Category Archives: violence

Ruggero Deodato @70

Ruggero Deodato @70

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHfAc3CJStQ&]

Ruggero Deodato (born May 7 1939 in Potenza) is a controversial Italian film director, actor and screen writer, best known for his infamous 1980 film cannibal film Cannibal Holocaust.

Ruggero Deodato belongs to the same mantle that holds Joe D’Amato, Dario Argento, Mario Bava, Tinto Brass, Ruggero Deodato, Lucio Fulci, Riccardo Freda, Gualtiero Jacopetti, Sergio Leone, Antonio Margheriti and Bruno Mattei.

These were filmmakers of the pre-internet dark ages, the terra incognita of the 20th century, who exploited the ignorance of the general audience regarding prurient matters such as sex, drugs and rock and roll.

In 1979 Deodato started work on Mondo-style Cannibal Holocaust. Deodato caused massive controversy in Italy and the United Kingdom following the release of Cannibal Holocaust, which was accused to be a genuine snuff film. Deodato was forced to reveal the secrets behind the film’s impalement[1] scene and to parade the lead actors before an Italian court in order to prove that they were still alive. More importantly, Deodato was harshly criticized for the use of real animal torture in his films. Deodato’s film license was then revoked and he would not get it back until three years later

Younger viewers may have spotted Ruggero as a client in the film Hostel: Part II.

See also Italian exploitation, Italian horror film, Italian film, cannibal films

I was three years old when May 68 happened

May 1968

burning Citroën DS during May 68 from here.

I was three years old when May 68 happened. May 68 was the direct precursor of the hippie movement here in Western Europe. Most of our teachers had been brought up in the “hippie” climate.

Yesterday E-L-I-S-E posted this burning Citroën DS (the photo is new to me and is unsourced at E-L-I-S-E). It brings me to repost one of my favorite quotes on art and politics.This is from one year before May 68.

The juvenile delinquents — not the pop artists — are the true inheritors of Dada. Instinctively grasping their exclusion from the whole of social life, they have denounced its products, ridiculed, degraded and destroyed them.

A smashed telephone, a burnt car, a terrorised cripple are the living denial of the ‘values’ in the name of which life is eliminated. Delinquent violence is a spontaneous overthrow of the abstract and contemplative role imposed on everyone, but the delinquents’ inability to grasp any possibility of really changing things once and for all forces them, like the Dadaists, to remain purely nihilistic.

They can neither understand nor find a coherent form for the direct participation in the reality they have discovered, for the intoxication and sense of purpose they feel, for the revolutionary values they embody. The Stockholm riots, the Hell’s Angels, the riots of Mods and Rockers — all are the assertion of the desire to play in a situation where it is totally impossible.

All reveal quite clearly the relationship between pure destructivity and the desire to play: the destruction of the game can only be avenged by destruction. Destructivity is the only passionate use to which one can put everything that remains irremediably separated. It is the only game the nihilist can play; the bloodbath of the 120 Days of Sodom proletarianised along with the rest. —Timothy Clark, Christopher Gray, Donald Nicholson-Smith & Charles Radcliffe in The Revolution of Modern Art and the Modern Art of Revolution (1967) via http://www.notbored.org/english.html

Hitler @120

Adolf Hitler @120

Heartfield vs. Hitler

John Heartfield Hitler Swallows Gold and Spouts Junk, 1932. [1]

Adolf Hitler (18891945) remains a powerful and dark figure even 64 years after his death. His legacy as a personification of evil in the 20th century is rivalled only by Joseph Stalin‘s. Both were possessed by the Devil, Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican’s chief exorcist, asserted in 2006.

Which brings me to the problem of evil.

Epicurus is generally credited with first expounding the problem of evil, and it is sometimes called “the Epicurean paradox” or “the riddle of Epicurus.”

“Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?” — Epicurus, as quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief

But shocking as it may sound, both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin believed that they were actually bettering the world by their actions; the evil of Hitler and Stalin had — in their own eyes — a purpose.

Some feel that true evil lacks this purpose and only enjoys causing destruction and chaos as a form of ultraviolence without motive. As such, figures like serial killers, spree killers and psychopaths are the personificaton of evil.

