The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema - Hardcover

Williams, Linda Ruth

3.83

12 ratings by Goodreads

9780748611492: The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0748611495 ISBN 13: 9780748611492

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 2005

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This bold and original book examines in detail a relatively new genre of film—the erotic thriller. Linda Ruth Williams traces the genre’s exploitation of pornography and noir, discusses mainstream stars (including Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone) as well as genre-branded direct-to-video stars, charts the work of key producers and directors, and considers home videos as a distinct form of viewing pleasure. She maps the history of the genre, analyzing hundreds of movies from blockbusters such as Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, and In the Cut to straight-to-video film titles such as Carnal Crimes, Sins of Desire, and Night Eyes.

Williams’s witty and illuminating readings tell the story of this sensational genre and contribute to the analysis of mainstream screen sex—and its censorship—at the beginning of the 21st century. She shows that as the erotic thriller plays out the sexual fantasies of contemporary America, it also provides a vehicle for marketing those fantasies globally.

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About the Author:

Linda Ruth Williams is Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Southampton. She is author of Sex in the Head: Visions of Femininity and Film in D. H. Lawrence and Critical Desire: Psychoanalysis and the Literary Subject.

Review:

She intersperses her wryly provocative analyses of 'suspense in suspenders' or 'cops and copulation' pictures with to-the-point interviews. Williams has graced us with a witty, discerning, elegant, exhaustive study of a byzantine and meaningful genre that is, as she declares in closing, "not'just for the boys'". Much as the release of Fatal Attraction became a cultural event in 1987, the publication of this remarkable book should become an academic event in the fields of cultural studies, film studies and porn studies. The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema makes groundbreaking contributions to the study of popular film genres and to the study of pornography... Williams has demonstrated that the erotic thriller's sex-is-dangerous ehtos had ramifications beyond the frame for industry figures seduced by a risky but lucrative genre and for a culture coping with AIDS and riven by gender wars and porn debates. In the process, she has graced us with an elegant, exhaustive study of a Byzantine "genre certainly not 'just for the boys'" In this comprehensive survey of one of contemporary cinema's most popular genres, Linda Ruth Williams describes Hollywood's coupling of softcore pornography with the narratives of film noir, arguing that an analysis of these hybrid fantasies of the rich and uninhibited can provide us with a history of the desires, excitements and paranoias of the last two decades. From Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction to Naked Obsession and Victim of Desire, Williams provides a roadmap to the exploitation cinema of the video age that is as lively as the movies it describes. -- Richard Maltby, Flinders University, Australia 'She intersperses her wryly provocative analyses of 'suspense in suspenders' or 'cops and copulation' pictures with to-the-point interviews.' - Sight and Sound Book of the Month She intersperses her wryly provocative analyses of 'suspense in suspenders' or 'cops and copulation' pictures with to-the-point interviews. Williams has graced us with a witty, discerning, elegant, exhaustive study of a byzantine and meaningful genre that is, as she declares in closing, "not'just for the boys'". Much as the release of Fatal Attraction became a cultural event in 1987, the publication of this remarkable book should become an academic event in the fields of cultural studies, film studies and porn studies. The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema makes groundbreaking contributions to the study of popular film genres and to the study of pornography... Williams has demonstrated that the erotic thriller's sex-is-dangerous ehtos had ramifications beyond the frame for industry figures seduced by a risky but lucrative genre and for a culture coping with AIDS and riven by gender wars and porn debates. In the process, she has graced us with an elegant, exhaustive study of a Byzantine "genre certainly not 'just for the boys'" In this comprehensive survey of one of contemporary cinema's most popular genres, Linda Ruth Williams describes Hollywood's coupling of softcore pornography with the narratives of film noir, arguing that an analysis of these hybrid fantasies of the rich and uninhibited can provide us with a history of the desires, excitements and paranoias of the last two decades. From Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction to Naked Obsession and Victim of Desire, Williams provides a roadmap to the exploitation cinema of the video age that is as lively as the movies it describes. 'She intersperses her wryly provocative analyses of 'suspense in suspenders' or 'cops and copulation' pictures with to-the-point interviews.' - Sight and Sound Book of the Month

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