Erotic Film Research Articles

Identity in Feminist Cinema from the Perspective of Queer Theory: Take Blue is the Warmest Color as an Exemplification

Recently, queer theory has attracted more scholarly attention as an extension of feminist theory in terms of deconstructionism and postmodern contexts. Queer theory has been utilized by feminists as a significant theoretical framework in art criticism, with cinemas taken as a representation system and cultural practice for the manifesto of gender identity and gender equity. This research will take the prestigious lesbian cinema Blue is the Warmest Color as an exemplification to analyze the embodiment of queer theory, especially gender performativity and body writing, with the methodologies of case study and analysis of the representation of screen images from the perspective of semiotics. The research findings confirm the association between cinematic techniques and representation and the construction of gender identity from the perspective of queer theory and representation theory. Meanwhile, the research explores the expansion and application of body writing in the cinematic field, clarifying several intentions of the large proportion of the explicit and straight representation of women’s bodies in sex scenes. Overall, this research analyzes how the employment of various cinematic techniques and representation contributes to the construction of the protagonists’ gender identities which destroys the binary regulation of sexuality and heterosexual hegemony, as well as acquires the acknowledgment and acceptance of the spectatorship in terms of queer position.

Sex Scenes, Television, and Disavowed Sex Work

What counts as sex work, and what is at stake when we narrow or broaden its boundaries? Drawing on interviews with intimacy coordinators, television screenwriters, directors, and actors, this article takes television sex scenes and their contested meaning as a point of departure for engaging with current feminist debates regarding definitions of sex work. Current transformations in how TV sex scenes are being reconceptualized by women inside the entertainment industry—especially through the deployment of boundaries between the simulated and the real, the artful and the pornographic—constitute an instructive case study in the blurriness between direct and indirect forms of sex work, the complexities surrounding who gets to define what sex work is and is not, and why it matters. This study of sex scene production illuminates the ongoing conditions of sexual harassment and violation that can result from an industry’s ambivalence about, or disavowal of, its reliance on sex work. I argue for the utility of a structural feminist analysis that can embrace all of what Jill Nagle terms “practices involving the exchange of sex and/or sexually related goods or services for money” under a broad umbrella of sexual labor and that can draw on the insights and demands of feminist sex workers and labor organizers to destigmatize all forms of sex work.

A Cross-cultural Comparison of Tomb Murals from the Etruscans and the Kingdom of Goguryeo

The Etruscan civilization on the Apennine Peninsula (ca. 900 - 27 B.C.) and the kingdom of Goguryeo on the Korean Peninsula (ca. 37 B.C. - 668) were separated by time and space. Nevertheless, they share an interesting aspect of their culture in common which is the creation of murals in the chambers of mounded tombs. These murals provide important insights into the lifeworld and the perceptions of the afterlife for both civilizations.
 The present study compares the themes of the murals from the Etruscans and the kingdom of Goguryeo in order to ascertain similarities and differences in their pictorial language. Whilst the differences may be simply explained by cultural differences, the similarities may point to commonly shared or universal values and modes of representation in early state formations. As can be demonstrated there is a range of themes that occur in both civilizations such as depictions of the tomb owners, banqueting scenes, hunting, processions and many more. The juxtaposition of the funerary art from both civilizations reveals also a few peculiarities which may be unique for each cultural sphere. In case of Goguryeo this is the depiction of star constellations and for the Etruscans the representation of sex scenes.
 It is being argued that the similarities in the scenes can be explained by common social and behavioral factors. These are for instance the performance of an ancestor cult, a strong affiliation to elite distinction and the creation of a group-related identity.

Sex scene and unseen: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (Céline Sciamma, 2019)

ABSTRACT Across her body of work, Céline Sciamma demonstrates a persistent and progressive interest in reconfiguring cinematic discourses of desire. The few sex scenes in her oeuvre do not function narratively as straightforward evidence of a character’s desire or the truth of the self. Rather, the director tests out how the reorientation of both conventional and novel sex scenes via visual style and mise en scène might offer opportunities to reorganise their sexuality effects. In Portrait de la jeune fille en feu/Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), Sciamma eschews the cinematic conventions of a sex-positive lesbian romance or arthouse film and offers instead an idiosyncratic image of sex that playfully acknowledges, and complexly references, the historical invisibility of lesbian sexuality and its more recent subjection to spectacular regimes of cinematic visibility. Detaching pleasure from the desire that looking everywhere else in the film sustains, Sciamma adopts a queer aesthetic of diffusion and strategic invisibility.

