Earogenous Zones: Sound, Sexuality and Cinema

by Bruce Johnson (Editor)

Overview

With its capacity to defamiliarize and subvert visual representation, sound is not simply a source of information supplementary to the visual in the cinematic representation of sexuality, but a site of ambiguous ideologies and power relations.

This collection exemplifies a variety of approaches to the sonic representation of sexuality in cinema. It draws on a range of sexual scenarios from pornography to sci-fi to art-house and includes cinema from various cultures and countries. Among the topics addressed are how the deployment of sound is implicated in gender politics in the representation of sexuality and how sounds are able to radically colour and even override the visual and lexical content of a film.

Through sonicity the film-maker can challenge the ideologies at play underneath surface stereotypes, and introduce emotional overtones which meliorate the alienation generally associated with porn. Sound and music can establish a historical period as well as spatially localize sexuality within a framework that problematizes the distinctions between porn and erotica. They can introduce into the ahistorical sextopia of porn the cultural specificity of the notion of ‘pornography’ and indeed can shift a film in and out of that category, even desexualizing the naked human body.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845533182
Publisher:	Equinox Publishing
Publication date:	11/24/2010
Series:	Genre, Music and Sound
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

About the Authors ix

Introduction Bruce Johnson 1

1 Sound Decisions: Interviews with Ole Ege Bruce Johnson 12

2 Beyond the Valley of the Ultra Cliché: Erotic Plenitude in the Films of Russ Meyer Mark Evans Matt Burgess 38

3 The Push/Pull Game: The Dynamics of Sound in Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, The Last Emperor and The Sheltering Sky Lesley Chow 54

4 Depraved Desire: Sadomasochism, Sexuality and Sound in mid-1970s Cinema Clarice Butkus 66

5 The Peculiar 'Love' Music in Oshima's Ai no korida James Wierzbicki 89

6 Lust in Space: Science Fiction Themes and Sex Cinema (1960-82) Philip Hayward 102

7 Zero Gravity: Science Fiction Themed Porn Cinema and Its Soundtracks 1990-2010 Philip Hayward Emil Stoichkov 125

8 "It's Gotta Be That New Wave Music": Music in New Wave Hookers Carries the Joke Laura Wiebe Taylor 140

9 Making "a Mall Movie about a Man with a 13-inch Penis": Popular Music Representations of Pornographic Intention Liz Giuffre 158

10 Musical Loops: Eyes Wide Shut…Ears Wide Open Kevin Clifton 174

11 Multiple Positions: Sound, Sex and Aural Dominance in 9 Songs Andrea Warren 190

12 Music, Image, Orgasm: Getting off on the Shortbus Marianne Tatom Letts 203

13 In Extremis: The Roots, Soundscapes and Significations of Twenty-first-century Zombie Porn Ralph G. Marsh 217

Index 234