Page 160 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

C H A P T E R 1 2
B L A C K S E X , B A D S E X : M O N S T R O U S E T H N I C I T Y I N T H E B L A C K
E M A N U E L L E F I L M S

Xavier Mendik

INTRODUCTION

For centuries, the uncertain continents — Africa, the Americas, Asia — were figured in
European lore as libidinously eroticised. Travellers' tales abounded with visions of the
monstrous sexuality of far-off lands, where, as legend had it, men sported gigantic penises and
women consorted with apes, feminised men's breasts flowed with milk and militarised women
lopped off theirs.1

According to Anne McClintock, the principles of oppression that underpinned European expansion
and colonisation into non-Western lands until the late nineteenth century were often coded as an
erotic and yet monstrous journey into the unknown. Part of the appeal of foreign exploration was the
idea that European adventurers' would come into contact with exotic and unusual forms of sexuality.

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