Bodil Joensen
Encyclopedia
Bodil Joensen or Bodil Jørgensen (25 September 1944 – 3 January 1985) was a Danish
pornographic actress
born in the village Hundige
, near Copenhagen
. 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
.
An icon and celebrity for a time, with her own successful business, she failed to make the transition to movies when market sentiment changed and became impoverished, dependent on alcohol, stopped being able to care for her animals, and died some few years later. The love of her life was her dog, but friends comment she was very close to all animals, and before her decline cared deeply and affectionately for every type, from rabbits to pigs.
mother and an absentee military father, Joensen grew up in the Copenhagen suburb of Hundige
. Her mother was often physically abusive
, sometimes violently so, and would whip her. At the age of 12, she was possibly rape
d by a stranger in a railway station — her Danish biography and 1980s interview say that they "just talked" or that she was "nearly raped", but her mother believed she had been actually raped. 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 have sex with boar
s, commenting in interview that her mother was "so shocked, she thought I was allied to the Devil". 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, after leaving home at 15, Joensen worked on a farm in a conservative area of Denmark. Her landlord, a farmer called Nielsen, 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. She later left 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."
in pornography
began at age 17 when she appeared in "light fetish
" pornography before establishing herself in the bestiality subgenre at around age 25. She starred in a number of feature film
s and shorts for companies such as Color Climax Corporation
, and for the pornographer Ole Ege, in which she and other actors had sex with various animal
species
. Between 1969 and 1972 she starred with animals in over 40 movies.
In this genre, Joensen 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 Scandinavia
n rustic nostalgia
. Her Danish biography comments of her domestic life: "The scene is classic Rabelaisian more than anything else, harkening back to the Middle Ages when people and their animals often did live in the same house."
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, entirely to the tune of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony (Pastoral)
—an involuntary artistic choice that became necessary when the original soundtrack recordings became unavailable through a gaffe. At the time, she lived with "two rabbits, seven dogs, a dozen pigs, some cats, a guinea pig, a mare and a beautiful black stallion named Dreamlight." Her Danish biographer commented later that she seemed a very open, warm-hearted person, "very at home with nature," and that "when she plays her erotic game with the dog or horse, it is not only a sexual curiosity, it is an erotic play with animals she loves and who are devoted to her." It was the surprising winner of the Grand Prize of the Wet Dream Film Festival in Amsterdam, November 26–29, 1970, where it premiered. Joensen immediately was an underground celebrity and drew attention from other documentary makers as well as tourists towards her expanding farm.
to visit and make private films with her animals.
Friends comment about that time 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". Neighbours, once friendly, turned dark and hostile, forced her to move repeatedly. As the Danish adult industry began looking to other content, Joensen 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, including depression, first working as a "live show" and "sexual roleplay" 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. Tajiri commented, sadly, that: "Accepting the 'Grand Prix' at the first Wet Dream Film Festival was the worst mistake we made with our film, but we were too flattered by the response at the time to realize it."
Joensen commented in a 1980 interview:
Her life falling apart, Joensen became dependent on alcohol
, and progressively less able to care for her animals. In 1981, following a change in Denmark's laws, she was raided for "sickening" animal neglect, and went to prison for 30 days. Not one of her animals ultimately survived, and Bodil herself did not recover from seeing them euthanised
. With little left, she turned to street prostitution
to support herself, her partner (an alcoholic himself) and daughter, although friends comment that even then, she did not want to be with people this way – all she wanted was her animals, as it once had been. Resorting to exchanging any sexual favour for alcohol and tranquillisers, she stated in her final interview that "in my position it is hard to turn down anything, no matter how disgusting... for me, staying alive in the hooking
business is hell."
Joensen gave her last interview in 1980 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 Joensen's that she died on 3 January 1985 from cirrhosis of the liver.
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
pornographic actress
Pornographic actor
A pornographic actor/actress or a porn star is a person who appears in pornographic film. Most actors appear nude in films...
born in the village Hundige
Greve municipality
Greve Municipality is a municipality about 21 km south-west of Copenhagen in Region Sjælland on the east coast of the island of Zealand in eastern Denmark. The municipality covers an area of 60 km², and has a total population of 47,773...
, near Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
. 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
Zoophilia
Zoophilia, from the Greek ζῷον and φιλία is the practice of sex between humans and non-human animals , or a preference or fixation on such practice...
.
An icon and celebrity for a time, with her own successful business, she failed to make the transition to movies when market sentiment changed and became impoverished, dependent on alcohol, stopped being able to care for her animals, and died some few years later. The love of her life was her dog, but friends comment she was very close to all animals, and before her decline cared deeply and affectionately for every type, from rabbits to pigs.
Early life
The daughter of a devout ChristianChristian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
mother and an absentee military father, Joensen grew up in the Copenhagen suburb of Hundige
Hundige
Hundige is a suburb south-west of Copenhagen. The town has a relatively high rate of crime, most of which are done in the large housing project called Askerød in the northern part, of the suburb ....
. Her mother was often physically abusive
Child abuse
Child abuse is the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Children And Families define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or...
, sometimes violently so, and would whip her. At the age of 12, she was possibly rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
d by a stranger in a railway station — her Danish biography and 1980s interview say that they "just talked" or that she was "nearly raped", but her mother believed she had been actually raped. 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 have sex with boar
Boar
Wild boar, also wild pig, is a species of the pig genus Sus, part of the biological family Suidae. The species includes many subspecies. It is the wild ancestor of the domestic pig, an animal with which it freely hybridises...
s, commenting in interview that her mother was "so shocked, she thought I was allied to the Devil". Turning to animals
Zoophilia
Zoophilia, from the Greek ζῷον and φιλία is the practice of sex between humans and non-human animals , or a preference or fixation on such practice...
