Reactions from History, My Dorm Room, and Our Class Discussion

It was interesting for me to research about Pepi, Luci, Bom directed by Pedro Almodovar and see how its shock value affected people when it first came out in 1980. I've learned that it's considered to be a cult film that inspired sexual freedom. However, when it first came out reviews in Spain were mostly very negative, considering it to be too vulgar. One critic Diego Galan disagreed stating that it undermined the "most respected taboos in our foolish society." In 1992 it was released in the United States which had a generally hostile reaction. Rita Kempley of the Washington Post even called the film "a smutty sexual slideshow most safely viewed in a full body condom."

Reading about these opinions makes me feel better about how disturbed I was with the film since it's nice knowing I wasn't the only one who was pretty freaked out. I simply had never seen anything as shocking as the urination scene that many have enjoyed posting about in this blog. I was talking to my roommate about this assignment and I convinced her to watch the urination scene on youtube because she wouldn't believe that I had watched something like that in one of my classes. She couldn't watch more than a few seconds of it and said, "Remind me not to take that class." Although I found the film unnecessarily graphic, I at least appreciate that it encourages female resilience and independence against possessive men. For example, I am happy that Luci stands up for herself when her husband speaks rudely to her like when he says "Shut up, this is man's business."

In terms of our class, there were definitely different statements that stirred up emotions. For example, when the husband said "You know I don't like an independent woman" students in the class became alert and seemed to pay more attention. He then said, "Amuse yourself by getting dinner ready" which made a lot of people look around at each other with dropped jaws, and I heard a few guys laugh at this since I'm assuming they thought of this as a "woman joke" that tend to be popular lately. I heard some people whisper "Oh my god." I figure people acted like this because we weren't expecting to see such poor treatment of a wife in the movie.