Page 162 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

FIGURE 30 Laura Gemser became closely associated
with the Italian Black Emanuelle films of the 1970s

TRAVELOGUES OF DESIRE

If the Black Emanuelle series did demonstrate a set of longstanding European concerns around the
presumed monstrous nature of black sexuality, then these tensions were reproduced by the narrative
structute and organisation of the films within this cycle. In particular, by depicting Laura Gemser as a
photo-journalist who tours the world seeking out scandal with the assistance of hidden photographic
equipment, the series immediately introduced an element of 'image'-based power and concealment
into its examination of aberrant, non-Western sexuality. In this respect, it can be argued that the
series reproduces what post-colonial theorists have referred to as the traits of 'ethnographic' cinema:
narratives that existed across fiction and documentary forms and aimed to provide a near scientific
exposition of non-European cultures. According to McClintock's analysis of the colonial imagination,
it can be argued that this style of cinema reproduces the Western dtive towards exploration and travel.
Implicit in these advances was the exposition of an 'exotic' environment from a (privileged) European
perspective.
For film, such ethnographic fascination was not new. From the end of the nineteenth century
cinema had come to play a crucial place in processes of colonial domination, with the development ot
silent 'panorama' films that allowed the viewer access to exciting and 'unusual' areas of the world. In
her book The Third Eye, Fatimah Tobing Rony argues that the 'ethnographic' film has continued to
serve a number of functions within twentieth-century society including colonial propaganda, pseudo-
scientific exploration of other cultures, travelogue loops and even 'jungle' adventure films. As she
notes, in its documentary format, ethnographic cinema frequently presents its viewet with 'an array of

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