Soft in the Middle: The Contemporary Softcore Feature in Its Contexts

by David Andrews

Soft in the Middle demonstrates that softcore's under-the-radar success and pervasive cultural devaluation may be understood in terms of the "postfeminist" strategies employed by successive generations of producers and distributors, each intent on overcoming obstacles to the mainstream distribution of pornographic material. Softcore and its American precursors became more "feminized" and "female friendly" as their distribution widened, a process hastened in the 1980s by the industry's transition to private, non-theatrical modes of distribution and exhibition (e.g., home-video outlets and premium-cable networks). One of the byproducts of this development is that contemporary softcore has frequently resorted to what are arguably anti-male or "misandristic" attitudes and depictions. Clearly, the genre challenges traditional assumptions about pornography, including those held by feminists on both sides of "the porn debates."

352 pages, Hardcover

First published September 8, 2006

Reviews

[Jason Coffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a spectacular, one-of-a-kind study of a type of film that is often ignored or completely dismissed by most cinephiles, and often even of people interested in paracinema. Andrews digs deep into softcore's history and lays out a ton of information, and the writing is somewhat academic, especially in the early chapters as he explains where the softcore form came from. If you have any interest in this sorely overlooked area of cinema, there is absolutely no better place to start than with this book. Fantastic.