Let’s Talk About Sex (At the Movies)

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Higher Ground

Tv & Film, Film Interviews, Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2022

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Film historian Karina Longworth is the host of You Must Remember This, a podcast exploring the forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century.

This week she joins us to discuss her new series, “Erotic 80s” (4:48), the seismic shift created by films like Last Tango in Paris and Deep Throat (7:58), the way in which these movies sold a distorted view of “female sexual liberation” (11:58), and how the cultural perception of these X-rated pictures evolved as the public learned of the abusive conditions in which they were made (12:50). As the 1980s took hold, Karina outlines how Hollywood capitalized on sex in the movies (16:50), making a film like American Gigolo (18:00), which transformed Richard Gere into a “distracting” sex symbol (22:09) and lead to “MTV aesthetic” in films like Flashdance and Risky Business (24:28).

On the back-half, we wrestle with the legacy of director Adrian Lyne’s work (28:00), the way cinema has drifted away from the center of culture (31:57), why Karina continues to make You Must Remember This (40:50), and a refrain she shares with 1930s actress, Kay Francis (42:53).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Pushkin.
0:09.6	What do poll dancing, AI Chappots and diet culture all have in common.
0:13.7	These subjects have a home on Embodied, the award-winning podcast I host from North Carolina
0:17.8	Public Radio W-U-N-C.
0:20.3	My name is Anita Rao, and you can consider me your personal guide to taking on the taboo.
0:25.0	Join me to explore important questions about our bodies and our society, where nothing is off limits.
0:31.0	So go ahead, listen to Embodied every Friday wherever you get your podcasts. This is talk easy. I'm Sam for go so
0:55.0	welcome to the show. Today I'm joined by podcaster and film historian Karina Longworth.
1:14.9	Karina is the host of You Must Remember This, a podcast that explores the secret
1:20.0	and forgotten histories of Hollywood's first century.
1:23.4	The show, which began back in 2014,
1:26.6	has just returned for a new season called Arotic 80s,
1:30.8	a 12 episode series that focuses on genres like the erotic thriller, body horror, Neo-Noir
1:38.0	and the sex comedy, all of which flourished throughout the 80s and 90s, but have seemed to disappear in 2022.
1:45.7	As Karina talks about in this conversation, the central dilemma is this.
1:50.8	We've never lived in an age where there is more public discourse about the nuances of human
1:56.0	sexuality, including sexual abuse and harassment.
2:01.0	And yet, sex itself has all but vanished from mainstream American movies, most of which seem entirely disinterested in presenting adults that have any kind of sexual appetite, desires, or fantasies.
2:16.6	But in the 80s, there were plenty of movies dealing with just this,
2:20.3	American Jiggolo, 9.5 weeks,
2:22.8	Risky Business, Fast Times at Ridgemont High,
2:26.2	Flash Dance, Fatal Attraction.
	...

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