Sex comedy

The name sex comedy is used for a genre of comedy which mostly describes sexual situations and love affairs. Other names are erotic comedy, and sexual comedy. The name is mostly used for movies and theatre plays, but some books have also been titled sex comedy, for example works of Ovid and Chaucer.

Sex comedy was popular in the English Restoration theatre, of the 17th century. In the 20th century, a number of sex comedies were made into movies. Especially between 1953 and 1965 many such movies were produced. Especially in the 1970s, some sex comedy movies were made in the United Kingdom. Other countries that produced such movies include Brazil, Italy, and Mexico.

Antiquity

The ancient Greek theatre genre of the satyr play contained farcical sex. Perhaps the best-known ancient comedy motivated by sexual gamesmanship is Aristophanes' Lysistrata (411 BC). In Lysistrata, the title character persuades her fellow women of Greece to protest against the Peloponnesian War by not having sex. The "boy-meets-girl" plot that is distinctive of Western sexual comedy can be traced to Menander (343–291 BC), who differs from Aristophanes in focusing on the courtship and marital dilemmas of the middle classes rather than social and political satire.

His successor Plautus, the Roman playwright whose comedies inspired the musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, regularly based his plots on sexual situations. The popularity of Plautus's comedies was a major influence on the creation of situation sex comedy.

Further reading

• McDonald, Tamar Jeffers. 2007. Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre. Wallflower Press
• McDonald, Tamar Jeffers, ed. 2010. Virgin Territory: Representing Sexual Inexperience in Film. Wayne State University Press.
• Sheridan, Simon. 2011. Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema. Titan Books. 4th edition.