The Body's Perilous Pleasures : Dangerous Desires and Contemporary Culture

Focusing on contemporary film and fiction, this book examines the construction of the body, both within cultural production and as a cultural product itself, and provides a provocative engagement with the cultural representation of the body and its 'dangerous desires'. Transgressive interpretations of conventional imagery merge with critical considerations of subcultural forms. The topics discussed include male erotic objectification; narcissistic masculinity; male to female transvestism; cyborgs and female desire; body piercing; 'demonic' children in film; queer cinema; vampires in women's fiction; the cannibal film; cyborgs and necrophiliac desire; AIDS and reincarnation films. The films discussed include __Videodrome, Dead Ringers, M. Butterfly, The Crying Game, Romeo is Bleeding, The Omen, Heavenly Creatures, Sister My Sister, Silenceof the Lambs__ and __Delicatessen.__ Drawing upon contemporary film and fiction, The Body's Perilous Pleasures is an investigation of the nature of the body and the manner in which it figures in transvestism, cyborgs and female desire, body piercing, AIDS and reincarnation