Blaxploitation Italian Style

Abstract

J uly 13, 2010, marked the death of director Luigi Scattini, the creator of the blaxploitation trilogy, La ragazza dalla pelle di luna (Moonskin, 1972), La ragazza fuoristrada (Off-Road Vehicle Girl, 1973) and Il corpo (The Body, 1974), that established Eritrean top model Zeudi Araya as an erotic icon in Italian culture. Though Scattini’s success is often underrated, his trilogy exhumes the image of the colonial Black Venus, a figure deeply rooted in the Italian imagery since the nineteenth century, whose exotic sexuality had been historically portrayed alongside a sense of danger and fear of cannibalism. This chapter examines the degree to which the notion of cannibalism applies to Scattini’s trilogy in terms of the associations between black femininity and anthropophagy, as well as the scopophilic relationship between Italian male spectators and the female black body. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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