And now for something completely different. I sat down with film professor Prof. Peter Lehman and horror scholar Dr. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas to discuss male nudity in cinema. We discuss our connections with the topic, the phallus vs the penis, rape revenge, the pitfalls of “respectable cinema,” the prosthetic penis and a lot more. I’m so glad and grateful that I had a chance to talk to these bona fide experts about a topic that I have been wondering about for a very long time. I hope you take something away from this unusual film exploration. 

A Selection of Peter Lehman’s Work: 

Running Scared: Masculinity and the Representation of the Male Body 

Masculinity: Bodies, Movies, Culture 

Pornography: Film and Culture 

Peter Lehman’s Arizona State University Profile

A Selection of Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’ Work:

Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study 

1000 Women In Horror, 1895-2018 

The Giallo Canvas: Art, Excess and Horror Cinema 

Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’ Website 

Watching Rape, the book Alexandra mentions 

Wesley Morris’ NY Times article on Black male sexuality 

Films mentioned: 

• The Virgin Spring (1960)
• Drive, He Said (1971) 
• Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971)
• Last House on the Left (1972)
• I Spit On Your Grave (1978)
• Sweet Savage (1979) 
• A Room With A View (1985)
• Drifting Into Chaos (1989)
• The Pillow Book (1996)
• Traps (1998) 
• Baise Moi (2000)
• Irreversibel (2002)
• Django Unchained (2012)
• Promising Young Woman (2020) 
• PVT Chat (2020) 
• Zola (2020) 
• Minx (2022-) 

Kevin Bacon’s penis PSA 

Lastly, thank you to Karolin Schnoor for all the support and for making the brilliant illustration!