Bad Sex: Sexuality, Gender and Affect in Contemporary TV

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Description

Bad Sex traces the evolution of representations of sex on screen, moving away from earlier portrayals of sex as dangerous, taboo, or glamorous, to more complex depictions of power struggles and often awkward or painful experiences and feelings. Billy Holzberg, Jacqueline Gibbs and Aura Lehtonen examine the representation of sex and sexuality in contemporary Anglo-American drama and dramedy shows like Fleabag (2019), Sex Education (2019-), I May Destroy You (2020) and Please Like Me (2013-16), arguing that TV is where the politics of sexuality and gender is negotiated under the contemporary conditions of neoliberalism. Through close readings of key scenes, they identify this shift as driven by the diversification of representations of sex and sexuality, with women, trans and non-binary, Black and minority ethnic, working-class and disabled TV professionals carving a space for themselves in a traditionally white, middle-class, and cis male dominated industry. In doing so, they explore the affective potential and limits of bad sex on our TV screens and what these representations can tell us about sexual politics and gender cultures today.

Reviews

Contemporary, affective, and beautifully written. Bad Sex recenters the political, personal, and wider significance of queer theory in popular culture during uncertain times. The intersectional and queer approach sets Bad Sex as a pivotal frame to examine popular culture, nostalgia, intimacy, representations on television, and what future possibilities could look like. -- Gemma Commane, Birmingham City University, UK

Author Bio

Billy Holzberg is Lecturer in Social Justice at King's College London, UK. He is author of Affective Bordering: The Emotional Politics of Migration Control (forthcoming in 2023). His writing has been published in Feminist Media Studies, Sociology, Body and Society, and Ethnic and Racial Studies. Jacqueline Gibbs is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Middlesex University, London, UK. Her research explores political and socio-cultural conceptualisations of vulnerability as they are mobilised within discourses and processes of care. She has published on these themes in MAI Feminism and Visual Cultures, Feminist Review and Sociological Review. Aura Lehtonen is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Greenwich, UK. She is the author of The Sexual Logics of Neoliberalism in Britain: Sexual Politics in Exceptional Times (2022). Her research focuses on how difference, diversity and inequalities are understood, conceptualised and represented in contemporary culture and politics, with a specific focus on sexuality.