Sexuality in Cinema

Swedish cinema became recognized for daring representations of sexuality with such films as One Summer of Happiness (1951), The Silence (1963), I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967) and a wave of sex films in the late 1960s and 1970s. The association between Swedish film and sexuality shows up frequently in popular culture. From Taxi Driver (1976) to Mad Men (2007–2015), dirty Swedish movie references abound. Yet the connection has attracted little critical attention.

Since film became a major component of mass circulation popular culture, the portrayal of black people has erupted on to cinema screens in an apparently non-systematic, erratic manner…