It’s Okay, Everybody Does It, But Nobody Ever,
Ever Talks About It
I was nearing completion of the first draft of this book when a scandal broke in Australia. A major supermarket chain—after becoming the first in the country to stock vibrators—was threatened with boycotts by religious and family groups. The sex toy was in stores for less than two weeks before the shelves were cleared.[1] The scandal was near identical to one in the UK in 2007 when another retailer withdrew a range of sex toys after their own sales experiment led to criticism. While both stories spark worthwhile discussions about the power of Christian lobby groups and kneejerk reactions of retailers, most relevant for this book, they spotlight popular discomfort with masturbation. News reports in both countries consistently eschewed any reference to how the toys would be used: masturbation as a word, as a subject, remains taboo.
In a scene from the sitcom Roseanne (1988–1997), family patriarch Dan (John Goodman) sat his new-to-masturbation son DJ (Michael Fishman) down for a heart to heart. “The funny thing about this,” said Dan, “is that even though it’s okay and everybody does it, there’s nothing wrong with it, nobody ever ever talks about it.” He then put his finger to his lips. In just one sentence Dan encapsulated the contemporary attitude to masturbation. The Australian and UK vibrator scandals don’t presume that people don’t masturbate, nor do they imply that we still connect the practice to disease or demonic possession, rather they simply showcase a reality that we just don’t want to talk about it. That doing so is considered crass at best, if not salacious and offensive at worst.
While we may have moved on from our Victorian past where autoeroticism was linked to every possible physical and psychological malady and treated with bizarre methods from brisk mountain walks through to electroshock therapy, nowadays the standard attitude is that it is perfectly fine: as Dan said, it’s okay and everybody does it and there’s nothing wrong with it. There is, however, a but. The but is that a cultural imperative exists that we keep quiet about it. That we practice it in private and that we refrain from admitting to our own participation.[2] Today we commonly accept that self-stimulation won’t make us blind, won’t grow hair on our palms or straighten our pubic hair or lead to menstrual disruption. In fact, it’s even quite common to hear it described as normal, natural and even healthy. But admitting to our own masturbation—or walking into a supermarket and picking up a toy to aid the task—is considered a step too far. In an increasingly sexualized culture, masturbation remains the secret relegated to the bathroom or deep under the bedclothes.
After completing a book in 2012 which included a chapter about vibrators in film and television, I realised that there was much more to say about masturbation in popular culture; a topic that hadn’t previously been treated to a volume of its own. Masturbation in Pop Culture fills this gap. This book is an examination of the how of popular culture’s depiction of genital self-stimulation, as well as extensive speculation about the cultural and political whys.
Through the exploration of over 600 scenes from film and television, I present the case that masturbation has a very strong presence on screen. From sitcoms to horror movies, teen comedies to erotic thrillers, autoeroticism is easily detected.
The portrayal, however, is not simple.
Just as in real life a paradox exists where most of us masturbate and accept it as normal and natural, there simultaneously exists a silence about it; that we do it, but we don’t talk about it; that we enjoy it but we laugh about it. The screen reflects this conflicted relationship. It is there—hundreds and hundreds of times—but it is routinely whispered about, mocked, presented as a punchline, and is inevitably portrayed as controversial at the very least.
Despite off-screen liberalizing of attitudes towards masturbation, there continues to be many screen examples where the practice is demonized, associated with death, insanity and criminality. Horror films like The Exorcist (1973), Cruel Passion (1977) or The Ferryman (2007) for example, illustrate devil possession via vivid and frightening displays of self-stimulation. Equally, the madness and badness of society’s fringe dwellers—the incarcerated, mentally ill, homeless and even homosexual—is frequently proven through autoeroticism.
At the opposite other end of the spectrum we are reminded that masturbation is primarily an act centered on pleasure. That it is done to feel good, to feel sexy. This pleasure can help substitute for an absent partner, assuage loneliness and distract from depression. Not only is the act itself pleasure-centered, but sometimes—and very frequently in the case of female masturbators—its display is a titillating, if not at times pornographic, presentation for an audience aroused by a sneaky peek at a usually private sex act.
Whereas female masturbation tends to be sensuous and included to arouse the audience, the self-stimulation of men is generally treated vastly differently. It is commonly situated in sophomoric comedies for example, where the act is hurried and inevitably gets sprung leading to embarrassment, if not also grotesque displays of semen splatter as in Love, Sex and Eating the Bones (2003), Grandma’s Boy (2006) and American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile (2006). Exceptions to all tropes exist though, and just as a small number of unsexy displays of female masturbation are detected (Margot (Nicole Kidman) for example, in the comedy-drama Margot at the Wedding (2007)), rare and erotic depictions also exist of attractive, buff naked men masturbating: the self-stimulation of Ben (Dylan McDermott) in American Horror Story (2011–), Hector (Jonathan LaPaglia) in the Australian mini-series The Slap (2011) and Allen (Daniel Radcliffe) in the biopic Kill Your Darlings (2013) are three examples.
The enormous range of masturbation methods—from fingers to fruit, musical instruments to sex dolls—are examined in Masturbation in Pop Culture as too are the triggers: the porn and the photos and the celebrity fantasies that turn-on characters enough for them to self-stimulate and which mirror the off screen ways that masturbation is commonly fuelled.
Other themes put under the microscope in this volume include the where of masturbation. I investigate the bathrooms, bedrooms, offices, cars, workplaces and schools where self-stimulation takes place, and examine the role that place has in framing the act in popular imagination. Just as dark and private venues reflect the secrecy that shrouds masturbation, its conduct in public locations like buses and beaches signified badness, madness and an absence of social decorum.
Masturbation inside relationships is also analyzed. A myriad of scenes suggest that doing so once coupled is testimony to dysfunction and dissatisfaction; that autoeroticism is a clue to a soured dyad. Some outlier examples however, uniquely dare to suggest that self-stimulation has a sexy place inside happy—if often avant garde—couplings.
While negativity—from general squeamishness and disgust about bodily fluids through to prudishness around sexual pleasure—underpins many examples, there are others that buck the trend and dare to suggest that not only is masturbation something pleasurable and fun but that it can actually be empowering. Examined also are scenes where masturbation connotes sexual self-sufficiency and is implied to play a role in good health and mood stability.
Through reference to a very large number of scenes from film and television—as well as a diverse and cross-disciplinary academic bibliography—Masturbation in Pop Culture investigates the role that masturbation serves within narratives while simultaneously mirroring our complicated relationship with the practice in real life and sparking discussions about a broad range of hot button sexual subjects.
Eamonn Duff, “Sex Toys Canned: Woolies Bites the Bullet and Dumps Vibrators,” The Age, September 29, 2013. Retrieved September 30, 2013 from http://www.theage.com.au/nsw/sex-toys-canned-woolies-bites-the-bullet-and-dumps-vibrators-20130928-2ul6i.html; Lauren Rosewarne, “Sex and the Supermarket: Woolworths Giving Off Bad Vibrations,” The Conversation, September 30, 2013. Retrieved September 30, 2013 from https://theconversation.com/sex-and-the-supermarket-woolworths-giving-off-bad-vibrations-18720.
An episode of the sitcom Louie (2010–) highlighted this well. The title character (Louis C.K.) ended up appearing on a Fox television program to defend masturbation against a lobby group, Christians Against Masturbation. Louie got the gig because no one else was willing to appear on television to defend masturbation.