Page 169 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

Following this traumatic encounter, it is a reluctant Emmanuelle who explores the more
uncivilised regions of the city in the final chapter of the novel. The heroine completes her sexual
training under the guidance of Mario, an ageing playboy who promises to show her something 'out of
the ordinary. The narration codes this journey within a vocabulary of disgust: terms such as unclean,
mouldy, stench, smell and plague dominate the narration. Equally, the heroine's disdain at the sight
of a man urinating in a river reiterates the exposure of both protagonist and reader to a different set of
body fluids than have been in evidence so far.
Emmanuelle's expedition includes visits to a number of sex dens where she is forced to lie on
filthy bedding and masturbate with wooden dildos described as 'revolting', 'rough' and 'dirty'.16
The heroine's ordeal culminates with Mario's coercing her into intercourse with a young native.
This encounter is further coded in terms of the heroines distress. Thus, when Mario commands
Emmanuelle to suck and drink from the native's penis, her response is 'to struggle against nausea'
during the act.17 The narration then goes on to describe the differences between the native and
European body which provoke Emmanuelle's unease:

It was not that she felt that it was degrading, in itself, to perform that act of love with an
unknown boy. The same game would have pleased her greatly if Mario had imposed it on her
with a blonde, elegant boy who smelled of eau de cologne in the bourgeois drawing room of a
Parisian friend ... but with this [boy]. It was not the same. He did not excite her at all. On
the contrary he frightened her. Furthermore, she had at first been repelled by the thought that
he might not be clean... 1 8

Arguably, the Black Emanuelle cycle that followed Arsan's novel shares many of the contradictions
surrounding the monstrous nature of non-Western sexuality. As with Arsan's novel, there is evidence
of the glamorous and profoundly de-historicised exotic displays performed for the white explorers:
Africa reduced to colourful ribbons or vaguely tribal jewellery ... assimilated into the vocabulary of
the West', 1 ' as Pinkus would term it. Beyond these pleasant parameters, there is also a more dangerous
environment that conceals chaos, violence and the monstrous.
However, what crucially separates the two cycles is the ease with which the black heroine becomes
associated with such filth and degradation. Indeed, in Albertini's Black Emanuelle, Gemser is asked
by a young African boy 'why are we the colour we are', to which the heroine replies 'let's tell people
that we never wash'. In contrast to Arsan's Emmanuelle, physical revulsion is replaced in Gemser by
physical possession as her body literally becomes invaded by the primitive forces surrounding her.
This process of physiological contamination is indicated in Albertini's film through a disorientating
dream occurring to the heroine. Here, Emanuelle imagines that she is involved in intercourse with a
tribal chief (who manages to maintain full ceremonial headgear during the sex act). This encounter
results in a delirious and de-subjectified dream scene where the heroine imagines looking at herself
and Gianni making love. (The camera alternates between the actual act of intercourse and shots of
Gemser looking in on the scene and masturbating.)
Crucially, it is not merely the attitude to the black physiology and sexuality that separate white
from black Emanuelle. Rather, it is the fact that as the Black Emanuelle cycle progressed under Joe

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