69 Année Érotique

“Liberté, Egalité, Sexualité” – this was the slogan that set the streets of Paris on fire in May and June 1968, when French students triggered the greatest revolution their country had seen since the 18th century.

If the UK (and the USA too) had already witnessed a cultural shift in 1966 with the “Swinging” movement, continental Europe had still yet to fully free itself from the constraints of moral boundaries – in particular, its sexual ones. Despite all the socio-political themes French students addressed, it is often forgotten that the riots started as a protest that aimed to obtain the right for male and female students to sleep in the same dormitories. This repressed sexuality – also displayed in the riots’ motto – suddenly exploded across Europe, infecting the arts with a kinky playfulness that reached its peak at the turn of the decade: “1969, the erotic year.”

On one side, the erotic pop trend begins with Serge Gainsbourg and his various lovers; on the other, Les Charlots’ tongue-in-cheek parody of this cliché that soon became a cheesy standard covered by many musicians, especially in bordering Italy. The kinky psychedelic shakers of Charlotte Leslie and Danyel Gérard crossed the Alps and met the seductive croons of Italian diva Patty Pravo and pornstar Moana Pozzi.

The late 1960s, however, was also the heyday of erotic films, on the one hand, B-movies labelled under the “sexploitation” genre, on the other, the works of cinema maestros such as Lucio Fulci, Dino Risi and Bernardo Bertolucci. Their creative and provocative titles set the wildest imaginations and desires on fire (Playgirl ’70, Orgasmo Nero / Black Orgasm, Profumo di Donna / Scent of a Woman). The plots may not have been in fact the greatest, but the soundtracks provided a mix of sleazy, seductive instrumentals and kinky wah-wah-filled groovers.

Despite the playful and cheesy nature of eroticism throughout the late ’70s, such freedom of sexual playfulness in the arts can be seen as one of the biggest victories and heredities of the May 1968 riots.