It is their kind of gratuitous violence we fear most, because it is unmotivated, a caprice.

“Stranger-killing, the killing which has no motive, is something which we associate to “pure evil“, and that we fear more than anything else in the world. There are several excellent examples of this morbid fascination, especially in the world of cinema: some of the most “relevant” contemporary blockbusters deal with the theme of serial killing (Ridley Scott’s “Hannibal” and “The Silence of the Lambs“, David Fincher’s “Seven“, Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho“, Mary Harron’s “American Psycho“).” — Albert Hofer[2] via [3]

While we like to think –not without reason, the first spree killer is a postwar development — that this kind of senseless violence is a late 20th century phenomenon, proof exists that gratuitous acts of violence already existed as far back as the early 19th century. Witness this illustration by Dutch illustrator Christiaan Andriessen:

Senseless Violence

A boy attacked in the street by a butcher’s apprentice with a cleaver, 22nd of November 1806. “What’s the matter lad? Well, that boy over there just cut me in my face with his cleaver.” — from the diary of Christiaan Andriessen:

Landru @140

Henri Désiré Landru (born April 12, 1869 in Paris, France – executed February 25, 1922 in Versailles, France) was a notorious French serial killer and real-life Bluebeard. Landru was the inspiration for Charlie Chaplin‘s film Monsieur Verdoux (1947).

Landru by you.

Henri Désiré Landru (born April 12, 1869 in Paris, France – executed February 25, 1922 in Versailles, France) was a notorious French serial killer and real-life Bluebeard who was guillotined for at least 11 murdered women. Landru was the inspiration for Charlie Chaplin‘s film Monsieur Verdoux (1947). The method of lonely hearts killing was also used by the real-life couple portrayed in The Honeymoon Killers.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72B8SAe8Pk4&]

I was surprised to find in that film, Verdoux, references to Schopenhauer. When Verdoux is told that he appears to dislike women, he protests: “On the contrary, I love women, but I don’t admire them. He goes on with a chthonic trope and adds “Women are of the earth, realistic, dominated by physical facts.”

Last time I heard [an implied]  Schopenhauer mentioned in a film was Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt. Verdoux thus becomes World Cinema Classics #95.

P.S. There is a pretty good YouTumentary on the guillotine here[1] with an incredible soundtrack, “Élégie” by Igor Stravinsky.

“Rap das Armas,” or, Parapapapapapapapapapa

Rap das Armas by Cidinho and Doca

Rap das Armas” (1990s) by MC Cidinho and MC Doca

MC Cidinho and MC Doca

Rap das Armas (Rap of Weapons) is a Brazilianproibidão” song by that has become very popular through the film 2007 film Tropa de Elite, however the original song was already very popular in the early 1990s (there is no info on original release dates on discogs). The song illustrates the elite police who invade the favelas (shantytowns) on a daily basis to fight the drug dealers, with lyrics about fireweapons such as the AK47 popular among said dealers and their confronts with the police and other drug dealer factions, but clearly being on the side of bad guys.

Because of the allegations that the songs are an apology for crime, they are  banned from recording and broadcasting. The obvious analogy here is with its American counterpart gangsta rap.

The song was produced by MC Cidinho and MC Doca. The song, despite its popularity, is never played on the radio, and was taken out of the movie’s soundtrack after 2 weeks. The motive behind this was that the lyrics in “Rap das Armas” praise the use of drugs, the criminal factions of Rio de Janeiro, and the drug dealers themselves.

The song illustrates the violence of everyday life in the favelas. Brazilians are in danger not only when they take drugs but also when they take the bus or attend funk dances.

Proibidão, which literally translates to “strongly prohibited,” is a genre of Brazilian funk (pronounced “funkee”) music originating from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro where it began in the early 1990s as a parallel phenomenon to the growth of drug gangs in the many slums of the city. The drug gangs sponsored DJs and baile funks in the favelas they controlled to spread respect and love for their gang as well as hate to the other gangs. The music that resulted is proibidão and its most famous example is Rap das Armas.

I’ve been repeatedly listening to this song, enthused by the sheer simplicity of it. Researching its history brings memories of the film Pixote (1980) by Hector Babenco, an arthouse hit when it came out and my first exposure to the favelas. The favelas were recently depicted in Cidade de Deus, one of the best films of the 2000s.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrAZ48gHJII&]

Parapapapapapapapapapa,

papara papara papara clack bum,

Parapapapapapapapapapa!

