Sex Scene suggests that what we have come to understand as the sexual revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s was actually a media revolution. In lively essays, the contributors examine a range of mass media—film and television, recorded sound, and publishing—that provide evidence of the circulation of sex in the public sphere, from the mainstream to the fringe. They discuss art films such as I am Curious (Yellow), mainstream movies including Midnight Cowboy, sexploitation films such as Mantis in Lace, the emergence of erotic film festivals and of gay pornography, the use of multimedia in sex education, and the sexual innuendo of The Love Boat. Scholars of cultural studies, history, and media studies, the contributors bring shared concerns to their diverse topics. They highlight the increasingly fluid divide between public and private, the rise of consumer and therapeutic cultures, and the relationship between identity politics and individual rights. The provocative surveys and case studies in this nuanced cultural history reframe the "sexual revolution" as the mass sexualization of our mediated world.
Contributors. Joseph Lam Duong, Jeffrey Escoffier, Kevin M. Flanagan, Elena Gorfinkel, Raymond J. Haberski Jr., Joan Hawkins, Kevin Heffernan, Eithne Johnson, Arthur Knight, Elana Levine, Christie Milliken, Eric Schaefer, Jeffrey Sconce, Jacob Smith, Leigh Ann Wheeler, Linda Williams
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Sex Seen: 1968 and Rise of “Public” Sex - Eric Schaefer
- Part I: Mainstream Media and the Sexual Revolution
- 1. Rate It X?: Hollywood Cinema and the End of the Production Code - Christie Milliken
- 2. Make Love, Not War: Jane Fonda Comes Home (1968–1978) - Linda Williams
- 3. The New Sexual Culture of American Television in the 1970s - Elana Levine
- Part II. Sex as Art
- 4. Prurient (Dis)Interest: The American Release and Reception of I Am Curious (Yellow) - Kevin Heffernan
- 5. Wet Dreams: Erotic Film Festivals of the Early 1970s and the Utopian Sexual Public Sphere - Elena Gorfinkel
- 6. Let the Sweet Juices Flow: WR and Midnight Movie Culture - Joan Hawkins
- Part III. Media at the Margins
- 7. 33 1/3 Sexual Revolutions per Minute - Jacob Smith
- 8. “I’ll Take Sweden”: The Shifting Discourse of the “Sexy Nation” in Sexploitation Films - Eric Schaefer
- 9. Altered Sex: Satan, Acid, and the Erotic Threshold - Jeffrey Sconce
- Part IV. Going All the Way
- 10. The “Sexarama”: Or Sex Education as an Environmental Multimedia Experience - Eithne Johnson
- 11. San Francisco and the Politics of Hardcore - Joseph Lam Duong
- 12. Beefcake to Hardcore: Gay Pornography and the Sexual Revolution - Jeffrey Escoffier
- Part V. Contending with the Sex Scene
- 13. Publicizing Sex through Consumer and Privacy Rights: How the American Civil Liberties Union Liberated Mediain the 1960s - Leigh Ann Wheeler
- 14. Critics and the Sex Scene - Raymond J. Haberski Jr
- 15. Porn Goes to College: American Universities, Their Students, and Pornography, 1968–1973 - Arthur Knight and Kevin M. Flanagan
- Bibliography
- Contributors
- Index
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