Voluptuous Yearnings

Caputi offers a broad theory of obscenity in contemporary American culture by answering the questions "What is obscenity?" and "How does obscenity operate within the confines of our society?" Drawing on psychoanalytic, postmodernist and feminist theory, she examines examples from many areas of contemporary art and culture ranging from Robert Mapplethorpe's controversial photography to Madonna's mixture of the religious and the erotic in the song "Like a Prayer," from novels including Joyce Rebta-Burditt's The Cracker Factory, and Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, to films including Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, Wim Wender's Wings of Desire, and Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing.