homo homini lupus, otherwise known as thoughts on "torture porn"

[intertribal]

Sarah Kane, English playwright.  Her first play, Blasted (found through reading this post on Narrative, Politics, and Sexual Violence by Matthew Cheney), was famously called a "disgusting feast of filth" by the never-filthy Daily Mail.  She said, "The logical conclusion of the attitude that produces an isolated rape in England is the rape camps in Bosnia and the logical conclusion to the way society expects men to behave is war."  She killed herself in 1999, at the age of 28.  After this (and seemingly because of some sense of guilt), her critics reached "a sudden posthumous consensus - the work wasn't hateful, nor was it about hate; it was about love."  Bold in copied text below is mine.

But why have so few Americans been given a chance to judge the play for themselves? (It has had only a few sanctioned productions in this country.) Partly it’s because Simon Kane, Ms. Kane’s brother and the executor of her estate, has denied several production requests.  “Mostly they’re ridiculous,” he said. “There was a company that applied for the rights to ‘Blasted’ and said, ‘We’re the people to do “Blasted” because we’ve done a stage adaptation of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” ’ ”  But gore isn’t the point. “The purpose of the violence in Sarah’s plays is diametrically opposed to the purpose of violence in most other people’s plays,” Mr. Kane said. “The purpose of the violence in Sarah’s plays is to resensitize people to what violence is.” (via) 

Harold Pinter was at the Royal Court the night after the first reviews came out. He says that he had never heard a voice like Kane's, that she hardly knew where it was coming from herself. "It was a very startling and tender voice, but she was appalled by the world in which she lived and the world within herself." [...]  "What frightened me was the depth of her horror and anguish. Everyone's aware, to varying degrees, of the cruelty of mankind, but we manage to compromise with it, put it on the shelf and not think about it for a good part of the day. But I don't think she could do that. I think she had a vision of the world that was extremely accurate, and therefore horrific. Because the world is a fucking awful place. It's a very beautiful place, but this species mankind is an absolute bloody disaster. The elements of sadism are astonishing. She wasn't simply observing mankind; she was part of it. It seems to me she was talking about the violence within herself, the hatred within herself, and the depths of misery that she also suffered."

As with Blasted, the critics suggested the violence in Cleansed was gratuitous and exaggerated. In fact, every violent incident in her plays was closely fashioned on real incidents. (The sucking out of an eye in Blasted, for example, comes from Bill Buford's account of football thugs' retribution against a policeman who had infiltrated their gang; the pole inserted up the arse and released through the shoulder was a Serb method of crucifixion; while the prisoner in Cleansed who learns how to count, discovers how much time he has left to serve and then hangs himself, is based on a man who was jailed on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela.) (via)

As thematic accompaniment, my current favorite Rammstein song, "Amour."