Connecting the Dots, Reality Check, Temperamental SkullF*ck

Caligula – A Case For Re-examination

What do you think SirGay does after catching a cold during the hottest days of the year? Ha, he comes here, of course, to fuck with your brains, my darlings. That’s right, you better get some ice. You will need it!

During all this hot delirium New York City’s streets were breathing on me, your dear darling saw a dream with Kirsten Dunst. That was a bit random, I’d say, but okay. In the dream, her poster, where she poses as Marie Antoinette, was mutilated by a group of savage actors, who apparently, I found out that in the dream, hated her guts. Dear Plastikoff knew, his brain was triggered. That’s right, my darlings, my mind was going completely bonkers in this heat, add to it a running nose – a freaking running nose! – and you have ze Plastikoff back with his new (some people might think) deranged thoughts about, well, this time, Caligula. Oh my dear flying ducks, Caligula!? And what the fuckity fuck made him think about the Caesar? Well, first of all, it was hot, like in Rome hot. Second of all, Caligula was/is considered as deranged as your dearest Sir G. or is he? No, really?

Well, since ze Plastikoff had nothing better to do apart from making sure his sweaty balls didn’t stick to the chair, he created a case for Caligula. I am here to prove to you all that he – gasp! – was the sanest of them all. Oh, I can feel your temperature rising. You can’t wait to tell me how wrong I will be about the Augustus, but simmer down a bit. That ice bucket I told you about, yeah, grab some ice from it and make a mimosa. Now listen to me and to my oh so genially put case. I don’t even know what the expression in court is, but whatever, I’m Russian, so there, I make my own rules. I am going to prove to you that Caligula was as nice as me when a breeze goes through my balls on the beach, that is (smiley face).

Where do I start with all this mess, because I did get distracted by Hellen Mirren’s tatas and this six foot dick one of the ladies in the film was sucking for at least a good thirty seconds? I watched the film for the first time on a big screen, so yeah, I forgot to count for how long this debauchery lasted. This entry is not about the film I occasionally re-watch for educational purposes on my old VHS tape, even though it was inspired by the naked Malcolm McDowell’s tush. Oh my! Sir McDowell was running in the rain, making all kinds of moves, naked and not afraid, playing the efing Caligula. But see, this is where we get really confused. We have so many takes on the one and only Caligula that it is quite easy to get distracted by all these dicks and vaginas flying around, because, you know, the orgies and what not. Well as long as everyone is vaccinated and enjoying themselves, who am I to tell what is good for them? Should I put another smiley face here, or should I wait for later? Oh well, smiley face! I know you’re having a hard time reading these long-ass sentences (giggles – “long-ass”).

I am here to entertain unlikely thoughts about things that might not look the way they really are. Just to prove my point about the information we have about the Caesar and how it was, most likely, tailored to please a certain group of people, I am going to ask you to talk to somebody who doesn’t like you. Ask what they think about you. You, most likely, will get a contrasting picture of yourself from somebody who appreciates you. I have a very strong suspicion that Caligula at some point of his reign got crushingly bad yelp reviews, so all got real fetid real fast afterwards. Historians who wrote books about Caesars were people close to them, meaning, they were a part of the ruling class. But why was Caligula portrayed as some kind of blood sucking monster who slept with animals and raped the oh-so-vulnerable rich wives of Rome?

There were a few things in the book by Suetonius about the twelve Caesars that didn’t make sense to me and sounded a bit, in the words of today’s popular “literature,” sensationalistic. My first conflicting question was aroused after I read about Caligula’s disappearance from the environment Caesars supposed to always be in. Apparently, Gaius escaped to the populous, to the simple people, and stayed with them for quite some time. Evidently the crowds really loved the Caesar. On one hand you have this love coming from the plebeians, but on another Suetonius is painting Caligula behaving like a monster against the elite after returning to the palace. Suetonius “suggested” that Caligula might have contracted some kind of disease while being away. Did he contract the empathy or the compassion bug? Hmm, that is possible. These two are “crazy diseases” no ruler should ever have. “Clearly” because of that “disease” Caligula made the wives of the high-ranking senators at the palace prostitute themselves. He took their “hard earned money.” Oh my goodness, was he taxing them? Oh yes, he was! He behaved with the rich and the powerful the way they abused the populous. Well, of course, that was unprecedented and it could not be tolerated. The patricians in the senate had to make Caligula an example of how you don’t behave with your own, so the future Caesars don’t get similar ideas, because, well, who wants these socialist emperors? Uh-uh not them! Caligula at that time was at his most revolutionary age. The senators made sure that Caligula’s image was tarnished forever and ever, well until ze Plastikoff and his genius was born, of course, ha!

The next thing which didn’t make sense to me was Caligula’s sleeping with his horse and his alleged sexual relationship with it. Well, my dears, you are for a treat here after I tell you that horses sleep standing up. If you see a horse on the ground, it is, most likely, sick or just about to die from old age. Suetonius thought this little detail will fly over the heads of the readers of his book. He miscalculated my mind and my love for animals.

Here is another detail for you, Caligula was a short man. How do I know this? Well, I don’t and nobody does, though some “sources” today say that he was a tall man. Hmmm, but his nickname was a “little boot.” That’s right, Caligula means “little boot,” you mimosa drinking farts. Was he involved in bestiality and fucked his horse? Hmm, it could be, but I don’t think so. Remember, “little boot” means “small.” So how did he do it? Suetonius doesn’t provide the details. Bummer!

Did Caligula love his horse more than the people who surrounded him at the palace? That is for sure true. Horses are lovely animals, but Suetonius went a bit too far with the horse loving idea making it sound as if Caligula was a terrible terrible human being, who abused horses, because, you know, he built stables for them as beautiful as rich men’s houses. This horse was, most likely, his best friend, so it makes sense for Caligula to have it around in his castle, or whatever his apartment was called at that time. There are some folks in NYC, still to this day, who keep crocodiles and tigers as their pets. Do you think Caligula would not do the same? This bitch had all the money and power? Why the fuck not? What really pissed the senators off was the fact that he made his favorite horse a senator too. Now that was a kick into their balls. Ouch!

And then there was his sexual attraction to his sister, or even sisters (plural). Now, where do I start with this mess? If you really want to hurt somebody, say something so outrageous about the people they love and you are on your way of becoming one of those, I don’t even know the name for it. A “little” fact that he married Cezonia, a loose woman from a whorehouse, who gave birth to a daughter conflicted with this story of Caligula’s incest involvement with his sister. The whole family was killed though during this bloodshed the rich created after being overtaxed, because, you know, that’s how you rolled at that time. You didn’t like papa, you killed his children. But was Caligula really fooling around with his sister? Well, that we will never know. They both are dead to prove Suetonius wrong, but what is clear to me, Caligula had a healthy sex life which, yeah, could sound quite outrageous for some sex fearing people, but at that time having orgies was a norm. So, my dear Suetonius, you will not scare me with your stories of supposedly nasty perversions Caligula had. You were, most likely, excluded from these parties and felt hurt, so you made it sound the way you made it sound. Sorry, but the elite used you and made you write all this outrageous fiction about this damn Caligula, just to make them look good in comparison. Oh, also, a question, how the fuck do you know so much about Caligula and his behavior? Your book was written a century after his death?

Caligula, by the way, didn’t go to any war. Can you fucking believe this shit? An Emperor who values human lives instead of profits? This son of a bitch just sat in front of a lake or whatever and watched his soldiers collect shells on the beach. He must be crazy and must be destroyed. Well, sure watching soldiers swim happily made Caligula look crazy and… they did destroyed him.

It is clear that whoever wrote these historical entries about Caligula, was not happy with him. And who can be happy when “your people” are behaving the way they are not supposed to behave. You don’t rob your own. You don’t rape your people’s wives. That is what you do to the people who have no power. The ones who go to jail today are the poor and the rich who stole from the rich. When a capitalist thief steals from a poor person they say, oh this doesn’t make sense, I can’t rob a poor person, I am rich. If you don’t believe me, I can pay you to believe me, because I have money and money is power. Now, when a rich thief robs his own buddies, uh-ho, this becomes a problem, because the truth is on the side of who is richer. But the thing is, you are both rich, so what do you do? Well, let’s go back to Caligula. Imagine the confusion the high ranked farts had when the emperor who had all the power and all the money suddenly decided to level himself with the lowest of the lows, the poor working class? That emperor must be out of his mind! This “legend” about Caligula’s madness all of a sudden got pushed into the “news.” Of course, the madman has to be removed from the power. He doesn’t serve the rich anymore. Aagh, he serves the people! This can’t be! This is blasphemy and all these big words the powerful say wanting to intimidate you.

