Jul 302023
May 262023
NYPD Blue S04E13 “Tom and Geri”, aired January 28, 1997
Geri, a police administrative assistant, has had an un-returned crush on Detective Andy Sipowicz. (In a previous episode, S04E06, she told him she was wearing rubber underwear.) The B story of this episode is that Geri tells Sipowicz that a friend she knows, Tom, has died in bondage gear in his apartment. Sipowicz, who wants nothing to do with Geri, hands it off to his superior, who in turn delegates it to a pair of female detectives, Russell and Kirkendall. Even at this stage, Geri seems distrustful of everyone.
Continue reading »May 252023
I’m giving a webinar on kink in mainstream media on 18 June 2023 at 10:00 AM Pacific. This is based on my ongoing research for The Celluloid Dungeon. I’ll be digging deep into the history of kink in film, going back to the dawn of the moving image and showing some of the moments and images and individuals. Admission is free for CARAS subscribers and $25 for everyone else.
May 142023
Apr 242023
Sleeping Beauty is a 2011 erotic drama film from Australia, directed and written by Julia Leigh.
Lucy (Emily Browning) drifts into paid sex work, as a lingerie-clad server at dinners for wealthy men, then takes a drug that leaves her unconscious as men touch her.
Continue reading »Apr 242023
Apr 192023
Lost in Space is a science fiction TV series about a family stranded in deep space. Episode S02E25 “The Colonists” aired March 15, 1967.
Many science fiction or fantasy TV series would include episodes that featured amazonian or matriarchal societies, doubtless for an element of sex appeal and the carnivalesque pleasure of inverting gender roles.
Continue reading »Apr 082023
Aired May 10, 1994
Roseanne was a popular sitcom in the 1990s, built around the stand up comedy of Roseanne Barr.
Roseanne’s elderly mother suffers a minor hip injury and has to move into her daughter’s house to recover, causing friction with Roseanne and her family. Bev’s friend Jake from the retirement home drops by and reveals that Bev injured herself during sex with him. Roseanne struggles with talking about sexual topics with her mother, and Bev is equally uncomfortable, after a lifetime of sexual ignorance and bad experiences. Roseanne and Bev awkwardly talk it out.
Continue reading »Apr 062023
Easy is a 2016 dramedy series about modern sex and romance. It’s loosely an anthology: most of the stories are self-contained, but certain character recur.
“Private Eyes” (season 3, episode 2, aired 10 May 2019) follows Hugh (Nicky Excitement) a technician who works for a private security company. Hugh is a kind of awkward guy, like an overgrown teenager with a fixation on martial arts. He goes on two dates, which end with polite but firm rejections by the women.
Continue reading »Feb 042023
O Fantasma is a 2000 Portuguese film directed by Joao Pedro Rodrigues. It concerns Sergio, a young man working as a night time garbage collector in Lisbon, and his sexual development.
Sergio is, to say the least, alienated. He inhabits a largely empty night-time world. While he flirts with a female co-worker, Fatima, his main sexual connections with others are wordless, anonymous sexual encounters with men. Not only does he connect to the company’s mascot dog, he’s animal-like himself. He rarely speaks, and often sniffs and licks people and things. Sergio just doesn’t have the social vocabulary to express his sexual identity. He operates more on intuition.
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