Sexuality is defined, expressed, and experienced as a personal but also as a social and political phenomenon (Siedman, 2010, p. 11). The film 40-year-old Virgin presents a strikingly unique twist on Western norms and values related to sexuality. Specifically, 40-year-old Virgin focuses on male heteronormativity, and the notion of the male as being expected to be sexually virile and sexually ravenous from puberty onwards. When the title character is forced to admit in public that he is a virgin at forty years of age, he exposes himself as a sexual deviant. His virginity is an ironic form of sexual deviance, however. He has no culturally acceptable excuse for being a virgin, as a monk might have. Rather than being expressed as an externalizing perversion such as a sexual fetish, Andy Stitzer (Steve Carell) expresses his sexuality via inadvertent abstinence. The film both supports and subverts several of the Western sexual...
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