The lust of the eye and the thrill of the flesh

This article sketches recent scholarship on the relationship between pornographic film and modernity. Specifically, it shows how that relationship has since 1979 brought research into pornographic film out of its past status as special pleading or titillation and permitted the creation of a legitimate field of rigorous research. It concludes with an argument that pornographic film is central, not peripheral, to an understanding of the emergence and sexualization of modern consumer society.