a way. No matter what obstacle stands between the two characters, they find their way back to one another in the dramatic ending to the film where Emma comes back to Adam and he says that he will never let her go again. Their love finds a way around distance or disagreement, around Emma who does not want to commit, and around both characters and their emotional baggage. Emma thinks, like HBO’s Sex and the City characters, that she can “have sex like a man,” that she can have sex without an emotional attachment. However, as Gail Markle (2008) concludes in her article “‘Can Women Have Sex Like a Man?’: Sexual Scripts in Sex and the City,” Emma ends up just as Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte do: “safely ensconced in relationships… abandon[ing] their desires to enjoy ‘sex like a man’ in favor of committed relationships” (p. 56). While Emma and Adam ignore some of the conventions of the heterosexual script, the end of the film sees Emma happily following those conventions and needing the relationship that she once so adamantly advocated against and Adam taking the dominant position in directing the future of their relationship. Emma is never necessarily passive nor sexually objectified, yet she and Adam both come to learn that sex without emotional attachment is impossible.
The film communicates that even if the sexual script of dominance and submission is not followed exactly, that the ending will always be the same. The narrative shows that even if a woman wants independence, she will come to learn to want a relationship. It shows that sex with the right person will never be awkward or not pleasurable but that with the one's true love, sex will always be magically orgasmic, as it is with Emma and Adam. It shows that even if the man cannot hold the dominant position in a relationship because the woman wants independence instead of commitment, it will be his role in the end to lure the woman to him and take direction of their relationship. The film demonstrates that the sexual script can be upset, but that, eventually, everything line of that script will fall back into place.
References
Barber, G. (Producer), & Reitman I. (Director). (2011). No Strings Attached [Motion Picture]. United States: Paramount Pictures.
Hust, S. J. T., Brown, J. D., & L'Engle, K. L. (2008). Boys will be boys and girls better be prepared: An analysis of the rare sexual health messages in young adolescents' media. Mass Communication & Society, 11(1), 3-23.
Kim, J. L., Sorsoli, C. L., Collins, K., Zylbergold, B. A., Schooler, D., & Tolman, D. L. (2007). From sex to sexuality: Exposing the heterosexual script on primetime network television. Journal of Sex Research, 44(2), 145-157.
Lippman, J. R., Ward, L. M., & Seabrook, R. C. (2014). Isn’t it romantic? Differential associations between romantic screen media genres and romantic beliefs. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 3(3), 128-140.
Markle, G. (2008). “Can women have sex like a man?”: Sexual scripts in "Sex and the City". Sexuality & Culture, 12(1), 45-57.
