“I Only Like Seeing Myself In Small Bits”: Catherine Breillat’s Reflections Of The Female Body by Alice Haylett Bryan
Catherine Breillat is a director famed for her depiction of women undergoing sexual and emotional transformations. Throughout Breillat’s narratives the bodies of her female protagonists become sites of personal exploration that challenge the patriarchal construction of femininity, and the use of shame, powerlessness, and binaries that constantly tear women in two, to oppress the female sex. This article explores the motif of the mirror in three of Breillat’s works, analysing how it is used as a prop that allows for a visual reflection, and psychical self-reflection, of the female characters, and as a double for the camera/screen with which the director critiques the misalignment between the patriarchal construction of the feminine, and actual female experience. With reference to the work of Luce Irigaray, it argues that through the female protagonists of Une vraie jeune fille (A Real Young Girl, 1976), Romance (1999) and À ma sœur (Fat Girl, 2001) Breillat seeks to rupture the construction of femininity from within, and by doing so, her characters can been seen to open up the path for the development of woman-as-subject.
Keywords: Catherine Breillat, Luce Irigaray, Psychoanalysis, Woman-as-subject, Female sexuality.
Sex is Metaphysical: Catherine Breillat’s Pornographic Films by Troy Bordrun
Pornographic genre codes are appropriated by Breillat and then seemingly misrepresented to produce a particular message: the shame of feminine sexuality under patriarchy. In this article I argue she must be pornographic if some element of truth in obscenity is to be recovered. I situate Breillat within a style of cinematic pornography, recuperating the term from otherwise hostile definitions.
I first consider how her pornography is unlike the erotic. Sexual encounters within her films are rife with dissatisfaction and misery and therefore far from the definition of viewing erotic art as a composed spectator’s aesthetic appreciation. Second, I articulate the difference between Breillat’s films and a pornography designed to titillate a male viewer. The sensation Breillat produces in spectators is a narrative displeasure. With this method of sensorial provocation, calling the viewer to ethically respond to the work by engaging their senses, Breillat transmits her message. She accomplishes this cinematic brilliance – treading a line which is pornographic yet not erotic and causing a sensation in the viewer which is not arousal – by frustrating habituated viewing, challenging the common film-experience of identifying with characters or symbolically recognizing the genre. With her misuse of pornography Breillat’s films achieve their social and political function.
Keywords: Catherine Breillat, Pornography, Linda Williams, Christian Metz, Laura Mulvey, Feminism, Sexuality, Genre.
Salò, Or the 120 Days of Sodom: The Contemporary Distribution of Sexual Extremity by Simon Hobbs
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, o le 120 giornate di sodoma/ Salò, Or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) is widely considered the most sexually transgressive art film in cinematic history. An allegorical assessment of the corrupting nature of power and authority, the film exists both as a championed piece of artistic transgression and a condemned work of pornographic excess. This article looks to explore these divergent forms of reception through an investigation of the film’s paratextual presence as a commercially available home entertainment product. Taking the BFI Distribution special edition UK Blu-ray/DVD release of Salò as a case study, this paper will investigate the film’s narrative image through an exploration of the Blu-ray/DVD’s cover, accompanying booklet and special features in order to reveal the effect that these paratextual entities have upon the understanding and cultural positioning of Pasolini’s often misunderstood narrative. Using these paratexts as bearers of meaning, the article will seek to explore how Salò has been rendered within the contemporary filmic climate, and whether its commercial presentation reflects its fluid cultural persona.
Keywords: Salò, Or the 120 Days of Sodom, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Art Film, Exploitation Film, Paratext, Marketing, Taste, Blu-ray, DVD, Distribution.
Erotic Adventures on Aphrodite’s Island: The Unofficial Cypriot Black Emanuelle Trilogy and the Film that ‘Increased the Birth Rate in Cyprus’ by Costas Constandinides
The dominant paradigm of filmmaking in Cyprus since 1974 is the so called ‘cinemas of the Cyprus Problem’, which either conceals the realities of conflict in order to inspire loyalty to official political narratives or unearths them in order to encourage reconciliation between Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots. This article focuses on four sexploitation films: three Black Emanuelle rip-offs (Emanuelle: Queen of Sados, Divine Emanuelle: Love Cult and The Dirty Seven) and the Greek-Cypriot film Hassanpoulia: The Avengers of Cyprus. While they have achieved cult status elsewhere, the three Black Emanuelle films remain largely unknown as Greek-Cypriot co-productions, while Hassanpoulia has only recently been discussed under the rubric of sexploitation cinema. This article counters these omissions, arguing that all four films can be considered examples of alternative ‘affinitive transnationalism’ between Greek and Greek-Cypriot cinema and remnants or imitations of the past glories of Italian genre cinema. My consideration then goes on to present a transgressive reading of the films, demonstrating how they form symbolic associations that disrupt dominant (re)presentations of Aphrodite, the mythological Goddess of love in Greek Cypriot imaginary.
