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2.4 The Perversion of Watching Film

To gaze is perverse, shaulust, [41] the desire to see and be seen is perverse. Looking is given pathological names in medical and psychoanalytic texts, and if the presence of the activity does not constitute its perversion, then the degree of activity does. For women, who are structured to be non-visual, (though very visible) any gazing at all would psychoanalytically, be called a perversion. It would indicate that woman was aligning herself with the male, or becoming pre-oedipal masculine. [42] Voyeurism, narcissism, scopophilia are all terms which encompass the desire to see, but which deliberately and only include the masculine. Women are constructed as not visual because their bodies present with nothing to see. [43] For women, wanting to look would constitute a double perversion - woman as perverted in phallologocentric isomorphic culture looks, at the peril of looking too much, a practice in itself a perversion.

Around this logic, however, is the fact that women want to look, and to see, but how they look and see will never be known, while their looking bodies are aligned with that of the masculine and hence perverted versions of visuality. This distinction between normal and abnormal looking suggests a normalized way of looking along with a normalized way of sexuality. If there is an idea of a totally normalized way of looking along with recognizable aberrations, I want to suggest this could be read backwards, especially in film theory. All looking is somehow perverse to the social constructs that prevent staring, winking, eye tics and other unacceptable occurrences in ‘life’ as opposed to ‘cinema’ and especially home video when we can look how we please. If visuality is, as it is in Western culture, given primacy at the peril of all other senses, then this primacy is a perversion of the fact of having five senses and validating only one.

 Reading Scott’s definition of normal sexual behavior into cinema, would define ‘normal’ viewing as something like: “Investing with the eye alone, toward a screen, in complete belief of the activity upon the screen (suspended disbelief) and reacting only with the eye to the ‘brain’ without any further use of any other organs, senses or viscera, for a gratifying sense of (mental not physical) pleasure.” [44] To watch a film and invest with more than, and away from, the primary normative looking organ, the gazing eye, would then be perverse. Traditionally, horror films are perverse; to watch and find pleasure in images of horror is also perverse. What makes the gazer watching the frightening fairy tale Snow White (Walt Disney, USA, 1932), or even a gory film such as Zombi 2 any more or less perverse than the gazer watching Fucked by a Dog (Netherlands, 1996, Director unknown)? Legislation is what makes it more perverse, because the audience watching bestiality may be prosecuted, not for acting as a bestialist may but for looking, for performing the same act as any film audience. The film literally takes the place of the object choice in a traditional configuration of desire. Any acts the image represents come to indicate a potential or substitute performance of a real sexual activity. Of course, possession (of the illegal videotape) is the plea, but possession is not what encourages cries of ‘pervert’. [45] The fact of desiring to watch images which are highly non-normative (or even un-perform-able to certain bodies) elicits this outcry. The Australian Board of Film and Literature Classification Legislation, 1999, RC: Refused Classification? states: “Films and videos will be refused classification if they contain gratuitous, exploitative or offensive depictions of;… sexual activity accompanied by fetishes or practices which are abhorrent…”. In the glossary, gratuitous is defined as “Material which is unwarranted or uncalled for, and included without justification of a defensible story-line or artistic merit”; exploitative as “Appearing to purposefully debase or abuse for the enjoyment of viewers and lacking moral, artistic or other values”; offensive is defined as “material which causes outrage or extreme disgust to most people”; while fetish is “An object, an action, or a non-sexual part of the body[!] which gives sexual gratification.  Fetishes range from mild to offensive. An example of a mild fetish is rubber wear. Offensive fetishes include abhorrent phenomena such as coprophilia”. [46] The television is taken as both object and instigator of desires which will spill into the ‘real world’, that are potentially disruptive if not properly signified and stratified into a hierarchical value system. It is interesting to note that even non-violent fetishes (coprophilia, urolagnia, although the OFLC see these in a very Stollerian sense) are banned like all banned references due primarily to their focus upon the flesh and the non-signified or wrongly signified matters of the body (gore, piss, vomit, shit, etcetera).

