In this article, we’re going to cover two major sexual taboos explored in cinema revolving around the transition from boyhood to manhood. We’ll undertake this through three main sections:

• Addressing taboos through Art 
• Fellini’s Amarcord and Sorrentino’s The Hand of God: Young boys and old women
• Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name and Weitz’ American Pie: Erotic experiments with food 
• From Boyhood to Manhood

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Haven’t seen these films? Explore ways to watch:

Amarcord | The Hand of God | Call Me By Your Name | American Pie

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Addressing taboos through art 

More than any other medium, art is the place where taboos are most frequently addressed. The origins and outcomes of any given taboo can be creatively interpreted by a musician, a painter, a sculptor, or a movie director in a way that other, more rigid elements of society do not allow. 

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Fellini’s Amarcord and Sorrentino’s The Hand of God: Young boys and old women

Out of all possible taboos we may have grown up with, I think movies do an excellent job at tackling the sexual ones. I recently watched two Italian cinema treasures, Federico Fellini’s 1973 classic Amarcord and Paolo Sorrentino’s 2021 widely acclaimed The Hand of God, and couldn’t help but notice an interesting common ground: Both movies feature an intimate scene between a young boy and an old woman. While uncomfortable to watch, this boy-and-woman sexual dynamic is possibly one of the most untamed exhibitions of pure desire and erotic curiosity cinema can bring to its audience. 

It got me thinking about how these scenes could be interpreted, and what their true intention is, from the director’s point of view. Because the erotic world is rather hidden from our public life and day-to-day interactions with people, we tend to label anything that is outside of our conventional view of sex and intimacy as a “fetish”. In some cases, this is true, but it is precisely because of the delicate nature of eroticism that we might sometimes find ourselves curious to explore something new, something out of the ordinary. Is this desire then immediately a fetish? 

In Amarcord and The Hand of God, Fellini and Sorrentino’s intentions, respectively, are not directed towards any kind of fetishism. How can we know? The term Gerontophilia, coined in 1901 by psychologist Richard Von Krafft-Ebing (who also happens to be one of the first sexologists), describes a sexual attraction towards the elderly. This denotes a fetish, so that a gerontophile is more aroused by elderly individuals than by any other ideas, objects, or people (example in cinema: the 2015 film Gerontophilia). 

In watching the aforementioned intimate scenes of both films carefully it becomes clear that, on the side of the young boy, this is a question of sexual discovery, not fetishism; and that the old woman, in turn, provides experience and dominance/ control in the act. 

We can talk about the Oedipus complex, but in regards to the scenes I am referring to, it’s not so much that the character of the young boy sees his mother in the older woman, but rather a mature, experienced symbol of a grown woman acting as a gateway into manhood and the world of sex. For all male dominance we tend to see in the commercial film industry when it comes to sex scenes, the boy-and-woman dynamic is a rare occasion on which the power play is reversed: the old woman in both Amarcord and The Hand of God is the teacher, the leader, and the architect of every touch and intimate advance. 

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Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name and Weitz’ American Pie: Erotic experiments with food  

Before even beginning to involve another person, understanding one’s body in a sexual context requires its own fair deal of self-experimentation. If you’ve seen Call Me By Your Name, you surely recall the famously uncomfortable peach scene, during which, on a warm summer afternoon, Elio (played by Timothee Chalamet) tries to have sex with a peach. 

Let’s move past the judgment… What does this mean? In this scene, Guadagnino is giving us a raw look into what the sexual curiosities of the teen mind can manifest into. However absurd or abstract the idea that comes to mind, it must be tested out. 

Similarly, in American Pie, opens to Jim (played by Jason Biggs) standing in his parents’ kitchen next to a freshly baked apple pie. We catch a glimpse of his facial expression and it says everything… what if I just… Not many moments later, he tries to penetrate the pie. Of course, it’s a comedy film and the visual provided is hysterical, but the underlying intention of this (s)experimental scene alludes to the same desire for discovery into a world still utterly tempting and completely abstract to both Elio in Call Me By Your Name and Jim in American Pie. 

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From Boyhood to Manhood

Amarcord, The Hand of God, Call Me By Your Name, American Pie…. what a weird list of movies to read side-by-side. But each single one of them explores the exhilarating and hormone-filled transition from boyhood to manhood, probing what pleasure is and where it comes from. How can that possibly be a taboo? 

What do you think? This is a new kind of article topic we’re trying out, and if you enjoyed it, then we’d love to keep analyzing certain themes in psychology through the lens of cinema. Have any recommendations? Drop them below! 

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