Keywords: Black Emanuelle, Cyprus, Greek Erotic Cinema, Aphrodite, Affinitive Transnationalism.
Incorporation of the Transgressive: Sex and Pornography in Danish Feature Films of the 1970s by Isak Thorsen
Denmark was the first country in the world to liberate picture pornography in 1969, and this article addresses how mainstream Danish feature film incorporated the transgressive potential of sex and pornography during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Using a historical perspective, the article describes the circumstances leading up to the liberalization of picture pornography. It also considers how Denmark for a short period of time became known as the centre of porn in the world, often attracting film-makers from abroad. This status quickly ebbed, but porn and sex migrated into mainstream culture via for instance the Danish feature film. Overall the Danish feature film incorporated and commercialised the transgressiveness of sex and pornography in three ways: in actual porn-films, in documentary-like films and in sex-comedies. The article suggests that a few feature film from the mid 1970s unsuccessfully tried to revitalise the transgressive potential of pornography, for instance by combining sex and Christianity. But the initial wave of liberation had taken place and pushing borders even further in an attempt to bring even more transgressive material into the mainstream was doomed. In the late 1970s pornography gradually left the mainstream cinemas and returned to a similar situation to the one that existed prior to the 1969 change in legislation, and hereby pornography regained a subcultural status.
Keywords: Pornography, Denmark, sex-films, sex-comedies, transgressivness, subculture vs. mainstream culture.
Death, Desire And Dania: Satire, Sexuality And Erotic Mobility In 1970s And 1980s Italy by Alex Marlow-Mann and Xavier Mendik
Dania Film is one of Italy’s most significant production companies, and a defining force in the evolution of filone (formula) cinema. Founded by producer Luciano Martino it has been responsible (together with its sister companies) for over 170 films in a wide variety of genres. This essay explores arguably its most significant contribution, the sex comedies (frequently starring genre icon Edwige Fenech) of the 1970s, which gradually evolved into a darker form of morbid erotic drama in the 1980s. The article seeks to explain the success and evolution in these genres not only in relation to industrial factors, but also in response to a series of social tensions and transformations affecting Italy at the time. The sex comedies of the 1970s negotiated the changing gender roles in the wake of feminism, parodying (and often anticipating) the effects of an increasing feminine presence within traditionally male spheres of employment, and caricaturing the response of a debilitated and increasingly confused masculinity. But the trauma of political violence in the 1970s also had an impact, with the shock produced by the discovery of the role played by female participants in these events provoking the emergence of a more vengeful and threatening female role in the film noir-fuelled erotic dramas in the 1980s.
Keywords: Luciano Martino, Sex Comedy, Erotic Drama, Dania Film, Anni di piombo (Years of Lead).
Rape and Sexual Violence in Contemporary Romanian Cinema by Doru Pop
This article analyses the functions of sexuality in contemporary Romanian cinema, focusing on films made after 2000 by auteurs like Cristi Puiu, Cristian Mungiu and Cătălin Mitulescu, while contrasting their work with the previous generation of filmmakers like Mircea Daneliuc, Mircea Mureșan or Lucian Pintilie. Given that in a patriarchal society women are often represented as sexual victims, this article examines the ways in which New Wave Romanian Cinema deals with narratives describing rape and male aggression. Discussing the differences between Romanian New Wave Cinema, Communist propaganda films and ‘Romanian Miserabilism’ (which is similar to the French New Brutalism), this study invokes concepts like sexuality and exploitation, the cinema of cruelty, social brutality in film and the gratuitous representation of sex acts. It also describes those recent films which deal with female and male homosexuality, issues of sexual control in contemporary families, and the principal stereotypes of male and female sexuality in contemporary Romanian society. This study explores sexual violence (be it verbal, physical or visual) in the cinema in relation to its significance at the cultural and political level, as a means to understand the deep changes Romanian society have undergone during this period.
