Beyond the seducer

Anne Bancroft’s death on June 6 permitted a suite of male Baby Boomer film critics to nostalgically trot out their adolescent fantasies of older women. They returned to a time - before the reality of their own sagging visage – when satisfying an experienced lover was a greater challenge for the young and eager than arousing a woman with an age below room temperature. But Bancroft was much more th
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Anne Bancroft’s death on June 6 permitted a suite of male Baby Boomer film critics to nostalgically trot out their adolescent fantasies of older women. They returned to a time – before the reality of their own sagging visage – when satisfying an experienced lover was a greater challenge for the young and eager than arousing a woman with an age below room temperature. In that time capsule of 1967, the sensual Mrs Robinson became the archetype of the demanding and predatory women, the seducer. She was erotic and thrilling.

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Tara Brabazon
About the Author
Tara Brabazon is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Brighton in the United Kingdom. She is also the Director of the Popular Culture Collective. Tara has published six books, Tracking the Jack: A retracing of the Antipodes, Ladies who Lunge: Celebrating Difficult Women, Digital Hemlock: Internet Education and the Poisoning of Teaching, Liverpool of the South Seas: Perth and its popular music, From Revolution to Revelation; Generation X, Cultural Studies, Popular Memory and Playing on the Periphery. The University of Google: Education in a (ost) Information Age is released by Ashgate in 2007. Tara is a previous winner of a National Teaching Award for the Humanities and a former finalist for Australian of the Year.