Screening Sex

With Screening Sex, Linda Williams establishes herself as not only the preeminent scholar of cinematic eroticism but also the most significant voice in cinema studies of her generation. Eric Schaefer, author of Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1958 Linda Williams is a terrific storyteller about sex, and, as she tracks the growth of her own cinematically-mediated sexual consciousness, we go to the movies with her, imagining as though for the first time new encounters with explicitness, new sexual knowledge, and new spectatorial sensations. Lauren Berlant, author of The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture Screening Sex is a truly remarkable follow-up to Linda Williams's groundbreaking book Hard Core Jane Gaines, author of Fire and Desire: Mixed-Race Movies in the Silent Era [A] book that, while far from amateurish, retains a personal element that adds much to its appeal and cogency...-Williams homes in on key films that have advanced or radically changed what is considered acceptable, or indeed desirable, on our screens...Williams' approach is serious but never solemn, and she derives amusement from various subterfuges resorted to by film-makers wanting to appear bold and adult, while still not offending too many people...Williams offers a lucid and perceptive account, never slipping into a simplistic the more frankness the better attitude, but noting how advances in openness often entailed retrograde steps. Philip Kemp, Times Higher Education, January 2009