As Laura Kipnis proclaimed, 'Pornography is the royal road to the cultural psyche (as for Freud, dreams were the route to the unconscious).' This book explores that claim. Hardcore pornographic films have combined fantasy and real sex to create a unique genre of entertainment. Pornographic films are also historical documents that give us access to the sexual behavior and eroticism of different historical periods. And this book shows how the making of pornographic films is a social process that draws on the fantasies, sexual scripts and sexual identities of performers, writers, directors, and editors to produce sexually exciting videos and movies. Yet hardcore pornographic films have also created a body of knowledge that constitute, in this digital age, an enormous archive of sexual fantasies that serve as both as a form of sex education and self-help guides. Sex, Society and the Making of Pornography focuses on sex and what can be learned about it from pornographic representations.