The system has not changed. In a society where the money rule, money can buy anything. How can any civilized society talk about morals when the main incentive for people in the power is to stuff their pockets with as much money as they possibly can? Caligula was critiqued that he didn’t go to any war. Instead, he decided to sit in front of a lake and watch half naked soldiers run happily around. That must be an absolutely clear sign of insanity, because look at all these wars we have to fight, look at all these countries we need to rob, because, you know, they are the “others,” which automatically makes them the enemy. Oh, and then there is the gold and all that shiny shit those countries have.

When somebody as powerful as Caligula sees that the real enemy is not the people, that the problem lays inside, that somebody must be killed, because he knows something we don’t know (as if). The confusion sets in, the revolution is just about to happen and we all know what happens when a revolution happens, the heads roll of the shoulders. Oh damn, ze Marie Antoinette! ze Kirsten Dunst and ze chaos sets in. The power becomes accessible to anyone, literally, to anyone! That is why it is so important to make sure that the future emperors learn from Caligula’s example. You do not go against your own. If you do, you are going to be called a horse and sister fucker, which, by the way, would be fine if you would still go to wars and rob the poor, then your horse fucking is the rule of the empire… And I thought I was going to talk about the film.

Sometime ago I went to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. They have a bust of Caligula there. This is what was written under this bust:

“The portrait style created for Augustus was adopted by his family and immediate successors in order to stress the unity and continuity of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. This fine bust of Caligula (r.A.D. 37-41) has regular features and carefully designed locks of hair, similar to those in portraits of Augustus. Here, however, the artist has also conveyed something of Caligula’s vanity and cruelty in the proud turn of the head and the thin, pursed lips.”

And who the fuck writes this shit? This is again one of the examples how we are manipulated to believe in certain things. What I see is a bust of a young, beautiful face, of somebody who was made into a monster, because he didn’t follow the rules of the rich, but instead was looking for the Moon.

My case is closed, my dears. Now I need to fart a bit, so excuse me, I am leaving you with that melted bucket of ice. Check if your head fits in it.

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Connecting the Dots, Film, Psychology, Re-Views, Reality Check

“Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom” in the Two Toed World of Thoughts and Prayers

Oh my dear darlings, the fallen leaves of last year left on the ground to rot. I know you missed me, as much as I missed the stench of clogged sewer holes of New York City. I would be still quietly enjoying this gooey muck the mad, mad world is spreading around like some kind of cow shit on the fields of freedom if not for somebody finding the picture of my innocent toes (gasp!) worth of removal from the Internets. Boy, oh boy, they are going to be not sorry they stepped on my two crusty chicken fingers. They woke me up like that bear I ate last winter (long story).

You see, all would be cool and dandy and I would be still posting bare assed celebrities on social media, but the removal of one of my personal photos from the Facethingy I love to stick around and watch how the facts disappear and opinionated flat earthers become the messiahs giving the free ranged “thoughts and prayers” was a bit too much. My two titsy-bitsy toes caught somebody’s attention. It was utterly appalling. The unimaginable happened. I looked at my toes as I have never looked at them before. Oh you naughty little things. How dare you prostitute yourself around like that. I put my feet into the crocs, two and a half sizes too small, and… damn, I needed to calm myself down, so I went to my vault of the most calming movies ever made and re-watched the delightful film of them all Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, because, you know, that’s how I protest censorship.

Oh my dear darlings, if you just knew how this film calms me down. When the times are unsure there is nothing more enjoyable as watching some prune faced fucks (pardon for my French) torture kids. It is almost like watching a reality show shot somewhere at the Mexican border. I mean, there is a reason why raping, killing and abducting kids for prostitution and organ harvesting is so in vogue today. Just look at this film Pasolini created in 1975. He got killed before the premier of the film though, so there is no way for us to find about all these fashionable traits we are experiencing today, but the evidence he left behind in the film might reveal to us the mystery of it all.

Salo, o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom). Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini. Subject and Script: Pier Paolo Pasolini and Sergio Citti. Criterion, 1975, (that’s right, my darlings, you will need to read the subtitles, but you might be distracted by some titties, a random ass fuck or your upset stomach, so the subtitles might become the last thing you will worry about.)

The movie is divided in four parts “The Antiferno,” “The Circle of Madness (or Manias),” “The Circle of Shit,” and “The Circle of Blood.” Every circle is constructed as Dante’s “Inferno” deeper you go mushier it becomes.

In the Antiferno four men sign a paper where they decide to get married to each other’s daughters. (Oh, just look at that, the incest right from the top of the film, but there is more, no outsiders allowed to join the most exclusive club of them all!) The Duke, The Bishop, The Magistrate and The President are the rich and the powerful who will decide who will live and who will be punished during their “reign” in Salo “republic” they create. They have four libertine women to help them to achieve what their sick minds are imagining. They recruit four well endowed men as their guards (and occasional fucks) and go to the country side for…

Nine girls and nine boys are chosen during the Antiferno part. There are naked titties and penises flopping around. These “creators of jobs” are inspecting each girl and each boy. They are not interested in spending on no insurance, no. Perfect health and dental hygiene is checked on each of the teenagers who stand as some kind of cattle for sale. They are looked at, touched and otherwise humiliated by the four. It seems like there is no dental plan to be splurged on, so one of the girls is out of the picture, after it is discovered, she is missing a tooth. After the inspection is done, the boys and girls are collected into a truck and transported to their future job site. If I would not know when this film was set, I would have thought these boys and girls were taken to one of those places which name sounds like that forest in Brazil. Oh, there is one boy who jumps out of the moving car, but he finishes with a bullet in his scull. Poor lad, he thought he could escape the system.

In the Circle of Madness we see the chatto (fancy French name for the “castle”) where the victims will be living for the rest of the film (the rest of their lives). They are introduced to the rules. The four read them, as would a priest read the commandments in the church. They sounds pretty much like these agreements you must sign. If you don’t follow them, you will be punished. The first punishment drops in almost immediately. A girl who prays for God suffocates in front of His image. Poor girl, it seems like she didn’t read to the end of what she was signing for. She looked at something inappropriate on her wall. The Facething chocked her to death, thus banned her for life. (Oh my goodness!)

The first madam is introduced with her mad stories of sexual perversion. The behavior of the four is out of the proportions. Though, can you believe it, but this circle is not as bad as the circles which will follow it. In this circle an occasional rape with occasional nails in your soup or an occasional bullet in somebody’s skull are like this breakfast coffee with a croissant you might enjoy, though no coffee and no croissant is going to be served because…

In the Circle of Shit there is nothing more important than a piece of shit. It is served on a silver platter during the shit eating fiesta. The second madam tells her sexy scat stories. Nobody can poop before the party, because, hellooo, no turd can be wasted. It is the main dish on the dinner table, mind you. Of course, one of the girls could not hold it anymore. So she left a little tootsie roll in a poo-pee pot and oh my, my, she ended up with the rest of the punished girls and boys in a tub of browny delight, literally bathing in it, while the others enjoyed the shitfest with an occasional ass fuck as if that’s how you throw a party, all perfectly normal, don’t you think?

The Circle of Blood is not for the weak. The last madam is there with her blood and gore stories of pleasure. After she finishes her last tale about bloody this and bloody that, the four prepare themselves for the big bloodshed where all the punished girls and boys will be tortured and later killed. During this part the piano player silently commits suicide by jumping out the window (ups!) Two boys, after being fondled by the Duke or the Bishop, I can’t tell it now, dance a slow dance while he watches through the binoculars how a tongue, an eye, and scalp are cut by the other three on the square outside of his window, which reminds of a pigsty with the kids running around naked in the mud. All of it is performed in silence and in the distance.

The film has all the things that show how lovable the human nature is. Who could deny torturing kids while some “proper” ladies in their most expensive ballgowns tell us how they were taken advantage of by one or several “proper” gentlemen and how much they liked it. I mean, they tell first world country’s problems, but still. Oh, Pasolini, how dared you show the high society in such a light. You should had known not to step on anybody’s toes (aha, the toes!)

Not sure how far you can go watching this film? My darlings, good news, we are living in it today. Isn’t fabulous? What are these mass shootings or occasional wars we don’t even know why we fight anymore in comparison to all this fun we see in this film. There are always thoughts and prayers to be sent somewhere. It’s not like we have to go to a post office and buy a stamp or something. It’s all free and we can do that while siting on the toilet. Click click and we are done. You might feel a bit queasy after learning about some random immigrant dying somewhere at the imaginary border, very reality TV I would say, but to feel like somebody just stuck a metal rod into your brain, scalped you off and popped your eyes out of the sockets with the kitchen knife is what we are aiming for, don’t we? Besides there are always opioids to be prescribed by doctor this or doctor that, you know. These lovely rich, hard working people, will prance on your bleeding guts after they skin you and leave you to bake in the scorching sun after paying you the “minimum wage” because, well, that shit they were serving you on the silver platter was full of nails, so be happy the price for the nails was not deducted from your paycheck. My darlings, no crocs will stop you from leaping out of the window the way this piano player lady did by the end of the film, because, well, you just have no insurance to pay for all this wonderful madness. But, I mean, how dared she leave you without her piano music.

