This book makes a unique contribution to the field of me- dia studies by analyzing the perpetuation of sexual scripts through news articles, films, TV shows, lifestyle magazines, advertisements, and other forms of popular mediated culture. Focusing on cultural differences between North America and Europe, the book catalogues and contextualizes common sex- ual scripts by looking at the ways in which people have or do | Eros Mediated not have sex, eroticize each other’s bodies, penetrate each other’s bodies, and give meaning to all these activities. Other such analyses have explored whether, when, and why people decide to have sex, and so on. This book instead fo- cuses on how the sexual interaction itself is culturally script- ed to occur—what sequence of events takes place after a couple have decided to have sex. While the first half of the book catalogues sexual scripts in a general way, based on geography and sexual orientation, the second half is framed around sexual discourses associated with some degree of shame and social stigmatization. The book ends by addressing the hegemonic perpetuation of me- diated sexual scripts across cultures and the role of sexuality in fourth-wave feminism. Sternadori Mediated Eros is suitable as the primary or secondary text in seminars on media, culture, and sexuality, and would also be of interest to journalists and freelance writers whose work explores the sociocultural construction of sex and the sexual self. MIGLENA M. STERNADORI (Ph.D., University of Missouri) is an asso- ciate professor in the Department of Journalism and Electronic Media at Texas Tech University. She has published in Feminist Media Stud- www.peterlang.com ies, Journal of Media Psychology, PETER LANG Women’s Studies in Communica- tion, Newspaper Research Journal, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Atlantic Journal of Communication, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Media Report to Women, and Journal of Media Education. This book makes a unique contribution to the field of me- dia studies by analyzing the perpetuation of sexual scripts through news articles, films, TV shows, lifestyle magazines, advertisements, and other forms of popular mediated culture. Focusing on cultural differences between North America and Europe, the book catalogues and contextualizes common sex- ual scripts by looking at the ways in which people have or do | Eros Mediated not have sex, eroticize each other’s bodies, penetrate each other’s bodies, and give meaning to all these activities. Other such analyses have explored whether, when, and why people decide to have sex, and so on. This book instead fo- cuses on how the sexual interaction itself is culturally script- ed to occur—what sequence of events takes place after a couple have decided to have sex. While the first half of the book catalogues sexual scripts in a general way, based on geography and sexual orientation, the second half is framed around sexual discourses associated with some degree of shame and social stigmatization. The book ends by addressing the hegemonic perpetuation of me- diated sexual scripts across cultures and the role of sexuality in fourth-wave feminism. Sternadori Mediated Eros is suitable as the primary or secondary text in seminars on media, culture, and sexuality, and would also be of interest to journalists and freelance writers whose work explores the sociocultural construction of sex and the sexual self. MIGLENA M. STERNADORI (Ph.D., University of Missouri) is an asso- ciate professor in the Department of Journalism and Electronic Media at Texas Tech University. She has published in Feminist Media Stud- www.peterlang.com ies, Journal of Media Psychology, PETER LANG Women’s Studies in Communica- tion, Newspaper Research Journal, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Atlantic Journal of Communication, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Media Report to Women, and Journal of Media Education. Mediated Eros This book is part of the Peter Lang Media and Communication list. Every volume is peer reviewed and meets the highest quality standards for content and production. PETER LANG New York Bern Frankfurt Berlin Brussels Vienna Oxford Warsaw Miglena M. Sternadori Mediated Eros Sexual Scripts Within and Across Cultures PETER LANG New York Bern Frankfurt Berlin Brussels Vienna Oxford Warsaw Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sternadori, Miglena M. Mediated eros: Sexual scripts within and across cultures / Miglena M. Sternadori. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Sex—Cross-cultural studies. 2. Sex in mass media—Cross-cultural studies. 