Razza cagna: Mondo movies, the white heterosexual male gaze, and the 1960s-1970s imaginary of the nation

Abstract

This article investigates the role, reception, and socio-cultural, political relevance of mondo movies in the context of late 1950s-early 1980s film and documentary. The mondo genre debuted with reportage films about sexuality in Europe and reached its pinnacle with Gualtiero Jacopetti's assemblage films. The historical context in which this genre evolved, and white masculinity was rearticulated and positioned at the centre of the national imagined community, is mapped focusing both on gender and race constructions and on the gaze identifying, encoding and decoding the sensationalist presentation of postcolonial/ decolonising Otherness. A brief review of some of the author's published work on 1962-1971 mondo movies introduces Cannibal Holocaust (1979) and director Ruggero Deodato's controversial reflection on the white, capitalist, sexist, Western and neo-colonial anthropological gaze.