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Ivory Tower Sex in Film: It's a Joke

Harlan D. Whatley

WALT: Dad, what's gradual school?

GARP: Gradual school?

WALT: Yeah, Mommy said that she teaches kids who go to gradual school.

GARP: Oh! Well, gradual school is where kids go and then gradually realize that they don't want to go to school anymore ...

Michael Douglas and Frances McDormand in Wonder Boys

Films about the Ivory Tower and sex usually fall into the comedy genre. In The World According to Garp (1982), Mary Beth Hurt plays a New England graduate school professor, Helen Holm, who ends up performing fellatio on one of her graduate students while in the student's car, which is parked in her driveway. The end result is when Helen's husband, T.S. Garp, comes flying into the driveway in his car and rams into the back of the graduate student's car, en flagrante, causing the grad student to sever his penis while Helen ends up in a neck brace. John Lithgow's character, a transsexual, comments, "I mean, I had mine removed surgically under general anesthesia. But to have it bitten off in a Buick ... " This is one of the funnier sex scenes in American cinema.

Another example is when Donald Sutherland plays an English professor, Dave Jennings, who likes to smoke pot with the students and have the random undergraduate try in Animal House (1978). In a similar vein, Michael Douglas portrays the weed-smoking writer and English professor, Grady Tripp; after getting divorced, he manages to get Chancellor Sara Gaskell (Frances McDormand) pregnant in Wonder Boys (2000). To make matters worse, the Chancellor's husband chairs Tripp's department.

In The Paper Chase (1973) a first year Harvard law student, James T. Hart (Timothy Bottoms) struggles under the larger-than-life Professor Kingsfield (John Houseman) while becoming romantically involved with a woman named Susan (Lindsay Wagner). At the end of the term, Hart learns that Susan's father is Prof. Kingsfield, complicating matters. Overall, it's more of a coming-of-age tale than a romantic celluloid romp. But yet another Harvard romance occurs in A Small Circle of Friends (1980) where three Harvard students (Brad Davis, Karen Allen and Jameson Parker) in the radical 1960's form a love triangle, and the three students eventually sleep together as part of their time of discovery in college. This film borders more on the serious with some witty, well-written dialogue.

Finally, we have the Ethan Hawke vehicle Before Sunrise (1995), where an American named Jesse is on a train from Budapest to Venice and meets Celine (Julie Delpy), a beautiful graduate student from the Sorbonne. Jesse and Celine spend fourteen hours together getting to know each other before Jesse catches his plane back to America. Their first kiss is on the same Ferris wheel used in the Carol Reed classic, The Third Man (1949).

Overall, academic sex in film is either portrayed in a humorous or campy fashion or in a delicate, tender manner. There is a lot of room for other scenarios to pan out. Perhaps one could enhance the student/teacher dynamic or escalate the tension of departmental politics? If you're a budding screenwriter or filmmaker, this may be the perfect setting for your next big picture.

Harlan D. Whatley received his MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College, where is now an Adjunct Lecturer in the Film & Media Studies Program.