Is there more or less sex on screen?

FIFTY YEARS ago the Supreme Court dabbled in film criticism. A cinema manager in Georgia had been prosecuted for “distributing obscene material” in the form of “Carnal Knowledge” (1971), a film about two men’s sexual pathologies starring Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel. It was rated R, denoting adult content, but it was hardly explicit. In one scene you can hear moans of pleasure, but all you see is an empty living room. The court ruled that the film was not obscene.