My dear darlings, after emptying my bowels quite a few times (that might actually do good for my figure!) I realized that maybe these pruned faced people who pretend to be so proper, shitting on the golden toilets, really are preparing us for a similar party. Aw, how very considered of them, don’t you think? Isn’t delightful how all is decided for us? There is no need to be a hero the way this boy at the beginning of the film was. Do you really want to escape this madness you are forced to encounter? You might finish with a bullet in your scull, if you try something stupid, like protest or some shit like that. Oh, you would be such a waste. There is so much potential in you, so much young skin to be skinned, so much torture to be experienced. The big pharma would really miss you. Many might say, you are lucky if you end up with the bullet and I say phf, they don’t know what they are talking about.

This film will be hard to swallow. If these kids can eat the actual shit while being raped and tortured by these very few who have the power, you will be just dandy. Pasolini ended up with his member out in the mud with an open fly and his scull mushed in as if it was a deflated ball. His body was ran over by a car a couple of times, because, well, with this film he stepped on those two toes he was not supposed to step on.

Is this a film you have to watch? Absolutely! Should you watch it with your date? Sure! Especially if you are trying to ditch that date and be written off in their phone book as a pervert. I tell you, every time I am around this film, I put it on. See, it saves me breakfast. (Smiley face)

Oh, and here is that picture of my two sexy fish sticks! Go ahead, get your rocks off, I don’t mind, neither do they. Tah-dah!

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Film, Psychology

Before Being Eaten – Death, Desire and Disgust in Film

Cannibal Holocaust. Directed by Ruggero Deodato. Written by Gianfranco Clerici. Grindhouse, 198019

    The film begins as a documentary about a missing film crew and its expedition into Amazon Rainforest. The crew goes to film a documentary about Rainforest’s cannibals. Alan Yates, the director; Faye Daniels, his girlfriend and script girl; and their two friends and cameramen, Jack Anders and Mark Tomaso never return to show their documentary.

    Instead professor Harold Monroe, a New York University (NYU) anthropologist, volunteers to lead a rescue mission to find the team and their film. He flies down to Amazon and discovers an absolutely primitive world of cannibals. Later on after much hiking through the jungle he meets the tribe which killed the four. The professor recovers the tapes and brings them to the States. After he warns that he has not seen anything more gruesome that the shot material he shows it to the commission of people who want to show the documentary to the wider audience. The documentary is shown and we experience the worst case scenario where all the documentarists are killed by cannibals after they perform and witness unimaginable events.

    In the beginning of the documentary the four introduce themselves and show how they are going to concur the Rainforest with their cameras. On their way they rape a girl which later is killed by the tribe. Then they burn the tribe’s houses and behave like they are the superpower. Later on we see who has the real power.

    Another tribe, the tree people, catch them one by one and gruesomely murder by decapitating, dismembering and raping the documentarists.

    After the commission watches all the material they are speechless. The commission decides to burn the documentary.

    There are so many studies of evil: eternal evil, evil in all of us, unconscious evil created by our psyche. But there is only one thought which bothers me a lot: why is evil called evil and why is evil bad? So many philosophers have agreed that evil is not that evil when one looks deeper, deeper into our soul.

    Evil through history has shown so many faces, though none of them has taught us how avoid it. But do we really need to avoid it and what would actually happen if we would finally avoid it? I expect the world would change as we know it. And I’m not sure if we would understand it.

    The world doesn’t change. Yes, the physical world is changing, but the human world is still in the same age as it was millions and millions years ago. We get angry at another human being. We think we are better than our neighbors. We go to war; thus we show that nothing has changed. That is scary.

    “… the price we pay for the advance of civilization is the loss of happiness. And since civilization itself arose as a flight from reality, it can’t even be justified as related to truth. The more civilized we become, the more we seem to suffer – without clearly gaining in knowledge.”20 Sigmund Freud

    The controversy of the film is based on our human perception. Nothing scares us more than fear of the unknown. It is enough for us to grab something gooey in the dark to make us scream. Our perception tells us things we know, but we might not be sure if it is real that something what we think it is. Could it be that what we grabbed in the dark is a decaying dead body? Or maybe that is something else that could make us sick?

    When I was a little child, I read fairy tales. They scared me so much that sometimes I had to go to sleep in my parents’ bed, thinking that they would protect me from unknown and imaginary things. Nobody knows for sure how Lucifer looks and why he is so scary. “From the standpoint of Jungian psychology, we might say that fairy tales do not recount consciously experienced human events, but that these “pure forms” make visible fundamental archetypal structures of the collective unconscious. This accounts for the non-human or, as Luthi puts it, abstract character of the figures; they are archetypal images, behind which the secret of the unconscious psyche is hidden.”21

    And now imagine that we have a film about something we heard from our great-great-grandparents, which is so real, because it involves us, human beings and nature. We heard stories about humans eating humans, maybe only in fairy tales, but when it comes to experiencing those stories on the screen, it is enough to put a couple of reality shots where animals are being executed without mercy. The story, even though not real, becomes a nightmare. The question if it is real is really asked.

    I grew up on a farm. My family was raising farm animals to be killed later for food. I remember one day my father came to our house and asked my brother follow him to the cattle-shed. The day came to kill a pig for food. Even though my brother is younger than I am, my father had chosen him for the “execution” of a pig. There is still a question why he had chosen my brother instead of me; maybe I was an “artistic” type, thus weaker for the purpose of killing of the pig? I do not know. I know one thing: that when it came to the point that my brother had to kill the pig he could not do it. He got sick to his stomach, because that was one of the pigs he used to feed every day. His soul made him upset, because it already had a relationship with the pig. He was not able to perform the killing, even though he was strong enough to do it. His soul’s intelligence forbade him the killing. My brother was able to help my father take care of the meat though, after the pig was killed by a butcher, but to perform the killing it was not completely in his power. It was in the power of his soul.

    My father had to invite our neighbor who was the one who always was asked to butcher pigs in our small town. There was nothing different about the butcher. That was his work. I know for sure that my brother was not meant for this work. Experiencing the “killings” in our cattle-shed did not make us different; even more so, we were able better understand the nature of an animal, an animal called human. Censoring the natural way of surviving creates a void in understanding of human nature.

    We want to pretend that there is a difference between us and other animals. The truth is we are the same. Seeing images which remind us about this is taboo and unacceptable to some people. We want to be superior; thus holocaust is born. To accept and learn is not what we want. We forget, thus we repeat.

To be continued…

 

Endnotes:

  1. Cannibal Holocaust is officially banned in over 50 countries worldwide. Certification status of the film today: Finland: K-18 (heavily cut VHS version); Norway: 18 (re-rating: 2005) (uncut); France: -18 (re-released) (DVD) (2004) (uncut); Singapore: (Banned); Finland: K-18 (2001); Sweden: 15; Japan: R-18; Hong Kong: III; Finland: (Banned) (1984-2001); UK: X (self applied: 1981); UK: 18 (re-rating: 2001) (heavily cut); Malaysia: (Banned); Ireland: (Banned); Canada: 16+ (Quebec); New Zealand: (Banned) (2006); Australia: R (re-rating) (2005) (uncut); Denmark: 15; Germany: 18 (heavily cut); Germany: (Banned) (uncut) 30; Brazil: 18; South Africa: (Banned); Philippines: (Banned); Italy: VM18 (re-rating: 1984); Norway: (Banned) (1984-2005); Australia: (Banned) (1984-2005); Mexico: C; Argentina: 16; France: -16; Iceland: (Banned); Netherlands: 16; South Korea: 18; Spain: 18; UK: (Banned) (1984-2001); USA: Open (rating surrendered: 1985); USA: X (original rating: 1984); West Germany: (Banned); Canada: R; Italy: (Banned) (1980-1984); USA: Unrated
  2. Sigmund Freud quoted in Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought, 234.
  3. James Hillman, ed., Studies in Jungian Thought: Evil (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967), 86.

 

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Film, Psychology

Before Falling in Love – Death, Desire and Disgust in Film

Ai no corrida. (In the Realm of Senses (USA title) or Bullfight of Love (literal English title)) Dir. Nagisha Oshima. Perf. Eiko Matsuda and Tatsuya Fuji. Genius Entertainment, Wellspring, 197612

    The film is set in 1936 Tokyo, where Sada Abe (Eiko Matsuda) a former prostitute, now works in a hotel as a maid. Sada with her coworkers witness a sexual act between hotel’s owner Kichizo Ishida (Tatsuya Fuji) and his wife.

