“Time to Say ‘Yes’ to Sex”: Genre Mixing and Aesthetic Rebellion in Five Multi Media Resource Center Films
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Date
2018-09-06
Authors
Laudick, Ann
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
In the 1960s to 1970s, an audacious group of Methodist clergymen redistributed erotic art films, while producing their own content in a similar style, with the goal of creating a progressive sexual education program. Looking at five such films, this thesis uses a cultural approach to genre theory to examine how the Multi Media Resource Center combined the genre-label of sexual education and aesthetics of art cinema to legitimize explicit representations of sex that depart from heteronormative sexual practices. This thesis explores how the films’ failure to fit into any one genre category, even as labels are forced upon them as an industrial practice, illuminates how cultural power was operating to regulate sex and sexuality.