-Pennington traces the development of visual and thematic sexual content, the ensuing conservative vs. liberal controversies, and the impact of resulting censorship codes and legal rulings with their shifting guidelines. Using numerous in-depth examples of films, citing specific plotlines, and offering pertinent descriptions of relevant scenes. Pennington thoughtfully analyzes the interrelationship of film and American society in terms of sexual attitudes and psychology, examining changing values, prejudices, boundaries, and norms within historical and cultural contexts....Throughout, he reveals the close but complex alliance between film and life. For academic and large film collections —Library Journal

-This work by Pennington is a social and cultural history of the representation of sex and its regulation in American cinema. She takes a chronological approach to the film industry's self-censorship regimes through the mid-1960s, non-mainstream film most affected by obscenity law, sexual themes in the films that helped put an end to the Production Code, changing American attitudes towards sex and their reflection in film through the 1980s, and the present-day conservative counterattack on liberal sexual realignment as it has played out in film. Remaining chapters adopt a more thematic approach and offer analysis of the revision of sexual representation of the past following the demise of the Production Code and representations of homosexuality, adultery, and pedophilia. —Reference & Research Book News