Tag Archives: sex positivity

Movies

Let’s Talk about (Movie) Sex, Baby

3 Comments
Sara
Sara
Sara is big into reading and writing fiction like it's her job, because it is. That doesn't mean she isn't real as it gets. She loves real stuff like polka dots, indie rock, and underground fight clubs. I may have made some of that up. I don't know her that well. You can tell she didn't just write this in the third person because if she had written it there would have been less suspect sentence construction.
Sara
Latest posts by Sara (see all)

Perhaps you heard that a little, grey-ish movie got America’s collective panties in a twist over the weekend. Fifty Shades of Grey is going to make well over $100 million by the end of its first week in release, which, depending on how interested you are in seeing stars get busy, could be a blessing or a curse. Will the success of Fifty Shades herald a new era of mainstream erotic film? It’s too soon to say but I’m not sure I’d throw away my handcuff key just yet. The reviews I’ve read indicate that the film version of Fifty Shades tones down some of the book’s most unpleasant aspects, by which I mean Christian Grey’s emotionally abusive and controlling behavior, not the elementary-level spanking and binding that passes for BDSM in this series. And yet this is still just the latest in a long history of supposedly erotic entertainment that take a prurient interest in sex while being squeamish about actually engaging in it, let alone depicting it in a positive light — particularly when it comes to female pleasure. So, rather than explore what Grey may be getting wrong (which is already pretty well-covered territory, and also involves paying money to see Fifty Shades of Grey), I thought I’d take a look back through film history to see what, if anything, has gotten sex-positivity right. (Please note: for the sake of simplicity, I’m sticking mostly to American cinema, since there’s a plethora of sex-positive films from foreign countries [France is nothing if not sex-positive you guys].)
Continue reading Let’s Talk about (Movie) Sex, Baby →