The Japanese author Mishima speaking of the Post war “Modern” dancer Hijikata:
When I met him the other day, Hijikata used the word “crisis” a number of times. He said,
“Through dance we must depict the human posture in crisis, exactly as it is.” He mentioned an example of such a posture in crisis and it was unusual: the back of a man urinating on the side of the street. Indeed, he was right.”
Build loos first, then fine people for peeing on roads' Atul Chaturvedi
This quote by Mishima was shown to me in my Post War Japanese Art class in Chicago and is principally taken from Alexandra Munroe’s seminal text Scream Against the Sky. This very heavy book was also the basis for my Graduate Thesis: Western Influences on Zen and Japanese Art. For the Japanese (And please Edward Said, forgive me) so accustomed to the horror of American fire bombings and the subsequent bomb, depictions of a monster--of a thing to be pointed at, was critical to their psyche. Horror was important. Horror was a kind of entertainment not unlike the arachnophobe bathing in spiders. The need for a Godzilla is an allegory for the Japanese predicament.
Perhaps this Horror is especially entertaining in a society that has been traumatized. It’s a community physically bathed in it. Or as Tarantino said “I can leave the violent parts in when I show my movies in Japan.”
Damningly, Grace E. Lavery says in her Quaint, Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan:
“Tarantino said, with what passes for affection, “in the last 25 years, when it comes to industrial societies, hands down the most violent cinema that exists in any one country is Japan. Sometimes grotesquely so. And as we all know, they have the least violent society of all.” I take it that Tarantino believed himself to be reciting some version of a psychoanalytic argument about the ethics of sublimation. The subject called “Japan” has successfully offloaded its demons into aesthetic representation.”
*As Said said (Said 1978). ... what is called Japanese culture, or so-and-so culture, divided by some frontier, does not exist"
All this sensuality reminded me of a now far too distant visit with my first wife (not my favorite) to the Glyndeborne Opera House in the United Kingdom. One of my yoga students was in charge of the cloak room and got us tickets. We were delighted to attend Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutti and I personally felt that it satisfied not just spiritually and intellectually, but as a carnal carnival of bursting bosoms as well. Mozart, and perhaps Opera generally is just very sexy. I was just overwhelmed by the wantonness of the thing and that it pleasured at many different levels of being. The wife was sort of left unmoved I think. Or as typical she just got really tired and went home to sleep. Her stolid insensibility was the principle catalyst for our divorce. I say this simplification, reductionately.
For marrying, and I have now done it twice as a foreigner, one must prove that you are in a sincere and authentic relationship. This standard is, again, a reduction.. What is a marriage? Is it a now asexual, but loving 60 year marriage? Or is it, unrecognizable when compared to the former, a polyamorous and abusive sexfest sizzlingly chronicled on Pornhub? Category, examined completely, tends to fall apart, and yet it is this vague establishment that allows me to live and pay tax in Canada.
Da Vinci and Gericault deconstructed
Taken as a given that forms and names are context dependent and inevitably a failure, the knock on Western ballet, Renaissance painting, and Bach is that everything is trying to uplift you in a pyramid structure. Whereas the minor key keeps you a little more grounded. Something like the way Butoh is trying to ground the viewer. Always reminding ourselves that the category of Japan, (which is West of here) is a convenient fiction. Categories fail us so reliably that Tarantino is barely more similar to an American than he is to an Italian. Is he as much Japanese as Mishima?
What I mean is, this is all of us. (Butoh performace of Sankai Juku, NY 2010)
“No one’s ever gone bust overestimating the American public’s interest in violence.”
Kieren Culkin playing Romulous Roy in Succession
I do wonder if artistic production is emblematic of a Society’s predicament? It seems like such an obvious point and yet artists and critics argue over this very premise. Is such and such an author best exemplifying the age or, clutching our pearls, contributing to our decline? These sorts of notions of autonomous choice are at odds with the notion that art is in indicator of the age. So are we symptoms of an age or actors of that age? In whose world is the decline of an Empire bad? Bad for Business? Bad for Genius? Are we the audience subject to the whims of genius? Is there choice?
