Truly Awful Stuff

Pornography is made to arise desire and this movie was made to arise thought. “Anatomy of Hell” is a film that cannot be viewed literally by applying social concepts to it. It is a poetic allegory, a legend, and a cinematic theorem where Breillat’s humanist philosophy is portrayed through sexual images. It’s supposed to have the naïve quality of the original cinema--- the silent film--- when images symbolized more than just what they represented. It’s also abstract because it makes it more personal otherwise we feel we watch someone else’s story different from our life. Breillat, as a director, is like an entomologist who has to examine things closely to “ know” them. And again many responses to her movie confirm the fears and the perverted morality of esthetics our society is permeated with and controlled by. It’s an insane hypocrisy to express disgust in art visualizing thoughts about the nature of a man and a woman but at the same time produce and watch reality shows like “ Fear Factor” where people devour slimy, smelly and odd looking things for money.

Here’s my analysis of the philosophical themes in the movie based on the director’s commentary.

The title Anatomy of Hell reflects the hell of female anatomy, which is the way fundamentalists regard a woman’s body. Her inspiration was Gustave Courbet’s controversial yet artistic and symbolic painting “ The Origin of the World” which can be seen in Musee d'Orsay in Paris. It is exactly what she reproduced in her movie---spread female legs exposing an open and hairy vagina with every detail of the female intimate anatomy.

The opening scene is the symbolical original meeting of the first man and woman, which is a confrontation of two completely opposite natures that terrifies both. Men and women experience this terror differently and this terror can create hatred or female self-hatred from rejection. The movie is not about love, a relationship or sex but about solitude of belonging to one species with two disparate mindsets and an effort to unite and transcend love expressed through our sexuality.

Although the director chose modern settings, a gay nightclub, calling Rocco a homosexual is wrong because the movie is not a social study but a legend. The image is figurative representing male domination, a place where men only want other men and women are excluded. She could have shown male politicians on TV with a single lonely female figure among them but since sexuality is a language men and women communicate with and bond the story is told using symbolical sexual images. The film is based on Breillat’s book “ Pornocracy” which is a political/historical term meaning “ The Rule of Harlots” and goes to the days when courtesans like Theodora ruled the popes and emperors. Courtesan is a dangerous woman, a femme fatale who makes men afraid they’ll loose themselves under her spell. The Man experiences the fear of being weak since men associate loosing control of their feelings with weakness.

The Deal is made to dehumanize the relationship and make it safe for the Man to experience anything that happens. Focus is to show what is “unwatchable” but in reality as soon as we watch we are either attracted or disgusted. Watching intimately evokes strong feelings never indifference. From hatred to curiosity, from curiosity to desire from desire to tenderness and what once seemed unwatchable becomes watchable.

The Woman is presented like a painting with her Odalisque qualities. She is a Sleeping Beauty ready for anything. In reality human body causes lots of anxiety and insecurity, which we hide in passion but here she is in repose, tranquil, offering herself to a painter’s eyes. http://mulot.free.fr/art/03%20-%20Ingres%20-%20la%20grande%20odalisque.jpg

After looking at that artistically perfect body the Man discovers female anatomy that horrifies both of them. The society esthetic codes imposed horror of femininity on women---a perception that body hair and organic secretions are frightening and disgusting. Yet after a closer, entomologist like examination the man’s revulsion is dispelled by fascination. The conspiracy of the modern society with its concepts of decency negates the sexual body and finds showing sexuality and desire obscene. However, when we have feelings vulgarity disappears. Breillat’s message is that social conditioning and human sexuality must be reconciled. That’s why the movie visually enters what is considered private and reserved for doctors using words starting with “psych”---a consensual hypocrisy of our society used to form a social bond.

This film is not only a theorem of anatomy and desire---the “unspeakable” but also it is about transcendence. In the end the Woman masters everything. She isn’t humiliated; she makes the Man see he cannot humiliate her and he cannot be humiliated either. Love is about giving away powers to each other. From that moment on the pleasure can begin---after the film---because what he learned he will use with the next woman. He goes like a King Kong from strength to tenderness and that tenderness women awake in men scares them because they see love as weakness. Weakness is a language. She feels defenseless against his force and he is defenseless against her weakness. Defenselessness is the path to enlightenment where there’s no need of emotional and sexual weapons. Power shouldn’t be used on others but on ourselves.