Keywords: Romanian cinema, rape, sexual violence, ideology, power and social aggression.
Catherine Breillat is a director famed for her depiction of women undergoing sexual and emotional transformations. Throughout Breillat’s narratives the bodies of her female protagonists become sites of personal exploration that challenge the patriarchal construction of femininity, and the use of shame, powerlessness, and binaries that constantly tear women in two, to oppress the female sex. This article explores the motif of the mirror in three of Breillat’s works, analysing how it is used as a prop that allows for a visual reflection, and psychical self-reflection, of the female characters, and as a double for the camera/screen with which the director critiques the misalignment between the patriarchal construction of the feminine, and actual female experience. With reference to the work of Luce Irigaray, it argues that through the female protagonists of Une vraie jeune fille (A Real Young Girl, 1976), Romance (1999) and À ma sœur (Fat Girl, 2001) Breillat seeks to rupture the construction of femininity from within, and by doing so, her characters can been seen to open up the path for the development of woman-as-subject.
Keywords: Catherine Breillat, Luce Irigaray, Psychoanalysis, Woman-as-subject, Female sexuality.
Sex is Metaphysical: Catherine Breillat’s Pornographic Films by Troy Bordrun
Pornographic genre codes are appropriated by Breillat and then seemingly misrepresented to produce a particular message: the shame of feminine sexuality under patriarchy. In this article I argue she must be pornographic if some element of truth in obscenity is to be recovered. I situate Breillat within a style of cinematic pornography, recuperating the term from otherwise hostile definitions.
I first consider how her pornography is unlike the erotic. Sexual encounters within her films are rife with dissatisfaction and misery and therefore far from the definition of viewing erotic art as a composed spectator’s aesthetic appreciation. Second, I articulate the difference between Breillat’s films and a pornography designed to titillate a male viewer. The sensation Breillat produces in spectators is a narrative displeasure. With this method of sensorial provocation, calling the viewer to ethically respond to the work by engaging their senses, Breillat transmits her message. She accomplishes this cinematic brilliance – treading a line which is pornographic yet not erotic and causing a sensation in the viewer which is not arousal – by frustrating habituated viewing, challenging the common film-experience of identifying with characters or symbolically recognizing the genre. With her misuse of pornography Breillat’s films achieve their social and political function.
Keywords: Catherine Breillat, Pornography, Linda Williams, Christian Metz, Laura Mulvey, Feminism, Sexuality, Genre.
Salò, Or the 120 Days of Sodom: The Contemporary Distribution of Sexual Extremity by Simon Hobbs
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, o le 120 giornate di sodoma/ Salò, Or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) is widely considered the most sexually transgressive art film in cinematic history. An allegorical assessment of the corrupting nature of power and authority, the film exists both as a championed piece of artistic transgression and a condemned work of pornographic excess. This article looks to explore these divergent forms of reception through an investigation of the film’s paratextual presence as a commercially available home entertainment product. Taking the BFI Distribution special edition UK Blu-ray/DVD release of Salò as a case study, this paper will investigate the film’s narrative image through an exploration of the Blu-ray/DVD’s cover, accompanying booklet and special features in order to reveal the effect that these paratextual entities have upon the understanding and cultural positioning of Pasolini’s often misunderstood narrative. Using these paratexts as bearers of meaning, the article will seek to explore how Salò has been rendered within the contemporary filmic climate, and whether its commercial presentation reflects its fluid cultural persona.
Keywords: Salò, Or the 120 Days of Sodom, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Art Film, Exploitation Film, Paratext, Marketing, Taste, Blu-ray, DVD, Distribution.
Erotic Adventures on Aphrodite’s Island: The Unofficial Cypriot Black Emanuelle Trilogy and the Film that ‘Increased the Birth Rate in Cyprus’ by Costas Constandinides
The dominant paradigm of filmmaking in Cyprus since 1974 is the so called ‘cinemas of the Cyprus Problem’, which either conceals the realities of conflict in order to inspire loyalty to official political narratives or unearths them in order to encourage reconciliation between Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots. This article focuses on four sexploitation films: three Black Emanuelle rip-offs (Emanuelle: Queen of Sados, Divine Emanuelle: Love Cult and The Dirty Seven) and the Greek-Cypriot film Hassanpoulia: The Avengers of Cyprus. While they have achieved cult status elsewhere, the three Black Emanuelle films remain largely unknown as Greek-Cypriot co-productions, while Hassanpoulia has only recently been discussed under the rubric of sexploitation cinema. This article counters these omissions, arguing that all four films can be considered examples of alternative ‘affinitive transnationalism’ between Greek and Greek-Cypriot cinema and remnants or imitations of the past glories of Italian genre cinema. My consideration then goes on to present a transgressive reading of the films, demonstrating how they form symbolic associations that disrupt dominant (re)presentations of Aphrodite, the mythological Goddess of love in Greek Cypriot imaginary.