Phillip Bagby on Culture and the causes of Culture in Anthropology of 1954 defined culture as similar behavior to others. Trends then.. culture is trendy and some folks are trendsetters? I suspect some of the hysteria on culture (say a righteous movement towards toppling monuments) is that if culture can be found to be abusive then there is ground for change in law and there is then recourse to Justice. And Justice defined by Plato as “fulfilling one's proper role – realizing one's potential whilst not overstepping it by doing what is contrary to one's nature.” We have to agree to that point.
My friend Michelle Kelsey Mitchell, a scholar at George Washington in DC and fouder of YoKids stated to me that race does not exist. She prefers the word ethnicity. It is observable that our genetic balance is not different enough to warrant the term. That in fact there is more difference in the genetic pool among Africans then there is in the entirety of humanity outside Africa. (Those crackers among us are familiar with the marks of inbreeding.) Perhaps then we could say that ethnicity loosely exists and norms of behavior are observable. Is Horror reification? Is it a real thing? Is it not an amalgamation of things?
Can we say truly that Horror causes no harm? When the relative disposition of the amygdala is so obviously affected by horror? Yet, realization is how laws get changed. Realization is the purpose of public protest. For example the general public in 1970 realized that protest was not healthy. The horror of Kent State in 1970 shifted polling numbers away from Vietnam Protest perhaps explaining why the War ended in 1975 and not on that day. The purpose of protest was to move the general public towards a realization that the war and violence is harmful. Instead the public learned that authoritarian regimes are fucking frightening.
Do we not make a social contract to better our total condition? Did not Great Britain unilaterally give up slavery? (Rather the middle classes demanded it of their sovereign. And really over centuries upended the order of who and what is sovereign over whom. Those inbreds are slaves in that palace. That much is sure.) And so perhaps we nurture the conditions for the Genius to manifest her wares and counsel. We make the conditions for her to prosper—to do well by doing good. And so we also make the conditions for the sociopath to prosper in the shadows. And so we allow conditions to fester to the state where sadism becomes the fodder of delight, n’est-ce pas?
How do we do this? We do this, I believe, by alienating the public to the other and to ourselves.
Depicted here the Clitoris
Actually, what this is, is an example of the neural wiring of the human Caucasian male. This homunculous depicts the map of how the brain sees itself and how much the mind understands of its condition. A yogi or a dancer, or gymnast will have quite a bit more links. That lady might have a complete map of her pelivic floor for example and its relation to the diaphragm and a subsequent awareness of vagal afference.
As an exercise you can see yourself sitting there in your seat. How much of your reality do you actually feel there? The largest radiant might be the giant halo that makes up your head. Then there is all that stuff down there. Way down below. Very little information on the pelvic tilt, but a big awareness of the hands, the toes, and the tip of the clitoris. That’s about it usually.
The Homunculous is in an apanic state. Apana, in Sanskrit meaning downward flowing energy as you are as well probably, You are unlikely to be in a pranic backbend, but more likely curled in a chair.
The sympathetic nervous system tends to take charge in this physical position; the muscles of the body acting on some E-pen device and contracting. This is also the state of the body in horror. Contracted, frightened, active, and alert. It is a very exciting state. One that my child adores. He loves being chased more than anything on earth. Sometimes we tease our friends as adrenaline junkies, which is perhaps too unkind if we look seriously at the term. Don’t we often say one is attracted to these states of beings? It is literally addictive. But, you see this in the youth. Much more than our sannyasins they like to stream into horror movies. (hmmm. I mean just stream horror movies)
Screaming Vivien Leigh and a screaming Drew Barrymore (Psycho and Scream respectfully)
These two ladies appealing across time to the youth market are both in their sympathetic nervous system. They are hunched, their chests contracted. The muscles of the face in a rigid mask. That we are alerted to their fear is our own biology. Our mind is attuned to this state, and the producers for these films rely on our anterior cruciate cortex’s concern for our fellows to gain our attention. And real studs too like Janet and Drew—people we like to look at anyway. The plot helps as well towards satisfying resolutions. This contracted form, however, this state of being.. that’s where the money is.
