One of the literary touchstones of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, Emmanuelle was a fictionalized memoir by the wife of a French diplomat, an account of her sexual awakening and experimentation during her husband’s tour of duty in the torrid zone of Bangkok, Thailand. “Emmanuelle Arsan” was in reality Marayat Andriane (nee Bibidh), the daughter of a Thai ambassador, a sometime actress who had married a French diplomat named Andre Andriane. The couple had gone to Thailand as part of a French delegation from UNESCO, and it was there that Andriane presumably found the material with which to fill her pseudonymous, seductive work.
The author details what was offered as an authentic journey from uptight Parisienne to sexual adventuress, an odyssey that involves her initiation into the rites of public masturbation, lesbianism, voyeurism, group sex, and sexual masochism. The topic was relentless in its ardor, with scene after gratuitous scene of orgiastic activity, some of it very strong stuff even in the 1960s. It was as clear-cut in its intent to arouse as any under-the-counter porn from the past, but Emmanuelle transcended the sleaziness and subtext of shame that clung to most traditional erotica. The author offered a playgirl philosopher’s view of pleasure as a noble pursuit, explicating the notion that sex for pleasure alone, far from “bestial,” was exactly what distinguished humankind from the animals, which have sex only for procreation. Written in a dreamy, sensuous style, like perfume ad copy gone out of control, aimed as much or more at the female reader as the male, Emmanuelle was a worldwide success and advanced the case for a more explicit sexual literature acceptable to the mainstream (although the topic was frequently banned, including, for a time, in France, where President Charles de Gaulle was outraged not by the sexuality but by the unflattering portrait of French diplomats overseas). The topic, with its upscale, jet-setting modern characters, philosophical amorality, and glamorous settings, anticipated and idealized the 1960s and 1970s subculture of upper-middle-class, wife-swapping “swingers,” and helped to create the concept of “porno chic.”
A film version, directed by Just Jaeckin and starring Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel, repeated the topic controversial reception and international appeal. The film’s success spawned numerous sequels, only a few of them officially sanctioned (the producers of the unofficial entries getting around the copyright problem by spelling their heroine’s name with one “m,” as in Emanuelle’s Amazon Adventure).
Works
Emmanuelle (1966)
