Sex and Performance

Chair: Anna-Marie Linnell

“Performance of the Leotards – Spectacle and Performance in London’s 2012 Women’s Gymnastics” by Kelly M Miller

This paper aims to fall under the conference themes of – Physicality, Identity and Representation under the larger umbrella of Boundaries and Translation. It explores the London 2012 Olympics, specifically the women’s artistic gymnastics events and looks to continue the University programme of “Bridging the Gaps” through the relationship between sport psychology/training and drama/theatre practices. It considers the notion of performance and the spectacle, intrinsic and implicit, in sport training and competition, through the lens of elite gymnastics. To do this, I use London 2012 as a case study, to draw upon the relationship between the languages, practices and processes of gymnastics training and competition and the languages, practices and processes of actor training and performance. I investigate the concepts of “playing” to the spectator and/or audience member and cultivation of a performative identity. I explicitly look into the US women’s gymnastics team and the idealization created around them and their “perfection”. The paper examines the following questions: How are the athlete and the performer connected – in training and “performance”? In what capacity has gymnastics competition become a spectacle of performance? How has the media created an ideology of the “ideal body and performer” for gymnasts? And, what role does the gymnast embody in competition? This paper hopes to bring to light the level of performance and the performative identities of elite 

“Gendered Expectations: The Role of The Objectified Female and Challenges to Gendered Pleasure in Contemporary Pornographic Manga” by Tara-Monique Etherington

No abstract provided.

“The Labours of Hercule: Adapting Sexuality in Agatha Christie’s Poirot” by J.C. Bernthal

In October 2012, filming commenced on the final episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot. First aired in 1989, the ITV series includes 100-minute adaptations of every novel and 50-minute adaptations of most short stories Christie published, featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, between 1920 and 1975. While episodes are consistently set around 1936/7, Poirot has been produced under five governments, in a period encompassing major change and constantly renegotiated priorities. This paper, then, explores how the series responds to Christie’s prose, in terms of sexuality.

Early episodes of Poirot, such as Death in the Clouds (1992) deliberately ignore hinted sexual inversion in the novels. Early twenty-first century screenplays notably downplay the roles of female sexuality and male virility, focusing instead on reassuring nationalistic stereotypes (Lord Edgware Dies [2000]; Murder in Mesopotamia [2002]). Controversial departures from Christie came in Death on the Nile and Five Little Pigs (2004), with added homosexual subplots, exploiting the series’ period setting to reflect on the historical policing of sexuality. Many recent episodes feature illicit sex-scenes, replacing money as a motive for murder in the plot. This paper considers the extent to which Poirot promotes contemporary attitudes to sex and sexuality by manipulating the past and rewriting history.