Page 168 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

backdrops (as in Emanuelle Nera: Orient Reportage aka Black Emanuelle Goes East (1976), Emanuelle
in America (1976) and Emanuelle: Perche Violenza Alle Donne? aka Emanuelle Around the World
(1977)), or else juxtaposed her against representations of the globe itself (as in the case of Le Notti
Porno NelMondo). It was the heroines ability to shift from one culture to another, seemingly without
any problems of assimilation, which led Richard Combs to argue that the series demonstrated 'an org)'
of globe-trotting [which] quite overshadowed the sexual activity'.9
Throughout the cycle the black heroine was depicted as a variety of nationalities from Arabic, African
and Indian, to Chinese and Japanese. For Italian journalist Manlio Gomorasca, regardless of Gemser's
fictional nationality, 'she was made to reincarnate all the temptations of the earth, thanks to that little bit
of exoticism that the colour of her skin guaranteed'.10 If the series equated the heroine's exoticism with
a sense of racial ambiguity, then this seems confirmed by the frequency with which Westerners mistake
her for 'native'. An example of this is indicated in the credit sequence of Black Emanuelle. Here, a hippie
missionary attempts to flirt with the heroine by talking seductively to her in Swahili. When Emanuelle
replies that she does not understand his language, the missionary responds in English stating that he
naturally took her for an African. This interaction sets up a pattern by which Gemser is increasingly
absorbed into the landscape, much to the disgust of her white travelling companions.
The reason for their widespread European unease relates to the way in which the African
landscape and its inhabitants evoke not only desire (by virtue of an exotic sexuality), but also death
(via a repeated connection with contagion and decay). From the missionary's revelation that he works
with natives whose minds are 'clean and uncontaminated' to Gianni's definition of Africa as seductive
like 'an incurable disease, the fear of infection can be seen as lurking behind this film, the rest of the
cycle, and, indeed the Italian cultural and psychic machinery that has produced it. As Karen Pinkus
has noted, since the 1930s a mythology of corporeal and hygienic deformation had been as a central
part of the Italian perception of the black body. As a result, non-European lands were re-configured
as a site of sexual and primitive chaos focused on acts such as 'masturbation, incest, polygamy and
excessive sexuality'.11
Importantly, such Eurocentric notions concerning the unclean, non-Western body are also central
to Arsan's novel Emmanuelle. For instance, it details a near-paranoid obsession with the 'unknowable'
nature of the Thai landscape. Here, the locale is divided into a series of 'picturesque' scenes; sites and
restaurants,12 while the frequent nakedness of its inhabitants are referred to as 'the Orient you see
in films'.13 However, behind these definitions lies a far more threatening and unstable environment
that the narration gradually exposes. For instance, chapter four of the novel centres on Emmanuelle's
exploration of the city while waiting for her lesbian lover, Bee. Here, she stumbles across the horrific
sights which remain concealed from the self-styled 'palace' she refers to as her 'observation post'. 14 Fot
instance, the narration remarks that she

was frozen in horrified contemplation of a leper sitting on the sidewalk. He was moving
backward, supporting himself on his decomposing wrists and dragging the stumps of his
thighs along the soiled ground. She was so shaken by the sight that she was unable to start the
engine of her car. She sat there paralysed, having forgotten where she wanted to go and the

movements she had to make, with her undecayed feet, her healthy, fragile hands... 15

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