Provocauteurs and Provocations: Screening Sex in 21st Century Media Maria San Filippo 9780253052124

Twenty-first century media has increasingly turned to provocative sexual content to generate buzz and stand out within a glut of programming. New distribution technologies enable and amplify these provocations, and encourage the branding of media creators as "provocauteurs" known for challenging sexual conventions and representational norms.

While such strategies may at times be no more than a profitable lure, the most probing and powerful instances of sexual provocation serve to illuminate, question, and transform our understanding of sex and sexuality. In Provocauteurs and Provocations, award-winning author Maria San Filippo looks at the provocative in films, television series, web series and videos, entertainment industry publicity materials, and social media discourses and explores its potential to create alternative, even radical ways of screening sex.

Throughout this edgy volume, San Filippo reassesses troubling texts and divisive figures, examining controversial strategies-from "real sex" scenes to scandalous marketing campaigns to full-frontal nudity-to reveal the critical role that sexual provocation plays as an authorial signature and promotional strategy within the contemporary media landscape.

Maria San Filippo is Associate Professor in the Department of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College, and editor of New Review of Film and Television Studies. She is author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning book The B Word: Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television, and editor of the forthcoming collection After 'Happily Ever After': Romantic Comedy in the Post-Romantic Age.

"One of the book's most notable contributions to the field is its emphasis on the portrayal of sexuality in films by women artists, many of whom have been discussed in this arena but not in this kind of depth and with this level of insight."-Michele Schreiber, author of Indie Reframed and American Postfeminist Cinema

"This is one of the best and the most engrossing book I've read in my field in quite some time."-Carol Siegel, author of Sex Radical Cinema, Goth's Dark Empire, and New Millennial Sexstyles

"Provocauteurs and Provocations delivers incredibly nuanced and deeply contextualized readings of a wide range of sexually provocative media texts. Reflecting the best work being done at the intersection of film/media studies and feminist/LGBTQ scholarship, it will be invaluable for helping us think through the ethical implications of screen media's current engagement with the pleasures and politics of sex."-Ron Becker, author of Gay TV and Straight America