My aim is to explicate that even the most outrageous of perversions that may appear on screen are matched by the perversion of watching, of looking, of corporeally reacting, of visually desiring. Even if the eyes shut, the body is reacting, hence participating in the ‘being’ of the perversion. All reactions to the visual depiction of perversity are perverse, whether they are consenting with the image or in conflict with it. The very act of unadulterated gazing is perverse, perhaps only more so when the pleasure this particular perversion affords is denied or repressed.

As I discussed in ‘Pleasure’, watching constitutes a form of desire and pleasure, though what this is particularly remains unknown. Suffice to say such pleasure is neither necessarily good nor bad pleasure, desire for an object one lacks or any of the other more traditional configurations which involve the terms ‘desire’ and ‘pleasure’. I have already criticized audience-to-character identification for its cathartic, mirroring and hence fixed-subject reaffirming qualities. Watching can potentially allow the viewer to mirror in a number of other ways. Especially if the body on screen is made ‘strange’, through spectacular corporeal alteration or simply through non-logical narrative, the body of the viewer can become strange, perverted from its previous state. I do not wish to reaffirm character identification on a visceral though still literal level. I wish, instead, to open up a space for potentially ‘strange’ and hence transformative and new readings of film and the affect-image on the affected viewer in order to theorize the affect potential of disruptive and extreme, but eventually all, film. Film has been read as a mirror on reality which is why those films which defy this version are either ‘art’ (which uses symbols to represent reality on a figurative rather than literal level, yet still maintains a connection with that reality), ‘science-fiction’ (which predict future reality) or ‘low art/trash’ (horror and other illogical spectacles, whether the ill-logic is that of non-sense or of the ill-logical planes of characters, i.e. viscera). Horror demands new modes of thinking that suspend logic and identification which may be on the most seminal level, such as affect. I am not advocating a specifically visceral mode of watching but simply envisaging those repressed planes of the body in order to create a more multi-plateaued immanently experiencing body which negates the sealed and stratified body that affirms subjectivity.

Pleasure taken in watching that which traumatizes or discomforts the subject comes from two different sources; the horror which is unexpected (shock or fear) and that which is expected (yet still dislodges the subject). The nuances of shock and fear have their own life and could be given a book each. Brief divisions could however follow such lines as the following: Horror is possibly the most 'throw around' term of the terms terror, fear, horror and shock, because it is the genre term given defiantly to a particular filmic experience, namely that which is not desired, not art, not subtle enough in its address of emotion. It is defined from terror and fear as unexquisite, unenjoyable through lack of tension, a shattering of build-up and crafting for an all out climax. It is for this reason the most threatening to the subject of the three. It is the final and most shattering of experiences from which the subject no longer returns in one piece, but explodes into objectification, floating disjointedly. Terror alternately exists so that the subject may continue. It involves a cathartic release, a final confrontation that essentially must be so that the subject may relocate itself as 'other' from the anxiety, while still siphoning off the exquisite pleasures to be found in the identification with the terror. Between these two poles is the more unknowable fear, where trauma is evoked and played out without any concrete idea of threat or of result. There is no information to allow the subject to anchor itself and so it floats around, helplessly lost and without knowledge of its fear, its threat and any longer, itself. The subject is not destroyed; it simply ceases to have ever been. The first source of pleasure is the subject’s inability to know what is going to happen; hence she/he does not necessarily choose to place her/himself in the situation of witnessing a traumatizing image. For example Cape Fear (Martin Scorcese, USA, 1991) strolls along as a tense thriller. Max Cady (Robert DeNiro) romances a female lawyer, jokes with her, kisses her and suddenly punches her, throws her onto her stomach and bites out a chunk of flesh from her cheek before anally raping her. This scene transforms the film into a horrific and traumatizing one: up to this point the viewer may have been expecting a pulpy Hollywood remake but s/he are now afraid of the film. Ironically, it does cruise along predictably before and after this scene (especially with the knowledge that it is a remake) but that single event in the film has altered the insides of the subject watching. Narrative, and the ability to predict plot, has no controlling effect on this single filmic moment to horrify the subject with what it represents, to arouse in the subject feelings of ambivalence; guilt for watching, blame for not have being able to predict what would happen and hence look away, pleasure at the genuine emotional and corporeal, visceral jolt the scene gave. This single moment ‘shock’ value pleasure at the horrific usually does not occur in horror films. This is due mainly to the packaging of horror films in the video market, [47] the tense build-up music that accompanies many scenes of shock, and the myriad gruesome scenes that may occur throughout the film.  Non-horror film horror, by way of contrast, is almost destined to be a singular shock in an otherwise generic ‘drama’ film.

