Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook - Transforming Genitals in Culture and Media, Jun 2023

Deploying theories of power and stigma, this article aims to discuss the perceptions of genitalia and the cultural expectations of genital transformations and representations in consideration to disability. Through a transcription-based content analysis of the audio description (AD) used in Series 10 of Naked Attraction (2016–present), this article aims to explore how the media shapes expectations and feeds into the problematic and powerful impact that audio description can have upon disabled individuals. This article focuses upon the representational transformations of genitalia from the corporeal into the visual, then, delving deeper, from the televisual to the audio, using this double layer of transformation to look at the deeper complexities at play. By AD not using the correct terminology for genitalia, an inclusion/exclusion or us/them dualism is formed based on power relations which make assumptions about disabled individuals. These assumptions are that disabled individuals either do not want or do not have the capacity to consent to sex. This links to the infantilization and patronization that disabled individuals are subjected to within wider society. A further aim is to interrogate how these expectations are perpetuated through televisual representations to create power relationships, and the impact this has upon disabled individuals. The shielding/censorship of genitalia from disabled individuals is evident in AD on television shows such as this, which contains euphemisms for genitalia rather than accurate descriptions. This feeds into the desexualization of disabled individuals and conflation and confusion between asexuality and disability alongside the dismissal of disabled individuals as potential sexual and life partners. This article shows how ableism runs through society perpetuated by the media and the effects this has on the disabled community.

This article aims to analyse the arguments or reasons that participants in Croatian online forum subtopic named ‘Labiaplasty – labia correction’ put forward as motives for opting for a labiaplasty procedure or as a rationale for having the procedure done. The emphasis of the analysis will be on those reasons or arguments that were predicated on functionality (of the vulva). Functionality is understood both in terms of changes in – or the desire to change – specific physical sensations or limitations and in those aspects evident in the psychological, emotional or cognitive effects of thinking about the procedure or the procedure once performed. Given that the analytical part of the work focuses on analysing textual material (the content of posts on the forum), the fundamental methodological basis of this work is a feminist critical discourse analysis. The analysis points to two main conclusions. First, it is necessary to include a broader context in the discussion on labiaplasty. Second, an analysed online forum on labiaplasty functions primarily on supportive principles, and it does not support critical approaches that reveal more general gender inequality aspects.

Penile circumcision remains a topic that divides people. This article considers Lisa Braver Moss’s novel, The Measure of His Grief, which tells the story of a character who begins to reconsider his own circumcision. Over the course of the novel, Dr Sandy Waldman studies circumcision and the foreskin, as well as anti-circumcision activism and foreskin restoration. This article thus aims to read the novel in light of foreskin restoration and intactivist politics. Additionally, this article considers the relationship amongst the foreskin, circumcision and masculinity.

Critically acclaimed transnational (United States/United Kingdom) drama Succession (2017–23) utilizes classical references combined (arguably juxtaposed) with queerness and insecurities about masculinity/-ties and orientation within its satirical representation of corporate culture. While connecting quality television to British period dramas and queerness, especially on HBO, is relatively common, the series uses phallic discourses not only to illustrate and satirize the toxic masculinity present in its pseudo-royal corporate culture but also to show the complexities of a queer ‘will-they/won’t-they’ couple – Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) and Greg Hirsch (Nicholas Braun) – within this environment. This article will engage in a close reading of representative scenes from the first three series in order to analyse the variety of phallic and other gendered or sexualized discourses within the series which represent contemporary sociocultural anxieties over masculinity/-ties and power as connected with genitalia, castration and/or orientation. This will include discussion and historical contextualization of castration with regard to queerness and different modes of (non-procreative) power, the analogy made to Nero and his castrated slave/spouse Sporus in which the title quote appears in the series as a declaration of love, and discussion of transgression, power and the series’ pseudo-royal court/corporation. The article will illustrate how the series utilizes these discourses to acquire and express the distinction required for quality TV while simultaneously interrogating, satirizing and critiquing the toxicity of contemporary corporate culture with regard to gender and orientation.

The society we live in is patriarchal, binary and hierarchically coded, evident from social and economic inequality and the stereotyping of men and women. Men are portrayed as active subjects and women as passive objects. Gender stereotyping extends to glorifying the male genitals as active, powerful, excellent and superior and objectifying the female genitals as passive, weak and corrupt. The social power of the media is essential in selecting information through agenda-setting and media framing. This article researches how the two most influential Croatian daily news portals, the progressive Jutarnji list and the conservative Večernji list, present female and male genitals in the media articles, mainly focusing on the genitals of celebrities. Famous people and celebrities are commodified into products created to influence the audience. The media presentation of their genitals can also affect the social perception of female and male sexuality. The research is based on a linguistic discourse analysis that includes language, context and interpretation on articles published in the digital extensions of Jutarnji list and Večernji list in the summer months of 2022 as units of analysis. The analytical matrix includes textual and visual ways of presenting the genitals of celebrities (attributes and connotations), their value and political orientation, and the valorization of sexuality along the axis of sex and gender. Research shows that digital extensions of Croatian daily newspapers (including the portal gloria.hr and sportski.jutarnji.hr), despite their different value orientations, are stereotypical and follow the accepted patriarchal binary dogma of male–female, positive–negative, active–passive, powerful–powerless, and that they depict male and female genitals with a visible cult-phallic media perspective.

The aim of the present study is to analyse the media representation of gender dysphoria in trans* people in two popular films – The Danish Girl and Girl. Specifically, we focus on the role of genitalia in media representation of the trans* experience through the lens of phallocentrism. In the case of Lili and Lara, the trans* female protagonists of the chosen films, their trans* experience is, as we argue, reduced to their relationship towards their genitalia. Consequently, such a portrayal fully corresponds to the prevailing paradigm of transnormativity in media representation of trans* people.

Contemporary performance’s interest in staging spectacles can often work to elicit a reaction, draw attention or arouse interest as well as work to interrogate particular discourses around identity politics, particularly when nudity is involved. Whilst the body in performance has been subject to close analysis, there has been relatively little research on the representations of vulvas within contemporary performance, in particular, the ways artists expose their genitals as spectacle to analyse sociocultural themes of gender, sexuality, medical discourse, body politics and beyond. Whilst acknowledging cultural feminists of the 1960s–70s who pioneered a forum for vulvic art, this article examines spectacles produced by The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein in her performance Notorious (2017) as well as artist and photographer Del LaGrace Volcano in Jenny Saville’s painting Matrix (1999), both of whom expose their vulvas to find pleasure in the liminal space between shock and unlearning. This article presents vulvic spectacles as spaces of transformation, challenging patriarchal constructs and conjuring dialogue around an often-tabooed body part, offering the possibility to call into question beliefs, knowledge, internalized biases, and practices – to look twice and to think anew.

Through a discussion of three YouTube vlogs by trans men, I am suggesting that the seemingly simple division between men who have penises (cis) and men who do not (trans) – as long as genital surgery has not been obtained – is materially more muddled than generally culturally considered, as well as to a great extent discursively created and maintained. Instead of understanding trans men’s bodies through lack and deficiency, I consider the trans penis as a part of body-reflexive practices of masculinity, a significant part of building one’s trans male self. I am thus arguing for a change in how we understand what a penis is, or what counts as a penis, as well as in how we see and understand trans men’s bodies.