Abstract
Giuliani analyses the early and mid-1970s soft porn/erotic genre focusing on films starring the Eritrean actress Zeudi Araya (La ragazza dalla pelle di luna, by Luigi Scattini, 1972; La peccatrice, by Pier Ludovico Pavoni, 1975) and the Indonesian actress Laura Gemser (Eva nera, by Joe D’Amato, 1976; Notti porno nel mondo, by Bruno Mattei and Joe D’Amato, 1977). These films offer fine examples of the process of reverse mirroring—in which blackness produced by white privilege reproduces whiteness itself—and of the complex interweaving of invisibilisation, concealment and hyper-visiblisation that in turn reproduce racism and white privilege. The intersection between exoticism and eroticism in the characterisation of black female protagonists offers valuable insights into the reappraisal of white masculinity in post-fascist and post-colonial Italy, where hegemonic sexuality entails a symbolic cannibalisation of the racialised/exoticised object of desire in continuity between Italy’s colonial past and its post-colonial present.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Antonio Bruschini and Antonio Tentori, Nudi e crudeli. I mondo movies italiani (Milano: Bloodbuster, 2013), 47.
- 2.
See hooks , “Eating the Other,” 21–40; and Mirzoeff , The Right to Look.
- 3.
Bellassai , “L’autunno del patriarca ,” 191–210; Chiara Saraceno, Mutamenti della famiglia e politiche sociali in Italia (1998; repr., Bologna: il Mulino, 2003); Elisabetta Ruspini, “Educare alle nuove mascolinità (gestire la parabola della virilità),” in dell’Agnese and Ruspini, Mascolinità all’italiana, 285–304.
- 4.
Perilli , “Relazioni pericolose,” 155–6.
- 5.
See, Del Boca , Italiani brava gente. On the minimisation of Italian colonial sins and racism compared to the British and the Germans, see Patriarca , “Fear of Small Numbers,” 537–68; Patriarca , “Gli italiani non sono razzisti,” 32–45; and Ellena , “Geografie della razza,” 15–31.
- 6.
Ellena , “Geografie della razza,” 29–31. Nonetheless, the eclipse of race in Araya’s and Gemser’s characters is highly complex and very different from the 1950s films analysed by Ellena (including Il mulatto, 1950; and Eva nera, 1954) or the visual texts explored by Sandra Ponzanesi. See Ponzanesi, “Beyond the Black Venus: Colonial Sexual Politics and Contemporary Visual Practices,” in Andall and Duncan, Italian Colonialism, 165–89.
- 7.
Seychelles in La ragazza dalla pelle di luna, Egypt in La ragazza fuoristrada, and Trinidad in Il corpo.
- 8.
Ennio Flaiano, Time to Kill (London: Quartet Books, 1992); see also Stefani , Colonia per maschi.
- 9.
Renato Micheli and Mario Ruccione, Faccetta nera (1935).
- 10.
Puwar, Space Invaders.
- 11.
See Petrovich Njegosh and Scacchi, Parlare di razza; and Perilli , “‘Sesso’ e ‘razza’ al muro,” 91–126.
- 12.
Artie Mitchell and Jim Mitchell, Behind the Green Door (USA, 1972).
- 13.
Giuliani Caponetto, “Zeudi Araya,” 109–23; Giuliani Caponetto, “Blaxploitation Italian Style,” in Lombardi-Diop and Romeo, Postcolonial Italy, 191–203; and Alice Casalini, “Presenze nere nel cinema degli anni settanta-ottanta, tra autorialità e blaxploitation,” in De Franceschi , L’Africa in Italia, 125–37.
- 14.
Le notti porno nel mondo and mondo movies in general followed in the footsteps of: Europa di notte; Le orientali, with a voice-over by Indro Montanelli (Romolo Marcellini, 1959); America di notte (Giuseppe Scotese, 1960); Io amo, tu ami (Blasetti , 1961); and the many films releasead between 1960 and 1963 by Luciano Marinucci and Mino Loy, Renzo Russo, Renzo Rossellini (Roberto’s son), Ettore Fecchi, Osvaldo Civirani, Roberto Bianchi Montero, and Luigi Scattini—the director who turned Zeudi Araya into the protagonist of Italians’ erotic/exotic imaginary of the time. Many other directors contributed to this very peculiar genre between 1963 and 1977, when Le notti porno nel mondo was released. Le notti porno nel mondo was followed by D’Amato’s Le folli notti (starring Amanda Lear), and Bruno Mattei and Joe D’Amato’s Emanuelle e le porno notti nel mondo n. 2 (both produced in Italy and released in 1978).
- 15.
Vittorio Spinazzola, Cinema e pubblico. Lo spettacolo filmico in Italia 1945–1965 (Milano: Bompiani, 1974), 318–25. For a discussion of how mass tourism was fuelled from the very beginning by a re-articulation of the colonial archive, see, among others: Gaia Giuliani, “Per un’analisi intersezionale dell’orientalismo nella televisione italiana contemporanea,” in Orientalismi italiani, ed. Gabriele Proglio (Castagnito: Antares, 2013), 3: 190–208.
- 16.
Despite being “minor” productions, these films had great success at the box office. See Gomarasca and Pulici, “Al tropico del sesso”; and Bruschini and Tentori, Nudi e crudeli. On the importance of minor cinema productions in representing social aspects of post-war Italian society, see Giacomo Manzoli, Da Ercole a Fantozzi. Cinema popolare e società italiana dal boom economico alla neotelevisione (1958–1976) (Roma: Carocci, 2016), 17–22.
- 17.
On the relationship between space, body, and racialisation and how “[racism] orients the body in specific directions, conditioning the way they ‘take up space,’” see Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology, 111.
- 18.
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), quoted in Rigoletto, Masculinity and Italian Cinema, 16.
- 19.
http://safe.videodw.com/view/57764239/la-ragazza-dalla-pelle-di-luna-the-sinner.html. The theme of a white bourgeoise couple in the midst of a marriage crisis who decides to open to erotic/exotic experiences in remote paradises had a famous precedent in Bora Bora, by Ugo Liberatore (1968), and in the far less successful Incontro d’amore, by Fulvio Gicca Palli and Ugo Liberatore (1970). La ragazza dalla pelle di luna was also preceded by a much less successful film, La ragazza dalla pelle di corallo, directed by Osvaldo Civirani and Angelo Sangermano and starring Gemser’s husband Gabriele Tinti.
- 20.
- 21.
- 22.
- 23.
Hobson, Venus in the Dark.
- 24.
Giuliani, “La razza fuoristrada,” 235–50.
- 25.
Stefani , Colonia per maschi.
- 26.
See Jeanelle Hobson, Venus in the Dark.
- 27.
Perilli , “‘Sesso’ e ‘razza’ al muro,” 91–126.
- 28.
See Di Barbora , “Donne in Aoi”; Di Barbora , “Colonialismo e identità nazionale,” 191–208; Patriarca , “Gli italiani non sono razzisti,” 32–45; Marchetti , Black Girls; and Perilli , “Relazioni pericolose.”
- 29.
See Stoler , Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power.
- 30.
See Tagg , The Burden of Representation; and Butler , “Engendered/Endangered,” 15–22.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Giuliani, G. (2019). Black Venuses Between Colonial Memory and Global Horizons. In: Race, Nation and Gender in Modern Italy. Mapping Global Racisms. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50917-8_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50917-8_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-50915-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-50917-8
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)