Virgin Territory: Representing Sexual Inexperience in Film PDF
Preview Virgin Territory: Representing Sexual Inexperience in Film
J Cinema and television studies e f f e r s “Virgin Territory addresses an important issue in a society obsessed with abstinence M c D programs and born-again virgins by offering witty, insightful, and profound o n examinations of the portrayal of virginity in film. This volume is a fascinating a l d read and a groundbreaking addition to film and gender scholarship.” VirPostgwar inMe at TeVrirginarl itfoluctuartingyLoss Sexual —Rebecca Bell-Metereau, professor of English at Texas State University and author of and G for “EHsoslelynwtioaol dre Aandidnrgo gfoyrn ys cholars and students working in the area of cinema, gender, Virg RecCehpitSciponringVselaivnnetd’sILrirtetclirlhoodeo nDcailralibnlges DQuoerstisV iDrgainyity ACh19e8r0rysInnocenVirgiDissectingnitMyEecTeenmsitnaorsyy t and sexuality. This volume explores how films reflect patterns of sexual i Representing Sexual Inexperience in Film n expectations and behaviors from a new and exciting perspective.” T —Hilary Radner, foundation professor of film and media studies in the Department of e Violating Sexcess Vi Cinema an Construction Media, Film & Communication Studies at the University of Otago and co-editor of r Decision Making rg Horrord Ridgemont pGTTCTSaaJiroueiamamrngbnlnat ealMersrilirs f,b J CoheGJueraeeetfamofmfdteyfrslera spy swr:Gnt isAMoi oo SenlMrcitnsn:kuDc i CrasdDioen lioGinan nnaArae.,c a nlCmRdmlldudeh,a ed bNa,it rsseehiNien cc el,atacea hS atfcMniho eotS eau Frnumltrrli,lthel leiiImonyvcdr a,n oCe .inI nolmnoa, tgbnGfiiitanbrlryma e,gN (pgCW aH aheTsatlsuhoe y c,KslR nklAteyeoinnwn moSdtot r DaaeUontaedne tlSe i iUvcCayeb tnaCorbitv,soa weiLdtmirayssi,nalie kti U,yMd: TKPCy.i .m:rDo eHBrosseosettsh,uyr ny2 m em M0Sr,0eh oeP9 aase)ertyntt ,e srdC e F acarelocnlo tn er, ritoryRepresenting Sexual Inexperience ThSeheFilmsvirginityThVirginCeMarjorie MorningstaruilnEnglishfilmictMouefFraxadElizabeth TaylorpiVstHlltheeeRPolanski’sumsrereoriiyNewlrbemlRepulsionenaEFastaItcOrgasmicasiMneorIsdenlinWindowuGyeeFeminismsicBnroDSlRotOnsÀ ma soeurRiuuoetntroyoAmericannevveradimesdTCayiRpPhenomenontotorFhieoGuiVirginrneperCcletgsoaerrhThirteensberixththyastiTimes(Teenage)celean40-Year-Old VltAmericanHBonjour TristesseaaivtgniaoihdnnrdsgiSnhes Contemporary Approaches to Film and Television Series in Performances Don’tns irgin Fi Wasn’t Broad Old virginity Cover concept based on a word cloud from www.wordle.net lm Cover design by Maya Rhodes Sexual Genre Movie Was edited by Tamar Jeffers McDonald Wayne State University Press Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309 (cid:45)(cid:72)(cid:73)(cid:73)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:48)(cid:70)(cid:39)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:68)(cid:79)(cid:71)(cid:3)(cid:48)(cid:72)(cid:70)(cid:75)(cid:17)(cid:76)(cid:81)(cid:71)(cid:71)(cid:3)(cid:3)(cid:3)(cid:20) (cid:20)(cid:21)(cid:18)(cid:20)(cid:26)(cid:18)(cid:19)(cid:28)(cid:3)(cid:3)(cid:3)(cid:20)(cid:21)(cid:29)(cid:20)(cid:23)(cid:3)(cid:51)(cid:48) Virgin Territory Contemporary Approaches to Film and Television Series A complete listing of the books in this series can be found online at wsupress.wayne.edu General Editor Barry Keith Grant Brock University Advisory Editors Tom Gunning Robert J. Burgoyne University of Chicago Wayne State University Thomas Leitch Caren J. Deming University of Delaware University of Arizona Anna McCarthy Patricia B. Erens New York University School of the Art Institute of Chicago Walter Metz Peter X. Feng Southern Illinois University University of Delaware Lisa Parks Lucy Fischer University of California– University of Pittsburgh Santa Barbara Frances Gateward Ursinus College Virgin Territory Representing Sexual Inexperience in Film edited by Tamar Jeffers McDonald Wayne State University Press Detroit © 2010 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Virgin territory : representing sexual inexperience in film / edited by Tamar Jeffers McDonald. p. cm. — (Contemporary approaches to film and television series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8143-3318-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Virginity in motion pictures. 