     After one innocent meeting on the porch Sada and Kichizo begin an intense affair that consists of little other that sexual experiments, drinking, and various self-indulgences. Sada’s obsession with Kichizo grows to the point that she has to have his sexual organs always inside of her. Sada falls deeper and deeper in love with Kichizo. One day they perform a very similar ritual as if they are getting married. After the ritual Sada feels that Kichizo belongs to her. She cannot stand even an hour without him. She follows Kichizo even when he is finally visiting his wife. Sada becomes obsessed with Kichizo and wants him all the time. She threatens to kill him if he so much as looks at another woman (including his own wife).

    Their obsession with each other escalates to the point that Kichizo lets Sada strangle him during the love making. Finally Sada kills Kichizo while Kichizo’s organs are inside of her. After that Sada severs Kichizo’s genitals and writes “Sada and Kichizo, now one” in blood on his chest.

    RENEE: The world is filled with people who despise what they cannot imagine. They enjoy their afternoons napping in the hammock. But before they know it they acquire breasts of brass, a belly of brass, and they sparkle if you polish them. You know your kind, when you see a rose you say, “How pretty!” And when you see a snake you say, “How disgusting!” You know nothing of the world where the rose and the snake are intimates and at night exchange shapes, the snake’s cheeks turning red and the rose putting forth shining scales. When you see a rabbit you say, “How sweet!” and when you see a lion you say, “How frightening!” You’ve never realized what blood they shed on a stormy nights out of love for each other. You know nothing of nights when holiness and shame imperceptibly switch appearances. That is why you plot to exterminate such nights, once you’ve finished mocking them with your brains of brass. But if there were no longer any nights, not even you and your kind could again enjoy untroubled sleep.13

    Have you ever felt a body ache from something your senses feel, but cannot define? Yes, that physical pain which comes from somewhere inside your mind and body. Somehow it gets activated by an atom or a small part of undefined sense. It keeps bouncing around the soul until it gets so aggravated that there is that unavoidable need for cry. And what if you cannot cry? What if you are born in a place where a “cry for body” is considered evil? But “I have an infinite hunger for love / for the love of bodies without souls,” Pasolini wrote.14

    The controversy of this film consists of pain which is born of a mind without reason. The reasonless pain gives birth to a helpless feeling. Not many can accept that undefined feeling which makes them squirm and writhe. They would rather go and kill it with knowledge of something which cannot be explained. Kant is helpless. His guidance for reason hits the wall, when the soul cries for the need to be physically touched. That pain just grows deeper when one meets another and “understands” that there is no way away from it but death. The pain which is born by reason and will to be touched hurts more. It doesn’t let the body go. The reasoning mind wants to come and help. But in that case the help is destructive. It is full of undefined sadness. The shaken soul goes asking “undersoul” why it is so that one soul cannot satisfy another body’s reason, the reason for another body’s pain? Descartes said in the Treatise on the Passions of the Soul: “That to know the passions of the soul, one must distinguish its functions from those of the body”; in Sade it became: “To know the passions of the body, one must distinguish its functions from those of the soul.” In the [Lucienne Frappier-Mazur] Writing the Orgy it reads: “To serve the body, one must first tame it. As always, the head is committed to the service of the body.”15

    It seems like it all gets round and lost in circle, a circle which doesn’t let one go. Is that another person who feels the same pain, but has no explanation for it?

    One needs to stop that future pain which comes from our depth. What can one do?

    Nietzsche said that to feel no pain one must despise one’s body: “body am I entirely, and nothing else; and soul is only a word for something about the body.”16 What if I knew that “soul” is not the only word for something about my body? What if I feel the pain not within my body, but within my soul? I know that there is no body without a soul unless one dies. My body has an aching soul. It comes not from my wisdom, but from my knowledge of another body. Is it possible that my body thinks? Does it really know the difference between the pain and pleasure? What if the pain comes from pleasure and pleasure comes from pain? The soul is helpless here. It cries: I want “to go under.”

    A soul is asking, but it gets refused and banned from the future.

    In the Realm of the Senses, Sada kills Kichizo, thus becoming one with him. Again Eros and Thanatos are together within soul and body. Sada has Kichizo’s sexual organs. She gets what she is missing; thus she fulfills the void in her body.

    “Did you suck my penis all night long?” asks Kichizo.

    “I want to have it inside of me all the time,” smiles Sada.

    To understand the controversy of the film, one has to be repressed. If one is free and listens to one’s body, one understands the need for touch. Freud “thought that the taboo generally countered the desire to touch.”17 Touching a naked body equals touching a dead body. To touch a dead body is taboo. The fear of giving birth to death appears. If a body does not get the touch it needs the body starts aching. If bodily pain is too hard to handle without knowing why, one gets confused, thus undefined. The reason for censoring the film comes from the undefined body or from the soul which refuses to be touched.

    From the early ages when there was a superstition that you need to eat another body to fix your body’s ache, one went, got that body, and ate it. Kichizo lets Sada “eat” him. Nietzsche says: “One must cease letting oneself be eaten when one tastes best: that is known to those who want to be loved long.”18

    Sada will never heal her body ache, because her body does not have the organ she retrieved from Kichizo. One never should censor body parts if one does not want to have his soul cry over it.

    To be continued…

    Endnotes:

  1. In the Realm of Senses was banned in most countries upon its initial theatrical release. Certification status of the film today: Argentina: 18; Australia: (Banned) (1992-2000); Australia: R (re-rating) (2000)Australia: X (original rating); Canada: R (Ontario) (1991); Canada: R (Manitoba) 28; Canada: R (Alberta) (1998); Canada: (Banned) (Nova Scotia); Canada: 18+ (Quebec); Chile: 18; Finland: K-18 (uncut) (1979); Finland: K-16 (uncut) (1979); Finland: (Banned) (uncut) (1978); Finland: (Banned) (uncut) (1976); Finland: (Banned) (cut) 1977); France: -16; Germany: 18; Hong Kong: III; Hungary: 18; Iceland: Unrated; Ireland: (Banned); Italy: VM18; Japan: R-18 (Re-rating); Japan: (Banned) (original rating); New Zealand: R18 (Re-rating) (2001); New Zealand: (Banned) (original rating); Norway: 18; Singapore: (Banned); South Korea: 18 (1999); Sweden: 15; UK: 18; USA: X (Original rating); USA: NC-17 (Re-rating) (1991) 29
  2. Yukio Mishima, Madame de Sade (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1967), 73.
  3. Barth David Schwartz, Pasolini Requiem (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), 52.
  4. Lucienne Frappier-Mazur, Writing the Orgy: Power and Parody in Sade (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 122.
  5. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 34.
  6. George Bataille, Erotism: Death and Sensuality (New York: Walker, 1962), 47.
  7. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 72.
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Film, Psychology

Before Being Executed – Death, Desire and Disgust in Film

Baise-Moi (Fuck Me). Directed by Virginie Despantes and co-directed by Coralie. Remstar, 20005

     “…why not turn criminal and become an agent of Heaven?”6 The Marquis de Sade

     Baise-Moi tells a story about two girls; Manu a thuggish looking girl, played by Raffa Anderson and Nadine a part-time prostitute played by Karen Lancaume. Two of them meet at the train station after a couple of “misfortune” events in their lives.

     Before meeting Nadine Manu and her only friend, a drug addict, are rapped by three degenerate street punks. After the rape Manu goes to her brother and tells what has happened. Manu’s brother reacts by vowing to find and take revenge upon the rapists, but is killed by Manu instead. Manu takes all his money and leaves.

     Meantime in another part of the town Nadine returns home from her job as a prostitute to find her roommate all pissed of because Nadine has smoked all her pot and has drunk all the alcohol in the house. After some argument Nadine attacks her roommate and suffocates her. Later Nadine goes to meat her only friend a drug dealer and her pimp in a hotel. Her friend gives her a package with documents and asks Nadine to bring them to Paris. When Nadine’s friend leaves Nadine hears gun shots and witnesses her friend being killed on the street right before her eyes. Nadine quickly leaves the place and heads towards the train station. She misses the train but meets Manu instead.

     Manu and Nadine exchange words with each other. They realize that they share common feelings of anger and together begin go on a violent road trip characterized by the pattern of meeting men, having sex with them, and then killing them.

     Finally, after much killing and aimless driving, the two women enter a swingers’ bar and kill many of the couples there. The pair discuss what they have done, and agree that it has all been pointless because nothing has changed inside them even though they have become country’s most wanted.

