Masturbation in Pop Culture: Screen, Society, Self

(Hardback)

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Through reference to over six hundred scenes from film and televisionas well as a diverse and cross-disciplinary academic bibliographyMasturbation in Pop Culture investigates the role that masturbation serves within narratives while simultaneously mirroring our complicated relationship with the practice in real life and sparking discussions about a broad range of hot-button sexual subjects. From sitcoms to horror movies, teen comedies to erotic thrillers, autoeroticism is easily detected on screen. The portrayal, however, is not a simple one. Just as in real life a paradox exists where most of us masturbate and accept it as normal and natural, there simultaneously exists a silence about it; that we do it, but we dont talk about it; that we enjoy it but we laugh about it. The screen reflects this conflicted relationship. It is therehundreds and hundreds of timesbut it is routinely whispered about, mocked and presented as a punchline, and is inevitably portrayed as controversial at the very least. Masturbation in Pop Culture investigates the embarrassment and squeamishness, sexiness and inappropriateness of masturbation, showcasing and analyzing how our complex off screen relationship is mirrored in film and television.

Reviews

Rosewarne gives a widespread overview about different forms of reports and classifications about masturbation * Sexuality & Culture *
An impressive work of seminal scholarship, Masturbation in Pop Culture: Screen, Society, Self by Lauren Rosewarne is enhanced with a two page list of Media References; a sixteen page Bibliography, and a comprehensive Index. A critically important and highly recommended contribution to academic library Western Popular Culture Studies reference collections and supplemental study lists. * Midwest Book Review *
Lauren Rosewarne has written another book which goes to those aspects of sexuality and popular culture that few of her peers would dare follow. Her mixture of rigorous scholarship and engaging, cutting edge analysis makes Masturbation in Pop Culture: Screen, Society, Self essential reading for anyone interested in the relationship between sex and media in our time. -- Brian McNair, Queensland University of Technology

Author Bio

Lauren Rosewarne is a senior lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne.