This realization invites the question: Has cinema reached the status of an historical archive for some audiences? If so, it would behoove film studies scholars to analyze the specific value of such representations, especially in the case of a phenomenon as significant as the Holocaust, which Lanzmann claims is not a suitable subject of fiction. The great success, as well as the influence, of TV programs and films such as Holocaust (1979)1 and Schindler’s List (1993) on public opinion about historical events - especially in Germany - strongly suggests that the worldwide audience is more open to fictionalized history than to more challenging essayistic work such as Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985).
21-37 To reflect on historical, social and political events could be considered one possible ‘duty’ of the audiovisual media, in particular narrative television and cinema. The History, Aesthetics and Politics of the Nazi Image in Low-Brow Film and Culture, London/New York 2012, S.
In: Elizabeth Bridges, Dan Magilow and Kris Vander Lugt (eds.): Nazisploitation. In these two films Gemser's placement within both the urban world of New York City and the tribal worlds of the Amazon uncovers how " civilized " sexuality requires the racist othering of people of color in developing countries in order to secure its place within the proper, bourgeois, and normative sexuality of the developed West.įrom: Cinema Beyond Good and Evil? Nazi exploitation in the cinema of the 1970s and its heritage. In these films and others in the series Emanuelle/ Gemser is a mediating subject that is simultaneously " not-quite-other " and " not-quite-Western " who in an often travelogue fashion grants Western viewers their gaze into " primitive " sexuality and violence. The undecidability of Gemser's racial background permits her character to move between both developed and developing worlds.
Gemser's racial difference and erasure of her specifically Indonesian background is exploited for its imagined erotic difference. These films encourage what post-colonial critics call the " colonial gaze " which operates within a dialectical framework defining the sexuality of the developed West as " civilized " while casting the developing world and its populations as sexually other and deviant. This article examines two of the most controversial and horror-themed Black Emanuelle films starring the Indonesian actress Laura Gemser (real name Laurette Marcia Gemser), Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977), and Emanuelle in America (1977).
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