     They keep going on the killing spree, but Manu is suddenly shot in a convenience store after her attempt to rob it. Nadine runs inside the store just to find the dead Manu’s body. Later Nadine decides to burn Manu’s body and to commit suicide. She flees to a remote cabin to do it, but gets arrested by the police right before she wants to finish with her “worthless” life.

     The Marquis de Sade enters his Bedroom, puts on a face of one of his libertines and says in a philosophical tone:

     “…that it’s only human pride which makes murder into crime? For the murderer just turns the mass of flesh that today appears as a person into tomorrow’s clump of earthworms. Does nature care more about one than the other?”7

     I remember traveling with my friend through a desert in California. What amazed me was that there was no greenery around. I remember thinking: “How strange,” but meanwhile I had another thought: “How strangely beautiful, those rocks and sand with some brown grass.” At that exact moment, even though I was adoring the scenery, I understood that I missed the greenery I was accustomed to every day.

     Closer to the evening we came to a house in the middle of the desert. Surprisingly it had a tree and a few patches of brown grass around it. The hostess of the house greeted us with warmth and asked us if we would like to sit in the shadow of the lonely tree. We agreed and sat in the shadow waiting till the hostess brought us some lemonade.

     While sitting on a bench I looked at the branches of the tree and realized that the leaves of the tree had thorns. It was impossible to touch them. The hostess saw my interest and told me that this tree was planted by her father and that it is dear to her soul. I remember thinking: “Strange, this type of tree in the place I was living would be considered poor and not worth anything, while here it had a great importance, not only because it was planted by somebody’s father, but also because it threw a shadow on patches of grass growing below.”

     Suddenly the hostess exclaimed: “How do you like my garden?”

     First I was puzzled and started looking for a garden the hostess was asking about, but there was only one tree and the brown grass patches around it. After the hostess saw my puzzled look she pointed to the tree and the grass and told that that was her garden.

     Later I learnt that she had been living in the desert her whole life. When I returned home I went to visit my garden. My garden was green and full of life. Roses in the garden had just bloomed. They were giving me the most beautiful colors I could imagine. I bent over to feel their scent when my attention caught some grass growing in the shadow of a rose bush. It wasn’t there before I went to California, so I grabbed it and rooted it out. Then I touched a rose’s blossom, but was stung by a thorn on the rose’s stem.

     “How beautiful, yet with thorns,” I thought.

     The lifeless desert and colorful garden made me understand something. To understand the beauty of a rose I needed a weed to grow next to it. To understand importance of a weed I needed a desert and a tree. To understand the impossible I needed a rose and a desert.

     Nadine and Manu’s need for each other is obvious. They were meant for each other as the rose and the weed was in the garden. People see a weed growing next to a rose immediately suggest that the owner of the garden is lazy, but in reality the gardener wants the rose to have company of the weed. Maybe he wants to enjoy the differences between the two of them. The rooting out the weed is making the controversial disappear. The norm of how the garden should look is forced upon the gardener.

     That spring I met somebody who made me think about the beauty in desert.

     I have always been drawn to deserted places. In the city one would call them seedy, lonely, sad, sometimes, the places where your dreams tell you their own scary fairy tales. There are only a few people who would go there just to be surrounded by all that mystery, the mystery only our unconsciousness can explain. I would go there sit and watch people who would play In the Realm of the Senses8 right in front of me. I don’t know why I was drawn to those places. When I was there it was almost like having a conversation with evil; who would answer my questions god knew no answer to. I believe George Bataille got some answers from those kind of places. I don’t know for sure if we were looking for the same excitement though. Dialogs between Eros and Thanatos were definitely happening there where Bataille got his inspiration (he was frequent visitor to bordellos). Bataille’s main idea is that sex is death. Through the sexual act we give birth to death; thus Eros and Thanatos are the same. Greek/Roman mythology says that they looked similar, with wings and were very handsome men; thus dialog between them is inside of our inner soul.

     One of those nights I met a person who came there to unleash his “fairy tales,” or let Eros and Thanatos go and make love to each other freely. He saw me sitting in the corner and watching. First he moved around the room, then he came to me and introduced himself. Suddenly he invited me to his house to read his poetry. I was intrigued. Was that my personal “fairy tale teller” saying to me: “go explore the unknown,” or was it my soul searching for that something Freud calls “the value of dreams?” So I went, even though I knew nothing about the person. I was surprised that I wasn’t thinking about anything bad that could happen in that kind of situation. I was interested in what the meeting would give birth to. Strangely enough, on the way to his place I remembered Pier Paolo Pasolini and his nightly escapades with male prostitutes. Still we don’t know if he was killed by one of them on the eve of All Saints. Most of the times our unconsciousness leads us to places where shadows become reality. Suddenly I imagined being taken by Nadine and Manu from Baise-Moi (Fuck Me) and executed without mercy. Nadine and Manu were so real at that moment that I even started thinking: “is it going to happen the way it happened in the film?” I don’t know how I could understand their pain at that moment, but I understood, or thought that I understood; maybe because at that moment I was without a place, going somewhere I could be raped and left as Pasolini was left:

     “Just because it’s a holiday. And in protest I want to die/ of humiliation. I want them to find me dead/ with my penis sticking out, my trousers spotted with white/ sperm, among the millet plants covered with blood-red liquid. / I am convinced that also the last act, to which I alone, the actor, am witness, in a river/ that no one comes to – will, eventually,/ acquire a meaning.”9

     Nothing made me be scared of the situation I was physically in at that moment. I was more involved in thinking of why Baise-Moi was born and how it was made. Was it born as a result of Eros and Thanatos having sex? Crazy thought! My mind flew into the realm of shadows, shadows which created “evil” films. German philosopher Leibniz in his Théodicée (‘Theodicy,’ 1710) explained “that in order to perceive light [good], there has to be shadow [evil], that a life containing nothing but sweetness would be cloying.”10

     Hm, I wasn’t expecting to talk in this sweet tone after watching Baise-Moi, one of the “evil” movies. Wasn’t I supposed to talk about killing somebody or having sex in unthinkable places?

     My mind began writing notes to my undersoul. They were very personal. I could not imagine how I could censor them. They were my nature, my experience, my life. Missing one or another part would just hurt my being. I would not be able to understand what was happening right then without looking at my own soul’s intelligence somebody would like to censor. I would not be able to write the second note to my undersoul if I pretended that what happened didn’t happen. So, before I was in love, I had to be alone. To be alone meant to be with my raw senses. I became like the butterfly which Thanatos was always carrying. I felt like Kierkergaard was yelling to my ear: “There are well known insects which die in the moment of fecundation. So it is with all joy: life’s supreme and richest moment of pleasure is coupled with death.”11

     I was fearless as fearless were Manu and Nadine, but “wait!” somebody said, that is not right, exposing yourself on screen is censored. But how can I show that I’m not afraid to be exposed? To be naked meant to show death. The naked body is a picture of death, thus evil, Bataille explained. Nobody likes death. We need to cut it out or censor it. You want to say you want to execute me? But I have not been in love.

     To be continued…

Endnotes:

5. Certification status of Baise-Moi today:

Australia: Refused Classification (re-rating) (2002); Australia: R (original rating); Belgium: KNT ?; Canada: 18 (New Brunswick/Nova Scotia/Prince Edward Island); Canada: R (Alberta/British Columbia/Manitoba/Ontario/Saskatchewan);Canada: 18+ (Québec); Canada: R; Chile: 18; Finland: K-18; France: -16 (original rating); France: -18 (re-release); France: X (re-rating) (2000) (court decision); Germany: 18; Hong Kong: III (heavily cut); Iceland: 16; Ireland: (Banned); Italy: VM18; Japan: R-15; Luxembourg: 17 27; Netherlands: 16; New Zealand: (Banned) (video rating); New Zealand: R18 (re-release); Norway: 18; Peru: 18; Singapore: (Banned); South Africa: 18; Spain: 18; Sweden: 15; UK: 18 (cut); USA: Unrated

6. The Marquis de Sade quoted in Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought: an Alternative History of Philosophy. (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2002), 184.

7. The Marquis de Sade, Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and other writings (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1965), 519.

8. Suggestion to the film by the same name (In the Realm of Senses. Dir. Nagisha Oshima. Perf. Eiko Matsuda and Tatsuya Fuji. Genius Entertainment and Wellspring, 1979)

9. Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bestia da Stile [Stylish Beast]

10. Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2002), 223.

11. Starrs, Deadly Dialectics, 97.

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Film, Psychology

Notes from Underground – Death, Desire and Disgust in Film

Introduction

     My head is splitting and I need some air. Just finished watching Baise-Moi, (2000) by Virginie Despentes; In The Realm Of Senses (1976) by Nagisa Oshima; Cannibal Holocaust (1980) by Ruggero Deodato and Gianfranco Clerici; Caligula, (1979) by Tinto Brass and Gore Vidal; and Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) by Pier Paolo Pasolini.