Seduction, deception and technology.

This paper proposes that exploring the use of internet pornography creates a potentially beneficial, albeit defensive liminal space that can be used therapeutically. The content of compelling sexual scenes can be viewed as the psyche's way of mastering internal trauma and masking an inner emptiness. However, from a Jungian perspective, the use of internet pornography can also be seen as a patient's distorted way of trying to make dissociated affects more bearable by triumphing over them. The sexual use of technology can express intrapsychic conflict encapsulated in what Stoller called 'microdots'. Stoller's microdots are unique scripts - a kind of emotional code that gives clinicians an opportunity to reveal unconscious processes and transcend them through meaning making. Wood's work at the Portman Clinic on the chosen 'compelling scenarios' of pornography-addicted patients is also examined with this Jungian lens. Jung's idea of the transcendent function is used to show the value of holding the tension of fantasy and frustration provoked by intimacy. The paper illustrates how they come together within the therapeutic relationship to stimulate something new.

The Effect of Alcohol and Sexual Arousal on Explicit and Implicit Condom Attitudes and Intentions to Use a Condom

Alcohol and sexual arousal are contextual determinants of condomless sex. Dual-process theory postulates that two types of cognitive processing contribute to the regulation of behavior: one that is fast, intuitive and automatic, and another that is slower and deliberative. This study applied a dual-process model to investigate condomless sexual behavior, highlighting the potential importance of implicit attitudes in condomless sex. We investigated whether the impact of alcohol and sexual arousal on condom use-related attitudes and intentions was explained by diminished working memory capacity, as dual-process models suggest. We also investigated whether this effect could be explained by implicit and explicit attitudes toward condom use. Male participants (N = 30) were randomized using a 2 × 2 within-subjects design that manipulated alcohol intoxication (placebo vs. alcohol beverages) and sexual arousal (neutral vs. erotic movie clips). We measured participants’ working memory capacity, intentions to use a condom, and explicit and implicit attitudes toward condom use. Significant main effects of alcohol intoxication and sexual arousal on working memory capacity were found. No significant interaction was found for the combined effect of alcohol intoxication and sexual arousal on intentions to use a condom. There was no significant effect of implicit attitudes on intentions to use a condom, although a trend toward significance (p = 0.06) was found for the effect of implicit attitudes on intentions to use a condom when participants were in a state of alcohol intoxication. Theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.

Eroticism in Ayu Utami’s Novels “Saman” and “Larung” and its Implications for Literature Learning in High School

This study aims to describe the depiction of female eroticism, the idea of feminism in Saman and Larung novels written by AyuUtami, and its implications for learning literature in high school. The method used in this research is a descriptive method utilizing qualitative analysis. The data source in this research is Saman and Larung novels written by AyuUtami. Data analysis utilized work analysis technique. Based research result, the types of eroticism include metabolic erotica, biological erotica, metabolic/biological erotica, whereas the expression of erotism includes the mention of genitals, descriptions of sexual scenes, descriptions of sexual intercourse scenes, descriptions of sexual misconduct, descriptions of sensual body parts. The idea of feminism is rebellion against the rules, customs, and norms of society, the movement that always opposes unjust rulers, representating women aiming for freedom, against the patriarchy on women, the struggle for equality and rights between men and women, the struggle against differences the sex system, and the struggle to resist discrimination and cultural values that undermine women. Based research result and its the relevance of core competence and basic competence in the curriculum of 2013, these novels are not relevant to be used as a literary teaching material in schools, but in terms of feminism, ideas can add literature value in high school.

