Deviant Cinema

The public spankings of Kathryn Grayson in Kiss me Kate or of Maureen O'Hara in McLintock are iconic, but the emotions and conflicts that they address are common preoccupations and recur continuously as themes in the global cinema. Buried in the vast inventory of movies released over the last century are almost 2,500 that partly or fully portray sexual dominance and submission of both genders, mental and physical, heavy and light, erotic as well as pornographic, documentary as well as fiction. Some are third-rate productions or crude attempts to exploit sex, but many do meet the fantasies and needs of a wide audience and they also occur as music videos, commercial advertisements, documentaries and game and talk shows on television. This impressive volume of movies from every country and period is largely unknown to the great majority of people, but most of the productions can be located and viewed with the help of this book.