While over 600 masturbation scenes from film and television have been discussed in this book, masturbation is nowhere near as common on screen as a practice like intercourse. Cultural discomfort partly explains this, but there are numerous other rationales. Masturbation, by its nature, is a solo sexual experience. While it can have a role in partnered sex (chapter 8), far more commonly it is thought of as behavior conducted alone, in private. Whereas a scene of intercourse can drive a plot—can serve as the culmination of a crush or the elevation of a relationship to a new level of seriousness—masturbation isn’t an obvious plot-driver.
While not common, masturbation does indeed have a presence on screen. It may not propel a narrative forward in the same ways other sexual displays do, but it nevertheless has a unique ability to serve as a show-don’t tell revelation about a character. Why are they masturbating? Are they lonely? Are they using self-stimulation to escape something? Replace something? What turns them on? Why are they masturbating instead of having real sex? Via a self-sex presentation, insights into mood, personality, preoccupations and political convictions can be gleaned.
Just as masturbation can reveal about a character, it is also enormously telling about our real life attitudes to masturbation. That we do it, yes, but that we do so secretly and that we tend not to talk about it. Equally, that we do so for a very wide range of reasons: horniness sure, but also escapism and substitution, boredom, distraction and even anger.
The investigation into any media product is more than just an exploration of the contents of our screens, but rather is revealing about the role of the media in our lives. As explored in this volume, the portrayal of masturbation in all its awkward/sexy/embarrassing glory mirrors our complicated real life relationship with it. Of course, the screen also provides ways to inform as well as mould our own masturbatory experiences. Something doesn’t become a taboo out of thin air and taboos are not maintained without repetition. Those around us of course contribute, but media portrayals are a key source in influencing how we think and feel about self-stimulation and thus have an important role in framing our perceptions and providing ongoing reinforcement of it as erotic and guilt-worthy and best done in seclusion.
Masturbation in Pop Culture is an extension of my work on sexual taboos as depicted in popular culture. The role of masturbation—a role that is complicated, invariably gendered, and reflective of the paradoxical relationship we all have with our sexual selves—reveals that the taboo still exists, even in an increasingly sexually liberal mediascape that is becoming ever more likely to dare present sexual practice in its full diversity.