The Aesthetics of the Ugly in Postmodernism (V. Sorokin's Novel "Blue Fat" and Mo Yan's Novel "The Land of Wine")

The article discusses aesthetic guidelines in postmodern literature. The emphasis is placed on the analysis of the aesthetics of the ugly in the novels of V. Sorokin "Blue Fat" and Mo Yan "The Land of Wine", the similarities and differences of the work of the two writers are revealed. Sorokin and Mo Yan are from two completely different countries, nevertheless their literary style and language are similar. The creativity of both is marked by the presence of multidimensional literary experiments. In "Blue Fat" and "The Land of Wine" there is an abundance of violent scenes, as well as detailed descriptions of violent bloody scenes. Sex scenes are also widely represented in both novels. The description of physiological details and nauseating details also occupies a significant part in both novels. In addition to the aesthetics of the ugly, both writers are heirs of the classical literature of their countries. Both writers create their own artistic world based on the aesthetics of the ugly. Unlike Sorokin, Mo Yang is obsessed with depicting the comparison between good and evil, beautiful and ugly. According to Mo Yan, the world is cruel, but evil can never prevail over good. In "Blue Fat" there are many Chinese elements of everyday life, which gives the novel an oriental flavor. Mo Yan also admits to the influence of Russian classical and Soviet literature on him: in the novel "The Land of Wine" the words of I. Lenin and L. Tolstoy are quoted. All this, as it was shown in the article, proves that the works of Vladimir Sorokin and Mo Yan have existing similarities. The heritage and development of the traditional literature of their country, the reinterpretation of modern society and its values, a self-sufficient artistic world based on the aesthetics of the ugly, is accompanied by an abundance of literary experiments, which allows both writers not only to show their talents in literary circles, but also to successfully demonstrate their own national mentality.

Relational Context of Sex (Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography)

Relational Context of Sex (Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography)

Merlerium: Mermaids, mythology, desire and madness in Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse (2019)

Robert Eggers’ 2019 film The Lighthouse provides an idiosyncratic representation of the mermaid as a Jungian anima in a film that revolves around the homoerotic tension between two lighthouse keepers on a remote, windswept island. While the mermaid theme is essentially a minor aspect of the film, juxtaposed with other mythological motifs, it is significant for the intensity of passions it catalyses in one of the film’s two male leads. Analysing the film, its script and statements of directorial intent, this article first discusses aspects of the interaction of the masculine characters and their relation to mythic figures, before going on to discuss the role and design of the mermaid, and of the sex scene she appears in. Additional consideration is given to the role of music and sound design in building nuance and thematic intensity within the film.

Transgender in Tamil Movies

Many movies released in Tamil have portrayed transgenders mostly as scenes for ridicule. In the guise of comedy, films have been portraying transgender people with insults, double entendres and sexual scenes. Some movies like Bombay, Thenavattu, Chithiram Pesutadi, and Naan kadavul show transgenders in a dignified manner. From 1977’s Balabhishekam to 2017’s sivappu enakku pidikkum, this review examines the film. Transgender people are those who have been ostracized from public life by their families and the entire society and are forced to live in the public square without any means of living without any means of livelihood, begging and prostitution. Tamil cinema is using the problem of such people and their need only for ridicule. Seeing this, the growing generation grows up with such thoughts and perpetuates its violence against transgenders. The Tamil film world often portrays transgender people as ugly and ridiculous. Tamil movies were also the reason why the transgender community was seen as a laughing stock in the early days.

The Aesthetic of Transgression: Love and Limits in the Early Work of James Joyce

Abstract: This essay draws on Georges Bataille's notion of "transgression" to argue for a distinctive "aesthetic of transgression" in Joyce's writing. Bataille theorizes a dialectical transgression where the punishment it calls forth operates as a regulatory force, reinstituting the taboo and apparently cancelling the force of transgression. Joyce initially understands transgression non-dialectically, as the violation of a preexisting taboo punishable by the law, but his early writing gradually overcomes this by developing a dialectical transgression—an act of going beyond the limit that is simultaneously recontained within the limit. Joyce pursues this by thinking through the "allegory of love" he inherits from medieval and early modern poetry. He reconceives the allegory into scenes of incompletely disclosed erotic encounters: they represent acts of transgression and fail to represent them adequately, mystifying transgression even as it is being revealed. Joyce's transition to this more complex understanding of transgression is read into "A Portrait of the Artist," the relationship with Emma in Stephen Hero , and the incompletely disclosed erotic encounter in chapter XXV of Stephen Hero . Some examples are given of how scenes of transgressive sexuality are represented in Ulysses . The persistence of such scenes is used to argue for a distinctive aesthetics of transgression in Joyce's writing.

