oh what a tangled web we weave when first we venture to ask about sex . . . at the very least this exercise has made me aware of the multitude of issues lurking behind an apparently simple question, and it has also allowed me to realize more clearly than at first what i rally mean to be asking about, so let me try yet one more time in most of the examples offered in this thread, sex is viewed as somehow [and i'm afraid none of these words is quite exact] naughty, delicious, scandalous, irresistible . . . the movies seem to be winking at us about sex . . . this was no doubt the result of two complementary factors: on the one hand there was the production code that made overt sexuality verboten, and on the other a cultural code that severely problematized extra marital sex . . . whatever the reasons, the cinematic result is - admittedly - often very erotic . . . but i now realize what i'm after is tracing the process by which movies became able to take sex so much for granted that it becomes hardly erotic at all, where making love [or even making lust or having an affair] is replaced by merely hooking up . . . or, to put it differently, the distance from mae west to paris hilton mike ---- For past messages, visit the Screen-L Archives: http://bama.ua.edu/archives/screen-l.html