Monthly Archives: February 2023

Finnish print smut

Our short piece with Laura Saarenmaa, titled “Local Flavour, Film Fantasies and Shifting Selections: Finnish Sex Magazines, 1972–1973”, is freshly out with Porn Studies. This is the link to free e-prints and this the permanent/actual one. It’s part of a forthcoming special Forum revisiting the so-called “golden era” of porn through non-US examples that we’ve been co-editing, and here’s the abstract:

The years 1972–1973 marked a period of transformation towards both hardcore print content and centralized production within the Finnish sex press. In a national context where the distribution and accessibility of screen porn was strictly regulated, periodicals remained the key platform for sexual content, and the leading ones were published by mainstream media houses also trading in women’s magazines and comics. Through examination of 15 sex magazine titles published in Finland during this period, this article inquires after the visibility and invisibility of porn films within them, contextualizes the print market in terms of publishing economy and governmental regulation and attends to the methodological challenges involved in porn historiography.

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Yul on preorder

Screenshot 2022-09-08 at 16.59.53Yul Brynner: Exoticism, Cosmopolitanism and Screen Masculinity is out end of March, and available now on pre-order (30% discount with the code NEW30).

304 pages, 35 b&w images, and an anal amount of historical print sources!

Yul Brynner’s star image was built on cosmopolitan flair, shifting tales of origin, baldness, as well as film roles as foreign rulers, freedom fighters, army officials, gunslingers and secret agents of ever-shifting ethnicities. Whether Cossacks, marauding pirate captains or cross-dressing torch singers, Brynner’s characters were invariably stand-outs.

This book explores his exotic and masculine star image and its transformations from lavish Orientalist Hollywood spectacles of the 1950s to 1960s European co-productions, 1970s action films and scifi. Extensively researched, it covers the actor’s entire film catalogue, his rumoured yet unrealised projects, television work and stage appearances, as well as their international media reception. Thematically organised, the book inquires after racial casting politics, the construction of sex symbols, Brynner’s humanitarian work and the recurring poses and gestures that characterised his performance style.

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Filed under academic pleasures, media history, sexuality