This edited volume is an inquiry into the representation of intimate relationships in a diverse array of media including cinema, arts, literature, picture books, advertising and popular music. It examines artistic portrayal of intimate relationships as a subversion of the boundaries between the representable and the non-representable, the real and the surreal, the visceral and the ideal, the embodied and the abstracted, the configured and transfigured. The essays focus on artistic mediation of intimacy in diverse relationships, including heterosexual, same-sex, familial, sibling' , political, and sadomasochistic.. The collection offers new interdisciplinary and multicultural perspectives on current trends in the study of popular representations of intimacy; representations that affect and formulate people's most personal inspirations, desires, angsts, dreams and nightmares in an increasingly alienated, industrialized world.

1. Part I Straight Intimacies and Heterosexual Guilty Pleasures.- 2. Fifty Shades of Guilty Pleasure - Sara K. Howe and Antonnet Renae Johnson.- 2. Vitalities and Fatalities in Intimate Relationships in Etgar Keret's Graphic Narratives - Nurit Buchweitz.- 3. Intimacy in Crisis: Family Dysfunction in Israeli Literature for Preschool Readers - Einat Baram Eshel.- 4. Part II Adapted Intimacies and Spectacular Obscenities: 4 An Intimate Adaptation - Jelena Borojevic.- 5. Satyricon of Fellini: Carnival and Bacchanalias in the Sexual Politics of Imperial Rome - José Maurício Saldanha-Álvarez.- 6. Re-imagining the 1970s: Romance, Sleaze and obscenity in Bombay Cinema - Ankita Deb.- 7. Part III Queer Intimacies and Politicized Attractions: 7 David Wojnarowicz's Poetics: Magnifying Homosexual Male Bodies, Exalting Queer Intimacies -Mélanie Grué.- 8. Marco Berger: Homoaffective through Cinematic Queer Continuums - William Daniel Holcombe.- 9. Hidden Desires: Cinematic Representations of Man/Boy Love - Kylo-Patrick R. Hart.- 10. Girl Meets Girl: Sexual Sitings in Lesbian Romantic Comedies - Kelly McWilliam.- 11. Part IV Gendered Intimacies and Feminized Carnalities: 11 Controlling the Mind for the Body: The De-Intellectualization of Women within the American Gothic - Matthew Martin.- 12. The Duality of Intimacy and Intimidation: Reclaiming the Ethical Kernel of Kryzstof Kieslowski's La double vie de Véronique in the Wake of Soviet Fall - Man-tat Terence Leung.- 13. Part V Interracial Intimacies and Ethnicized Intercourse: 13 Utopian Transgressions: Intimate Relationships across Social Boundaries - Miri Talmon.- 14. The Epistemology of the Ethnic Closet: Interracial Intimacy and Unconditional Love in Ian Iqbal Rashid's A Touch of Pink - Gilad Padva.- 15.Part VI Advertised Intimacies and Eroticized Pop Music: 15 Romantic Relationships and Sexuality in Hebrew Advertisements 1967-1977 - Avivit Agam Dali.- 16. Vulgar Lyrics in Nigeria Twenty-First Century Popular Music: St. Janet and Olamide (Badoo) - Ayokunle O. Omobowale, Dauda, A. Busari, Mofeyisara O. Omobowale and Olugbenga Samuel Falase.