It’s been 25 years since Paul Weitz showed one of the goofiest ways to beat off in American Pie.
Masturbation is such an intimate and solitary act that it almost feels intrusive to watch a movie character engaging in it onscreen. Despite being a (nearly) universal experience, cinema tends to allude to the practice of self-pleasure, preferring the titillation of partnered sex scenes. There’s still an overall discomfort with acknowledging personal sexual gratification, and it’s mainly portrayed in comedies as something aberrant or worth mocking; see Brad (Judge Reinhold) imagining Phoebe Cates’s character unclasping her red bikini top in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) or Cameron Diaz using Ben Stiller’s “hair gel” in There’s Something About Mary (1998).
Movie masturbation scenes also highlight our culture’s hypocritical double standard. Male characters often jerk off as a punch line, making a joke of the insatiable urges that their sex must deal with. It is rare for a female character to rub one out; films that do venture to illustrate how women are just as sexually motivated as men, such as But I’m a Cheerleader (2000), often get slapped with an NC-17 rating — despite being tamer than their R-rated counterparts that feature elaborate come jokes.
Some filmmakers, though, are pulling back the curtain with more open, subversive, or just plain weird depictions of masturbation. Twenty-five years ago, director Paul Weitz showed one of the goofiest ways to beat off when the hapless teenager Jim had his way with an apple-filled confection. The scene perfectly captures the naïveté and desperation of adolescence, when you’re constantly chasing that mysterious and elusive feeling of what it’s really like to have sex for the first time. This maelstrom of teenage humiliation, awkwardness, and sexual exploration seemed destined for iconic status. The idea of being caught by your parents is cringeworthy enough, let alone having sex with a dessert item. While American Pie (1999) became legendary for Jim’s experiment on a sweet treat, it’s not the first or the last movie to depict more adventurous ways of going solo. Many films push the boundaries of sex, humor, and weirdness, daring to make something that is already taboo even more so for men and women alike.
The To Do List (2013)
The summer before a plucky high-school valedictorian goes to college, she is determined to harness her untapped sexual power. Armed with Cosmopolitan magazine and an admiration for feminists like Gloria Steinem and Hillary Clinton, Brandy Klark (Aubrey Plaza) creates a list of all the sexual milestones she wants to achieve, the A to Z’s from giving and getting head to groping and making out. Her first assignment is learning how to “flick the bean.” She initially sets the scene with candles, a Kenny G cassette tape, and Rusty Waters’s senior-year yearbook photos laid out like a Playboy centerfold. From a bird’s-eye view, Brandy lies spread-eagle on the bed, muttering “I’m not a quitter!” while she intently rubs herself. But it is Brandy’s hazy fantasies of her sun-kissed crush rubbing aloe vera on her that send her over the edge. Her sister (Rachel Bilson) discovers Brandy straddling her pillow and moaning, her glasses dangling from her face in the midst of all the gyrating. It’s not completely out of the ordinary to transform a husband pillow into the perfect lover, but the way Plaza portrays Brandy with such gusto combined with Maggie Carey’s in-your-face direction makes this scene stand out. Outside of indies, we hardly get to see female characters touching themselves in such an enthusiastic way or their self-discovery shown as such a humorous spectacle.
Y Tu Mamá También (2001)
Before Challengers (2024), there was Y Tu Mamá También. Seventeen-year-old Tenoch (Diego Luna) and Julio (Gael García Bernal) have a strong bond defined by an over-the-top heterosexuality and masculinity. In between puffs of weed, swigging alcohol, and adolescent horseplay, they brag about banging their girlfriends, call each other gay slurs, or compare the size of their penises. But the boys doth protest too much, methinks; the way they constantly assert themselves as alpha males can’t conceal the depth of their mutual feelings. At Tenoch’s father’s country club, they lie on the diving boards and jerk off, competing to see who will come first. They challenge each other by suggesting different women to think about — their art teacher, Salma Hayek, and, finally, Luisa (Maribel Verdú), the unhappy wife of Tenoch’s cousin. This does the trick, and we see the resulting sperm dissolve underwater. While not entirely uncommon for straight male friends, this diving-board duel oozes with subtext. They are sexual next to each other but not with each other, facing away when they would rather be joined together. Luisa instantly recognizes the intensity of the boys’ relationship, especially after she sleeps with both of them and they start fighting. “You mark your territory and quarrel, but you just want to screw each other!” she shouts. Luisa’s disruption of the best friends’ relationship awakens what has been dormant for so long, and the notorious threesome scene ends with the charolastras, as Tenoch and Julio call each other, finally kissing.
The Squid and the Whale (2005)
Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale depicts an upside-down world in which the self-absorbed adults behave like children and the children are rushing to grow up. Sixteen-year-old Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and 12-year-old Frank (Owen Kline) are caught in the middle of their parents’ acrimonious custody battle, taking opposing sides in a family war. When their mother (Laura Linney) begins dating Frank’s tennis instructor, Frank starts misbehaving, consuming alcohol and playing with himself in the school library. The boy walks with purpose to find a corner in the stacks, lays down a ripped-out image of a naked woman for inspiration, and rubs himself against the shelf. Then he smears the gooey aftermath on the spines of the books. With the chaos of his homelife leaving him on autopilot, Frank cares little about being caught defiling the library; his aloofness is disconcerting, especially coming from someone so young. It’s icky to see such a private matter being made so public and potentially having his other, younger (and likely more innocent) classmates witnessing it.
Poor Things (2023)
Poor Things is a Frankenstein-style tale refracted through Yorgos Lanthimos’s whimsical fish-eye lens. The reanimated Bella Baxter’s (Emma Stone) saucerlike eyes greedily take in everything life has to offer her, especially the vices of scrumptious cuisine, dancing, and sexual euphoria. This unrestrained hedonism transforms her world from mundane black-and-white to glorious color. Even with a posh British accent, Bella speaks like a toddler; she has no filter and openly points out the absurdity of polite society, acting on her primal instincts and impulses without hesitation. “Working” herself, or making herself “happy,” is one of the first things she discovers, and she happily lolls in bed perfecting her technique. In the middle of elocution lessons, she hoists her legs on the dining-room table and inserts an apple into herself, carefully adjusting to make sure it is positioned just right. The camera pushes closer to her face, capturing a kaleidoscope of emotions from curiosity to excitement until her orgasmic mouth fills the entire screen. The biblical symbolism is obvious; she discovers something outside the teachings of her father and creator (whom Bella literally refers to as God), which causes her to reject and leave her secluded home (Eden). The reference to Satan’s forbidden fruit is compelling, but the apple is still an odd shape for the vagina; the cucumber she chooses next seems much more effective.
Mulholland Dr. (2001)
David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. is a bizarre fantasia that exposes the underbelly of Hollywood glitz. The cerebral narrative mixes memory, dreams, and the subconscious to make for a truly hypnotic cinematic experience. The fragments of its plot are like picking up shards of a broken mirror, all scattered and sharp, reflecting the truth while distorting reality. One of the many haunting images that burn into your brain is the extreme close-up of Diane Selwyn (Naomi Watts) crying and masturbating on her couch, her face flushed and wet with tears, her clothes tightly clinging to her sweaty body. While rubbing her hand desperately inside her underwear, her sadness morphs into frustration. We hear the sounds of slapping as she fruitlessly searches for an orgasm. Diane’s entire life has been defined by this insatiable longing for satisfaction: failing to become a movie star and failing to remain Camilla’s (Laura Harring) lover. It’s frightening to see her transform what should be an act of pleasure into self-flagellation.
The Lighthouse (2019)
The choking-the-bishop scene in this gothic yarn is a surreal montage of sexual repression, claustrophobia, isolation, and the existential mysteries of the open sea. After downing a giant bottle of alcohol while wearing nothing but a sou’wester, Thomas (Robert Pattinson) furiously beats off while holding a mermaid scrimshaw in the other hand, his muscles rippling in the stark black-and-white cinematography. He imagines the real-life mermaid’s body in intimate detail — her human breasts, moaning mouth, and vagina located in the middle of her tail (which answers the age-old question How do mermaids have sex?). There are also scattered, subliminal images of Thomas pulling a rope, a crab crawling through squelching tentacles, a sharp spear, and the back of Ephraim’s (Logan Hawkes) head. The speed of Thomas’s wanking increases alongside his anger until he lets out a strange, bansheelike scream (in another take, Pattinson vomited) and collapses onto the ground. This is just one of many loony moments in a film where a seagull is smashed to death and a pair of lighthouse keepers frolic, fart, and fight while drunk on lamp oil.
Happiness (1998)
Todd Solondz’s exceptionally bleak Happiness reveals suburbia’s dark secrets. His films have a type of humor that is so lacerating and so twisted that you’re afraid to laugh … but can’t help it. Happiness follows three families wading through their banal lives. One of them includes Bill (Dylan Baker), a pedophile who confesses to his 11-year-old son, Billy (Rufus Read), that he enjoys sexually assaulting Billy’s friends. Billy tearfully asks his father if he wants to have sex with him; Bill replies, “No … I’d jerk off instead.” He also offers to help Billy masturbate since the young boy has been frustrated about being unable to climax. Obviously, this is all very disgusting. But in true Solondz fashion, he resolves Billy’s sexual confusion in a provocative and bitterly funny final scene. On the balcony of his grandparents’ Florida condo, Billy spies a buxom woman lounging by the pool. His face slips into a yearning expression, and we can guess what happens next. A sudden close-up of his semen slowly dribbling off the balcony railing confirms it. His dog eagerly gobbles it up, then goes back inside to lick the face of Billy’s relative. The final line of Happiness is Billy’s proud declaration: “I came.”
