Bodil Joensen
Bodil Joensen or Bodil Jørgensen (25 September 1944 - 3 January 1985) was a Danish pornographic actor born in the village Hundige, near Copenhagen. (Her name is pronounced "Yuen-sen"). An animal lover, she ran a small entrepreneurial farm and animal husbandry business, and enjoyed celebrity status from her many pornographic films in which she engaged in sex acts with animals.
Early life
The daughter of a devout Christian mother and an absentee military father, Bodil grew up in a small village near Copenhagen. Her mother was often physically abusive, sometimes violently so, and would whip her. At the age of 12, she was violently raped by a stranger in a railway station. On returning home to tell her mother, she was beaten and blamed for the incident. Seeking a means to retaliate, she vowed to her mother that when she grew up she would spend her life with boars, commenting in interview that her mother was "so shocked, she thought I was allied to the Devil".[1] Turning to animals for affection, her dog became her best friend, companion and lover, and she wore a locket with his picture for the rest of her life.
Initially, Bodil worked on a farm in a conservative area of Denmark. Her landlord, a farmer called Neilsen, commented, "She was passionate about animals", adding that she was entranced by the sight of animals breeding, an activity she stated she found "wonderful" to help with, later leaving to set up her own breeding farm, "Insemination Central", which became popular for her ability to handle aggressive animals such as boar, and was then ruined by country gossip, spread principally by farmers' wives who were unhappy at the prospect of their husbands working with a young single girl on farm business. Friends commented that she "was never given much of a chance" by such people. She commented later that "9 out of 10 men wanted to fuck me, and their wives hated me."[1]
Pornography career
Launched in the context of a failing business and attempts to remain solvent in order to keep her livestock and home, her career in pornography began at age 17 when she appeared in "light fetish" pornography before establishing herself in the bestiality subgenre. She starred in a number of feature films and shorts for companies such as Color Climax, in which she and other actors had sex with various animal species. Between 1969 and 1972 she starred with animals in over 40 movies.[1]
She drew special attention worldwide as the Boar Girl, a reputation earned from her live performances with swine, as well as her participation in films shot with pigs on her own breeding centre. The movies she appeared in combined a peculiar blend of the "tolerant contemporary Danish society" image and Scandinavian rustic nostalgia. The documentary A Summer Day (1970) by Shinkichi Tajiri, shows her living with her animals on her farm during this era, including their care, her affection for them, and her sexual life, to the tune of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. He commented later[1] that she seemed a very open warm hearted person "very at home with nature". It was the surprising winner of the Grand Prize for the X rated film festival at which it premiered, winning Joensen immediate underground celebrity status and drawing attention from other documentary makers as well as tourists towards her expanding farm.
Later life and death
By the late 70s she had managed to achieve her goal of living on her own farm, along with her daughter and a platonic friend, which she financed by allowing sex tourists to visit and make private films with her animals. Friends comment[1] that she was "easily exploited by almost anyone with a camera" and that the visitors "just wanted pornography, they didn't care about knowing her". As the Danish adult industry began looking to other content, Bodil failed to make the transition from porn to other movies, and her financial stability and life began to fall apart. After 1972, she experienced a sharp deterioration, undergoing very obvious physical and psychological changes, first working as a "live show" and "sexual role play" girl. By 1980, with little remaining means of income and spiralling debt, the only work she was able to retain was a hectic routine of small scale live shows most evenings.
Her life falling apart, she became dependent on alcohol, and progressively less able to care for her animals. In 1981, following a change in Denmarks laws, she was raided for "sickening" animal neglect,[2] and went to prison for 30 days. Not one of her animals ultimately survived, and Bodil herself did not recover from seeing them euthenised. With little left, she turned to street prostitution to support herself, her partner (an alcoholic himself) and daughter, although friends comment[1] that even then, she did not want to be with people this way - all she wanted was her animals, as it once had been.
She gave her last interview in 1980[3] and died in 1985. Many believed her to have committed suicide, however in the April 2006 UK documentary, "The Dark Side of Porn: The Search For Animal Farm", which traced the production of the notorious underground film known as Animal Farm from excerpts of her many bestiality films, it was stated by a close friend of Bodil's that she died on January 3, 1985 from cirrhosis of the liver. The program included footage of her gravestone.
External links
- Template:Imdb
- Danish biography for Bodil Joensen
- Zoopornstars biography for Bodil Joensen Warning: Other parts of this website are pornographic
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Source for her pre-porn career: Channel 4 documentary Dark side of Porn, in its study of Animal Farm.
- ↑ Including according to "The Dark Side of Porn", animals in a metre of excrement, and rotting animal carcasses.
- ↑ Interview with Bodil Joensen Warning: Other parts of this website are pornographic.
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