Transgression in Anglo-American Cinema: Gender, Sex, and the Deviant Body - Paperback

by Joel Gwynne (Editor)

Sexuality within mainstream Hollywood cinema features primarily in comedy or rom-com genres, where lightness of tone permits audience engagement with what would otherwise be difficult affective terrain. Focusing on marginal productions in Anglo-American contexts, this collection explores the gendered dynamics of sex and the body, particularly embodied deviations from normative cultural scripts. It explores transgressions acted through and written on the body, and the ways in which corporeality inscribes gender discourse and reflects cultural and institutional power. Films analyzed include Mysterious Skin (2004), Shame (2011), Nymphomaniac (2013), and Dallas Buyers Club (2013). Navigating queer politics, taboo fantasy, body modification, fetishism, sex addiction, and underage sex, essays problematize understandings of adult agency, childhood innocence, and healthy desire, locating sex and gender as sites of oppression, liberation, and resistance.

Author Biography

Joel Gwynne is associate professor at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His books include Erotic Memoirs and Postfeminism: The Politics of Pleasure; Postfeminism and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema; and Ageing, Popular Culture, and Contemporary Feminism.