Pepi, Luci, Bom

As we watched the film “Pepi, Luci, Bom”, I felt that my reaction and those of the people sitting near me were similar in that many of us were not expecting scenes that were explicitly sexual. The film was filled with several scenes that in our society and culture can be considered vulgar or taboo. However, this brings the focus to the question of what kind of reaction the film's director, Pedro Almodóvar was trying to evoke in the audience. The most likely reaction would usually be shock. This in a way reflects the ideas of Camp in that there are scenes of exaggeration and excess. Sontag also notes that “Camp is playful, anti-serious,” and this is shown in the scenes where Pepi, Luci and Bom go out to parties and clubs. Regarding the sexual scenes, Almodóvar probably brought the element of shock with them to make the film grab the audience's attention in order to more effectively convey his message. The message that was prevalent throughout the film, and in many of Almodóvar's films, is female strength. This was shown through the film's greater focus on Pepi and Bom's friendship and Luci and Bom's relationship than any of the relationships with the male characters. One example is when Pepi is shown to become the strong one as the power shifts from her male rapist to her when she organizes the attack on him.

I also found it interesting that almost everyone who posted about the film so far commented on the sexual aspect of it but did not comment as much on the violence. I acknowledge that there wasn't nearly as much violence as there was sexual scenes, but it brings up the fact that there is a difference between American entertainment and European entertainment. In America, sex is censored a lot more than violence, while in Europe, it is the opposite and violence is censored more than sex. “Pepi, Luci, Bom”, a Spanish film, set in Madrid, is an example of this, in that it more prominently featured sexual scenes, such as the scene where the police officer rapes Pepi in the beginning of the film, the scene where he rapes the neighbor, Charo, later in the film, the scene where Bom urinates on Luci, and the “General Erections” competition. These sexual scenes overtake the movie, while the scenes of just violence are featured less. The one scene of violence that sticks out the most is when Bom gets the band to beat up the police man. The fact that the earlier posts focused more on the sexual scenes in the film also reinforce the idea that here in America, sex is the more taboo topic, while we have just become accustomed to violence in films and other entertainment, and have even come to expect it as the norm, whereas we don’t always expect as many explicit sexual scenes as there were in this film.