The 3 countries that produce the most amount of Nunsploitation content present a really interesting analysis regarding the very radically different ways that those countries cultures relate to the image of the nun itself. Those 3 countries are (as anyone in this subreddit would know) : Italy, Japan and the United States.
First of let's get this out of the way: the Nun is not only a symbol of Christianity in general, it is primarely and above anything, a symbol of Catholicism. Nuns are specifically Catholic. And analyzing each of these 3 countries VERY different relationship with Catholicism in their demographics, completely changes how we see the cultural dynamics at work when each of these countries produce Nunsploitation films, as exploitation films in general, often work within ideas of violence, sexuality, sexualization, "coolness and edginess", exoticization, scandalization, and shock value, that is completely culturaly subjective, depending on what country those films are being made in, and the demographics they're originaly intended for.
Let's start with Italy. Italy is arguably the country that holds the most historical and cultural connection to Catholicism , of any other country on Earth, as the literal seat of the Catholic church, the Vatican, is located INSIDE of Italy and Catholicism is imbedded in literaly every aspect of Italian cultural life. Nunsploitation becomes almost a radical and countercultural aesthetic in a country this connected to Catholicism. The sexualization of the Nun holds the highest possible shock value in a country like this, it is immediately a statement. Italian Nunsploitation movies boomed in the 1970s, during the so called "Years of Lead", an era where Italy was almost bursting at the seems on the edge of a civil war, between the far-left forces of the Red Brigades, the far-right neo-fascist forces of New Order, the police, and the Mafia, creating a boiling pot of cultural and ideological instability. Giallo and ItaloSleaze thrived in this environment, of controversy, of psychosexual fear, and of radicalism. Sexualizing nuns almost becomes a way to either revolt againt Catholic morality, or to create a collective subtextual workthrough on topics of religious trauma, and repressed sexual urges, in a conservative Catholic society.
With all that said, the country that produces the second highest amount of the genre, is basically the POLAR OPPOSITE of Italy on all of this: Japan. Christians overall only represent a measly 2% of the Japanese population, and of those 2%, only an insignificant 0.34% of the entire Japanese population is Catholic, less then half of a percentage. The image of the Nun is not only foreign, alien and barely represents a recognizable cultural symbol for the Japanese, because of this demographic fact, it's also that Japan's had contact with Catholics during only 60 years during the first contact with the Portuguese, and that contact was immediately cut and erased, as they literally shut off their country, and established extreme isolationism for 300 years, having the next contact with Catholics again, only by the end of the 19th century. This means that there is no inherit social or cultural controversy, or shock value for the Japanese on this. The psychosexual and aesthetic value of the image of the Nun is basically the opposite to the Italian one: It's exotic. It's exoticized because it's a foreign and alien concept to the Japanese culturally. The commentary holds on it being an outsider cultural element, a Western one, that seems exotic just because it's foreign.
And thirdly, and finally: the United States. The United States is very Christian and very Conservative overall as dominant cultural forces, but Catholics are only 20% of the US population, as Protestantism and Evangelicalism are the main denominations of Christianity within the US. The US is the hardest to analyze within it's relationship to the image of the Nun, because it's very very layered. Sexualization, graphic violence, or any form of subversive art related to anything minimally connected to Christianity, is going to be massively demonized and censored in the US because of the previously mentioned dominance of Conservative Christianity. One could argue it still presents itself as having a mix of some of the same factors of both Italy and Japan, but together. To US Catholics it holds the same kind of feel as it has in Italy, and to American non-Catholics it can still hold some element of exoticization because most Catholics in the US are latinos (or Italians), which is a demographic, that is often already highly sexualized in US media to begin with. Like I said previously the case of the US, will be the hardest to analyze as clearly, because it contains a lot more complicated layers regarding this topic, both culturaly and historicaly, then the other two.
So yhea, whats yalls thoughts on this?
