Linda Williams (film Scholar) - Writings - Author

Author

• Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film, University of Illinois Press, 1981. Paperback edition: University of California Press, 1992, ISBN 0-520-07896-9
• Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible (University of California Press, 1989). Expanded Paperback Edition: Univ of California Press, 1999, ISBN 0-520-21943-0

Williams argues that facials are a fetish or a perversion. She states "The money shot is thus an obvious perversion -in the literal sense of the term, as a swerving away from more "direct" forms of genital engagement- of the tactile sexual connection." Williams also explores similarly sensitive sexual subjects in the book, such as sadomasochism, rape, incest, and the role of a narrative in films that contain pornographic material. Joseph Slade, author and professor at Ohio University, wrote of her work that "Williams thinks of ejaculation as a leitmotif similar to those that punctuate musical comedy, a genre she thinks resembles the hard-core film. Although Williams' thesis tends to reduce porn films to a single heterosexual genre, Hard Core is remarkable because the author actually engages the subject instead of pontificating from distance and because she insists that feminists must learn to reevaluate sexual expression."

• Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black & White from Uncle Tom to O.J.Simpson, Princeton University Press, Paperback edition, 2002, ISBN 0-691-10283-X

Commenting on the films Jewish themes, Williams notes that The Jazz Singer represents the triumphs of the assimilating son over the old-world father ... and present impediments to an assimilating show-biz success.... when Jakie's father says, "Stop," the flow of "jazz" music (and spontaneous speech) freezes. But the Jewish mother recognizes the virtue of the old world in the new and the music flows again."

• Screening Sex, Duke University Press, 2008, ISBN 0-8223-4285-4