"Sexuality within mainstream Hollywood cinema features primarily in comedy or rom-com genres, where lightness of tone permits audience engagement with what would otherwise prove to be difficult affective terrain. Focusing on the margins of mainstream production in Anglo-American contexts, this collection explores the gendered dynamics of sex and the body, paying particular attention to embodied deviations of normative cultural scripts. It seeks to understand the ways in which transgression is acted through and written on the body, and the ways in which corporeality inscribes not only gender discourse but also reflects cultural and institutional power more discursively. In their analysis of a number of provocative, contemporary films such as Mysterious Skin (2004), Shame (2011), Nymphomaniac (2013) and Dallas Buyers Club (2013), and navigating themes such as queer politics, taboo fantasy, body modification, fetishism, sex addiction and underage sex, the essays in this volume problematize received understandings of adult agency, childhood innocence and healthy desire, locating sex and gender as sites of not only oppression but also liberation and resistance. Ultimately, this collection advocates a discussion of culturally rejected forms of love, desire and sex."--Page 4 of cover
Includes bibliographical references and index