In this now-classic study, Linda Williams moves beyond the impasse of the anti-porn/anti-censorship debate to analyze what hard-core film pornography is and does—as a genre with a history, as a specific cinematic form, and as part of contemporary discourse on sexuality. For the 1999 edition, Williams has written a new preface and a new epilogue, "On/scenities," illustrated with 25 photographs. She has also added a supplementary bibliography.

Linda Williams is Professor of Film Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film (California, 1981) and editor of Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film (1995).