The Legacy of Emmanuelle: Oriental Desire and Interracial Encounters in European Films Set in Thailand 1974-1980 (original) (raw)

Thailand in the European Cinematic Imagination: The Phenomenon and Legacy of "Emmanuelle" (Fr 1974)

International Academic Forum Journal of Cultural Studies, 2019

Movie markets in Europe and the United States saw a considerable increase in the number of erotic films in the first half of the 1970s, followed by a transition to predominantly X-rated films in the second half. The development and rapid proliferation of the soft- and hardcore film genres can be attributed to the Sexual Liberation Movement of the 1960s, changed viewer expectations, the liberalization of film exhibition laws, and the development of new film technologies. A substantial number of European erotic and pornographic films were made in Thailand. The film Emmanuelle (Fr 1974, dir. Just Jaeckin) marked the beginning and became an international box-office hit, followed by several French, Italian, Swiss, German, and Danish productions that sought to ride on the wave of Emmanuelle’s success. This article seeks to give a concise overview of Emmanuelle’s legacy, that is, European adult-oriented films made from 1974 to 1980 because they shaped western representations and popular perceptions of Thailand for many years. It seeks to explore the cinematic portrayals of Thailand in selected films to determine the extent to which the country plays a significant role as a setting, and it explores the relevance of western interracial desires as well as the films’ appropriation of the enduring allure of the East felt by many Europeans.

Media, erotics and transnational Asia

Contemporary South Asia, 2014

contents ix acknowledgments 1 introduction mediations and Transmediations: erotics, sociality, and "asia" Purnima mankekar and Louisa schein 33 chapter 1 Wayward erotics: mediating Queer Diasporic return martin F. manaLansan iV 53 chapter 2 For Your reading Pleasure: self-health (Ziwo Baojian) information in Beijing in the 1990s Judith Farquhar 75 chapter 3 Zines and Zones of Desire: mass-mediated Love, national romance, and sexual citizenship in Gay indonesia tom BoeLLstorFF 111 chapter 4 correspondence marriages, imagined Virtual communities, and countererotics on the internet nicoLe constaBLe 139 chapter 5 Flows between the media and the clinic: Desiring Production and social Production in Urban Beijing eVerett Yuehong Zhang 173 chapter 6 Dangerous Desires: erotics, Public culture, and identity in Late Twentieth-century india Purnima mankekar chapter 7 homeland Beauty: Transnational Longing and hmong american Video Louisa schein chapter 8 another kind of Love? Debating homosexuality and same-sex intimacy through Taiwanese and chinese Film reception sara L. Friedman chapter 9 Born under Western eyes: The Politics and erotics of the Documentary Gaze in Born into Brothels heather deLL chapter 10 american Geishas and oriental/ist Fantasies anne aLLison references contributors index acknowledgMents As academic projects transform into collective endeavors, they become truly pleasurable and rewarding. Over the years that it has taken to bring this project to fruition, many colleagues, friends, and family members have generously contributed guidance, provocations, and support. Our earliest musings on erotics, media, and Asia emerged from numerous meals at conferences from which developed a close friendship coupled with intensely generative intellectual synergy that gave rise to this work. At the same time, our commitments emerged from the urgency of the aids crisis, which has called so many of us to take action around the complex, uneven interplay of meanings and practices inherent in sexualities and erotics. We first began presenting pieces of the collection at the Association for Asian Studies annual meetings in 2000, where we benefited from astute comments from Paroma Roy and several members of the audience.

Syndromes and a Century: Contemporary Queer Thai Cinema

The Oxford Handbook of Queer Cinema, 2021

This chapter concentrates on the conceptual possibilities that new Thai cinema and media open up for how we understand-and inhabit-queer personhood. It draws these films into relation to a wider political context and delineates recent shifts in understandings of sexual personhood in the country. Investigating Thai and Thai-coproduced feature films, documentaries, as well as queer occupations of social media, the article pays special at tention to the (nondoctrinal) ways in which Buddhism informs contemporary sexualities. What results are globally informed yet locally rooted models of queerness and transness that take us beyond the dominant liberal models of sexual identity and economic mobility, as trans videos, lesbian films, and queer documentaries model a kind of personhood that is ordinary, though not obedient, and socially central, though not assimilated.

The very first series of Thai queer cinemas--what was happening in the 1980s’?

2005

I would like to thank Mr. Barry Pringle, a lecturer at the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, for his proofreading and being patient with my English. Any error that may occur in this paper is totally mine. ** Kathoey is now an ambiguous Thai word for male-to-female transgender. Kathoey consider themselves as female and may or may not go for a full Sexual Reassignment Operation.

Notes on camp films in authoritarian Thailand

Camp humour in the counterpublic sphere is one mode to express survivalist subversion when open resistance is not possible. This essay takes stock of camp aesthetics specifically in independent digital films that critique the Thai state while simultaneously healing the oppressed, through perversity, queer politics and satirical humour. The films discussed in this article use the following queer strategies: (1) the reversal of values through exaggeration and excess (Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy critiques authoritarian prescriptions for happiness, taking them to excess to unleash murder and mayhem); (2) revelling in sexual perversity through temporal postulations (Supernatural poses as complex layers of sci-fi Thai gay pornography, but is in fact social critique); (3) presenting postcolonial critique of the country through satire (Madam Anna, Nipples, Macaron, Ponyangkam and Basic Education satirizes Anna and the King); and (4) using poorly acted melodrama in drag to trigger the comedic uncanny (Behind the Painting is a remake of Sriburapha's popular 1937 novel, a commentary on Thailand's elite alignment with Japan).

German Films Set in Thailand from 1960 to 2016: Genres, Representations and Trends

Proceedings Article - 9th International Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences, Hat Yai, Thailand, 2017

In the 1950s, many Western companies, particularly Hollywood studios, began to produce fiction films in Thailand, and in the 1960s German film companies also discovered Thailand as a viable story setting. The number of German fiction films made in Thailand was modest at first, but since the late 1980s the growing demand for television films series and other factors led to a gradual increase in the quantity and quality of these films. To this date, no comprehensive study about Western films set in Thailand has been conducted, and the corpus of German films set in Thailand has been downright ignored. The present study seeks to remedy this research gap because German films set in Thailand need to be analyzed for their representation of the Thai nation and contextualized for our understanding of the developments in the German film and television industry. The study offers an overview of German fiction films made in Thailand since the 1960s, engages with the question whether these films are narratively innovative or formulaic, and explores their representations of Thailand. Results show that from 1960 to 2016, about 11 German theatrical films, 16 television films, and 22 television series episodes were fully or partially set in Thailand. The three leading companies have been Rapid Film, Lisa Film, and Ziegler Film, each being involved in several productions. The German films and series episodes set in Thailand are often based on narrative formulas, and the films could be divided into eight broad categories, where television dramas and light-hearted television series episodes are the two leaders. Regarding the representation of Thailand, the majority of analyzed films emphasize the country's beautiful landscapes and seaside views, treating it as a desirable travel destination for affluent Germans. Thai people are often just incidental to the adventures of the main characters. A small group of films breaks away from stereotypes, portraying Thailand more realistically and with more immediacy.