Biologically a man-woman relationship is not a war but historically it was set this way with women being the losers. All fundamentalist religions consider a woman inferior to a man and reduce sexuality to procreation. Sexuality is a part of our self-awareness and human sexuality is a language and a means of transcendence. We think and evolve therefore we are structured by love, which is transcendental. Love makes us feel unique and eternal and our sexuality makes us conscious of that. Human sexuality developed to uplift us not degrade us yet the religious and non-religious governments imply the latter because human sexuality is in direct competition with them since nation of lovers who identify themselves with transcendence cannot be governed. They keep us from discovering the transcendence of the sexual act by plunging us into guilt and imposing moral codes of obscenity. Pornography exists because of that guilt. It’s the truth we can never quite attain, like all truths. We identify with it and pursue that idea. Intimacy and secrecy are necessary to sexuality but not obscenity. It doesn’t mean we should have orgies but when we look at it the sin or indecency disappear and we feel freer, more loving to others because we love ourselves. There’s no vulgarity in love.

In the end the Man cries when he speaks the truth to another man which is no longer the truth. It’s a true account but the pain he feels says to the contrary. What happened is still happening inside him, something intimate and secret that came from the sexual initiation act he cannot share with other men. From now on he’ll begin a new life. He’s a new man but he’s alone. She returned to the consciousness of the womb, the sea---symbolical death. Every material death leads to the concept of eternity. Orgasm---the little death creates that fleeting feel of transparent body which allows us to identify with eternity and immateriality. Despite all we’ve learned and unlearned, there’s something stronger---our destiny, our true nature.

There are three allegory scenes labeled provocative---the lipstick, the tampon and the rake. They are not meant to stir or horrify but to understand. It’s human and as the Roman playwright Terence said “ Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto”—I’m a man and nothing human is strange to me. We are like a student of surgery who sees an operation for the first time---initially it seems horrible but then we get used to the sight.

The lipstick is a childish gesture to highlight the indecent parts and make them more beautiful; then he’ll put lipstick on her lips. The Woman is serene and The Man wants to defile her but succumbs to desire of possession which is violent but melts into tenderness. He cries because he no longer knows who he is but it is by being lost we find ourselves. It’s an alchemist story of a man’s journey to enlightenment. The Woman is in a Christ position and she affronts the man with the truth she knows. When he knows it too and admits it with the suffering and disintegration of his personality that it causes he’ll be reborn beautiful, human and serene. It’s an initiation journey, the alchemic whitening (he was initially dressed in black).

The tampon scene signifies sacrifice. Drinking blood of our enemy is a ritual of respect and eternal friendship. It refers to the cultural blood sharing traditions of Native American Indians and the Holy Grail Quest---the respected enemy will become our most faithful friend like in case of Lancelot. Blood is a sacred symbolism---Kir Royal, the noble blood. The only blood that’s considered disgusting is women’s blood. It’s an incomprehensible perversion in the hearts and minds of mankind. For girls and women alike it’s traumatic and produces fear of rejection. This deliberate disgust is present in all fundamentalist religious views and used as a tool to dominate and subjugate women. Even in the western societies tampon commercials show blue color instead of red. Despite that, it was not Breillat’s intention to dwell on social issues but focus on the origin of mankind.

The rake scene was inspired by Caravaggio’s painting “ The Martyrdom of St . Sebastian”. http://www.phespirit.info/pictures/caravaggio/p070.htm and Brancusi ‘s extravagant sculpture showing the female body curved like an egg.
http://www.oclipa.com/photolibrary.php?ph=203&i=All

Pitchfork is a symbol of deity---Neptune (ocean) but also a devil and femininity can be diabolical and divine. When she wakes up and stares at the audience the trident is on the side and makes her look like a goddess. Later she returns to the ocean associated with feminine womb. If the art is used symbolically like in this case it rises above debasement, which can only occur in the mundane world.

Breillat used voyeurism to expose denial and the Freudian nonsense that women suffer from the penis envy. Girls suffer from being bullied by the boys when they are little, having their skirts pulled up and from being told that they can’t behave a certain way because “ girls don’t do that”. If anything men are jealous of ovaries and the power of birth. It’s known that some female species in animal kingdom switch gender in a single sex environment to procreate. However, her message is not feminist but humanist. Men are mysteries to women but we don’t want to understand everything. If something is an enigma it becomes an ideal we pursue therefore men are women’s ideal and women should be men’s ideal with the same esteem.

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Oh-it's a doll, rightio then. My only concern was for the actual child who participated in that scene, not the director's ideas, which I had no problem with whatsoever.Thanks for clearing that up.