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What do sex scenes in film have to do with the crushing weight of capitalism? How have our bodily desires and passions been ambushed, commodified, and exhausted by the constant, catastrophic impacts of a system that alienates as it extracts? How have we been trained to conflate consumption and activism under neoliberalism, so that the very act of consuming limits our political aspirations and actions? And why the hell are there so few sex scenes in cinema these days?

These are just some of the questions we explore in this episode as Robert reads a beautifully-written and wide-reaching piece by friend of the show Carlee (co-host of the podcast Hit Factory): “The Puritanical Eye: Hyper-mediation, Sex on Film, and the Disavowal of Desire.”

Further resources:

•  “The Puritanical Eye: Hyper-mediation, Sex on Film, and the Disavowal of Desire,” by Carlee
• Hit Factory
• Carlee on Twitter

Related episodes:

•  Upstream: Capitalist Realism with Carlee

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