Salvation Magazine Issue 1 - Magazine - Page 7
Dark rituals cast a vast fascinating shadow
over a substantial amount of his work. As
you can see, we can also find nuns who aren’t Catholic here, and I know I will not be
the only one enjoying this. And it is safe to
say that religion’s omnipresence, particularly that of the Catholic religion where guilt
reigns supreme and insatiable, infuses sex
with violence even more. Sinners should always think about repenting as soon as they
enjoy too much of the pleasure that this
kind of life provides. Therefore, suffering
in pleasure appears to be the perfect way
to avoid the problem and to balance everything out instantly. Rops’s dark rituals are a
perfect transition on a road that leads to a
cult and mysterious French short film from
the 1920’s, ‘Messe Noire’ (Black Mass). Described as the reception and initiation of
a neophyte to a satanic cult, we witness a
young girl submitted to a ritual that implies
bleeding, butt whipping, leading to the final
sex scene with a good ol’ fellatio on Satan
and a pretty rare cunnilingus scene for the
period, the 6-minute film ends with an allgirl orgy.
B
ut can we speak about sex and violence à la Française without mentioning Jean Rollin? A key figure when it
comes to associating blood and eroticism,
Rollin’s aesthetic alone can be sufficient to
make you question your desires and unspoken fantasies. Young and (not so) innocent
women with evanescent figures heading for
deadly fates and bites, delivering vital fluid on
their languished breast. The recurring presence of vampires also allows Rollin to depict
submission and domination in the most exciting and hypnotizing of ways. At the end of
‘Une Vierge chez les Mort’s Vivants’ (A Virgin
among the Living Dead, 1973), you can hear
a character pronounce this sentence; “It’s not
Death that has defeated Life, but Life that always leads to Death”, perfectly translating the
inevitable domination of Death and therefore
the fascination that can be found in trying to
defeat her yoke.
To get back to literature briefly, it’s appropriate here to speak about Georges Bataille.
George Bataille, whilst not as infamous as de
Sade has produced philosophical tracts and a
novel that are not just Sadian in character but
which vie with de Sade both in terms of sexual violence and their ability to use sexual perversion as a weapon to destroy accepted cultural and religious norms. In his short novel
‘The Story of the Eye‘(1928) Bataille created
two teenage lovers who revel in blasphemy
and sacriligeous sexual violence which culminates in the murder and mutilation of a
priest, with Simone, the novels female anti-heroine, tearing out the priest’s eye at the
moment of his death at her hands. She then
inserts the eye into her vagina so that priest
can see his own corpse. Then, like de Sade’s
eponymous heroine Juliette, Simone and her
lover escape unpunished and sail off into the
sunset free to rape and pillage forevermore.
We can see from these examples that Bataille’s
definition of eroticism is the desire to “substitute the isolation of the being; his discontinuity, to movement towards a profound continuity feeling” (in L’Érotisme, 1957). Johan
Grzelczyk elaborates upon this, in an inspiring
essay (“Sade, perversité et espace” in Le Philosophoire N°18), saying sadist philosophy
Main picture left is a still from Pasolini’s Salò or 120 Days of Sodom. Above Clockwise from top; Hans
Bellmer, A Sade, 1947; Félicien Rops, Les Sataniques, 1882; An illustration from Justine by Guido Crepax;
the cover of issue 106 of the Italian erotic comic De Sade published between June 1971 and February 1980
by Ediperiodici; Anonymous French “artistic photograph’’ titled ‘The Happy Syringe’, Paris, 1920.
embraces a will to annihilate the other, as it
embodies an obstacle to the desire of profound
continuity. There are also considerations about
the relative selfishness it requires, but it would
be too lengthy to really get into details on that
matter right now. Nevertheless, this is an interesting topic because it begs to differ from
a consensus about the futility of violence, and
instead suggests that sex, violence, and horror
confront us with our own vulnerability. We are
left to decide whether we want to face it, repel
it, or accept it. This invalidates the usual judgements often attributed towards art brimming
with these themes. However, as we speak of the
delightful pleasure of mixing sex and violence,
lets clarify that violence can only be a pleasure
with consent.
T
his is why my last recommendation
would be a documentary made by Ovidie, which bears a common name with
one of Rops’s work:’ Pornocratie’. Fans of Jean
Rollin may be familiar with Ovidie from his
semi autobiographical film The Night of the
Clocks (2007) where she played a woman
who had inherited a mansion from an uncle,
a filmmaker, for which read Rollin. The mansion is ‘haunted’ by memories of her uncles
films, essentially the works of Rollin and as
she encounters these ‘memories’ so we are led
through Rollin’s filmic oeuvre.
Ovidie, is also a former pornographic actress,
a self described militant feminist and lately
a writer, documentary film maker and cam-
paigner for animal rights. Her most notable
works include the books, Porno ‘Manifesto’
(2002), ‘La Sexualité féminine’ (2018) and
the documentary, ‘Pornocracy: The New Sex
Multinationals’ (2017).
You’ll witness the porn industry’s reality and
the violence potentially endured by sex workers (more generally women). So, whether you
like sex and violence or even just sex, be aware
that the way you consume and practice this,
has a real impact, positive or negative. Be careful about ethics and respect; support sex workers; and most importantly: prenez du Plaisir.
You can read more of Dolly Wood here:
Fr.tipeee.com/dollywood
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