The original lyrics:

Morro do Dendê é ruim de invadir
Nós com os alemão vamos se divertir
Porque no Dendê eu vou dizer como é que é
Aqui não tem mole nem pra DRE
Pra subir aqui no morro até a BOPE Treme
Não tem mole pro Exército, Civil nem pra PM
Eu Dou o maior conceito para os amigos meus
Mas morro do Dendê, também é terra de Deus
Vem um de AR15 e outro de 12 na mão
Vem mais um de pistola e outro com 2 oitão
Um vai de Uru na frente, escoltando o camburão
Vem mais dois na retaguarda mas tão de crok na mão.

De AK47 na outra mão a metralha
Esse rap é maneiro eu digo pra vocês
Quem é aqueles caras de M16
A Vizinhança dessa massa já diz que não agüenta
Nas entradas da favela já tem ponto 50
E Se tu tomar um “PÁ” será que você grita?
Seja de ponto 50 ou então de ponto 30 …

Translated and annotated lyrics[2]

The neigbourhood of Dendê is hard to invade
We with the Germans (German from enemy in the WWII meaning, by analogy, the police; it could also refer to gangs from the Complexo do Alemão favela) will have some fun
Because here in Dendê I will tell you how it is done
Here there is no “easiness” to the DRE (special police)
To climb up this neigbourhood even the BOPE (Police Special Forces) is afraid
Here there are no “easiness” to the Army the Civil(ian police) or to the P.M. (Military Police)
I give the best advice to the friends of mine
But Dendê neighbourhood, is also God’s land
There comes one with AR15 and another with a 12 (gage) in their hands
One cames with a pistol and another with two big eights (heavy arms again)
One comes with a “Uru” in the front, escorting the dumb ass (police officer)
Two more follow with Glocks in their hands

With an AK47 and the other with a machine gun
This rap is really cool, I can tell to you
Who are those guys with M-16
The neighbours of all our people (the Favelas) are already saying that they can not handle it (here it refers to the white middle and high classes of Rio who live properly in the city)
At the doors of the favelas there is already .50 (caliber)
And if you get a Pá! (BOOM!) will you scream?
Being of .50 or .30 (weapons’ calibers).

Clyde Barrow @100

Clyde Barrow @100

Clyde Barrow by you.

Mug shot of Clyde

Bonnie Parker (October 1, 1910May 23, 1934) and Clyde Barrow (March 24, 1909May 23, 1934) were notorious outlaws, robbers and criminals who travelled the Central United States during the Great Depression. Their exploits were known nationwide. They captivated the attention of the American press and its readership during what is sometimes referred to as the “public enemy era” between 1931 and 1935.

Bonnie and Clyde (1967) is a film about their lives. It is regarded as the first film of the New Hollywood era, in that it broke many taboos and was popular with the younger generation.The film was controversial on its original release for its supposed glorificaton of murderers, and for its level of graphic violence and gore, which was unprecedented at the time. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times was so appalled that he began to campaign against the increasing brutality of American films, although one has to add to that Crowther was very puritan about sensationalization.

Fascism @90

The birth of the Fascist movement can be traced to a meeting he held in the Piazza San Sepolcho in Milan Italy on March 23, 1919. This meeting declared the original principles of the Fascists through a series of declarations.

Destroying the fascist snake

Anti-fascist Spanish poster.

Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology (generally tied to a mass movement) that considers individual and other societal interests subordinate to the needs of the state, and seeks to forge a type of national unity, usually based on ethnic, cultural, or racial attributes. Various scholars attribute different characteristics to fascism, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism, authoritarianism, militarism, totalitarianism, anti-communism and opposition to economic and political liberalism.

The governments most often considered to have been fascist include the Mussolini government in Italy, which invented the word; Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, but other similar movements existed across Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.

Fascism and the avant-garde

Fascism attracted political support from diverse sectors of the population but most surprisingly also from intellectuals and artists such as Gabriele D’Annunzio, Curzio Malaparte, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Knut Hamsun, Ernst Jünger, Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, and Martin Heidegger.

