Beyond the sex barrier: the sexual revolution and Swedish cinema

by Mariah Larsson, Linnaeus University

Abstract

Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence (1963) is often said to have broken through the “sex barrier” of Swedish film censorship, opening the floodgates for sexually explicit films and, eventually, pornography. However, this development was never a straightforward march towards greater graphic detail of sex and nudity, but rather a quite complex negotiation of the informal norms and codes that regulate sexuality and sexual representations in a given society at a given time. The wave of “sex film” in Sweden in the late 1960s and early 1970s simultaneously reflect and leave their mark on Swedish society and international perceptions of Sweden. Nonetheless, the space they occupy in (film) historiography is one of denial, of misconceptions, or of fandom and cult adoration. In this lecture, I wish to delineate how the development of the sex film and the legalization of pornography in Sweden in 1971 relate to Scandinavian exceptionalism, and address the issues of gender and sexuality in the welfare state evoked by these films. 

Mariah Larsson, University of Linnæus, Sweden

Mariah Larsson is Professor at the Department of Film and Literature at the University of Linnæus, Sweden. Her main research areas are film and sexuality, national and transnational cinema, and popular culture. Recent publications include “The Swedish Porn Scene: Exhibitions Contexts, 8mm Pornography and Sex Films” (Intellect, 2017) and as “Swedish Cinema and the Sexual Revolution: critical essays” (co-edited with Elisabet Björklund, McFarland, 2016)