2. Sex in motion pictures. I. McDonald, Tamar Jeffers. PN1995.9.V55V47 2010 791.43’6538—dc22 2009037066 ISBN 978-0-8143-3695-3 (e-book) Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Tamar Jeffers McDonald Gaylyn Studlar Velvet’s Cherry: Elizabeth Taylor and Virginal English Girlhood 15 Ilana Nash The Innocent Is a Broad: American Virgins in a Global Context 34 Timothy Shary Virgin Springs: A Survey of Teen Films’ Quest for Sexcess 54 Rebecca Sullivan Postwar Virginity and the “Marjorie” Phenomenon 68 Alisia G. Chase One Very Chic Hell: Revisiting the Issue of Virginity in Bonjour Tristesse 83 Tamar Jeffers McDonald Performances of Desire and Inexperience: Doris Day’s Fluctuating Filmic Virginity 103 Pete Falconer Fresh Meat? Dissecting the Horror Movie Virgin 123 v CONTENTS Nina Martin Don’t Touch Me: Violating Boundaries in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion 138 Greg Tuck Orgasmic (Teenage) Virgins: Masturbation and Virginity in Contemporary American Cinema 157 Lisa M. Dresner Love’s Labor’s Lost? Early 1980s Representations of Girls’ Sexual Decision Making in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Little Darlings 174 Shelley Cobb Was She or Wasn’t She? Virginity and Identity in the Critical Reception of Elizabeth (1998) 201 Andrea Sabbadini The Window and the Door 223 Carol Siegel Irreconcilable Feminisms and the Construction of a Cultural Memory of Virginity’s Loss: À ma soeur! and Thirteen 238 Celestino Deleyto The New Road to Sexual Ecstasy: Virginity and Genre in The 40-Year-Old Virgin 255 Bibliography 269 Filmography 281 Contributors 287 Index 289 vi Acknowledgments This edited collection has had a long gestation and has thus garnered a similarly long list of people to whom I owe a debt of thanks. Richard Dyer encouraged me to investigate all things cine-virginal during the years of my doctoral thesis. Robin Larsen, Alisia Chase, and Peter Thomas helped me work through issues of virginity and anthology organizing during and after a lunch at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) in Atlanta. Barry Keith Grant and the anonymous reviewers at Wayne State University Press provided very helpful feedback. To all these I owe my thanks and ap- preciation. Colleagues and students at Birkbeck College, University of London, Warwick University, Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, Ox- ford Brookes University, and the University of Kent, as well as at various film studies conferences, helped by hearing my ideas as they developed and bore with me as my fascination for disproving Doris Day’s perennial virgin status showed no sign of waning. I am indebted to the chapter authors for their patience with my edits and their high levels of enthusiasm for the project. Special recognition and gratitude is owed to Annie Martin at Wayne State University Press for her keen interest and support throughout, and to the Press’s Maya Rhodes and Carrie Downes Teefey and copyeditor Mary Tederstrom for their inesti- mable assistance in getting the book to print. And, of course, it is to my family that I owe greatest thanks: my mother for taping odd films for me late at night; Chloë for helping me check the bibliography; and Chloë, Jessica, and Paul for sitting through innumerable bizarre genre products with me because they had some tenuous relation to virginity (The Dunwich Horror again, gang?). My love and thanks to you all. vii Tamar Jeffers McDonald Introduction Does she or doesn’t she? Is she or isn’t she? Will she or won’t she? Should she or shouldn’t she? Should I surrender? Have you been bad? As these lines from books, articles, advertisements, and films from the cusp of the 1950s and 1960s demonstrate, virginity resists scrutiny and provokes interroga- tion.1 Although these queries in the popular media can be dated from the 1953 publication of Sexual Behavior of the Human Female, popularly known as the “Kinsey Report,” a moment that propelled the figure of the desirable and desirous female virgin into the public eye, it would be wrong to assume that this was the first or only incidence of virginity becoming a hot, and hotly contested, topic in popular culture. As chapters in this book explore, virginity was already an important social trope during the early decades of the twentieth century as well as during the years of the Second World War, and it remains so today, despite superficial assumptions about permissiveness. Indeed, virginity has had a long and vexed history and has never been a simple matter of an ontological either/or. It most often has a chronologi- cal, medical, legal, religious, or moral dimension to its loss; frequently its maintenance is seen as being as problematic as its relinquishment. While virginity may seem an “old-fashioned object,” it nevertheless remains one of perpetual currency within popular culture and the various cinemas that serve it.2 This collection thus considers examples of virginity as produced and marketed in film in order both to prompt discussion about the topic’s wider significance within culture and to consider the specific problems 1
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