The second kind of traumatic pleasure is taken in explicit horror; films where the subject is quite confident about the nature of the film and its potential to arouse fear or horror. To come to the point where the desire for horror has been accepted, the gazing eye is faced with multiple perversions that refuse rational reasons for their drive. Perversion in horror film will, more often than not, confuse or exceed traditional definitions and forms of perversion rather than faithfully represent them. The subject looking for reasons and explanations behind the perversions of the protagonist of such films as Lucker the Necrophagus or the killer in La Sindrome di Stendhal (‘The Stendhal Syndrome’, Dario Argento, Italy, 1996) [48] will be frustrated and elucidate her/himself as having the same desire to pathologize as cultural, medical and legal faculties. In these films the viewer will ‘see’ that which is unseeable (in everyday life anyway), gore, viscerality, (sex with) cadavers. And the motive, plot and rational normative desire that occur in the characters of other genres of film are notably and deliberately absent. Seeking the reason behind perversity is the desire to disclose a secret whereby the construction of the very being of a secret is more important than and exceeds the answer to it. In L’Orrible Segreto del Dr. Hichcock [49] (‘The Horrible Doctor Hichcock’, Ricardo Freda, Italy, 1962) the protagonist is a necrophiliac but his desire is explained away as he kills in order to inject new life into his long dead wife. He had reason and motive before desire.  Macabro (‘Frozen Terror’, Lamberto Bava, Italy, 1981) is the story of a woman whose dead lover’s head is fondled and used for cunnilingus, but it is not ‘cranio-necro-philic’ desire as much as a recreation of a memory of a subject. [50] In Lucker the Necrophagus and NekRomantik and NekRomantik 2 (Jorg Buttgereit, Germany, 1988 and 1992) necrophilia is the means and the end of the pleasure, the drive and the sexual gratification. There is no reason why, only perverse action to do. It may be explained away as ‘fetish’ in order to validate the use of a certain object for gratification, but there is no evidence the corpse is entirely object or subject. In NekRomantik 2 Monika (Monika M) sits with her corpse-boyfriend on the couch, takes snapshots of it in domestic situations as well as having sex with it. To explain it as a fetish is to limit its use to sex only, rather than as an entity whose presence as companion exceeds simple sexual (‘fetishistic’) gratification. This logic of fetishization suggests Monika does not choose the corpse as companion, but is rather driven by her uncontrollable sexual drives, which, in their excess, rob her of control and choice. She does choose the corpse, it is more than satiation for her libidinal cravings, it is a partner, a subjective object (or objectified ‘subject’) entity in her residence. Either way, the corpse’s ill-defined subjective place in her life is as perturbing to viewers as its sexual function. If corpses are read only as objects, then the walking corpses of Dawn of the Dead or Paura nel Citta Dei Morti Viventi pose a more complex problem. They are corpses that exhibit anthropophagic desire; perverse (abject) objects become perverse desiring subjects.

