The story of Emmanuelle revolves around the sexual awakening of a young French woman who's come from Paris to join her husband in a colony of horny ex-pats living in Thailand. The fabulous Jeanne Colletin (1938-2006): French cougar extraordinaire and member of the Comédie-Française. These erotic, escapist works of the Seventies made for a bulk of early Eighties late night cable programming - and for a lot of kids of a generation, AIDS had yet to rear its ugly head and the adult life looked awfully fabulous. I can't even count how many films the Italian-produced Black Emanuelle franchise spawned.
Creating erotic visual fantasies set against lush, exotic landscapes populated by beautiful people in beautiful clothes, Jaeckin's formula was repeated again and again - in his own projects and sequels as well as the resulting deluge of (often accidentally quite hilarious) knock-offs. The oddly/aptly-named Jaeckin wasn't the first softcore eroticist by far, but his influence shaped the cinematic landscape of the Seventies. Not too long ago we rediscovered a beloved "childhood classic" in the screening room: director Just Jaeckin's seminal Emmanuelle of 1974.
Of course there was full-tilt porn in the world, but VHS was just picking up steam, the cost of tapes was astronomical, and otherwise one had to trek to a seedy XXX theater in the inner city to see it on the big screen - none of which was within the realm of possibility for kids that hadn't even gotten their driver's licenses yet. But we were hungry to know the full potential adult life had to offer, and this way one only had to wait for one's parents to go to bed. It was light, the televised version of a peek at your dad's Playboys.
rooms across suburban America, and back then a little nudity went a long way. In the early Eighties, late night cable television piped watered-down erotica into t.v. For you younger readers, there really was a time before the internet and the porn avalanche that came with it. It's odd to live in a time when one can be nostalgic for simpler, more innocent times - and yet that simplicity and innocence includes vintage European softcore erotic filmmaking. For the real thing, you're really going to have to get off the computer. glamour and bisexuality! Do relax, though - of course since it's on here it's just the stylized, cinematic representation of such. So instead of sugar and romance for you, my valentines, this year comes something closer to our own hearts here at the social design. I think it's kind of tacky - and anyway, at this stage in the game it's my style to stay the bachelor. Valentine's day is upon us once again, but honestly I've never been a great fan of the holiday's aesthetic. Just a little tonic for an increasingly myopic world. It was certainly a mind-opener for the young set back then, equally fascinating now. So whatever the era and whatever the means, I think the film retains a modernity still today. Now it's handily available for your viewing pleasure online. On a very clunky film projector, I remember quite well.
And I think every American science teacher of the era screened it in their class, too. It's a film adaptation of the book Cosmic View, written by the Dutch educator Kees Boeke in 1957. It's called Powers of Ten and was written and directed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1968, later re-released in 1977. If you are of a certain generation (namely the one called X), which is to say a school kid of the 1970s, then you're probably familiar with this short film. But that said, I do have a little something to share today, and hopefully so much more soon enough. Well, in my defense, I did start a new job and I'm also in the early throws of a workshop dedicated to prodding its participants into producing a very rough, book-length manuscript in thirty days time. That I can hardly put out a blog entry in thirty days leads me of course to question what I was thinking. I pretty much abhor a blog post that starts with "Sorry I haven't been on lately." and yet here I am practicing what I preach (against).