Elena Gorfinkel

In this episode we delve into the seedy and exciting world of sexploitation cinema! Oftentimes, pornography studies is so busy working to legitimate hard core texts that we sometimes forget about the wide-world of soft core cinema. Just before the “Golden Age” of theatrically released pornography in the late 1960s, there was almost a decade of sexploitation cinema single-handedly keeping alive a dying studio system that had lost its dominance in light of losing its profits from owning theaters and the invention of the in-home entertainment system knowns as television. Sexploitation movies are a mode of cinema consisting of cheaply financed, quickly made, with B-grade acting adapted to a variety of film genres. There are sexploitation movies that look like film noirs from the 1940s (with nudity), teen beach movies from the 1950s (with nudity), and even sci-fi movies (with nudity)! These movies allowed for a new generation of filmmakers to break into the industry without the heavy burden of having to prove themselves with a big budget or A-list actors. Exploitation cinema is a crucial part of Hollywood history that thankfully has been given the attention it deserves with Elena Gorfinkel’s new book Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s (University of Minnesota Press, 2017). Elena’s remarkable book is a deep historical and theoretical dive into the legal history, feminist perspective, legal conditions, and critical response to sexploitation films. In this interview we talk about how Kim’s Video in New York City facilitated her interest in sexploitation films, we talk about the Marxist and feminist implications of sexploitation, we consider why film critics of the 1960s were so “bored” watching sexploitation, and we talk about her role as the co-chair of the Adult Film History Special Interest Research Group, which is a part of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. If you’re looking for a primer on the history of sexploitation, you’ve come to the right podcast!

Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s

Elena’s Twitter

Was '60s Sexploitation Cinema More Than Just Pornography?

Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!: A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959

Elena’s Interview with Feminist Media Histories about “Sex and the Materiality of Adult Media”

Fieldnotes: Constance Penley interviewed by Elena Gorfinkel

“The Story of Kim’s Video & Music, Told by its Clerks and Customers”

A Farewell to Kim’s Video

Art Zone: The Wonderfully Weird World of Lisa Petrucci

Something Weird catalog

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