Sex dolls are a complex phenomenon with several diverse possible emotional, sexual and therapeutic uses. They can be part of a broad variety of sexual practices, and also function as a sexual aid. However, the media discourse on sex dolls first and foremost concerns how we perceive the relationship between intimacy and technology. A critical discourse analysis of the Swedish media discourse on sex dolls reveals six themes which dominate the discourse: (a) the definition of what a human being is; (b) a discourse on the (technological and existential) future; (c) a social effort; (d) a loveless phenomenon; (e) men’s violence against women; and (f) pedophilia. Accordingly, this discourse is very conservative and normative in its view of sexuality, technology, and humanity. Overall, the dominant themes do not provide any space for positive effects of technology on human sexuality, and if they do, it is usually as a substitute for something else.

This chapter discusses current changes in how pornography is perceived, consumed, and produced in Scandinavia, with a particular focus on Sweden. Brian McNair argues that the development in liberal democracies that has legalized and facilitated pornography in the past four decades has also enabled various sorts of progress that have been made in the areas of women's and gays' rights as well as the rights to sexual citizenship. The chapter focuses on the producers' perspective, the consumption angle and the changing context for consumption of pornographic images are also taken into account. Two producers of different pornographies are juxtaposed and compared: Mia Engberg, who produced Dirty Diaries; and Mike Beck, who has been producing mainstream porn films. The chapter is partly based on earlier research into the pornographic film in Sweden in the 1970s, but although the chapter provides historical background, the main emphasis is on the contemporary scene.  

This essay focuses on UK-based Swedish filmmaker Mai Zetterling's made-for-television documentary Of Seals and Men (1979). Zetterling is known internationally as an art-film auteur, and this examination seeks to broaden her stature in the context of the UK and Europe-based cinefeminsim movements of the 1970s. The authors argue that Of Seals and Men constitutes a significant and overlooked artifact in the history of colonial Greenlandic-Danish relations, as it focuses on the controversy of the Green-landic seal hunt and was financed as a propaganda vehicle by the Danish government and the Greenland Trade Department. The article draws on extensive archival research and references Zetterling's production notebooks and correspondence as well as official communication by the Royal Greenland Trade Department.

This book expands the notion of sexual fantasies from the field of psychology into the realms of cultural studies, anthropology, philosophy, and sociology. So far, much research on sexual fantasies has dealt with issues of gender differences, the effect of sexual fantasies on people’s lives, or how problematic fantasies can be treated in therapy. In this volume contributors from different academic disciplines explore sexual fantasies at the convergence of the cultural and the individual, taking into account that fantasies are paradoxical: highly individualised and private, and at the same time dependent on a world that supplies structures, images, symbols, and narratives.

This chapter focuses on a filmmaker from Sweden who may not have received as much analytical attention as other directors of the new extremism but whose work is nonetheless key to an understanding of a wider European turn towards the extreme: Lukas Moodysson. It examines the reception of Moodysson's work in Sweden, where he has developed a reputation as a politically subversive filmmaker. In particular, it analyses his fifth feature film A Hole in My Heart (Sweden, 2004), which is notable for its controversial and sensationalist images, including close-up plastic surgery on labia. The chapter notes that the film did not fare as well with audiences as some of Moodysson's earlier films, though critics were more favourable towards it and tended to read it as a scathing critique of the pornography industry. Considering the links between Moodysson's filmmaking and the Swedish feminist anti-porn movement, this chapter argues that, despite his reputation as a radical, there is a much more conservative strain running through his work than is generally acknowledged.