Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1500943 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 216 pages

Review

Customer Reviews

Review in "Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries"
The following review is from the January 2008 issues of Review in "Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries."
Martin's engaging book builds (as she makes clear) on the work of others who have examined the world of the soft-core erotic thriller. But this in-depth analysis of the practice and reception of these often-maligned films takes the discussion several steps further, examining this work from a feminist point of view. This results in a study that is both surprising and refreshing. Adroitly disposing of the artificial demarcation between high and low art--which, as Martin [Connecticut College] correctly argues, is the reason that many of the films discussed in this book have gone unexamined--the author gives trenchant readings of contemporary soft-core thrillers, films noir, and gothic films. In so doing she seeks to reclaim for females the pleasure of viewing these films, which have in most cases been specifically designed to appeal to stereotypical male fantasies. Illustrated with a solid selection of frame grabs, and offering carefully detailed deconstructions of numerous films in the genre, this groundbreaking work is similar in its ambition to Carol Clover's Men, Women and Chain Saws (CH, Sep'92, 30-0181). It offers a fresh view on a type of film often dismissed out of hand. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers; all levels. - W.W. Dixon, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

accessible feminist film criticism
Growing up, I loved Hitchcock films and film noir, an odd choice for a child who came of age with color television, Rambo and Reagan. Fast forward to post-college years later when I took a job at a video rental store to support a poorly stipend internship, where ninety percent of the store's revenue was from the sale and rental of adult films. Did Barbara Stanwyck and Tipi Hendren lead to this?

According to Nina K. Martin in Sexy Trills: Undressing the Erotic Thriller, they just might have (thanks for introducing me to the old flicks mom!). The erotic thriller is soft-core, direct to video pornography with elaborate sets and romanticized stories, generally aimed at women - as opposed to hard-core pornography, which, with its emphasis on penetration and myriad other sexual acts and little to no premise to get there, is usually aligned with male pleasure. Using a selection of film texts of the genre, Martin analyzes the effect of the erotic thriller on the construction of heterosexual female sexuality in contemporary American society. According to Martin, erotic thrillers have well-define formulaic patterns - including gothic and film noir borrowings - that define the genre. Within these various narrative texts, sexuality for the heterosexual female is safely explored with in the permitted boundaries and resolves itself around either true love (marriage) or punishment for digressions in personal and professional lives.

Taking an academic look at non-academic texts, Martin shows that the idea of "what women want" is more about what men tell women that women want. Nearly all media companies are owned by men, and almost all film directors are men, so in a mass media and consumer-driven world, contemporary culture is a homogenized template of what individuals are told to desire and need, and dictates come from Hollywood, Hitchcock, Cosmopolitan, Rachel Ray and women's pornography. And ultimately, as Martin points out, the erotic thriller reinforces women's subordinate place in society because women--even when in charge of their sexual expression--still have their sexual services purchased and made available for purchase, primarily for men. As a woman is sexually empowered in the films through fulfillment of personal desires, she is disempowered within the public sphere for her actions, thus reemphasizing the public/private split in society where power and authority are mutually exclusive to sexual expression and fulfillment (does anyone view Hillary Clinton as a sexualized woman?). Individual women's sexuality, Martin states, is inseparable from culture representations of individual women's sexuality and is not reconcilable with public life and power the way men's sexuality is. Jenna Jameson is for the bedroom only, Hillary has no sex life (wasn't that why there was Monica?), and Hitchcock's Tipi is punished for her sexual urges and desires by giant black birds.

Despite the academic prose and evocations of Freud and Foucault, Martin's critique of the erotic thriller is accessible to interested audiences looking at the text as film criticism, feminist criticism or both (for uninterested audiences there is a smattering of still frames from select films). Martin doesn't enter the feminist pornography debate because, as she states explicitly in her introduction, the book is primarily film criticism and secondarily feminist criticism. However, she is attuned to feminist concerns and feminisms. Through this numbered lens, the book becomes more interesting for its inability to judge pornography as either pro-woman or anti-woman. Instead, Martin cleanly analyzes how sex is marketed to heterosexual women by well-defined, status-quo affirmations of what is considered normalized (and non-threatening) sexuality and, therefore, doesn't detach her thesis from the effect of the Second and Third Waves. The empowerment of women, Martin tells us, is through a dictum and language that are not our own.

Sexy, thrilling, and beautifully written
Luckily, a friend loaned me her advance copy of "Sexy Thrills." From its title to its last sentence, this book is fascinating, well written, witty, and just plain fun. More than simply a genre study of erotic thrillers, "Sexy Thrills" grapples with the big issues of women's sexuality and identity, as well as with the important debates within contemporary feminism.

Erotic thrillers are a form of soft-core pornography targeting a female audience. Unlike male-oriented porn, erotic thrillers address, as Martin says, "the sexual subjectivity of women and the social construction of gender." Initially these films are difficult to categorize, as they draw from a number of genres--film noir to soap operas, romances to pornography--but they share a number of key features, most revolving around "a gendered formula for visual arousal." In addition to examining the primary examples of this genre from its most famous, "Basic Instinct," through its most prolific practitioner, Zalman King, to its many multiple-part series, such as the "Body Chemistry" films, Martin delves deeply into their structure and cinematic character to analyze the filmic qualities that make these movies so attractive to women. Along the way she unpacks "sexual consumerism, feminized niche marketing, and a post-feminist focus on sexual exploration as the means to female empowerment."

"Sexy Thrills" is of value across the disciplines. Martin is a real star of that new generation of feminist scholars questioning received traditions and counter-productive intellectual dichotomies. And she does so in a remarkably fair minded and generous fashion, which I take as the sign of a truly sophisticated scholar. What Linda Williams did for hard-core, Martin accomplishes for soft-core pornography: making it intelligible and intriguing. "Sexy Thrills" is a highly original work of interdisciplinary scholarship, and beautifully written. I recommend this book to anyone interested in contemporary American culture.