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, after leaving home at 15, Joensen worked on a farm in a conservative area of Denmark. Her landlord, a farmer called Nielsen, 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. She later left to set up her own breeding farm, "Insemination Central", which became popular for her ability to handle aggressive animals such as boar
Boar
Wild boar, also wild pig, is a species of the pig genus Sus, part of the biological family Suidae. The species includes many subspecies. It is the wild ancestor of the domestic pig, an animal with which it freely hybridises...
, and was then ruined by country gossip
Gossip
Gossip is idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others, It is one of the oldest and most common means of sharing facts and views, but also has a reputation for the introduction of errors and variations into the information transmitted...
, 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."
Pornography career
Launched in the context of a failing business and attempts to remain solvent in order to keep her livestock and home, her careerCareer
Career is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a person's "course or progress through life ". It is usually considered to pertain to remunerative work ....
in pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
began at age 17 when she appeared in "light fetish
Sexual fetishism
Sexual fetishism, or erotic fetishism, is the sexual arousal a person receives from a physical object, or from a specific situation. The object or situation of interest is called the fetish, the person a fetishist who has a fetish for that object/situation. Sexual fetishism may be regarded, e.g...
" pornography before establishing herself in the bestiality subgenre at around age 25. She starred in a number of feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
s and shorts for companies such as Color Climax Corporation
Color Climax Corporation
Color Climax Corporation ApS is a Danish pornography company founded in 1969. It has its headquarters in Copenhagen. It had been one of the leading producers of European pornography up until the 1990s....
, and for the pornographer Ole Ege, in which she and other actors had sex with various animal
Animal
Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...
species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...
. Between 1969 and 1972 she starred with animals in over 40 movies.
In this genre, Joensen 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 Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
n rustic nostalgia
Nostalgia
The term nostalgia describes a yearning for the past, often in idealized form.The word is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of , meaning "returning home", a Homeric word, and , meaning "pain, ache"...
. Her Danish biography comments of her domestic life: "The scene is classic Rabelaisian more than anything else, harkening back to the Middle Ages when people and their animals often did live in the same house."
The documentary A Summer Day (1970) by Shinkichi Tajiri
Shinkichi Tajiri
Shinkichi Tajiri was a Dutch-American sculptor of Japanese ancestry . He was also active in painting, photography and cinematography....
, shows her living with her animals on her farm during this era, including their care, her affection for them, and her sexual life, entirely to the tune of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony (Pastoral)
Symphony No. 6 (Beethoven)
Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68, also known as the Pastoral Symphony , is a symphony composed by Ludwig van Beethoven, and was completed in 1808...
—an involuntary artistic choice that became necessary when the original soundtrack recordings became unavailable through a gaffe. At the time, she lived with "two rabbits, seven dogs, a dozen pigs, some cats, a guinea pig, a mare and a beautiful black stallion named Dreamlight." Her Danish biographer commented later that she seemed a very open, warm-hearted person, "very at home with nature," and that "when she plays her erotic game with the dog or horse, it is not only a sexual curiosity, it is an erotic play with animals she loves and who are devoted to her." It was the surprising winner of the Grand Prize of the Wet Dream Film Festival in Amsterdam, November 26–29, 1970, where it premiered. Joensen immediately was an underground celebrity and drew attention from other documentary makers as well as tourists towards her expanding farm.
Later life and death
By the early '70s she had managed to achieve her goal of living on her own farm, along with her companion or partner Knud Andersen and her daughter (born circa 1972), which she helped finance by allowing sex touristsSex tourism
Sex tourism is travel to engage in sexual activity with prostitutes.The World Tourism Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations, defines sex tourism as "trips organized from within the tourism sector, or from outside this sector but using its structures and networks, with the primary...
to visit and make private films with her animals.
Friends comment about that time 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". Neighbours, once friendly, turned dark and hostile, forced her to move repeatedly. As the Danish adult industry began looking to other content, Joensen 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, including depression, first working as a "live show" and "sexual roleplay" girl. By 1980, with little remaining means of income and spiralling debt
Debt
A debt is an obligation owed by one party to a second party, the creditor; usually this refers to assets granted by the creditor to the debtor, but the term can also be used metaphorically to cover moral obligations and other interactions not based on economic value.A debt is created when a...
, the only work she was able to retain was a hectic routine of small scale live shows most evenings. Tajiri commented, sadly, that: "Accepting the 'Grand Prix' at the first Wet Dream Film Festival was the worst mistake we made with our film, but we were too flattered by the response at the time to realize it."
Joensen commented in a 1980 interview:
Her life falling apart, Joensen became dependent on alcohol
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
, and progressively less able to care for her animals. In 1981, following a change in Denmark's laws, she was raided for "sickening" animal neglect, and went to prison for 30 days. Not one of her animals ultimately survived, and Bodil herself did not recover from seeing them euthanised
Euthanasia
Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
. With little left, she turned to street prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
to support herself, her partner (an alcoholic himself) and daughter, although friends comment that even then, she did not want to be with people this way – all she wanted was her animals, as it once had been. Resorting to exchanging any sexual favour for alcohol and tranquillisers, she stated in her final interview that "in my position it is hard to turn down anything, no matter how disgusting... for me, staying alive in the hooking
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
business is hell."
Joensen gave her last interview in 1980 and died in 1985. Many believed her to have committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
, 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
Animal Farm (video)
Animal Farm is the street name given to an infamous underground pornographic film containing scenes of explicit bestiality that was smuggled into Great Britain in the late 1970s or early 1980s...
from excerpts of her many bestiality films, it was stated by a close friend of Joensen's that she died on 3 January 1985 from cirrhosis of the liver.