LECTURE ONE NOTES

Sex has many different meanings. One of them has to do with whether or not someone is male or female, but as usual the problem is not so simple. Do we mean “biologically” or “socially” male or female?

Sex in this case contrasts with gender. Sex is often seen as biological while gender is cultural or, in effect the set of behaviors which are learned in a given culture depending on whether or not one is seen as biologically male or female. . Gender allows for more than two forms although much of western society constructs only two anyway – in which case the switch from sex to gender is relatively meaningless. In the past applications said “Sex” and gave two choices “male” or “female”. Now they say “gender” and give the same two choices. The basic idea behind gender was that there may be more than two (e.g. gays, lesbians, transgendered and so on).

In this regard it becomes possible to talk about sexual orientation which generally is held to be an attraction to a particular “sex” (or gender?) This complicates matters since as the number of genders increases so potentially do the number of orientations – if in fact it is to a gender. The stimulus for the eroticism in these cases is usually defined relative to the “sex” of the erotic stimulus. This allows for the definition of sexual orientation as being involved with fetishism (stimulus is an object which arouses which may the clothes of the opposite sex or transvestism); bestiality (animals) necrophilia (corpses) partialism (body parts) etc.

Sex is also defined sometimes by external genitalia. Depending on whether a person has one set or the other they are classes as male and/or female. However people with both sets of genitalia do occur and are known as hermaphrodites.

A third approach is to deal with chromosomes. In humans there are generally 23 pairs of chromosomes, one pair of chromosomes seems to control “sex and sex linked traits” The sex chromosomes are either XX (female) or XY (male). However there are people with extra chromosomes and XXY and XYY are found as well. Thus even biologically one can argue that there are more than two sexes.

Sex is also use for copulation or the sex act as in sentences like “They had sex” which obviously doesn’t mean they are biologically one thing or the other, but rather they participated in a specific act.

Defining what is meant by sex in film is more complicated. First of all, any film with people in it (or most animals for that matter), have males and/or females in them so therefore they have “sex” in them. This is hardly the interpretation any one would make however.

In some cases people have talked about “sex” in films when what they were talking about was in fact gender. That is they are talking about the depiction of males and females in film.

Another approach would be to talk about sex with the meaning of the “the sex act” . Here the problem becomes thicker. Film analysts often talk about two terms: scopophila and specularization. Scopophilia is basically a desire to see something and is akin to voyeurism. Specularization is the process of focus on something – that is to say “making a spectacle of it”. Different genres tend to “specularize” different things. A film which disappoints in its presentation (or specularization) of the essence of that genre basically fails. If we go to see monster films to be frightened by the monster, and the monster isn’t scary, then the film at some level fails as a monster movie. In effect, ones scopophilia is not fulfilled by the director's specualrizationi!!!!!! WOW!

This leads to the question of sex in films. One might suspect that there are several kinds of “sex films” one of which is pornography (literally “writing about prostitutes”), another of which might be erotic cinema and a third of which might be films in which the sex act or people’s orientation or attitude toward the sex act drive the plot in some way.

Pornography might be defined as that genre of film in which the sex act itself is specularized to its own end, Erotic films may be those which are set to bring some sort of arousal or sexual interest in the viewer, but not specifically by focus on the sex act as the thing which arouses. Whether a specific work is erotic art or pornography may be open to person definition and taste and how one perceives the work as a whole with different people viewing it differently.

Another aspect of sexuality which complicates things is that sex and sin are very linked together in the three major religions which dominate in the West – Judaism, Christianity and Islam which jointly are often called the religions of the children of Abraham. Unlike many (if not most) religions in the world these three have a revealed text. God speaks to people and tells them things directly. All three of the religions, growing out of the same source as they do have a tendency to pass moralistic judgment on sex and sex acts from a religious “God said…” point of view although the points of view shift over time.

For much of the West there is a strong conflict in that virtually everything in Western society is traced back to the Greek and Romans (and sometimes even Egyptians) whose attitudes toward sex and sexuality were quite different from those of the Jewish religion in pre-Christian/Islamic times. Hence the moralistic approach of these three religions towards sex are in marked contrasted with the Greek and Roman traditions from which the rest of the culture has sprung.. Many of the worlds other major religions move sex and sexuality into a religious sphere as well, but without the moral “sinful” judgment about sex as original sin, but often something which is to be enjoyed and used for a variety of intellectual, philosophical and aesthetic purposes. In this religions like Hinduism Taoism, Shintoo and many others are at odds with the “big three” religions coming from the Middle East. As a result, I have decided to avoid showing films which deal with eroticism which come from non western cultures because of the difficulties of trying to understand the films in light of their complicated “other culture” backgrounds.

Attitudes towards sex and the erotic vary over time. What is seen as erotic in one generation may not be in the next. In some time period the ankle is erotic, at other times the neck, and still others the firearm and so on.

During the course of the term we will be talking about censorship and “the code”. A good examples of the restrictions of the code were those placed on sex, religion and crime. The Outlaw, a Howard Hawkes films with Jane Russell was held up for years because of 2 scenes in the film – the notorious “roll in the hay” scene and Russell’s horse back riding sequence with “cleavage”. The film today would probably get a G rating.

The code disappeared and was replaced by a rating system. You should watch (at home) This Film is Not Yet Rated for information about the new system

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