Linda Williams (born 1946) is a professor of film studies in the departments of Film Studies and Rhetoric at University of California, Berkeley.
Williams graduated from University of California, Berkeley with a B.A in Comparative Literature 1969, and then gained a PhD at the University of Colorado.[1] Her main academic areas of interest are; film history, film genre, melodrama, pornography, feminist theory and visual culture; all with an emphasis on women, gender, and sexuality.[1]
Regarding film genres, she argues that horror, melodrama, and pornography all fall into the category of "body genres", since they are each designed to elicit physical reactions on the part of viewers. Horror is designed to elicit spine-chilling, white-knuckled, eye-bulging terror; melodramas are designed to make elicit sympathy (tears) after seeing the misfortunes of the onscreen characters; and pornography is designed to elicit sexual arousal.[2]
As author
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."[3] Joseph Slade, author and professor at Ohio University,[4] 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."[5]
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....[and] 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." [3]:186
As editor
The book contains an analysis of Brandon Lee's work and his place in the gay porn industry, written by Nguyen Tan Hoang. The essay is entitled "The Resurrection of Brandon Lee: The Making of a Gay Asian-American Porn Star". It debunks the myth that he left his parents’ Chinese food delivery store to pursue a career in the industry. According to this apocryphal story, he was discovered delivering food and the director asked to "see his egg roll". It also has a chapter by Deborah Shamoon called “Office Sluts and Rebel Flowers: The Pleasures of Japanese Pornographic Comics for Women”.