The thrill-killer in many horror films is another pervert in terms of the abject pleasure taken in killing. [51]   The killer’s violence presents scenes, which for the audience, afford dual pleasure; that of the dying victim and the murdering perpetrator. An experience of cathartic muscular tension released in death meshes with the passionate surging of a nerve-tip through violence. [52] Rather than identifying with the killer’s character, a corporeal identification of both killer and victim - terror and aggression, pain and desire - could simultaneously be felt. In La Sindrome di Stendhal Anna Manni (Asia Argento) is a cop who trails a rapist/killer looking for his motive, trying to eviscerate the way his mind works, the elusive reason for his perverse drives. He kidnaps her and toys with her fear before she escapes and thinks she has killed him. [53] She becomes so entangled in the construction of the ‘secret’ of the killer’s desire that after he is ‘dead’ and the murders continue, Anna’s chief officer takes her off the case to cease her (perverted) obsession [54] with it. Finally, it is revealed that it is Anna who committed these murders. Following the killer’s death, in her desire to solve the killer’s desire she has become not the killer, but that desire. If the audience look too hard for the plot construction they will become the fear and dislocation that the plot’s absence arouses. If they attempt to foil, avert or repress their desire for perversity they will inevitably end up with another perversity.

The desire to watch images of violence and viscerality on film brings with it a fascination of disgust, a wish to disrupt the self through affect by these images. There is never any guarantee of exactly what the horrific pleasure will be, but there exists before the film a fascination by the subject to see what they would not wish to look at in the ‘real’.  The desire to see the unseen or unsee-able exists in everyone; it is being disgusted by watching the news stories of heinous crime, it is being more offended by a victim’s decapitation or the dismemberment of a body than the murder of a living human. It is the game the seeing subject plays with her/himself to find out how much can be taken, how much can be stomached? The creation of phantasmatic boundaries of ‘what I will and will not/can and can not’ watch pits morality against fascination. That very expression connects the fact of the eye watching to the visceral effect of horrific images. The subject is not looking simply for an image, but looking for a flesh reaction. To desire a reaction in the body is libidinal, it is the seeking of pleasure, even if the pleasure is derived from a gruesome site. Freud states “All comparatively intense affective processes, including even terrifying ones, trench upon sexuality” [55] . The inability to ‘stomach’ horror films is the inability to allow them in to the body, to ingest them, and be compelled by them upon a line of flight. However such a claim may point to ingesting images too well, being readily open to the images so they can make us sick, evincing the essentially porous and fluctuating nature of the body and its capacity to be affected. What the horror-film-hater fears lies directly beneath the symbolic crust, the container of the body, and is exactly what the horror film shows: the arbitrary integrity of the body, viscera, vulnerable, foreign soft interiors and the subject’s own abjection which these signs represent. The body’s interior at once presents democratic unity amongst all bodies and pure difference from the body we know. Privileging the derma shows a need for corporeal signification in order to ‘be’. The body opened up is not only an affect-ive line of flight but also a line of flight from the stratified body and the signifying skin. A censoring viewer denies repressed terrain of the subject’s own body exactly because s/he refuses to acknowledge any pleasure coming from those parts not signified beyond their physiological function. S/he will not look at them in horror films, s/he will not take any pleasure, even a basic cathartic one, in images of horror. It is ironic then that the subject uses the stomach to express disdain for horror, as if the very site of the horror, the interior organ, is expressing its own desire, but the subject cannot take pleasure in the stomach’s expression and construes it immediately as illness.

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• Depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena (my italics) in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that they should be classified RC.
• Depict in a way that is likely to cause offence to a reasonable adult a person who is or who looks like a child under 16 (whether or not engaged in sexual activity), or;
• Promote, incite or instruct in matters of crime or violence.

• if they promote or provide instruction in paedophile activity;

• depictions of child sexual abuse or any other exploitative or offensive depictions involving a person who is or who looks like a child under 16;
• detailed instruction in: (i) matters of crime or violence, (ii) the use of proscribed drugs;
• depictions of practices such as bestiality;

• violence with a very high degree of impact or which are excessively frequent, prolonged or detailed;
• cruelty or real violence which are very detailed or which have a high impact;
• sexual violence;
• sexual activity accompanied by fetishes or practices which are abhorrent;
• incest fantasies or other fantasies which are offensive or abhorrent.”