Behind Closed Shutters: Unlocking gender through the figure of the prostitute in postwar Italian cinema (1942-1965)

紧闭的百叶窗背后：通过战后意大利电影中妓女的形象解锁性别（1942-1965）

• 批准号: AH/G007837/1
• 负责人: Danielle Hipkins
• 金额: $ 3.09万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2008 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FG007837%2F1
• 关键词: Behind; Closed; Shutters; Unlocking; gender

The dominant models for interpreting the representation of men and women on screen have emerged in relation to Hollywood, but what tools do we use to look at gender representation in other national cinemas? How do we adapt the same approaches to other specific contexts? This study attempts to answer these questions, by focusing on the representation of the female prostitute in Italian cinema between 1942 and 1965. This figure has been selected because of her striking prevalence in Italian cinema in the two decades after the Second World War - a war which brought the existence of female prostitution into the spotlight in Italy. At the same time a growing awareness of women's rights drove a campaign to close Italian state-approved brothels. Resistance to this change gave rise to a prominent public debate that carried on beyond the eventual closure of the 'case chiuse' with the Merlin law in 1958 and also had a significant impact upon Italian cinema. Close textual readings of the female prostitute on film will be set in the context of the historical discourses surrounding her. In the first part of the book I will consider approaches to the prostitute in visual culture, identifying the clash between the experience and the representation of prostitution as the key theoretical challenge. Italian culture has been inflected in specific ways in its understanding of the prostitute through literature, operatic tradition, earlier cinema, Catholicism, medical discourse, and the relationship between prostitution and the state. The notion of space governs many of these discourses, the brothel/street dichotomy being central to the regulation of prostitution. Emphasizing how the history and representation of prostitution interact, I will show how these spaces overlap with notions of cinematic space. By adapting Anglophone theories of spectatorship to the Italian context, I will suggest that historical spectators staged their desire in different spaces through the figure of the filmic prostitute, and also experienced her within the concrete spaces of Italian cinemas.The second part of the book identifies four key moments in the representation of the female prostitute, setting the close reading of key films in the context of all Italian cinema featuring the figure in the period. In the first of these chapters, focusing on transition from dictatorship to reconstruction, I consider the ways in which the figure of the prostitute allows us to understand the gendering and nation-building processes of postwar Italian cinema and its dominant movement: Neorealism. The prostitute in the later popular melodramas of the 1950s is typically associated with a conservative cultural hegemony and the collapse of this Neorealist project. However, in the next chapter, by approaching melodramas as potential Italian 'women's films', thinking about the depiction of relations between women, and considering the neglected perspective of the female spectator, I suggest that the female prostitute serves multiple functions. In chapter five the centrality of the Merlin proposal to ideas about gender in the 1950s and 1960s will be explored through films that attempt to tackle the issue of prostitution as a political one. These later films draw upon Neorealist ethics and show how cinema became part of the public discourse about the brothel. Associations between the economic boom and prostitution are often used in Italian cinema to express nervousness about changes in women's roles. Looking at the rise of comedy in the early 1960s, chapter six explores the ways in which the figure and reminiscences about the lost brothels are used comically to reinscribe rigid gender roles. This book challenges received wisdom about gender relations in Italian cinema of the postwar period. An innovative use of film theory, with close reference to the historical context, gives a new perspective on Italian cinematic history: as gendered in both its representations and its audiences.

解释银幕上男女代表性的主导模式与好莱坞有关，但我们用什么工具来看待其他国家电影院的性别代表性呢？我们如何将同样的方法适用于其他具体情况？本研究试图回答这些问题，通过关注1942年至1965年意大利电影中妓女的表现。之所以选择这一人物，是因为她在第二次世界大战后的二十年里在意大利电影中引人注目的流行-这场战争使意大利的女性卖淫现象成为人们关注的焦点。与此同时，人们对妇女权利的认识日益提高，推动了一场关闭意大利国家批准的妓院的运动。对这一变化的抵制引起了一场突出的公众辩论，这场辩论在1958年梅林法最终结束后继续进行，并对意大利电影产生了重大影响。对电影中的妓女的文本解读将置于围绕她的历史话语的背景下，在本书的第一部分，我将考虑在视觉文化中对妓女的研究方法，确定卖淫的经验和再现之间的冲突是关键的理论挑战。意大利文化通过文学、歌剧传统、早期电影、天主教、医学话语以及卖淫与国家之间的关系，以特定的方式对妓女进行了理解。空间的概念支配着许多这样的话语，妓院/街头二分法是卖淫管制的核心。强调卖淫的历史和表现如何相互作用，我将展示这些空间如何与电影空间的概念重叠。通过将英语国家的观影理论运用到意大利的语境中，我将提出，历史上的观众通过电影中妓女的形象在不同的空间中上演他们的欲望，也在意大利电影院的具体空间中体验她。本书的第二部分确定了表现妓女的四个关键时刻，将关键电影的近距离阅读设置在所有意大利电影的背景下，以该时期的人物为特色。在这些章节中的第一章，重点是从独裁到重建的过渡，我认为妓女的形象使我们能够理解战后意大利电影及其主导运动的性别化和国家建设过程：新现实主义。在20世纪50年代后期流行的情节剧中，妓女通常与保守的文化霸权和新现实主义项目的崩溃有关。然而，在下一章中，通过探讨情节剧作为潜在的意大利“女性电影”，思考女性之间的关系的描述，并考虑到被忽视的女性观众的角度，我认为妓女服务于多重功能。在第五章中，我们将通过试图将卖淫问题作为一个政治问题来处理的电影，来探讨梅林建议在20世纪50年代和60年代对性别观念的核心作用。这些后来的电影借鉴了新现实主义伦理学，并展示了电影如何成为关于妓院的公共话语的一部分。在意大利电影中，经济繁荣和卖淫之间的联系经常被用来表达对妇女角色变化的紧张情绪。第六章回顾了20世纪60年代初喜剧的兴起，探讨了人物形象和对消失的妓院的回忆如何被滑稽地用来重新塑造僵化的性别角色。这本书挑战了战后意大利电影中关于性别关系的传统观念。电影理论的创新使用，与历史背景密切相关，为意大利电影史提供了一个新的视角：在其表现形式和观众中都是性别的。