SEX

There is quite a bit of disconnect between how the Sword & Sorcery genre is portrayed as regards to sex. In the wider popular mind it is a genre overflowing with naked flesh, bulging muscles, bare breasts and scantily-dressed women. It just would not fit the popular conception of the genre if it did not contain musclemen in loincloths and women in various bikinis made from things bikinis are not normally made from.

This is largely a concoction of the era when S&S moved out of literature and into the realm of comics and movies. The written form of S&S was not really a tremendously sexy genre, and in fact usually contained no sex at all, save for vague references and mentions of unclothed harem girls.

Howard himself was no fan of including a sex appeal element, and often he only included women at all because the publishers got on him about it if he didn’t. If he wanted to be the cover story, he had to put a sexy girl in the story for the artist to put on said cover and thus help sell magazines. He often complained about this in his letters, but he went along with it – resulting in Conan rescuing a succession of half-dressed damsels who he would ditch before the text tale.

Subsequent practitioners of the form did not really go farther with this. Leiber and Moorcock were both quite reticent at including sex in their stories, and this may have just been a function of the time period. The pulp era liked to flirt with sexy themes, but was constrained by censorship laws to keep it in the margins.

This all changed in the late 60s when the S&S resurgence took place. People were accustomed to much more explicit sexuality in their stories, and as the 70s progressed more and more barriers came down. There were fewer and fewer restrictions placed on authors as to what they could write, and the whole culture became much more accepting of sexual themes.

The art used to sell Sword & Sorcery also had a big impact. Frazetta famously included the now-obligatory scantily-clad slave maidens on his covers, and set a precedent no one was in a hurry to get away from. Book covers came to include oiled-up barbarians and naked girls almost by default, and the comics were not any better about this, skirting right along the edges of what they could get away with.

These sorts of images may have been in the original tales, but a visual depiction of a harem of naked women is a lot more visceral and explicit than just mentioning one on the page. The selling of S&S became bound up with lurid images of sex – mostly provided by naked or mostly-naked women. Even when female characters were given more agency or even placed in the lead role, they still had to adhere to the fanservicey tropes of chainmail bikinis and loincloths.

It introduced a degree of carnality to the genre that it has never quite gotten away from, and in fact some modern authors gleefully include scenes of rape or torture as a way to seem “edgy” without really considering what they are doing. The violence and sex sometimes rise to almost pornographic levels and rarely seem to add anything to the narrative. None of this is helped by the grimdark aesthetic of things like Game of Thrones, with the ubiquitous female nudity and casual rapeyness.

So should this element of gratuitous sex be considered a necessary part of the genre? I would say not. I feel like the sexual themes detract from the kind of lean and mean stories that make for the best Sword & Sorcery. I’m not being a prude here, as I have written something like 20 pornographic novels, and I know as much about that kind of story as anyone. I feel like the elements of barbarism the sexual elements are meant to evoke are fine, and can add to the feel of brutality that makes for a menacing world. But I don’t think sex is a good story element for what is essentially an action genre, and those who have delved heavily into it have done the genre – and themselves – a disservice.