Journeys into Perversion: Vision, Desire and Economies of Transgression in the Films of Jess Franco (2025)

The transvestite figure and film noir: Pedro Almodóvar's transnational imaginary

Contemporary Spanish Cinema and Genre 2008 Isbn 978 0 7190 7775 3 Pags 157 178, 2008

Book review: Spanish Erotic Cinema, Ed. Santiago Fouz-Hernández (EUP 2017)

Studies in European Cinema (2019)

'Trust me, I'm a director: sex, sadomasochism and institutionalization in Luis Buñuel's Belle de Jour (1967)', in Studies in European Cinema, 1: 1 (2004), pp. 19-29.

Studies in European Cinema, 2004

This article offers a psychoanalytic rereading of a classic piece of European cinema, itself a cornerstone in the œuvre of a major European director. Argumentation starts from the idea that Buñuel's playful laying of interpretative red herrings is valuable as a cultural gesture, but dangerous as a platform for satisfying film criticism. Seeking to challenge the descriptive auteurism that often characterizes studies of both Buñuel and Belle de Jour, the proposition here is that critically informed textual analysis reveals that Belle's psycho-sexuality is more complex than existing studies suggest. In particular, discussion works towards answering a previously unasked question about Belle: traditionally, she is held to embody all the classic signs of masochism - and yet, in its conceptual origin, a masochist is also a sadist, so what does it mean to consider the representation and actions of Belle within the context of sadism? By responding to this question via the film's mise-en-scène - which is rich but often neglected by critics - the article reveals a new relationship between Belle, her fantasies and a set of male-orchestrated institutions. In turn, the piece is able to shed new light on the film's notoriously enigmatic ending.

Rape and sexual harassment in Spanish cinema during the early years of the Francoist regime

International Journal of Iberian Studies, 2010

This article analyses gender relations during the first two decades of the Francoist regime in Spain through the portrayal and treatment of sexual assault by filmmakers and censors. Based on the study of 200 films produced during the 1940s and 1950s, this article aims to discover the frequency, mode and utility with which sexual assaults are addressed in Francoist cinema, with a particular emphasis on the way in which these crimes affected the fictional female victims. This study aims to understand how these issues were addressed in a medium as popular and as seemingly innocent as cinema and to also have a better understanding of the conceptualization of women during this period in Spain.

A 'Flesh' New Start: The Transgressive Case of Torture Porn

Transgression and Its Limits, ed. by Matt Foley, Neil McRobert and Aspasia Stephanou, 2012

Transgression and Its Limits is a long overdue collection that reads the complex relationship between artistic transgressions and the limits of law and the subject. In mid-twentieth century theoretical understandings of transgressive culture, it is the existence of the limit that guarantees the possibility and success of the transgression. While the limit calls for obedience, it also tempts with the possibility of violation. To breach the limits of the acceptable is to simultaneously define them. However, this classical understanding of transgression may no longer apply under the conditions of post-modernity, late-capitalism, and the simulated or empty transgressions that this period of the simulacra encourages. Context becomes paramount in reading the myriad forms of transgression that encompass politics, aesthetics and the ethics of the obscene; while a range of theoretical perspectives are employed in order to elucidate the economies at work underneath the seemingly transgressive act. The essays selected include explorations of transgression in cinema, photography, art, law, music, philosophy, technology, and both classical and contemporary literature and drama. Professor Fred Botting’s (co-author of Bataille and The Tarantinian Ethics) analysis of transgression from Bataille, to Baudrillard and Ballard compliments the collection’s concerns about the status of transgression. Aside from fourteen critical essays on topics such as early-modern drama, George Bataille, J. G. Ballard, the female necrophilic, “torture-porn” cinema, and the art of Robert Mapplethorpe and Salvador Dali, there is also a new discussion of transgression between novelist Iain Banks and Professor Roderick Watson (Emeritus at the University of Stirling). With its focus on the paradoxical nature of the impulse to transgress, as well at its wide-ranging historical and artistic concerns, Transgression and Its Limits is a landmark book in a rapidly developing scholarly field.

Cinema, sex tourism and globalisation in American and European cinema

Contemporary Cinema and Neoliberal Ideology, 2017

In this chapter, I will be considering three films that centre on female sex/romance tourism.

Homoheresy on Film: Subversive Gay Cinema in Spain in the 70s and 80s

Book Review: Teresa Rizzo (2012), Deleuze and Film: A Feminist Introduction,

Sex and Social Power in Obscene Films: La Pianiste

La Pianiste is known to be a highly rated pornographic film with a female protagonist who has an unusual sexual addiction. Many people watched the film with the idea that they wanted to watch a pornographic movie to let off steam, but they did not get the pleasure they wanted to see from the stereotypes of women constantly on the screen to please men. As a result, the movie also attracted a lot of critics who like to see classical Hollywood cinema's male audience. I explore why these voices are boycotting or questioning the film from the critics that the film has suffered and refute these critics in order to expose the sexual oppression of women in a patriarchal society. The essay will include a lot of scene analysis to show the director's portrayal of a woman who is oppressed by society.

Hardcore Horror: The Pleasures and Displeasures of Breaking Cinematic Taboos

2018

Although films of both the "Torture Porn" and "New Extremism" subgenres have been characterized as physically hard to watch, films of the "Hardcore Horror" subgenre push this characteristic to the extreme by purposely tackling taboo issues such as incest, bestiality, child abuse, and fecal consumption, and portray flawed protagonists that the audience cannot empathize with. Because Hardcore Horror films are typically confined to the Internet, and are largely spread by word of mouth, the appearance of such films in the mainstream film industry typically leads to cries of moral outrage and disgust on the part of censors and theater viewers. This essay examines Srdjan Spasojevic's <em>A Serbian Film </em>(2010) and Tom Six's <em>The Human Centipede II </em>(2011), and argues that these films evoke contradictory emotions among different audiences. To those unaccustomed to the Hardcore Horror subgenre, these films induce vivid...