Maria San Filippo

By examining a variety of media genres including art cinema, sexploitation cinema and vampire films, 'bromances', and series television the author explorex the role bisexuality plays in contemporary screen culture.

Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television

The B Word

Premiering at Sundance in 2014, Desiree Akhavan’s acclaimed debut feature, Appropriate Behavior, introduced the indie film world to the deadpan, irreverent wit that had already won over fans of her trailblazing LGBTQ web series The Slope. The first volume in the Queer Film Classics series to spotlight a work by and about a bisexual woman of colour, this book explores Appropriate Behavior as an instant classic of US indie filmmaking in the 2010s, as a radical reappropriation of straight and gay film genres, as an artist’s coming-of-age story, and as a model for feminist-queer creative collaboration. Less than a decade old, Appropriate Behavior captures an urban queer community imperilled by gentrification and homonormativity and serves as exemplar of an innovative wave of independent cinema not yet subsumed by the streaming economy. Maria San Filippo explores how filmmaker and film render a singular voice and story that queers not only its celebrated romcom predecessors but also the gay coming-out film and the lesbian romance alike. The book concludes with an interview with Akhavan. San Filippo pays special tribute to Akhavan’s audacious sensibility and the “inbetweener” moxie that makes Appropriate Behavior an unparalleled portrayal of bisexuality.

Appropriate Behavior

Explores romantic comedy's revitalizing response to shifting sexual and social mores of the past decade.

Romantic Comedy in the Post-Romantic Age

After Happily Ever After

Explores romantic comedy’s revitalizing response to shifting sexual and social mores of the past decade.

After "Happily Ever After"

Is the sex on our screens simply sensationalism or is it a political strategy to help us reimagine ways of thinking about sexuality? Twenty-first century media has increasingly turned to provocative sexual content to court controversy, even scandal, in a bid to generate buzz and stand out within a glut of programming. While such an approach may at times be no more than a profitable tactic, the most probing and powerful instances of sexual provocation serve to illuminate, question, and transform our understanding of sex and sexuality. In Provocauteurs and Provocations, award-winning author Maria San Filippo looks at the provocative in films, television series, web series and videos, entertainment industry publicity materials, and social media discourses and explores its potential to create alternative, even radical ways of screening sex. New production technologies enable and amplify the distribution of "provocauteurs," who challenge sexual conventions and representational norms. Throughout this edgy volume, San Filippo examines a myriad of controversial strategies—including "real sex" scenes, scandalous marketing campaigns, full-frontal nudity, troubling texts, and divisive figures—to reveal the critical role that sexual provocation plays as a promotional strategy and authorial signature within the contemporary media landscape.

Maria San Filippo

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