Cornell and the myth of pre-Sexual Revolution America

I have always been afraid of watching the 1977 film Looking for Mr. Goodbar. I grew up hearing about how my mother, upon seeing it in the theater, had walked out and immediately vomited. The movie, which follows New York schoolteacher Theresa Dunn through a series of at times humiliating sexual encounters (and the lasciviousness of the 1970s) until one of her sex partners murders her, is an adaptation of a novel, itself inspired by the real-life death of Roseann Quinn. Just two days after her body was found, Quinn was described as having “no regular boyfriend but the type...