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While the MPAA’s confusing and hypocritical ratings decisions were leaving filmmakers flummoxed in the early 90s, cable TV was opening up new possibilities for erotic content. Today we will offer a brief history of sex on TV, and then focus on Red Shoe Diaries, the cheesy-but-charming late night softcore soap that was the brainchild of 9 ½ Weeks writers/producers Zalman King and Patricia Knop.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Culture in the 90s was obsessed with the sex lives of teenagers. This is a theme we will come back to several times throughout the season. In this episode, we’ll talk about Drew Barrymore, who became a massive star at age 7 in E.T., went to rehab at 13, became an emancipated minor at 15 and immediately started pushing buttons with naked photo shoots and her comeback role as a murderously seductive teen in Poison Ivy. With teenaged Drew scantily clas in magazines and on screen – and “Long Island Lolita” Amy Fisher making headlines for shooting her adult lover’s wife – the media was eager to exploit the precocious sexuality of other teen girls. But while she made her film debut in the Poison Ivy-esque The Crush, Alicia Silverstone vocally pushed back on being branded “the next Lolita”. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the early 90s, one of the biggest scripted shows on TV was Murphy Brown, starring 40-something Candice Bergen as a product of the 60s whose high-powered career precluded marriage and family. When the character became a single mother, and was criticized for it by vice president Dan Quayle, a massive conversation about “family values” began that would change the culture – and, arguably, American politics. Off-screen, Bergen was married to French filmmaker Louis Malle. While his wife was in the middle of the “family values” maelstrom, Malle was making Damage, one of the most sexually intense films of the 90s, and one which used sexuality to explicitly critique the hypocrisy of politicians. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the biggest hits of 1992, Basic Instinct was sold as Michael Douglas’s return to Fatal Attraction territory, but its success owed to an alchemy of three other creatives: a writer (Joe Eszterhas) who was driven to become the highest-paid scribe in movies; a director (Paul Verhoeven) who was determined to redefine the amount of sex considered acceptable in a Hollywood movie; and a female lead (Sharon Stone) who had waited a long time for her breakout role, and finally found it in a bisexual murderess with the sheen of a Hitchcock blonde. We’ll talk about all of that, detailing the extremely messy production that was protested by LGBT activists – and its screenwriter – virtually from beginning to end, and examine Basic Instinct as a collision of toxicity and commerce that was emblematic of just-pre-Clinton era.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the five years after the release of Fatal Attraction, Hollywood scrambled to make one movie after another about homes and workplaces invaded and threatened by sexy outsiders. Today we’ll talk about five of these films: Presumed Innocent (1990), The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (1992), Single White Female (1992), Consenting Adults (1992) and The Temp (1993). To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the most controversial movies of the 1990s, Thelma & Louise pushed every hot button of the new decade: date rape, sexual harassment, the failure of the feminist movement to create real change for the working class, and how pissed off women were, or were not, entitled to be about all of the above. Though it made more noise as a media phenomenon than at the box office, Thelma & Louise made so many people so mad that it had the feeling of a turning point. We’ll talk about the anger the movie communicated, the anger it inspired, and debate its lasting legacy. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosted by Flea, founding member and bassist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, This Little Light is a podcast about falling in love with music. Flea interviews musical guests from all genres to discuss the teachers who guided them, the influences that inspired them, and how the lessons they learned as young musicians have shaped their creativity, resilience, and careers. This Little Light, a production of Cadence13 and Parallel, available now with new episodes dropping weekly, is available for free wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An enigmatic sex symbol dating back to the 70s, Theresa Russell made a play for Hollywood stardom in the late 80s and early 90s, making a number of films about the sexual commodification and role playing. Ken Russell’s Whore was marketed as a gritty answer to Pretty Woman, showing the “truth” about Los Angeles street prostitution. In Impulse, a neo-noir romance in which Russell plays an undercover cop posing as a sex working in a hopelessly corrupt LAPD, Russell was directed by Sondra Locke, longtime girlfriend and co-star of Clint Eastwood. When Eastwood dumped Locke while she was directing the movie, she fought back, instigating a series of lawsuits that revealed that Eastwood and his studio had conspired against her. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The first blockbuster about sex of the 90s, Pretty Woman both reinvigorated Richard Gere’s career, and turned Julia Roberts into the biggest female movie star of the era. We’ll dissect the gender politics of this fantasy about love between a streetwalker and a corporate villain, analyze its lasting appeal, and trace the wild rollercoaster ride of the first few years of Roberts’ movie stardom. Virtually unknown before 1989, within a year of Pretty Woman’s release Roberts was considered the most bankable woman in movies, a controversial icon of 90s womanhood and, eventually, a romantic antihero whose performances and personal life were put on a pedestal by a breathless media, only to be swiftly knocked down. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Erotic 80s began with a prologue about the short lived heyday of the X rating, pornography, and feminism. Erotic 90s begins with a prologue about the disastrous rollout of NC-17 –the X rating’s replacement – and the evolving state of both porn and feminism at the dawn of the 90s. Topics include David Lynch, Harvey Weinstein, “pro-porn” feminism, “the new morality,” video stores, Magic Johnson, date rape, and much more.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