     I need somebody to talk to. God knows why I have chosen to watch these films. Is it because I am fed up with films which leave nothing in my mind, are pre-chewed by their creators and put in my mouth without any spices for me to sense? Yes, I would agree, I have become a consumer of “films without taste.” I have swallowed them. They have left nothing to think about. I don’t even remember that I have watched them.

     I got plenty of “taste” after watching the films I am going to tell you about. Every one of them went deep inside of me and left their marks on my thinking. My consciousness was saying “stop watching them, stop watching them,” but my unconscious was giving me plenty of reasons to continue what I had started. I understood that those films were very personal to me, personal to somebody, as personal as one’s life could be. So I kept watching.

     I was more interested in what those films have left in my mind, how they have provoked my thoughts, and how they have created an absolutely different world I hadn’t been used to. If I said that I wasn’t disgusted, I would be lying. If I said that I wasn’t moved, I would also be lying. So then why was my unconsciousness telling me to keep watching, when I clearly saw and read that those movies are “bad seed,” “evil,” controversial, and banned? What made them become like that and what part of human nature or psyche did they touch so that they became completely unpalatable and without merit to some people?

     My thoughts are splattered in my head and I don’t know how to get a grip on them: where should I start? Should I start by discussing my emotions and my psyche, or should I dive straight into the films somebody has forbidden me to watch? Really, there are so many thoughts and there are not many words I know to make my thoughts reflect the way these films spoke to me.

     I want to be as personal as I can be by discussing the feelings I experienced watching these films. They are somebody’s experiences. They are feelings and thoughts brought to the screen. Somebody dreamt about something and said: “What could it possibly mean?” or had some question about themselves, their sexuality, their need for something that life – as it is – could not provide.

     I dived into reading Freud, Jung and other psychoanalysts looking for some answers. There were too many “somethings” in my mind. I began reading philosophers looking for the meaning of what I had experienced. I found a lot of guidance in their books, but my feelings wanted to discuss something else, even though that something else was already discussed by Sade, Rousseau, Kant, Nietzsche, Camus, Dostoevsky, Bataille, or Mishima. That gave birth to my “notes from the underground,” to my notes from “undersoul,” to my notes of “intellectual feelings.”

To be continued…

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Film, Psychology

Approaching the Subject of Death – Death, Desire and Disgust in Film

Prologue

There are not many people who can truly say that they are not afraid of death. The second humans are born, in effect, they are born to die. Death has many faces; many of them are mysterious, frightening, and it is most often the case that when humans are faced with death they lose their “cool.” What humans do not understand or are afraid to understand makes them suffer. Humans suffer not from life itself, but from living it. A human being’s consciousness is defined by intellect or by a way of thinking. The knowledge of how thinking is born gives humans their perspective on how to live. Death, desire, and disgust go hand in hand on the road of the unknown. Humans bravely walk this road of disgust looking for answers, although usually emotions get in the way, of rational understanding. The mind dictates the norms born in a society, while inner souls are drawn to experience an unconscious story.

The social and psychological use and function of human experience is fundamental. It defines and at the same time breaks down boundaries. Inevitably, in modern times, cinema has played a huge part in defining those boundaries. And because cinema story and aesthetics are constantly metamorphosing, the boundaries do as well. What is unknown today might be known tomorrow; what is evil now, might be good tomorrow.

The act of reproduction itself is an act of death. By producing a new life humans actually produce another being for death. This circle of human nature is morbid but not unfamiliar. Humans all understand that they live by Nature’s order; and in that way, similar to animals. But the big difference between humans and animals is humans’ unique consciousness of the paradox of death and their unstoppable instinct to impose intellect on the natural order to make sense of it all. What is often not understood becomes a taboo.

In these series of writings, I will attempt to draw a distinction between human intellect and human experience. Most of the time humans approach lives through their experiences. The experience of others is nothing for us at the age when our intellect is forming. A child will still put a fork into an electric socket even though his mother said that it will hurt. Humans’ experience of pain defines knowledge of that pain. Through that experience the senses gain “intellect.” Human souls “read” these senses. That way they become “intelligent.”

Alongside each film I screened I read certain philosophers and psychoanalysts to gain insight as to how to react to it. They touched the parts of my brain which connect creativity, common sense and compassion. The written works of Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and Bataille gave me the stylistic approach for writing the series; the idea of using the “soul’s intellect” to better understand my own feelings towards the controversial. With their help I put my thinking into impressionistic writing, because my creativity is provoked by that which makes my brain work.

Intellectually explaining a feeling can sometimes kill the understanding of it. This is why I am going to take on a “personal tone” in the series. Unconsciousness is very important to me while constructing my sentences. Sometimes I explain myself through “free association,” the method many psychologists use on their patients. The flow of the “research” is accessed through my “dreams” along with the films and philosophical literature. The feelings provoke my thoughts, and written words get onto paper.

Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground is my main guidance in the structure of this work. Dostoevsky, in the first part of Notes, explains and narrates his feelings through a character, but leaves the actual events that affected him for the second part. He tells about affected feelings before the reader hears what caused them.

I often pay homage to Nietzsche and his construction of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. His lonely man’s voice provoked in me the tragedy of the human psyche. I want to call him a “psychologist of philosophy.” I play with his way of writing and, maybe, at some point even pretend that I am that voice. “With knowledge, the body purifies itself; making experiments with knowledge, it elevates itself; in the lover of knowledge all instincts become holly; in the elevated, the soul becomes gay.”1 “God is a thought that makes crooked all that is straight, and makes turn whatever stands.”2

Georges Bataille’s explanation of how he used his personal experience while writing Story of the Eye gave me guidance as to how to express something that I was not able to express or explain.

These are the keys one should know while reading next chapters. If it feels “too impressionistic,” let it be, because explaining a feeling is sometimes censoring the thinking of the soul. Personal experience through feelings for me is the soul’s intellect. At some point one might feel that there are too many people speaking at the same time and the main thought is buried somewhere in between. That is my purpose. Many times controversial films are censored and then uncensored or re-released. Why this is happening is also buried somewhere between “defined censorship.” The real question is: who gives the power of censorship to one or another group of people? How do they decide that something is inappropriate and can provoke “evil?” Are they not “evil” themselves who see movies with their own dirty minds? Are they not reflecting like a mirror what is wrong in their own lives? Is it not, in Freudian terms, “a fear of the unconscious?”

“In his denial of the unconscious, of the deeper self that is expressed in dreams, one may sense his fear of depths, of anything not visible to the naked eye – for he is, after all, the ‘objective’ observer par excellence.”3

I am very much on Nietzsche’s side when he says that “all instincts that are not allowed free play turn inward.”4

Oscar Wilde’s novella The Picture of Dorian Gray written in 1891 comes to my mind. The ironic part in the history of writing The Picture of Dorian Gray is that the book was used to accuse Oscar Wilde of “evil doings” and “helped” him to become a convict. A similar thing happened with the Italian director Deodato after his Cannibal Holocaust was released in 1980. The film’s mis en scene was so vivid and believable that he was actually accused of killing his actors during the filming. To avoid jail time or even a possible death sentence he had to find the actors and bring them to the court to show that they had not in fact been killed during the shooting of the film and were very much alive.

The play with the human psyche and hidden evil is what interests me while writing the series. Humans who would not know good without knowing evil.

So these are my “notes from the underground” after screening the films. Each “note” is affected by a specific movie and by a specific controversy the film touches.

To be continued…

Endnotes:

  1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a book for all and none (New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1966), Pg. 77
  2. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Pg. 86
  3. Roy Starrs, Deadly Dialectics: Sex, Violence, and Nihilism in the World of Yukio Mishima (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), 130.
  4. Starrs, Deadly Dialectics, Pg. 128
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Theater Farts

How Changing a Minor Key Could Become a Major Improvement or What One Could Learn about Theater While Listening to a Christmas Song

Oh my dear darlings, I know you missed me like last year’s Christmas, I know. I missed myself too. Only a few days have passed after New Year’s smashing celebrations and I am already singing Christmas songs in the shower for you. Darlings, I missed being important as much as I missed Christmas. You don’t believe me? Oh, you’re so sweet. What do you think I do on those lonely nights being away from theater and all these artistic endeavors? Well, of course, I write blogs and critique others. It helps me to get my importance back, so get ready to hear something you could use if you are as smart as I am, that is. Besides, it’s winter, what else one does but listens to SirGay’s salty balls jingle in the wind while he shines his unbelievable intelligence while living on a mountain somewhere upstate New York.

