Page 56 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

At a time when the German film market was dominated by foreign (mostly Hollywood) films and
witnessed the concomitant dwindling of film audiences, movie theatres and production financing,6 soft-
core films were inexpensive to make and easy to export. Indeed, the films in this series are important
not only because they were hugely popular in Germany, but were West Germany's most profitable
film exports. It is estimated that these films found 100 million viewers worldwide, out-performing the
Edgar Wallace films. Moreover, the Schoolgirl Reports inspired a host of spin-offs including Hartwig's
Swedish Love Games, The Nurses Report, Sex in the Office and Hofbauer's own Hausfrau Report: To this
day, the Reports air on German television, and the 1996 release of the Schulmddchen soundtrack speaks
to the films' international appeal and the widespread nostalgia they invoke in their fans.
One would think that the economic importance of this series and the fact that it was representative
of production trends in the 1970s when Germany became Europe's leading producer of soft-core
pornography8 would earn Hofbauer and his naughty schoolgirls a central place in post-war German
film historiography. Yet the series has been either ignored,9 summarily dismissed"1 or denounced
for its address to the wrong kinds of audiences. Thomas Elsaesser, for example, laments that the
pornographic turn appealed to Germany's immigrant guest workers (Italian, Greek and Turkish
men) who 'ouste[d], indeed eradicate[d] the last remnants of the family audience', and the educated
audiences who would support the artistic and politically trenchant efforts of the New German
Cinema." This unsettling language of eradication' aside, Elsaesser charges that the sex films siphoned
resources and audiences from legitimate film projects.
These omissions and dismissals are predicated on a general disregard of genre film during the late
1960s and 1970s, and, more specifically, on the assumption that the Schoolgirl Reports do nothing
more than tame the sexual revolution for non-political (foreign) older, male viewers. Admittedly, the
commercial allure of the sex report films are the extended scenes of female masturbation, girl-on-girl
petting, simulated heterosexual sex, orgies and the conspicuous display of the nude girl body. Yet
these pornographic sequences are embedded in a discourse that leads us through the various regimes
of power that shape and discipline sexual behaviour in ways that interrogate the relationship between
sexual liberation, memory and the possibility of 'a life untainted' by German history.

COMPULSIVE CONFESSING

In a typical episode from Part Two: Was Eltern den Schlaf raubt (What Keeps Parents Awake, 1971) a
school psychologist calls fifteen-year-old Susan into her office to serve as an example to viewers of the
harm that can come to girls who experiment with sex too early in life. 'You know we only want to
help you,' the doctor explains, 'so you must tell me everything, every detail...' Susan is thus prompted
to recount the circumstances that lead her to attempted suicide. Her first sexual forays flash across
the screen as she describes her early initiation into carnal desire which fails to deliver sexual pleasure.
Immer wieder ('over and over again') she pleads for more sex with her lovers in the unfulfilled hopes
of reaching orgasm. After her parents decide to lease a room in the house, she goes to great lengths to
seduce the new lodger. When finally his willpower caves, Susan's parents enter the room and discover
their daughter engaged in aerobic intercourse. Susan's father, convinced of her innocence, presses
charges against the lodger.

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