American independent film is launched into the mainstream by Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies and videotape, starring James Spader as an impotent man who gets off on filming women talking about sex. Videotape also plays a role in a Spader film released almost simultaneously, Bad Influence, in which he plays a meek yuppie at the mercy of alpha male Rob Lowe – who was trying to rehabilitate his career after a tape leaked shot by the actor and documenting his real-life threesomes — one with a 16 year-old girl. We close the first half of this season talking about Lowe, Spader and how camcorder mediation of sex changed pop culture forever. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The 1988 baseball blockbuster Bull Durham confirms Kevin Costner as the ultimate squeaky-clean, all-American heartthrob, building on a sexual persona sparked the year before with the neonoir No Way Out. Today we’ll talk about why Costner was the quintessential safe hunk for the 80s, his alchemic chemistry with co-star Sean Young in No Way Out, and her subsequent rocky road through Hollywood misogyny. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The erotic thriller goes commercially mainstream with Fatal Attraction, a film which starts a national conversation about whether or not women can “have it all” – “it all” meaning both careers and marriage. Is Fatal Attraction an indictment of working women as “witches” and a call to roll back women’s rights, or a snapshot of extreme toxic masculinity? Plus: Dirty Dancing. Is it evil? To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Billed as the hottest Hollywood film since Last Tango, 9 ½ Weeks was considered to have missed the mark by everyone who made it – including director Adrian Lyne, stars Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger, producer/writer Zalman King and his wife, writer Patricia Knop. Today we’ll talk about why this intoxicating and troubling film is worth a second look, how to square away the arguably feminist finished product from a production process that robbed Basinger of agency, and we’ll explore the film Rourke and King re-teamed on as a re-do, Wild Orchid. We’ll also talk about Rourke’s “bad boy” persona, and his problematic relationship with his second wife and co-star, supermodel Carre Otis. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Just as the AIDS-related death of Rock Hudson was finally forcing straight people – and Hollywood – to acknowledge that epidemic, a film was released that transposed the new climate of sexual fear into a murder mystery. The sleeper hit of 1985, Jagged Edge turned Glenn Close from a respected actress into a star, and established the brand of screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, who would later write Basic Instinct and Showgirls. Almost a decade after radical feminists began to call for a crackdown on violent sexual imagery, Jagged Edge tried to have its cake and eat it, too: infusing its sex and violence – and its depiction of a career woman – with a fundamentally conservative point of view. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a time of bombastic blockbusters (and Reagan’s re-election), two auteurs defy the norms by releases violent films about sexual obsession, sparking a controversial mini-trend which one critic dubs “Vioporn.” Kathleen Turner, then also starring in a family-friendly blockbuster, plays a sex worker with a double life in Ken Russell’s Crimes of Passion. Brian DePalma, the most talked-about director of the moment, takes his tribute/critique of Hitchcock to the next level by casting Melanie Griffith – daughter of Hitchcock blonde Tippi Hedren – as a porn star in Body Double. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While the music video was still in its infancy as a cultural phenomenon, two films were released that were accused of aping the “MTV aesthetic”: Adrian Lyne’s Flashdance, and Risky Business, which turned Tom Cruise into a major star. Today we’ll talk about what the “MTV aesthetic” was and why it was considered a big deal for movies to be influenced about it, and we’ll examine how both of these movies treated sex work and race within the context of 80s social mores and Reagan capitalism. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

1982 saw the release of three hit high school-set comedies about sex: Porky’s, The Last American Virgin and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The only one to survive as a classic, Fast Times turned Phoebe Cates – who also appeared in the Blue Lagoon rip-off Paradise the same year – into a frozen-in-time icon of adolescent sexuality. Today we’ll talk about this sudden explosion of teen sex on movie screens, and compare Cates’s public persona and attitude to on-screen sexuality to that of Blue Lagoon star Brooke Shields. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The New Hollywood directors of the late 1960s and 70s were the first generation of Hollywood filmmakers to grow up studying Hollywood movies as art. In 1981-1982, a number of those directors made actual or virtual remakes of classic Hollywood noir films, including Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat, and Bob Rafelson’s The Postman Always Rings Twice; and Paul Schrader’s Cat People. What was the value of revisiting the tropes and narratives of 1940s noirs in the 80s, beyond the fact that the sexual relationships implied in the original movies could now be depicted graphically? Today we’ll talk about how these films played into the personas of stars Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner, how they challenged the standards of what could be shown in movies of the 80s – and how and why they were received extremely differently. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the most aesthetically influential movies of the ‘80s, Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo sets a template for much of what we’re going to discuss this season: it’s about sex as a conduit for wealth, masks and double lives, and the role of danger in desire. Today we’ll talk about the sexual persona of Gigolo star Richard Gere in the early 1980s; the ways in which Gigolo and other films from 1980 (Dressed to Kill, Cruising) grapple with straight male anxiety over gay male visibility; and the tension between the promotion of sex-positivity for women and the anti-feminist backlash. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices