Lady Chatterley's Legacy in the Movies

Sex, Brains, and Body Guys

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by Peter Lehman and Susan Hunt

Type: Studies
Subject: Sociology
Keywords: masculinity, sexuality, stereotypes, gender
Publishing date: 2010
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 256 pages
6 ¼ x 9 ½ inches (16 x 24 cm)

ISBN

978-0-8135-4802-9

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Book Presentation:
Titanic. Two Moon Junction. A Night in Heaven. Sirens. Henry & June. 9 Songs. Lady Chatterley. And more. A new "body guy" genre has emerged in film during the last twenty years-a working-class man of the earth or bohemian artist awakens and fulfills the sexuality of a beautiful, intelligent woman frequently married or engaged to a sexually incompetent, educated, upper-class man. This body guy exhibits a masterful athletic, penile-centered sexual performance that enlivens and transforms the previously discontented woman's life.

Peter Lehman and Susan Hunt relate a host of wide-ranging films to a literary tradition dating back to D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and an emerging body culture of our time. Through an engaging and compelling narrative, they argue that the hero's body, lovemaking style, and penis-revealed through extensive male nudity-celebrate conformity to norms of masculinity and male sexuality. Simultaneously, these films denigrate the vital, creative, erotic world of the mind. Just when women began to successfully compete with men in the workplace, these movies, if you will, unzip the penis as the one thing women do not have but want and need for their fulfillment.

But Lehman and Hunt also find signs of a yearning for alternative forms of sexual and erotic pleasure in film, embracing diverse bodies and vibrant minds. Lady Chatterley's Legacy in the Movies shows how filmmakers, spectators, and all of us can be empowered to dethrone the body guy, his privileged body, and preferred style of lovemaking, replacing it with a wide range of alternatives.

About the authors:
PETER LEHMAN is the director of the Center for Film, Media and Popular Culture at Arizona State University. He is the author of numerous books, including Running Scared: Masculinity and the Representation of the Male Body and Roy Orbison: The Invention of an Alternative Rock Masculinity, and is the editor of Pornography: Film and Culture (Rutgers University Press).

SUSAN HUNT teaches film studies at Santa Monica and Pasadena City Colleges. She has coauthored numerous articles on film and sexuality for many journals and anthologies.

Press Reviews:
"An important, definitive book! Insightfully analyzing the 'body guy' genre, the authors persuasively demonstrate the need for and value of a radical reassessment of the discourses previously used to talk about male and female sexual power and pleasure and their representation in film.
"
— Robert Eberwein

"Peter Lehman and Susan Hunt have forcefully and brilliantly focused on a genre of film that desperately needed to be yanked out of the shadows into light.

"
— Zalman King

"Lehman and Hunt brilliantly track the legacy of Lady Chatterley's fondness for the 'body guy' at the expense of the intellectual male in images of (improbable) penile penetration on film. In arguing that non-genital sexualities (and brains) offer better models than violent body masculinities, they productively challenge the anti-intellectualism of much visual culture today."
— E. Ann Kaplan

"A valuable resource for those working in gender studies and masculinity in the cinema. Highly Recommended."
— Choice

See the publisher website: Rutgers University Press

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