Sexy Thrills: Undressing the Erotic Thriller (review)

In Sexy Thrills: Undressing the Erotic Thriller, Nina K. Martin examines the direct-to-video (DTV) erotic thriller’s representations of female heterosexuals and their sexual explorations that lead to female empowerment. Her investigation into the erotic thriller also suggests that sexual consumerism and feminized marketing are continually disseminated by the female-oriented erotic thriller genre (2). Martin’s work shows how the erotic thriller, a modern form of soft-core pornography, utilizes erotic sex scenes and suspenseful narratives to capture female audience attention. In contrast to hard-core pornography, which is male-oriented and objectifies women, the erotic thriller is marketed for a female audience, and as Martin proposes in her book, this genre actively engages in the conversation of cultural tensions surrounding femininity, heterosexuality, and feminist discourse (3). The tensions created by this entertainment express a significant need for exploration of the integral role that these DTV films play in popular culture’s definition of female heterosexuality and, most importantly, its construction and regulation. As seen in each film, the female character goes on sexual adventures, and this exploration comes with a strong sense of danger and destruction. Through this danger and destruction, the erotic thriller reveals the anxiety of the transformative female heterosexuality.

Understandably, Martin uses a feminist perspective, taking “pop” and third-wave feminist theories into consideration; yet her analysis is not limited to this discussion. Instead, Martin explores the nature of the erotic film genre and how the continued transformation of female sexuality and sexual representations impacts a younger generation of women who are formulating their own ideas of gender roles and sexual desire in popular culture.

Martin’s introduction grounds the reason the erotic thriller is vital to female sexuality and identity, which affirms the need to examine what some critics and scholars view as “low culture” or “trash” entertainment. The usefulness of this section is the way Martin sets up her argument. Both scholars and general readers will find this part of her book beneficial because of the many avenues through which Martin analyzes and investigates these contemporary adult films. Toward the end of her discussion, she provides a brief outline for each chapter. By providing a brief overview, Martin structures her investigation for readers, ending her introduction with a mini-conclusion that reiterates how the erotic thriller “is a cultural product, a marketing niche, an educational tool, and a vehicle for sexual entertainment and arousal—a form that articulates contemporary ideologies surrounding feminism, sexual desire, and femininity within American popular culture” (11).

Her opening section, “Pleasures and Dangers: The Erotic Thriller as a Women’s Genre,” touches on the fact that the erotic thriller borrows from established cinematic elements, such as mise-en-scéne, narrative qualities, and the pleasure/danger formula, to maintain its own genre. Building first on genre methodologies, Martin centers her discussion on how the DTV erotic thriller emerges as its own genre and is an example of a woman’s genre. Martin uses the work of distinguished scholars—Rick Altman, Fredric Jameson, Linda Hutcheon, and others—to explore the elements that erotic thrillers borrow from other film and literary genres to enhance female audience engagement. Through this discussion, Martin establishes how the erotic thriller differs from hardcore pornography: even though both are used to arouse and stimulate, the erotic thriller develops a setting for desire and offers a seductive and suspenseful narrative fantasy for female viewers. As a result, Martin links the erotic thriller to other women’s genres such as romance novels, talk shows, soap operas, made-for-television movies, and the female gothic. Tropes of sexual threats and women’s roles in both the public and private spheres lend themselves to the manipulation of female subjectivity and the expansion of female-driven narratives (81). The point of this connection is to reiterate how the female character in the erotic thriller journeys through the tensions between love and hate as well as gains sexual knowledge. These tensions are further exploited by male humiliation, which subverts gender...