Sexual Dystopia and Excess in the Italian Erotic Comedy of the 1970s

Italian erotic comedy portrays, and to some extent transfigures, the new gender dynamics and sexual models that have emerged in Italian society after the transformations related to the so-called economic boom as well as to the explosion of feminism as a mass movement. With the aesthetic simplicity and opportunistic production features typical of popular culture, Italian sexy comedy explores the social, psychic, and sexual tensions that the emergence of a new model of femininity has caused within the sphere of traditional masculinity. These tensions seem to shape the strategies of representations deployed by erotic comedy in many respects, starting from its (quite repetitive) sexual quest narratives. However, we suggest that it is precisely in the representation of the female body that we can observe the clash between new femininity and traditional masculinity at its highest level. In other words, in erotic comedy the female body almost literally incarnates the constant tension between neurotic desire and performance anxiety, fear of failure and will to possess that generally shapes the relations between male characters and women.