Ze’ev Sternhell (The Birth of Fascist Ideology (1989)) argues that European fascism first articulated itself as a cultural phenomenon, as a nonconformist, avant-garde, revolutionary movement. Modernism, says John Carey in The Intellectuals and the Masses (1992), is a literary theory of fascism.

Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals

The Manifesto of Fascist Intellectuals was written during the course of the Conference of Fascist Culture, held in Bologna, Italy, on March 29 and 30, 1925. It was published a few weeks later in nearly all Italian newspapers on April 21, by tradition the anniversary of the Founding of Rome. The secretary to the conference told the Italian news media that over 400 intellectuals attended the meeting; however, the number who gave public support to the manifesto was only 250, among them Vittorio Cian, Francesco Ercole, Curzio Malaparte, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Ernesto Murolo, Ugo Ojetti, Alfredo Panzini, Ardengo Soffici, Lionello Venturi, Gioacchino Volpe, and Giuseppe Ungaretti. Luigi Pirandello, though not present at the conference, announced his support of the manifesto by letter. Support for the manifesto by Neopolitan poet Salvatore Di Giacomo resulted in a falling out with Benedetto Croce, who, shortly afterwards, responded to the Fascist proclamation with his own Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals.

Fascism in fiction:

Christ Stopped at Eboli

Carlo Levi was a painter and writer, but he also had a degree in medicine. Arrested in 1935 by Mussolini’s regime for his anti-Fascist activities, he was sent to live in remote town in southern Italy, in the region of Lucania which is known today as Basilicata. The landscape was beautiful, the peasantry poor and neglected. Since the local doctors were not interested in peasants and not trusted by them, he began to help them.

A Special Day

As her entire family (including her fascist husband) goes to the streets to follow Hitler‘s visit to Mussolini in Rome, an Italian housewife (Sophia Loren) stays home looking after some domestic tasks. Her apartment building is empty but for a man (Marcello Mastroianni) who seems repulsed by fascism (a strange attitude in those days).

The audience learns early in the movie that this man is a radio broadcaster who has lost his job and is about to be deported due to his political attitudes and his homosexuality. Unaware of this, the housewife flirts with him, as they meet by chance (or intentionally) in the empty building. During their conversation, the rather naïve and mainstream woman is surprised by his opinions and finally shocked when she realizes his sexual orientation.

Nonetheless, despite their fights and arguments, they eventually make love before he is taken away by the police and her family comes back home.

Further reading

Carlo Jacono @80 and Italian exploitation

Carlo Jacono @80 and Italian exploitation

Segretissimo n° 75 (art cover by Carlo Jacono)

An Italian translation of Malory by American author James Hadley Chase

Cover design by Carlo Jacono

Carlo Jacono (March 17, 1929June 7, 2000) was an Italian illustrator detective novel covers and regular contributor to Mondadori’s gialli and Urania magazine.

A digression into Italian exploitation.

My interest in regional exploitation or pulp culture is that what it tells about the region where it is produced. I am searching for national stereotypes by way of their exploitation culture; regional stereotypes deduced from regional fears and desires (horror and eroticism).

Italian exploitation culture is literature and films in the “low culture” tradition originating from Italy, cultural products which address the prurient interests of its audience. A quick glance at Italian society on the one hand, which its firm anchor in puritan Christianity, and its abundance on the other hand of graphic exploitation material, quickly reveals its double standards.

In print culture there has been giallo fiction, quickly followed by adult comics, the so-called fumetti neri.

But the nature of Italian prurience is most readily revealed in Italian cinema. Genres such as cannibal films, Italian erotica, Italian horror films, giallo films, mondo films, il sexy, spaghetti westerns, sword and sandal films all went a tad further than contemporary products of European exploitation.

Had it not for the world wide web, these maligned genres would probably not have been so widely known, but if you prefer reading books to the internet, here is a list of publications on European exploitation you may enjoy.

André Pieyre de Mandiargues @100

Yesterday would have been André Pieyre de Mandiargues‘s 100th birthday, had he not died in 1991.

Some quick finds:

Les Incongruités Monumentales by André Pieyre de Mandiargues by you.

Les Incongruités monumentales, Robert Laffont, 1948.

