Intercourse in Television and Film: The Presentation of Explicit Sex Acts

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

As many critics and theorists have noted, non-pornographic films, documentaries, and quality television series have increasingly included explicit sex scenes since the 1990s, some of such scenes featuring the performance of actual sex acts. The incidence of sex in narratively powerful, resonant visual media can no longer be dismissed as a trend. What was once an aesthetic weapon in the arsenal of provocateurs is now frequently integrated seamlessly into the mise-en-scne and exposition of widely viewed and culturally significant films and television series. Intercourse in Television and Film: The Presentation of Explicit Sex Acts analyzes the aesthetic and narrative contexts for the visual media presentation of the sexual act, both those which are non-simulated and those which are explicit to that point that their simulation is brought into question by the viewer. In this book, questions involving the performance choices of actors, the framing and editing of the sex act, and the director's attempts at integrating sexuality into the overall narrative structure as well as their effects are explored.

Reviews

Long overdue, this brilliant anthology asks exactly how and why we are seeing explicit sex acts, not in pornography, but throughout visual culture. Like a previous eras attention to censorship and the Production Code, Intercourse in Television and Film offers rich historical, material, and cultural frameworks for its close-ups of sex scenes and provocative analyses of their meanings. Beautifully written and rigorously theorized, these essays comprise a bold and important new overview of a phenomenon that demands interpretation. -- Linda Mizejewski, The Ohio State University

Author Bio

Lindsay Coleman is independent scholar. Carol Siegel is professor of English and cultural studies at Washington State University Vancouver.