3. Sex customs—Cross-cultural studies. I. Title. HQ21.S64325 306.7—dc23 2015018820 ISBN 978-1-4331-2923-0 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-4331-2922-3 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-4539-1665-0 (e-book) Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/. © 2015 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006 www.peterlang.com All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited. To my sons, Raphael and Alexandre With gratitude to my partner, historian Matthew Pehl CONTENTS Introduction: What’s “Okay” in Bed? Identifying and Comparing Sexual Scripts in Media Content 1 Chapter 1. Constructivist Theoretical Underpinnings: Sexual Scripts and Media Frames 17 Chapter 2. Look-Sees, Lysol, and Baseball: Heterosexual Scripts in American Popular Culture 47 Chapter 3. Sex as an Existential Journey: Heterosexual Scripts in European Popular Culture 75 Chapter 4. What’s Same-Sex Sex Like? Popular Imagination of Gay and Lesbian Sexuality 101 Chapter 5. Not Loud Enough, Too Loud: Gender and Heterosexuality Construction in Sex Advice 123 Chapter 6. Kinksters, Swingers, and Other Weirdos: Media Depictions of Alternative Sexualities 145 Chapter 7. Just What the Doctor Ordered: The Scientification of Sex and Sexual Dysfunction 169 Chapter 8. Too Young, Too Old: The Procreative-Age Confinement of Socially Tolerable Sexuality 195 viii mediated eros Conclusion: The Implicit Perpetuation of Sexual Scripts 219 References 235 Index 273 INTRODUCTION What’s “Okay” in Bed? Identifying and Comparing Sexual Scripts in Media Content A ghost is haunting the world—the ghost of sexual (un)fulfillment. It always has, but it is now more omnipresent than ever. It manifests itself through desir- able images on portable screens, television, magazine pages, and billboards. It whispers, suggests, and titillates between story lines. And it reveals itself in ubiquitous guilt-free narratives from media outlets that are so much more rep- utable than online porn, pay-per-view channels, or the old-fashioned “smut” surreptitiously sold at gas stations. The erotic pagan tales once told within the confines of a village have found a worldwide equivalent in music videos, sitcoms, news stories, and movies. Thanks to contemporary communication technology, they not only cross borders in milliseconds, but also encourage mass conformity in the once deeply private sphere of sexuality. The mainstream availability of sexual narratives creates expectations and pressures that can be difficult to meet in real life. “I can’t get no satisfaction,” sang the Rolling Stones in 1965. “And that man comes on the radio, and he’s tellin’ me more and more about some useless information supposed to fire my imagination” (Jagger & Richards, 1965). A song banned by many radio stations for its suggestive lyrics (Kalis & Neuendorf, 1989), “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” makes a rarely discussed association between media content and sexual frustra- tion. Is the band’s lead Mick Jagger singing about a radio-mediated sexual script 2 mediated eros that failed to excite his imagination? What about “When I’m watchin’ my TV and that man comes on to tell me how white my shirts can be, but he can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes as me”? (Jagger & Richards). Perhaps the bisexual Jagger, whose own sexual experiences afford him a richer and more critical perspective, is expressing sarcasm over the restrictive social construction of masculinity, which in turn limits the subjectivities of sexual desire and pleasure. In any case, kudos to the Rolling Stones for recognizing, half a century ago, the power of media to transform one’s subjective experi- ences of life and also sexually frustrate (a subject that will be discussed at length throughout this analysis). Sexuality—diverse, multifaceted, and regulated throughout the world— can be viewed as a protean collection of social scripts that vary across time and space. It has long been attributed a great importance. In the words of French philosopher Michel Foucault (1984/1986), sexuality was a central element of the “arts of existence” (p. 10) and “practices of the self” (p. 13) in antiquity, and in later times came to be seen as the very core of existential evil. The mostly discursive construction of sexuality (Foucault, 1976/1990) means that it can never be a constant; it also makes silencing it difficult or even impossi- ble. Sexuality’s amorphous body fluctuates from century to century and from continent to continent despite any social attempts at control. Media and Popular Sex Pedagogy A time-tested way to contain the transgressive power of sexuality is to surround it with silence. Shereen El Feki, a Cambridge-educated biologist-turned-writer who studies sexual culture in the Middle East, says a doctor in Cairo told her: “Here, sex is the opposite of sport. Football, everybody talks about it, but hardly anyone plays. But sex, everybody is doing it, but nobody wants to talk about it” (El Feki, 2013, np). This insightful statement, sadly, applies not only to the Middle East. In the U.S., in this day and age, it is much more accept- able to talk about hemorrhoids than about sex—not counting locker-room male braggadocio, of course.