Sex and the series
Iris Brey
2018 - Éditions Points
Sex and Art
This book by French director, author and film critic Iris Brey examines female sexuality in recent American series. Her essay is divided into four chapters: Speech and Sex, Pleasure, Violence and Queer. It explores the new patterns and ways of looking at these series, recounting the singularity of women’s experience.
Her TEDx talk “How Game of Thrones opened my eyes” is a first approach to her reflections on the omnipresence of the male gaze and the need for a female gaze in cinematic and televisual works.
I love watching series written and directed by women. As Iris Brey puts it so well, they are “missing images” that I persist in filling with renewed pleasure every time. And here she is, in her book, explaining why these series (Girls, I Love Dick, The Bisexual, Fleabag, Broad City, Normal People, Chewing Gum, to name but a few) appeal to me so much, especially when it comes to the representation of female sexuality. She clarifies the difference between the “male gaze” that objectifies and essentializes THE woman, with a sexuality centered around her vagina and not her pleasure. And the “female gaze” through which we feel what the heroines experience. And that changes EVERYTHING (at least, a lot!). Iris