Shortbus (2006)
John Cameron Mitchell’s film takes audiences inside an underground soirée nicknamed Shortbus, a vibrant mecca of personal, sexual, and creative freedom hosted by drag artist Justin Bond. With its unflinching depiction of nudity and sex, the scenes in Shortbus are a roulette wheel of kinky exploits ranging from threesomes to massive orgies to sadomasochism and more. But all the kissing and licking gets you to the center of what the film is really about: individuals searching for a meaningful connection with others and the feeling that they matter to the world. Shortbus introduces a very acrobatic method of self-pleasure in the opening scene. James (Paul Dawson) has been meticulously video-recording the details of his daily life. As part of this project, he films his remarkable ability to bend his legs over his head and dip his penis into his mouth to give himself a blowjob. None of this is fabricated, and we actually see James finish into his own mouth. It’s an impressive form of having solo sex that few can achieve and remarkable to witness someone who can actually pull it off. Many of those with a penis would surely jump at the chance to expand their masturbatory horizons in this way if they could.
Call Me by Your Name (2018)
Peaches are a perennial summer staple, their plump shapes holding a sweet, punchy taste inside. They also have distinctly 21st-century sexual connotations with the emoji representing the roundness of a big butt. Call Me by Your Name intersects both of these concepts in an instantly iconic masturbation scene. Seventeen-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) lies in his bed, the sun casting shadows across his bare chest while he thinks about Oliver (Armie Hammer), an older graduate student. He starts to fiddle with a peach, poking his finger in its bulbous ridge to see how deep of a hole he can form. We can see the idea tickle his brain before he begins gliding the peach down his chest, letting the juices run down his skin. Is he really going to … ? Yes, he does put the peach down his underwear and jerks off into it. Then Elio silently places the peach, now with his own juices spilling out, back on the bedside table. Many films use the combination of masturbation and food for comedic effect, but Call Me by Your Name takes a more earnest approach, depicting the sticky parts of your first love and heartbreak.
American Pie (1999)
A horny teenager testing the carnal pleasures of a baked good encapsulates Weitz’s film American Pie as a whole: a raunchy but ultimately sweet take on the classic losing-your-virginity narrative. After Jim’s (Jason Biggs) friend Oz (Chris Klein) says that third base feels like “warm apple pie,” he finds out for himself when his mother leaves the homemade pastry on the kitchen counter. The close-ups of his fingers penetrating the pie, combined with groovy, porn-style music, playfully underscores his questionable lust for the treat. Biggs’s expressions are priceless; you can see his wheels turning as he formulates the idea, briefly scoffing at its stupidity but then seriously contemplating as he sinks his fingers deeper into the pie’s squishy center. Originally filmed at different angles, the theatrical release features Jim standing in the corner holding the pie tin over his penis. The unrated version is even funnier: Splayed on the counter in missionary position, Jim thrusts into the pie with all the passion of a Harlequin romance novel. In both versions, Jim’s father’s flabbergasted reaction adds a hilarious button to the close-up of the pie, all crumbly and torn apart from the tryst. “We’ll just tell your mother that we ate it all,” the nerdy patriarch (Eugene Levy) declares while Jim hangs his head in shame. In terms of comedic jerking-off scenes, American Pie will likely never be topped.
The Exorcist (1973)
There was a lot of hullabaloo surrounding the release of The Exorcist with audiences fainting, vomiting, or leaving the theater. This not only helped William Friedkin’s horror film earn its reputation as one of the scariest movies of all time, but viewing it became a test of wills for how much deviance and brutality you could handle. The crucifix scene is one of the most unsettling parts. Regan’s mother (Ellen Burstyn) discovers her darling daughter (Linda Blair) clenching a crucifix and slamming it into her vagina, splattering blood everywhere. It’s more like stabbing than getting off. Her lips curl as she screams, “Let Jesus fuck you!” When Mrs. MacNeil tries to wrestle the crucifix away from her daughter turned demon, Regan grabs her face and pulls it close to her vagina, screaming in that famous gravelly voice, “Lick me!” The iconic image of her spinning head follows, forever etched in the minds of terrified moviegoers. Sex, masturbation, and Catholicism have never been a good mix; religious figures seem to always be warning their congregants of the dangers of “ringing the Devil’s doorbell” or having to cut off your right hand if it causes you to sin. Filmmakers enjoy toying with the paradoxes of the sacred and the profane, frequently turning religious objects into phallic ones, such as the Mary-shaped dildo in Benedetta (2021). We likely have Friedkin to thank for that unforgettable image — this possession-driven masturbation scene is one of the many ways The Exorcist shattered taboos.
Saltburn (2023)
Saltburn has a double dose of weird and unforgettable masturbation scenes, both courtesy of Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), a maniacal voyeur enamored with his blue-blooded Oxford University classmate Felix (Jacob Elordi). Through the sliver of the bathroom door, he watches Felix pleasure himself in the bathtub. Later, Oliver leans down to slurp his semen out of the dirty drain. But as if that weren’t gross enough, there’s more. After the death of Felix, Oliver kneels on his grave. At first, this gesture makes sense; clearly, Oliver is so distraught that he can no longer hold himself upright. He lies down on the grave, stretching his arms to clutch the dirt in his hands — not an uncommon reaction, especially given how emotional he is. But then he undoes his tie, removes his white button-down shirt, pulls down his pants, and starts thrusting into the wet, muddy earth. It’s one of the most disturbing ways to pleasure yourself, mere feet away from your dead lover’s body being eaten by worms.
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