Ideas of sex: discourses on sexuality in Liliana Cavani's 'The Night Porter' and Cesare Canevari's 'The Gestapo’s Last Orgy'
| dc.contributor.author | Impey, Nick | en |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2012-08-02T14:50:14Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2012-08-02T14:50:14Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2011 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Both The Night Porter (Cavani) and The Gestapo’s Last Orgy (Canevari) are often referred to as exploitation. Exploitation cinema’s focus on empty excess is in line with the exaggeration/superficiality of “Camp”. Despite Susan Sontag’s separation of “Camp” elements and homosexual-Camp elements, subsequent commentators have argued that Camp is an exclusively gay critique of the artificial nature of the “performance” of hetero-normative gender roles. My article looks at the ways in which lesbian filmmaker Liliana Cavani discusses queer sexuality through a Camp play on gender roles, and how this same discourse is “developed” in Canevari’s virtual remake. German/Italian fascist ideology’s preoccupation with the perfected male body and Hitler’s original acceptance of homosexuality contributed to the presence of a lingering (masculine) homoeroticism in Nazi iconography. Holocaust history of Nazi domination enhanced this masculine image. Accordingly, the two filmmakers use a binary of male (masculine) Nazi dominator and female submissive prisoner, which is possessing of a heterosexual quality made fragile by the history of fascist sexual ambiguity. Essentially, my paper argues that the films’ disruption of the traditional images of Nazi aggressor/innocent victim through the protagonists’ depicted collaboration corresponds with the filmmakers’ blurring of masculine/feminine roles in their individual statements about queer sexuality. | en |
| dc.description.status | Peer reviewed | en |
| dc.description.version | Published Version | en |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | en |
| dc.identifier.citation | Impey, N. (2011) 'Ideas of sex: discourses on sexuality in Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter and Cesare Canevari’s The Gestapo’s Last Orgy', Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 1 (Summer 2011). https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.1.06 | en |
| dc.identifier.doi | https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.1.06 | |
| dc.identifier.endpage | 13 | en |
| dc.identifier.issn | 2009-4078 | en |
| dc.identifier.issued | 1 | en |
| dc.identifier.journalabbrev | Alphaville | |
| dc.identifier.journaltitle | Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media | en |
| dc.identifier.startpage | 1 | en |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10468/650 | |
| dc.publisher | Film and Screen Media, University College Cork | en |
| dc.relation.uri | http://www.alphavillejournal.com/Issue%201/ArticleImpey.html | en |
| dc.rights | © 2011, the Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. | en |
| dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ | |
| dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ | |
| dc.subject | Nazism | en |
| dc.subject | Holocaust | en |
| dc.subject.lcsh | Exploitation films | en |
| dc.subject.lcsh | Motion pictures | en |
| dc.subject.lcsh | Sensationalism in motion pictures | en |
| dc.title | Ideas of sex: discourses on sexuality in Liliana Cavani's 'The Night Porter' and Cesare Canevari's 'The Gestapo’s Last Orgy' | en |
| dc.type | Article (peer-reviewed) | en |
