The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality

by Mandy Merck (Editor)

The Sexual Subject brings together writing on sexuality which has appeared in ^Screen> over the past two decades. It reflects the journal's continuing engagement with questions of sexuality and signification in the cinema, an engagement which has had a profound influence on the development of the academic study of film and on alternative film and video practice.
The collection opens with Laura Mulvey's classic "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" with its conjunction of semiotics and psychoanalysis, the critical approach which is most closely associated with Screen 's rise to international prominence. The reader then goes on to explore the particular questions and debates which that conjuction arguments around pornography and the represenation of the questions of the representation of femininity and masculinity, of the female spectator, and of the social subject.
Many of the writings in this Reader have become indispensable texts within the study of film. The purpose of the Reader is not only to make the articles available to a wider readership, and to a new generation, but also to pose new conjunctions, making connections in one volume between debates and inquiries which spanned two crucial decades of film theory.
The Sexual Subject is intended not only for all those with a particular interest in film and film theory, but for anyone with a serious commitment to cultural theory, theories of representation, and questions of sexuality and gender.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction

348 pages, Paperback

First published October 29, 1992

Reviews

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality é uma coletânea de artigos acadêmicos envolvendo sexualidade e as telas de cinema, com conteúdos relacionados com a revista Screen. Traz tanto artigos de estudiosos muito conhecidos internacionalmente como Laura Mulvey e Homi K. Bhabha, como trabalhos de outros menos renomados. Ele é dividido em cinco sessões. A primeira delas traz o olhar psicanalítico e subjetivo sobre as obras da sétima arte. A parte seguinte traz quatro artigos sobre o tema da pornografia no audiovisual. Depois, o tema é a mulher como espectadora dos filmes, para em seguida pensar as imagens de homens na cultura visual. Por fim, os artigos da última sessão abordam o tema da alteridade nas obras cinematográficas. Mas realmente, excetuando-se os textos de Mulvey e Bhabha encontrei pouca novidade ou insights interessantes. Talvez isso se deva porque este é um livro da década de 1990 e não leva em consideração, por exemplo, a plataformização e a digitalização dos vídeos com o advento da Internet.

[Isabel R · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of a mixed bag, as should probably be expected from a collection like this. There's some really great stuff in here: obviously Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema is basically a modern classic at this point, and I'll always eat up basically anything Richard Dyer reads, but there's also a lot of essays that feel like they're kind of just repeating arguments Laura Mulvey made better and more succinctly, without adding anything of their own. Also I understand that psychoanalysis was a big deal for 70s film theory, but it does also get pretty tiring reading the same points about Freud and Lacan over and over again. Some decent stuff but far from the best collection on this topic

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

One month later -- The essay "Visual Pleasure and the Cinematic Narrative" by Laura Mulvey re-invented cinema, the feminine perspective, the gaze and power relations in films. Quite the revolutionary! -- A Collection of essays about cinema and sexuality through a heavy Freudian psychoanalytic lens. Out of all the essays my second favorite was by Dr. Hami K. Bhaba called "The Other Question: The Stereotype and Colonial Discourse". Some of the essays seemed culturally dated such as Richard Dyer's "Don't Look Now: The Male Pin-Up", and it may not be antiquated as much as from a nationalistic politically biased viewpoint. However, I am not much of a cinèphile. So, my impartiality to the subject matter might make for my low rating. I would also like to mention since I have stated that I do not know much on cinema, it's historical significance might be lost on me as well. For all I know these essays could have stimulated the ushering in for a new era of cinema and cultural growth that is beyond my scope.

[Sab · Rating 5 out of 5]

In college I underlined nearly every other sentence in this book. It is that good. Read and learn!