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The sexual component of rock-and-roll has been a strong element in films about and featuring rock-and-roll from the beginning. In the 1950s, when rock music was new, the films featuring rock often were based around parental fears of the rampant sexuality supposed to go with the music. In films like Don't Knock the Rock (1956), the plot revolved around convincing parents that kids listening to rock-and-roll were not inevitably preparing for an orgy. Ironically, the sexual component of rock became stronger and more overt as initial parental fears were sublimated if not eliminated, and rock on film would become sold for its sexual content rather than in spite of it.
Ehrenstein and Reed note how rock-and-roll fit with the rebellious spirit of teenagers in the 1950s, specifically because that generation was experiencing a new sense of autonomy:
With its concerns of sex and speed, instead of the 'June, moon and spoon' of their parents' music, rock as a perfect music for the atomic era--its goading orgiastic sound made all the more poignant the possibility of oblivion's imminence.
In truth, this rebellious spirit seems to be part and parcel with being a teenager in the modern world, and to satisfy this need the sense of the forbidden in rock-and-roll--and especially the forbidden in sexual terms--has had to escalate from heavy petting in the 1950s to overt sexual activity to all manner of abnormal sexual activity hinted at in more recent music. Films including rock-and-roll have followed the same pattern, increasing their overtly sexual content as they offer more and more "forbidden fruit" for the teenage audience.
In the 1950s, the sexuality was hidden, hinted at rather than shown. Indeed, it was more an attitude than sexual activity itself. Elvis Presley gyrated through Jailhouse Rock (1957), his behavior as a singer and dancer sending a sexual message, while his relationship in the film itself is as pure and ...