Keywords: Black Emanuelle, Cyprus, Greek Erotic Cinema, Aphrodite, Affinitive Transnationalism.
Incorporation of the Transgressive: Sex and Pornography in Danish Feature Films of the 1970s by Isak Thorsen
Denmark was the first country in the world to liberate picture pornography in 1969, and this article addresses how mainstream Danish feature film incorporated the transgressive potential of sex and pornography during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Using a historical perspective, the article describes the circumstances leading up to the liberalization of picture pornography. It also considers how Denmark for a short period of time became known as the centre of porn in the world, often attracting film-makers from abroad. This status quickly ebbed, but porn and sex migrated into mainstream culture via for instance the Danish feature film. Overall the Danish feature film incorporated and commercialised the transgressiveness of sex and pornography in three ways: in actual porn-films, in documentary-like films and in sex-comedies. The article suggests that a few feature film from the mid 1970s unsuccessfully tried to revitalise the transgressive potential of pornography, for instance by combining sex and Christianity. But the initial wave of liberation had taken place and pushing borders even further in an attempt to bring even more transgressive material into the mainstream was doomed. In the late 1970s pornography gradually left the mainstream cinemas and returned to a similar situation to the one that existed prior to the 1969 change in legislation, and hereby pornography regained a subcultural status.
Keywords: Pornography, Denmark, sex-films, sex-comedies, transgressivness, subculture vs. mainstream culture.
Death, Desire And Dania: Satire, Sexuality And Erotic Mobility In 1970s And 1980s Italy by Alex Marlow-Mann and Xavier Mendik
Dania Film is one of Italy’s most significant production companies, and a defining force in the evolution of filone (formula) cinema. Founded by producer Luciano Martino it has been responsible (together with its sister companies) for over 170 films in a wide variety of genres. This essay explores arguably its most significant contribution, the sex comedies (frequently starring genre icon Edwige Fenech) of the 1970s, which gradually evolved into a darker form of morbid erotic drama in the 1980s. The article seeks to explain the success and evolution in these genres not only in relation to industrial factors, but also in response to a series of social tensions and transformations affecting Italy at the time. The sex comedies of the 1970s negotiated the changing gender roles in the wake of feminism, parodying (and often anticipating) the effects of an increasing feminine presence within traditionally male spheres of employment, and caricaturing the response of a debilitated and increasingly confused masculinity. But the trauma of political violence in the 1970s also had an impact, with the shock produced by the discovery of the role played by female participants in these events provoking the emergence of a more vengeful and threatening female role in the film noir-fuelled erotic dramas in the 1980s.
Keywords: Luciano Martino, Sex Comedy, Erotic Drama, Dania Film, Anni di piombo (Years of Lead).
Rape and Sexual Violence in Contemporary Romanian Cinema by Doru Pop
This article analyses the functions of sexuality in contemporary Romanian cinema, focusing on films made after 2000 by auteurs like Cristi Puiu, Cristian Mungiu and Cătălin Mitulescu, while contrasting their work with the previous generation of filmmakers like Mircea Daneliuc, Mircea Mureșan or Lucian Pintilie. Given that in a patriarchal society women are often represented as sexual victims, this article examines the ways in which New Wave Romanian Cinema deals with narratives describing rape and male aggression. Discussing the differences between Romanian New Wave Cinema, Communist propaganda films and ‘Romanian Miserabilism’ (which is similar to the French New Brutalism), this study invokes concepts like sexuality and exploitation, the cinema of cruelty, social brutality in film and the gratuitous representation of sex acts. It also describes those recent films which deal with female and male homosexuality, issues of sexual control in contemporary families, and the principal stereotypes of male and female sexuality in contemporary Romanian society. This study explores sexual violence (be it verbal, physical or visual) in the cinema in relation to its significance at the cultural and political level, as a means to understand the deep changes Romanian society have undergone during this period.
Keywords: Romanian cinema, rape, sexual violence, ideology, power and social aggression.