From silent-screen sirens to contemporary bromance, the movies have not only reflected Americans’ sexual mores, but also taught the public what to believe, denounce, and accept. This course examines the historical capacity of American cinema both to represent sexual norms and to subvert the idea of the normal, with particular emphasis on the profound historical and cultural influence of the Hollywood Production Code. Examples for study include representative works from genres such as melodrama, farce, film noir, horror and the western, as well as experimental, independent and adult film.

Course Objectives:

§     To identify and investigate the historical, cultural, social, and aesthetic issues in the representation of sex and sexuality in the American popular film tradition.

§     To develop skills in the critical analysis of cinema as art, formulating and exchanging original responses to cinematic works based on identification and consideration of significant cultural and aesthetic issues.

§     To develop appreciation of the key questions in critical approaches to mass art, especially the genre approach to cinema.

The topic of sex in cinema is not only controversial but often confusing, in ways that may reveal the perplexing relation of sexuality to the life of our culture. It signifies at least three things:

1)     The representation in cinema of all aspects of sexual life—from rituals of courtship to actual sexual practices—and the pleasures and anxieties society finds in these depictions.

2)     The place of cinema as a social institution in the social and cultural history of sex—for example, the status of film stars as role models and ideals; cinema as a factor in the history of adolescent sexuality; and the immense influence of the adult film industry.

3)     The special theses of depth psychology, especially the Freudian tradition of psychoanalysis, on the relation between cinema as fantasized experience and the libido in individuals—i.e., an understanding of cinema as a cultural institution built on a biological endowment of sexual instincts and a psychological foundation of sexual drives.

The particular areas of study and investigation in this course--aside from the pleasure of critically examining some great movies--are:

§     The social, historical, and economic factors in the development of the codes of representation in cinema, governing what may and may not be represented, and how it is to be interpreted.

§     Film genres as a crucial means by which cinema conveys ideas about sex, with special attention to the stock situations, settings, characters, and iconography associated with film genres.

§     The role of sexuality in a prominent but often despised mode of popular narrative and especially of American commercial film: melodrama.

§     And especially: the capacity of popular cinema (and media generally) to represent sexual norms—or more precisely, “the normal”—and just as characteristically and meaningfully, the subversion of the normal.

There is no official view of sex and sexuality in this course. All perspectives are welcome, and all minds should try to stay open.