We are currently seeking short contributions for summer 2017 of approx. 1,000-1,500 words. If you would like to join our contributors for the July-September period, email Darren Kerr and Donna Peberdy at screeningsex@gmail.com
Month: June 2017
CFP: Special Edition [Mai] ‘Feminist and Queer Perspectives on Sex in Contemporary Film and TV’
CFP: Special Edition of Mai: Journal of Feminism and Visual Culture – ‘Feminist and Queer Perspectives on Sex in Contemporary Film and TV’. Please email abstracts to: Connor.Winterton@mail.bcu.ac.uk (guest editor).
Learning to Play
by Susanna Paasonen, University of Turku, Finland. In a scene from Jan Soldat’s 2016 documentary film, Coming of Age, a senior male couple recount the beginning of their relationship as a fisting date. Horst is sitting topless on a sofa and Kalle, dressed in a plastic bib and diaper, sits in a playpen hugging a teddy bear with a markedly pensive expression.
Roman Porno: Screening Male Desire?
by Colette Balmain, Kingston University, UK. In Screening Sex, Linda Williams insists on the double meaning of the verb to screen ‘as both concealment and revelation.’ [1] While sex in US cinema is marked by a movement away from concealment toward revelation, in Japanese cinema screening sex is marked by an oscillation between concealment and revelation with the sight of the sex act classified as obscene and needing to be obscured from the gaze. Nowhere is this clearer than in eroductions (erotic productions) of the 1970s and 1980s and, in particular, within Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno. In this post, I consider the emergence of Roman Porno in 1971 and Nikkatsu’s recent rebooting of the genre in 2015 in order to chart the way in which the reboots demonstrate a shift in attitude towards screening sex, albeit maintaining that the conventions of female desire are filtered through the male directorial gaze.
Can Jennifer Aniston Rape Anyone? Horrible Bosses and Acknowledging Rape on Screen
by Isaac Gustafsson Wood, University of Southampton, UK ‘Rape. Rape. Rape. That’s a rape. This is what raping people is. You’re a raper. You’ve raped me. That’s a rape’, Dale (Charlie Day) screams as he is shown pictures of his limp and unconscious nude body entangled in sexually suggestive positions with his boss Julia (Jennifer Aniston). With a shocked face, Dale finds the words to express his feelings, getting louder and more confident in his ability to recognise what has happened to him as rape. Despite his certainty that he has been raped, Dale is continually undermined by his friends as they refuse to see a problem simply because Julia is sexually attractive. Rape in the comedy Horrible Bosses (2011) is portrayed as a contentious subject to be debated among the characters; who decides what rape is, is up for grabs.
Screening Sex 