This Ain’t Jaws XXX (2012) and Porn Parody

by I.Q. Hunter, De Montfort University, UK. On the face of it, Jaws (1975) seems an unlikely candidate for the porn treatment. Spielberg’s film is entirely male-centred - so I guess a gay version with three-way romps on the Orca might make sense – but the characters’ motivations have no obvious erotic component or indeed reference, aside from Quint calling out ‘Stop playing with yourself, Hooper’ to the lounging ichthyologist. Sex as a theme is not there to be exploited as with, say, A Clockwork Orgy (1995), the porn version of A Clockwork Orange (1971), which feeds off the obsession with sex, power and breasts that drives the narrative of the original. And the piscine motif of Jaws doesn’t immediately suggest the erotic, unless one considers the ‘eels for pleasure’ section of the Animal Farm (1981) bestiality compilation video that did the rounds in Britain in the 1980s, or urban myths involving Led Zeppelin, a groupie and a shark. That said, it is doubtless true that any film can be ‘pornified’ insofar as narrative gaps in the original can be filled with sex scenes, and the characters’ motivations refocused on seeking opportunities for them.

‘I can speak for myself’: Father Paquin’s Confession in Spotlight (2015)

by Darren Kerr, Southampton Solent University, UK. Just a little over half way through Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight (2015), door-to-door investigations are taking place. Noted in the screenplay as ‘the summer victim montage’, evidence of paedophilia in the Catholic Church is building and stories of abuse victims are coming through. The rolling notes of Howard Shore’s … Continue reading ‘I can speak for myself’: Father Paquin’s Confession in Spotlight (2015)

‘You can be whoever you want to be’: Neoliberal Culture and The Girlfriend Experience (2016)

by Martin Fradley, University of Brighton, UK. Based on Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 film, Starz’ US television drama The Girlfriend Experience (2016) is an unsettling tale of entrepreneurial selfhood. Taking place within a rarefied social universe, it is filmed in the visual lingua franca of the neoliberal present: a coolly desaturated blue-grey world of glacial surfaces, … Continue reading ‘You can be whoever you want to be’: Neoliberal Culture and The Girlfriend Experience (2016)

Virtual Reality: The Sexual Revolution is Not Taking Place

by Sarah Arnold, Maynooth University, Ireland. Over the past few years Virtual Reality has once again been heralded as the revolution in moving image immersive entertainment. After any number of false starts, VR seemed at last to be commercially viable with the technological infrastructure in place and a number of companies and products at the vanguard of the imminent VR revolution.

Tainted Love: Screening Sexual Perversion

Tainted Love: Screening Sexual Perversion, edited by Darren Kerr and Donna Peberdy, is the first critical anthology to offer extended analysis of the representation of sexual perversities on screen and will be published by I.B. Tauris August 2017. Interrogating the recent shift towards the mainstream in the cinematic representation of previously marginalised sexual practices, it challenges the discourses and … Continue reading Tainted Love: Screening Sexual Perversion