Christmas to me is like this show I am forced to watch every day every year for two months. It is like a broken record stuck on the same song. God wrote a play called Christmas and nobody can change any word or scene in it. This is precisely how I feel about some theater shows and some playwrights who are running skitters when a director or an actor wants to change a line or a scene in their written play. Playwright is God. Everyone else is just a decoration. Or is it?

Many times I would hear some playwrights complain how one or another director or actor changed something in their play. They would make it sound as if the world is just about to collapse. I don’t know why I am so concentrated on these poor playwrights. Maybe that is because I care about them and I want to prove to them that if a creative mind decides to change something in their work that change is a really good thing.

For some reason musicians are less uptight about somebody else covering and changing their music. Maybe that is the nature of music or maybe they are smoking too much MJ in studios, who knows. The point is that most musicians welcome interpretations of their music by other artists, be it another composer, a singer or a DJ. Why there is this uptightness in theater, I ask?

Before I prove my point that any change improves your work, dear playwrights, I want you to listen to two versions of the same Christmas song. I actually bought one of them to listen for my own pleasure. What the what? I am asking this myself too. I can’t believe I bought a song called “All I Want for Christmas Is You?” I must have lost my mind somewhere in my sweaty ass-crack. The song which inspired this entry is the Mariah Carey song, but here is a twist, the version of the song I purchased is Chase Holfelder’s. There is a major change in the song and the change is – the minor key. Before I go further please listen to both versions here.

Mariah Carey’s version

Chase Holfelder’s version

No, you really need to listen to them before continuing reading what I have to say about theater and playwrights. Listen! I said (smiley face).

Now, remember my rant about how some playwrights are just (insert a curse word here), because they believe that “if anything is changed in their plays they are going to be somehow destroyed and what not?” Remember that letter I wrote to them? Well, if you don’t remember it, here is a quick break down for ya.

For some reason there is this notion that if a director or actor or any creator but a playwright changes anything in a play, the play becomes like that herpes everybody is afraid to claim to have. My darlings, herpes has nothing to do with it, smell your farts. It is quite challenging to explain to today’s self proclaimed Shakespeares that Shakespeare’s works actually improved by all these cuts and different interpretations throughout these years Shakespearian plays have been performed.

But let’s not distract ourselves from the Christmas songs I presented to you here. Even though Chase Holfelder’s version of the song is almost unrecognizable and eerie as Christmas is to me, for some “weird” reason it is still the same song. The same way a Shakespearean play is still a Shakespearean play even though Romeo and Juliet are played by two boys in some productions. Well, of course, if you know the history of theater you know that there were no female actors allowed on the stage at the time Shakespeare wrote his plays. All the female roles were played by men only. To see two men play Romeo and Juliet nowadays is somehow innovative while the biggest innovation of the play happened at the time when women stormed onto the stages and the role of Juliet was given to a female actress. Do you see what I have done here, or you are still thinking about herpes?

In any case my dear theater people, especially you my darling playwrights, every time you are not sure if you like an interpretation of your play just remember Christmas and Mariah Carey, then remember that killing is not an answer ever! Enjoy those different takes of your work made by other creative minds and just let it be even if your jingle bells are up your ass and you want to vomit flowers. Believe when I say this, because of that Christmas song I forgave you all. I found my old/new love and you will find it too.

I’ll point it out to you and say it again; anybody who is inspired to give their take on your work is only improving your work? Anyone who is able to find something worth changing/interpreting in your play is giving you a great compliment. Your work could tremendously improve if you just let another creative soul to be creative with it. You could reap a major success by letting it happen. Enjoy and let it be.

Ciao-cacao and don’t forget to flush after you do your do-dos. Oh yeah and you should take care of that herpes!

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Theater Farts, Unsolicited Solicitations

Lord Has Smiled at the Orchard of Rimas Tuminas

Oh my sagging balls, why oh why is it so hard to write this next blog entry? I could put the blame on my pretentious writing genius who needs to get drunk to be able to give you all that, whatever that is that you are reading right now, but… I would be telling you lies. The bar is fully stacked. I can’t find any excuse for staying sober and for not being able to write something spectacular about the next theater director I have been having dreams about. I should tell you the truth, I forget about any need to be artificially intoxicated when I watch theater works directed by Rimas Tuminas. His works are just that good. I feel a natural buzz and my soul gets that needed je ne sais quoi to survive in this age of consumerism.

I saw his Cherry Orchard for the first time more than twenty years ago and… I became his lifetime fan. I could just write: Rimas Tuminas is perfect in what he does in theater and that would be it, so why do I need to write anything else about him while “perfect” defines everything he touches creatively? You know what? I should just put a bunch of videos with his work here and say, see this? This is how theater should be made. End of story! Plastikoff is besides himself. He is not able to say anything clever. No, no, no, no this is not me! I have to find a way to tell you about this tremendous theater director who is becoming better and better like this wine which with time turns into an expensive Cognac.

That Rimas Tuminas is one of the greatest theater directors is not even a question. The question is: how does he do it? Is there some kind of drug one needs to take to be able to release all this wonderful madness? Do I need to dip myself into some kind of magic lake and kiss a frog or something? I don’t know. This really kills me! I want to be just like him. That’s right, I said it, so deal with it.

As a young actor I grew artistically watching shows directed by Tuminas. I was broken as Ranevskaya in his Cherry Orchard. I traveled to Vilnius like Ephraim in his Smile at Us, Oh Lord. I got frozen into a statue from love while watching his Masquerade. I feel like Tania from his Eugene Onegin in the scene where she tells to her nanny how much she loves Eugene when I talk about Tuminas. I can recall almost every scene from these shows, even though I saw some of them, that’s right, more than twenty years ago.

Rimas Tuminas is able to “open” actors and their creativity. He makes them feel secure on the stage. Every single piece, directed by Rimas Tuminas I saw, has stuck into my brain like some kind of spell. As it often happens when one begins to talk about a great director one finds himself talking about ideas, feelings, emotions. One finds himself talking about meaning of life and… damn where is that port I need so much right about now? You know what? Instead of talking about Tuminas I am going to talk about his actors and their work on stage. They might be that magic potion Tuminas drinks before bed every night to become this fantastic.

A Lady Bug (Bozhya Korovka in Russian = Little Cow of Gods) just landed on my finger and Lord smiled at me (this I am going to count as my smiley face, no?)

Cherry Orchard and Sigitas Račkys

I believe we would have not known how good Sigitas Račkys is if not for Tuminas. Lopachin was his first break through role in Cherry Orchard. It seems like Cherry Orchard was a break through show for many actors of Little Theater of Vilnius whose Artistic director Rimas Tuminas still is to this day, even though he has also become the Artistic director of Vakhtangov theatre in Moscow.

A side note: it is said that Cherry Orchard almost didn’t happen. The little gossip gnomes of theater have told me that the show was literally created a day before opening. Apparently Tuminas was so unhappy with the way the show was going that he scratched almost all of it a day before opening and built a brand new version that is still running to this day. Is it true? I don’t care to know. I love stories like that. They create the needed drama and mystery. Theater loves s**t like that.

Who knew that Cherry Orchard would become the defining moment of Tuminas’ creative life as well. The show has all the elements Tuminas is famous of: a great quiet opening which turns into a large movement later, little scenes defining every character, a slow pace which builds up into a dramatic emotional explosion and, of course, a quiet ending which leaves your soul burning long after the show is over.

I decided to tell you about Tuminas’ creative genius through his actors for a reason. First, of course, you needed to be reminded about how great Plastikoff is and second… well this makes me more excited about writing and the process of connecting the dots. I know, of course, that for some of you connecting what Račkys’ acting has to do with Tuminas way of directing might be challenging, but… I believe in you. I am not going to write about each character and actor in every production Tuminas directed, no. Are you crazy? That would take me days and days with no end to finish. I decided to cherry pick (see what I have done here?) actors from some of his shows and just concentrate on their work highlighting certain specifics in Tuminas productions. Sorry, but you will need to find those dots yourself. I apologize in advance to those actors I haven’t picked. I promise to redeem myself later somehow. Maybe I will just come and put a show with you or something?

As you already have guessed from the name of this part, I am concentrating on Sigitas Račkys while talking about Cherry Orchard. It seems like Račkys really understood Tuminas and vise versa. After Cherry Orchard Sigitas became one of the leading actors of Tuminas’ productions. I am so glad that they found each other. This relationship gave birth to Galileo Galileo and Smile at Us, Oh Lord, two of Tuminas’ shows where Račkys leads the gang.

