Abstinence Cinema: Virginity and the Rhetoric of Sexual Purity in Contemporary Film
- ISBN-10
- 0813575125
- ISBN-13
- 9780813575124
- Category
- Performing Arts
- Pages
- 210
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2016-03-08
- Publisher
- Rutgers University Press
- Author
- Casey Ryan Kelly
Description
From the perspective of cultural conservatives, Hollywood movies are cesspools of vice, exposing impressionable viewers to pernicious sexually-permissive messages. Offering a groundbreaking study of Hollywood films produced since 2000, Abstinence Cinema comes to a very different conclusion, finding echoes of the evangelical movement’s abstinence-only rhetoric in everything from Easy A to Taken. Casey Ryan Kelly tracks the surprising sex-negative turn that Hollywood films have taken, associating premarital sex with shame and degradation, while romanticizing traditional nuclear families, courtship rituals, and gender roles. As he demonstrates, these movies are particularly disempowering for young women, concocting plots in which the decision to refrain from sex until marriage is the young woman’s primary source of agency and arbiter of moral worth. Locating these regressive sexual politics not only in expected sites, like the Twilight films, but surprising ones, like the raunchy comedies of Judd Apatow, Kelly makes a compelling case that Hollywood films have taken a significant step backward in recent years. Abstinence Cinema offers close readings of movies from a wide spectrum of genres, and it puts these films into conversation with rhetoric that has emerged in other arenas of American culture. Challenging assumptions that we are living in a more liberated era, the book sounds a warning bell about the powerful cultural forces that seek to demonize sexuality and curtail female sexual agency.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2016-03-08
- 210 pages
- Paperback
- Rutgers University Press
Similar books
-
The Abstinence Teacher
By Tom PerrottaAlready widely known to book and movie audiences for his scathing satire mixed with remarkable compassion in works including Election and Little Children (both adapted for film, Little Children garnering Perrotta an Oscar nomination), this ...
-
Homeland Maternity: US Security Culture and the New Reproductive Regime
By Natalie Fixmer-OraizFor more on diet and lifestyle, see Jorge E. Chavarro, Walter C. Willett, and Patrick J. Skerrett, The Fertility Diet: Groundbreaking Research Reveals Natural Ways to Boost Ovulation and Improve Your Chances of Getting Pregnant (New ...
-
Consent Culture and Teen Films: Adolescent Sexuality in US Movies
By Michele Meek... Abstinence Cinema, Casey R. Kelly posits that the aughts led to a sex negative backlash during which “popular cinema contribute[d] to the ideologi- cal salience of a growing neo-conservative movement that seeks to reestablish abstinence ...
-
I Choose to Wait: The Quick Guide to Being Abstinent in Today’s Society
By Grace AnyanwuThis book is primarily for: - anyone who is abstinent and intends to remain so - anyone who may have been sexually active and wants to be abstinent - anyone who isn’t sure about what being abstinent means and has a desire to find out more ...
-
Subversive Horror Cinema: Countercultural Messages of Films from Frankenstein to the Present
By Jon TowlsonLewton is left, then, with the problem of making Oliver's journey towards acceptance believable. Amy's teacher, Miss Callahan (Eve March), who understands the situation, is able to articulate it for the benefit of Oliver and the ...
-
Fourth Wave Feminism in Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume 1. Essays on Film Representations, 2012-2019
By Valerie Estelle Frankel... film and other media. the romantic hero and vampire edward cullen is the ultimate embodiment of “abstinence cinema” as he prides himself on his strict sexual abstinence until marriage, distancing himself from the “bad” promiscuous ...
-
A Cinema of Hopelessness: The Rhetoric of Rage in 21st Century Popular Culture
By Kendall R. PhillipsThis book explores the circulation of anger and hostility in contemporary American culture with particular attention to the fantasy of refusal, a dream of rejecting all the structures of the contemporary political and economic system.
-
Saying Yes! to Saying No: A Parent's Guide to Values-Based Abstinence
By Christy BacaIf you have children or grandchildren, you will want to teach them to Say No when it counts, and this book will give you the tools to start now! - Ryan Knight, D.C. Sex is going to become a part of everyones life at some point.
-
Nobody Told Me: What You Need to Know About the Physical and Emotional Consequences of Sex Outside of Marriage
By Pam Stenzel, Melissa NesdahlHere is a book to help teens make the right choices when it comes to sex, based on actual questions the author has received from real-life teens.
-
The Naked Truth: About Sex, Love and Relationships
By Lakita GarthIn The Naked Truth, you’ll understand the principles of self-control, self-discipline, delayed gratification and how to achieve your dreams.