Tuesday, September 05, 2006

I love Ruggero Deodato, he's so evil












A Yanömamö girl picks lice from the hair of a man with club-fight scars

Last night I attended a focus group for Extreme Films Research and discussed House on the Edge of the Park in a group of four. The BBFC certificated copy has been cut by 11m 43s for scenes of "gross sexual violence and humiliating nudity". However the clear judgement of the focus group was that we all liked the film for its "class politics". We had each experienced something like a journey from addiction to recovery, a private shame transformed by discovering that one's debilitating preoccupations mirrored the codes and structures of capitalism. A conservative critic might frame the whole grounds for discussion in terms of the "problem of human evil", a classic non-problem from a Marxist perspective. At any rate Trotsky's view was that atrocities are more likely to take place when soldiers are fighting for a cause they know to be unjust. It may be we get up from bed and walk to work each day in the service of an unjust cause and by punctuating our lives with staged atrocities we recover something of the will to live. Films like House on the Edge of the Park were compared to a drug, or to the way the Yanömamö Indians like to brain each other with enormous clubs until they form hard welts on the surface of their heads; young men stagger around after each blow, returning for more until they finally collapse to the ground. The wonderful thing is after a few days when the mind starts to clear - one knows one has recovered enough to get back on the trip again.

1 comment:

carl said...

a brilliant post. I'm also interested in Pol Pot and Democratic Kkampuchea and am trying to use him for something i'm writing at the moment. " brother number one " seems to be the best book on him, but if you know of others.... i would say that the overlap in our interests is pretty significant...

why not include your email so i can irritate you up close rather than just through the comments box.though naturally i respect your privacy, blah, blah

feel free to delete this comment as and when!