I could be clever and say that Račkys bought Tuminas’ attention the way, his created Lopachin, bought Cherry Orchard, but I digress. Nobody was buying anybody. This collaboration became one of the greatest collaborations seen on theater stage. I should say that you all are a very lucky bunch because you can watch the whole show right here:

http://www.vmt.lt/lt/video/view/?id=17

http://www.vmt.lt/lt/video/view/?id=19

Vytautas Šapranauskas and his Jewish nose

About Vytautas Šapranauskas one needs to write a book or several of them for that matter. The way this guy lived on the stage and made everything even the most tragic scenes comic is uncanny. There is no comparison to him in Inspector General and in Smile at Us, Oh Lord.

While a student I experienced this great theater moment. I got a comp to watch Smile at Us, Oh Lord. There was absolutely no space anywhere in the audience even to stand. The only way to watch the show was to stand in the sound booth on tiptoes holding your breath. Just before Šapranauskas came onto the stage I found myself surrounded by actors who just finished a scene I just watched. Later I realized that they all came to the booth to watch the mastery of Šapranauskas. One could only wish to be honored like this by their colleagues. Šapranauskas was Tuminas’ actor. It felt like Tuminas just let Šapranauskas play in his sand box called theater. You can see Šapranauskas almost in every production of Tuminas. Here I am giving you Smile at Us, Oh Lord.

http://www.lrt.lt/mediateka/irasas/15965

http://www.lrt.lt/mediateka/irasas/15970

Eglė Gabrėnaitė

There is a lot to say about Eglė Gabrėnaitė, but instead I’ll say nothing. If you already watched through Cherry Orchard you already know that this actress is one you are not going to forget. I am presenting here excerpts from Inspector General to remind you that she is as great in a comedic role as she is in a dramatic one. Enjoy! Oh yeah, watch Vytautas Šapranauskas and Arūnas Sakalauskas do their magic there too. My mouth is salivating from all of this wonderful madness.

http://www.vmt.lt/lt/video/view/?id=29

http://www.vmt.lt/lt/video/view/?id=30

I could continue writing, but I am just too lazy. Besides you have all this tremendous gorgeousness of theater to watch and connect the dots. Who knows, I might return to Tuminas some other day and tell you why I cherry picked these three specific actors, but… maybe we could discuss that in the comments section?

To end this entry I am leaving you with a link to Vilnius Little Theater. Get familiar with the place where a lot of the above mentioned magic was born.

http://www.vmt.lt/lt/video

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Re-Views, Theater Farts, Unsolicited Solicitations

Not So “Delicate Dis-Balance” of SirGay’s Salty Balls

Last weekend I had quite an event. My friends took me to see a show on Broadway. Oh my goodness, I thought, I am going to see a Broadway show. Like a good boy (in my case a man, I am not trying to kid anyone anymore) I put my fancy pants and went.

Damn it, I knew I needed to have a drink beforehand…

I sensed that there was something wrong with the show as soon as it started. After twenty minutes into the “action,” for some reason, I wanted to storm onto the stage and scream at everyone, like, and what is wrong with all of you people here? But then I realized, I was surrounded by rich white people and the exit was way too far.

Well, darlings, even though I had only thirty five cents in my pocket, I remembered that I am white too, so I blended in. My whiteness saved me from being looked at, like, and what the f*ck are you doing here watching white people talk on a couch for three hours and… oh my gog… they were drinking too.

As soon as I saw by whom I was surrounded, I put my tailbone on my seat, sat on it and patiently watched the whole damn show. I just kept thinking, my friends spent their two day’s paycheck just to have me with them, so I better behave or the next time… well there would be no next time for my tailbone on any Broadway theater’s cushioned seat if I don’t behave.

Being a true (emphasis on “true”) theater artist I kept thinking, is this what you need to put on stage if you want to be on Broadway? I thought that you need to sleep with somebody there to get a part, or… or, wait, is this what you do to get a part in Hollywood? I always mix these two. The feeling that grabbed me by my balls was not the most pleasant. (Disclaimer: SirGay’s more detailed descriptions of events involving his balls, Broadway theater seats and what not were edited out, we decided not to dilute real problems with such descriptions) I just kept thinking, what is it I am watching now? Watching a show that had a bunch of rich white people drinking around a couch and having all these drunk conversations about their, so called, “problems” was kinda… I don’t know… I just don’t know. I kept looking at the audience and the huge chandelier on the stage which probably cost more than five or six shows to mount Off-Broadway, an amount which could pay full salaries to everyone involved with these Off-Broadway shows and still have some leftovers for some Off-Off-Broadway performance to make. The chandelier mesmerized me and then something else happened… (The description about SirGay’s salty sweat dripping down his crotch was edited out. Yes, it involved his balls.)

There is a reason why I want to avoid naming actors involved in the production. Yep, like a real Broadway show there were big names attached to this show. Why have they agreed to be in this production? I don’t know. I didn’t have time to ask them that. I was too busy with my own important busyness of being appalled. I just kept thinking, would the show have the same amount of people sitting in the audience if the show would have been made with less known actors? I asked my friends, if they would see the same show if not for these stars? My friends almost in unison said, no. I knew it. It was another conspiracy against me and my art. (Where do I put my smiley face?)

What bothered me in this show was the absence of enlightenment and inspiration. Pff, no. What bothered me was that the show was built by the rich, for the rich, with the rich actors. And it was, of course, about rich people’s “problems,” like, why can’t I sleep in my room while there are at least fifteen other rooms available in the house? God damn it, I’d take any of them, as long as I don’t pay the rent. Absurd? Ummm… I don’t think they (meaning rich) thought it was absurd. You might say, maybe that was the point of the show, to show how absurd it is to be rich and not to be able to sleep in your room. Ummm… that can’t be true, but then you see the audience of predominantly white and no doubt rich and then you go, and who the f*ck if not white and rich can afford to buy tickets to Broadway shows today? Damn it. How the heck was I excluded from this VIP club? (I think I want to hug my pillow and cry myself to sleep now.)

When you see the audience of old white people in a Broadway theater, that nobody can afford to rent, with the stars, who have as much money as these people in the audience, talk and talk and talk about nothing, you might start thinking that you were abducted and were made to sit and listen how “bad” these rich people have. How absolutely terrifying it is not to know where the coffee beans are in the house, because you’ve never made a cup of coffee yourself before. I kept thinking, maybe at some point actors were going to go into a song or into something more absurd and the set would suddenly change into… well, more exciting than this piece of rich people’s house full of expensive chandeliers and furniture. I kept thinking and why the f*ck am I watching these white rich people drink expensive drinks in their expensive house when I, ze Plastikoff himself, cannot afford the cheapest Port anymore, why? And then it donned on me, I was there to see how Broadway really works. If you are not in the club of these one percent people who own everything, don’t even think to dream to have anything on Broadway. But if that is the supposed dream, I want to wake up. This terrified me more than the last year’s ass contest started by Kim Kay, yes, that’s how you supposed to say, Kim Kay.

Somewhere by the end of act two I started feeling nauseous. I could not take it anymore. The status quo of a poor artist “surviving” in the city was so obvious to me that I… wait, what did I do? Oh, I went to see act three. I understood that my nausea was also provoked by my (description about the state of sweaty balls was edited out).

Suddenly I saw Mr. Albee sitting on his couch and getting drunk to the point of oblivion and saying (maybe to himself), oh you want a play about rich people for rich people? Okay, I am going to give you that. Let me write something while I am still drunk. The play would make no sense to most of poor (who needs them on Broadway anyway?), but would absolutely tickle rich people’s egos. You see, they would say, there is a show on Broadway about us. See how important our problems are. These other (meaning poor) people will never understand what it means to be this filthy rich when you literally can start drinking whenever you like and just keep drinking, because there is nothing else more dramatic to do. And why don’t they (meaning poor) understand how hard our lives are? Thankfully we know how to squeeze fresh orange juice for an early morning drink. Screw you all, I am having a screwdriver now…

I am afraid my dear darlings that after this review I might be banned from all Broadway theaters, because how do I dare to say anything bad about rich people’s entertainment and even more, about white rich people’s entertainment, which only they are entitled to enjoy. You know what, my darlings, there is nothing for me to lose. I am going to sacrifice myself for the humanity. See how selfless and heroic Serge Plastikoff is? You haven’t heard from him for such a long time and now he is ready to put his well white being on the chopping block for you. You might want to ask me, what was happening with you our dearest SirGay? Why weren’t you sharing your wisdom with us for such a long time? Darlings, I was on a break, on a break from all these things that matter to you. I went to Broadway to find that it is so broad, this so called Broadway, that there is no place for anybody who is not rich there.

I feel like I need to put some lemon juice on my balls and spray it with pepper spray now. But talking about spraying my (edited)… so tha-dha for tonight. There is nothing else I want to tell you today.

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