Again, what is critical in film is establishment. If we are to have a jump scare than we must be situated in the right mood. In any drama we must have a mise en scène. (and children love drama. They love a story even if the drama of their school day leaves them in agony.) In loveplay as in horror it helps if the curtains match the drapes. Rather, I mean that the set and setting of the play is conducive towards the intended mood. Not to say that Horror can’t happen in a love hotel. It can; just as loveplay can happen in a roadside toilet. It’s just that the establishment is key.
A film ultimately is a train wreck. A car crash. We are there to see this and we wish more than anything to understand why the participants crash and who they are and why we should care. Missing the beginning of a train wreck is a real misfortune. We long to see it unfold. We seek understanding in a world that is senseless. We seek category.
Film satisfies our desires through hints and allegations, allusions, and suggestion.. foreplay really.
Like the illusionist who waves his cape and unfurls theatrically the prestige as its put. The frisson, the Drs. The dristi. We see the God finally. Taking Darshan means to see in Sanskrit. What is beautifully established in Hindu temples is the sensation of seeing something miraculous, the existence of a thing anticipated. Entering a Hanuman temple in South India is not unlike a Disneypark line. Full of barricades and waiting and scheduled liftoffs. The revealling of the diety is not unlike a sunrise or the sudden appearance of a celebrity. Darshan and film take advantage of this natural excitement when a thing anticipated is finally revealed to us. As Bettleheim might say to us—comedy arises in us first when the mother covers her face with her hands and then suddenly reveals herself.. to the child’s delight. This great uncovering of the primal mother is the Tiepolo Pink, it is the arousal of the religious instinct.
Tarantino understands that film is a medium that demonstrates presently the blood and action of violence better than any other. He is not cynical, as much as he (in his phantasmorgical fantasies) is an amateur realist. A lover of the super real. And like Picasso telling a little lie to tell the truth. We want it too. We want the blood. We want the Darshan.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I believe, contracts and compounds the tension of the violent release, maybe a little better than Inglourius Basterds; where Brad Pitt starts slicing off scalps and the Bear Jew starts beating in heads a little early for me to feel truly expunged and exhausted. Like climaxing a little too early in the sex act. I kind of wanted to work for it a bit more, you see. In any introduction to screenplay writing course we are taught to build tension and desire to know and to see. That said Women seem to enjoy climaxing early and then often, buffeted by rather larger and greater crescendos at each interval, rather like an epic novel. So maybe it’s different for women. And there are more of you.
I have just sat down to rewatch the Basterds again. On second viewing it does satisfy and entertain. I am disappointed Shoshanna dies among the elder guard of the Third Reich. I wish she had a more complete revenge and escaped with her lover (whereabouts unknown.) The incision of Hans Landa is perfectly scripted and foretold and deserved. Though I wish also the Jew Bear had lived. Why did the plan call for him dying with the little perfect Italian?
Shoshanna and the Elders Guercino 1617
That moment where he (the one ostensibly with the worst Italian language skills) speaks his name perfectly to Landa, who unexpectedly speaks (and we mean the brilliant Christoph Waltz) fluent Italian is absolutely hysterical. Bravo he says to the one who can muster fluency in his own name whilst the others he directs around to his own pleasure like a Maestro.
This, ultimately, is what we have with this little film. It is Nazi killing as entertainment. The horror is controlled towards the comic. And always the comic is an element to Tarantino. In Reservoir Dogs when we watch Michael Madson dance to Hollywood or when we see Uma Thurman pull her syringe out in Pulp Fiction; Bruce Lee thrown into a Buick, we understand that Tarantino is essentially comic, and his violence is in service to the punchline.