The Devil's Kisses, anthology edited by Linda Lovecraft

Featuring his story “The Diamond”Catelogue of Bellmer engravings prefaced by Les Incongruités Monumentales by André Pieyre de Mandiargues

Prefaced by Mandiargues

Le Merveilleux by Les Incongruités Monumentales by André Pieyre de Mandiargues

Arcimboldo le merveilleux, Robert Laffont, 1977.

His story La Marée and the 1967 novel La Marge were both made into film by Polish film director Walerian Borowczyk and it is de Mandiargues’s collection of pornographic items that is featured in Borowczyk’s Une collection particulière . He wrote several prefaces, amongst others to  Pauline Réage‘s Story of O and a catalogue raisonné of Hans Bellmer engravings.

La Motocyclette by Mandiargues

La Motocyclette

His novella La Motocyclette was the basis for Jack Cardiff‘s The Girl on a Motorcycle. He was also the author of works of non-fiction, such as a photography book devoted to Bomarzo entitled Les Monstres de Bomarzo and a book on Arcimboldo. His stories are collected in Le Musée Noir [The Black Museum] (1946) and Soleil des Loups [The Sun Of The Wolves] (1951).

His book Feu de braise (1959) was published in 1971 in an English translation by April FitzLyon called Blaze of Embers (Calder and Boyars, 1971).

One of his most controversial books is L’Anglais décrit dans le château fermé (1953).

Salute to Bacchus

Today is the feast of the Roman god Bacchus, known by the Greeks as the Greek god Dionysus. In my hometown Sint Niklaas, there used to be a bar called Bacchus. That was in the late seventies and early eighties.

I had to wait until the 1990s and the first issue of Wired Magazine to be properly introduced to Bacchus via Camille Paglia’s interview on her recently published Sexual Personae in which Paglia mentions the Nietzschean dichotomy of Apollonian and Dionysian.

Popular perceptions of Dionysus and Bacchus

Dionysus was seen as the god of everything uncivilized, of the innate wildness of humanity that the Athenians had tried to control. The Dionysia was probably a time to let out their inhibitions through highly emotional tragedies or irreverent comedies. During the pompe there was also an element of role-reversal – lower-class citizens could mock and jeer the upper classes, or women could insult their male relatives. This was known as aischrologia – αἰσχρολογία or tothasmos, a concept also found in the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Bacchus is less wel documented in text, but all the better in painting (Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Caravaggio). His name is connected with bacchanalia, a term in moderate usage today to indicate any drunken feast; drunken revels; as well as binges and orgies, whether literally or figuratively.

Bacchanal by Rubens

Rubens

Bacchanalia

The bacchanalia were wild and mystic festivals of the Roman and Greek god Bacchus. Introduced into Rome from lower Italy by way of Etruria (c. 200 BC), the bacchanalia were originally held in secret and only attended by women.

Bacchanalia by Auguste (Maurice François Giuslain) Léveque  The Bacchanalia were traditionally held on March 16 and March 17

The festivals occurred on three days of the year in a grove near the Aventine Hill, on March 16 and March 17. Later, admission to the rites was extended to men and celebrations took place five times a month. According to Livy, the extension happened in an era when the leader of the Bacchus cult was Paculla Annia.

Cornelis de Vos Triumph of Bacchus

Cornelis de Vos

Paculla Annia

Paculla Annia was a priestess from the southern Italy who, according to Livy, largely changed the rules of Bacchanalias so that regarding nothing as impious or forbidden became the very sum of Bacchuscult. In the rites, men were said to have shrieked out prophecies in an altered state of consciousness with frenzied bodily convulsions. Women, dressed as Bacchantes, with hair dishevelled, would run down to the Tiber with burning torches, plunge them into the water, and take them out again. The rites gradually turned into sexual orgies, particularly among the men, and men who refused to take part were sacrificed. It is said these men were fastened to a machine and taken to hidden caves, where it was claimed they were kidnapped by the gods.

Prohibition by the Roman Senate

The festivities were reported to the Roman Senate which authorized a full investigation. In 186 BC, the Senate passed a strict law (the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus) prohibiting the Bacchanalia except under specific circumstances which required the approval of the Senate. Violators were to be executed.