Earogenous zones : sound, sexuality and cinema

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.Sound decisions : interviews with Ole Ege / Bruce Johnson -- Beyond the valley of the ultra cliché : erotic plenitude in the films of Russ Meyer / Mark Evans with Matt Burgess -- The push/pull game : the dynamics of sound in Bertolucci's Last tango in Paris, The last emperor and The sheltering sky / Lesley Chow -- Depraved desire : sado-masochism, sexuality and sound in mid-1970s cinema / Clarice Butkus -- The peculiar "love" music in Oshima's Ai no korida / James Wierzbicki -- Lust in space : science fiction themes & sex cinema (1960-82) / Phil Hayward -- Zero gravity : science fiction themed porn cinema and its soundtracks 1990-2010 / Phil Hayward and Emil Stoichkov -- It's gotta be that new wave music : music in New wave hookers carries the joke / Laura Wiebe Taylor -- Making "a mall movie about a man with a 13-inch penis?" : popular music representations of pornographic intention / Liz Giuffre -- Musical loops : eyes wide shut? ears wide open / Kevin Clifton -- Multiple positions : sound, sex and aural dominance in 9 songs / Andrea Warren -- Music, image, and orgasm : getting off on the Shortbus / Marianne Tatom Letts -- In extremis : the roots, soundscapes and significations of 21st century zombie porn / Ralph G. Marsh.246 page(s