Last Tango in Belle Isle: Walker Percy, Cinéma Vérité , and New Language

ABSTRACT: This article recovers the lost dialogue between Walker Percy's controversial novel, Lancelot (1977), and Bernardo Bertolucci's infamous erotic film, Last Tango in Paris (1972). Employing a method called cinéma vérité , which relies on improvisation to simulate a reality effect, Last Tango in Paris claimed to recover a reality antecedent to language, one defined by bodies touching bodies. This cinematic project paralleled a movement within religious studies toward examinations of body practice and away from what Percy himself called "worn" theological lexicons. Percy engaged these mutual turns to the body by deconstructing and remaking them in Lancelot , a novel structured around a series of failed film projects, each of which draws on the methods of cinéma vérité . By studying the protagonist Lancelot's failure to access reality by documenting it in film, the novel insists that experiences of the real, against the claims of Bertolucci and anthropologists like Clifford Geertz, are inextricable from our ways of speaking about it. Through its invocation of Last Tango in Paris, Lancelot examines the risks of the immanent turn in postwar religious studies and calls for a new normative language to frame religious experience.

Representing Bodies and Bathing Machines: Jane Austen’s Sanditon and Andrew Davies’s 2019 ITV Adaptation

Jane Austen’s final novel fragment Sanditon has inspired continuations of many kinds from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. The most recent literary afterlife it has generated is the 2019 British adaptation for ITV, created by Andrew Davies, and with a screenplay by Davies, Justin Young and Andrea Gibb. This eight-part adaptation attempts to recreate Austen’s Regency world but reimagines and develops Sanditon through the lens of twenty-first century sexual sensibilities. Most notably, depictions of male nudity and sex acts demonstrate the adaptation’s engagement with contemporary sexual politics. Scenes offering salacious views of naked men sea-bathing counter the historical tradition of the female nude offered up for male gaze; the female body, in contrast, remains fully clothed in response to the contemporary Me-Too context. Furthermore, the inclusion of sex scenes, a character with a backstory of sexual abuse, a relationship featuring coercive control, and an ending denying the heroine her man reflects the zeitgeist. However, the disappointing British viewing figures for Sanditon suggest that sex does not always sell, particularly when it comes to creating a successful twenty-first century Austen adaptation.

The Subject Construction and Role Mental Model Construction of Erotic Movies Based on Lacan's Desire Theory.

Jacques Lacan is a famous French psychoanalyst, but his influence has long gone beyond the scope of psychoanalysis and has affected almost all fields of “human science.” Film and psychoanalysis coincided almost simultaneously and influenced each other. But with the development of film, researchers found that film studies in the period of classic film and film semiotics have come to an end. It has certain theoretical value to explore the construction of the subject and the mental model of the erotic film based on Lacan's desire theory. Method. The body in the film and video described in this paper includes both the material body as an aesthetic object and the spiritual body with aesthetic consciousness. The so-called artistic presentation of the body element means that the beauty of the body form displayed by the actor's body in the film video is perceived by the audience, and the desire to stare is captured by the audience, thereby completing the audience's entire body composed of eyes, body, and mind. The body is not only an aesthetic object but also an aesthetic subject, and the human cognitive system is not just a closed brain. Because the nervous system, body, and environment are constantly changing and interacting, true cognition is a unified system of all three. The main part of this paper uses Lacan's psychoanalytic theory to deeply analyze the relationship between the characters shown in the film. From the cognitive impairment of the self to the failure of communication between characters, the language of uncertainty entangled by desire is removed, and the behavior and facial expressions of the movie characters are used as the analysis basis to fully interpret the inner world of the characters. This includes love, hatred, pain, struggle, and many other contradictory emotions. In addition, this paper also analyzes the metaphor of the relationship between the characters from the perspective of semiotics and discusses the description of the relationship between the characters from the lens language from the perspective of cinematography. The special meaning conveyed by the recurring elements in the film is emphasized, and the correlation between the pictures is explained from the less mentioned photographic aspect of the film. Results/Discussion. Looking at Lacan's theory, the subject, the other, and desire are linked by the subject spirit, which is the core of the connection between the three, and only through the resistance and struggle of the subject spirit can the illusion of the subject be broken. Bewilderment and the suppression of the other and desire finally become the self. And the embodiment of this true self is particularly prominent in film art. Lacan's purpose is not merely to dissolve the subject but to seek a stand in the midst of destruction, pursuing the ultimate transcendence of man's desire for the external other and internal desire.

