Horizontal Collaboration: The Erotic World of Paris, 1920-1946 - Softcover

Mel Gordon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1627310177 ISBN 13: 9781627310178

Publisher: Feral House, 2015

A TIME WHEN THE EROTIC CAPITAL OF EUROPE EXPERIENCED REMARKABLE HEIGHTS AND SHAMEFUL LOWS

A companion to the highly-praised pictorial history Voluptuous Panic (Feral House, 2008), HORIZONTAL COLLABORATION explores sexual politics in Interwar and WWII Paris.

Mel Gordon, author of Voluptuous Panic (Feral House, 2008), the celebrated history about the sex culture of Weimar Berlin, returns with a stunningly illustrated look at Paris, The City of Pleasure, prior to and during German occupation during World War II.

HORIZONTAL COLLABORATION encompasses the Jazz Age, Depression, World War II and the Occupation and finally the Liberation. It concludes with the shuttering of the licensed brothels in 1946, which some Parisian intellectuals thought was the final 'destruction of French civilisation'.

The term 'Horizontal Collaboration' refers to the sexual liaisons between French civilians and German occupiers from 1940 to 1944. These were extremely widespread and included both individual wartime relationships in addition to prostitution. As Allied armies swept across the French countryside, thousands of young women - and some men - who had slept with German soldiers were savagely punished by the authorities or by vigilante crowds, becoming a source of deep national shame.

Mel Gordon redefines the pejorative term to mean something much broader: French men and women 'horizontally collaborated' to overcome all social obstacles, divisions and regulations. These obstacles include married and unmarried couples, straights and homosexuals, foreigners and locals, gun-toting soldiers and their vanquished subjects. The natural yearning for sexual pleasure equally corrupted all cohabitating partners.

This book rediscovers a remarkable time when the aesthetic and erotic capital of Europe experienced remarkable heights and shameful lows. It includes hundreds of images, most never-before-published, encompassing this fascinating but little-known history.

Review:

"This book rediscovers a remarkable time when the aesthetic and erotic capital of Europe experienced remarkable highs and shameful lows." --Fiesta

About the Author:

Mel Gordon is Professor of Theater Arts at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of twelve books, including "The Grand Guignol," "Dada Performance," "The Stanislavsky Technique," and the Feral House titles, "Erik Jan Hanussen: Hitler's Jewish Clairvoyant" and "The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber."

• Publisher: Feral House
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1627310177
• ISBN 13: 9781627310178
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320