Sexual violence history predicts changes in vaginal immune parameters during sexual arousal

ObjectiveTo examine the influence of sexual arousal on vaginal mucosal inflammatory cytokine and antibody production in healthy women with and without histories of childhood and/or adult sexual violence. MethodsNinety-one premenopausal healthy women (ages 18–42) attended a single laboratory session in which they provided vaginal fluid samples before and after viewing one neutral and one erotic film. While viewing the films, participants’ vaginal sexual arousal was recorded using vaginal photoplethysmography. ResultsOf the 91 participants, 41 (45%) reported no history of sexual violence, 17 (19%) reported a history of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) only, 19 (21%) reported a history of adult sexual assault (ASA) only, and 10 (11%) reported a history of both CSA and ASA, with 4 participants choosing not to provide information on their sexual violence history. For women with a history of ASA but not CSA, there was a significant increase in vaginal IL-1β following arousal, while for women with a history of CSA (with or without ASA), there was a significant decrease. Women without CSA histories had a significant increase in vaginal IgA following sexual arousal, while women with CSA histories had a decrease. ConclusionSexual arousal possibly plays a role in modifying vaginal immune responses in young, healthy women. Moreover, these effects may vary depending upon sexual assault histories, such that relative to women without assault histories, women with a history of early life sexual trauma showed significantly altered vaginal immune responses following sexual arousal. If replicated, these findings may help explain the increased risk for sexually transmitted infections observed among women with sexual assault histories.

The Handmaiden

The Handmaiden

Conscience and Controversy

Conscience and Controversy

Patterns of Genital and Subjective Sexual Arousal in Cisgender Asexual Men

ABSTRACT Human asexuality has been defined as a lack of sexual attraction to others, although its nature is not well understood. Asexual men’s genital and subjective sexual arousal patterns were compared to sexual men’s to better understand asexual men’s sexual response patterns. Using a penile plethysmograph to measure genital arousal, 20 asexual, 27 heterosexual, and 22 gay cisgender men (M age = 28.28, SD = 9.41) viewed erotic films depicting sexual activity or masturbation, and a subsample engaged in sexual fantasy of their choosing. Questionnaires assessing sexual function and behavior were also completed. Asexual men scored lower on sexual desire and orgasmic function, higher on sexual aversion, and did not differ on overall sexual satisfaction. Compared with gay and heterosexual men, asexual men demonstrated lower genital and subjective sexual arousal to the erotic films but displayed similar sexual arousal when engaging in sexual fantasy. Asexual men’s lower levels of sexual excitation rather than their higher levels of sexual inhibition were associated with lower responses to the erotic films. These findings suggest asexual men have preferred sexual stimuli that differ from sexual men and have a similar capacity for sexual arousal as sexual men. Collectively these findings add to a growing literature aiming to understand the nature of asexuality.

Beyond ‘la petite mort’ – sex and death in 120 BPM

ABSTRACT Recent French films have sparked discussion about how we understand the AIDS crisis and how that historical understanding informs present-day views of HIV/AIDS in France and further afield. An example of this, Robin Campillo’s period piece, 120 Battements par minute (2017), explicitly depicts ‘la petite mort’ and the connection between orgasm and demise through the experiences of Parisian ACT UP members during the height of the AIDS crisis in the early 1990s. The following article argues that the three sex scenes in 120 BPM are pivotal points in the narrative which quite literally raise the dead, connecting the characters to lost lovers, members of their community and their past selves. Through this, I analyse how these scenes interact with the film’s re-enactment scenes of protest actions in the 1990s, through their choreography, dialogue, duration, and the images of sexual acts themselves. To do this, I identify how the film troubles and reconstructs ideas of death in AIDS cinema through the recognition of the HIV+ individual as one who will not be desexualised by the virus, even if they are dying. This article will scrutinise and query the relationship between the sex scene, mortality, and memory in 120 BPM.