The Human Centipede, and Post-Modern Ideas on Enjoyment
I recently watched The Human Centipede, a unique horror film by Tom Six. An absolutely disgusting - if biologically useless - concept of people being surgically connected mouth-to-ass is the premise of the film.
There's been plenty said already about the movie. The grotesque concept is in total contrast to the clinical and clean set, execution, and minimal gore. The Doctor is superbly done - slick German mad scientist, with massive BDSM / fetish overtones. How he degrades, slowly, over the movie, was great and unexpected. The film isn't moved by plot so much as our curiousity to see how the experiment pans out. Overall it is an open, simple, more contemplative horror movie, with powerful psychological tugs. How much the subtlety grabs you and how well you can imagine and sympathize determines how successful you find it.
Yet something so forthright is just asking for a metaphorical bent. At the end, I couldn't help thinking that the centipede is a literal expression of something that is normally vague and unseen- how, yes I'm going there, we are all connected. Normally we don't care much about people, let alone strangers, but what happens to one effects everyone in harder to see ways than the movie shows but happens nonetheleess, and we really should be concerned because of that. The movie is about working together, communication, boundaries. What the Japanese man says about being selfish digs this home. Could this ridiculous movie have an important moral? How could it not be more clear?
-------------------
What I find really interesting about this film is how extremely opposed the reviews are. Some found it poorly edited, badly written, with gaping plot-holes with lack of real conflict and characters no one cared about. Boring, slow, unsatisfying, with little actual gore, action, or understanding. Others thought it was one of the most memorable films of the year, refreshingly new horror that dug in to deep philosophical conflicts. It is simultaneously the worst and the best.
Which one is right? Do the existence of opposing viewpoints discredit both? How can there not be one clear answer?
This movie is but one clear example how dealing with art is dealing with subjectivity in value.
My current understanding is that, if your reaction is enjoyment, it's good, and if its not enjoyable to you, it's bad. It is relative to the viewer. This is why my view of the silly argument of 'what is art / what is not art' is so open. Anything and everything, because there is the chance that someone, somewhere, will enjoy it. I know from experience that people can be captivated by the strangest things. Even the shittiest DeviantArt scrawling is included. That also allows for unintentional art, such as nature. Sure, there are things that have a higher ratio of viewer enjoyed versus didn't enjoy, but that doesn't discredit other things.
The problems arise when people don't like the people who do / do not enjoy something. Responses are complicated because people are complicated, bringing different experiences that influence their reactions. Viewers focus and gain pleasure from different aspects of a work. What one person takes for granted the other may overlook completely. We often judge one another based on what parts they favor. It's crucial to keep this in mind if we are to understand one another as equals instead of deem one inferior to the other.
For example, I am visually oriented. I am predisposed to enjoy things that look interesting more than other things, or focus on the visual aspect of something. Therefore, it's unfair to judge my likes, that are based on me being programmed to like new visual stimuli, to those of someone who is more inclined towards some other aspect. Our brains don't operate the same. I think that's the biggest fallacy in thinking someone who has a different conclusion here is somehow stupid or wrong. They are not focusing on the same things. You wouldn't tell a fish it was a terrible bird because it's not a bird.
But our culture complicates things by judging the different aspects as more or less important, and people who like certain things better or worse people. You just like how it looked? Shame on you, the writing was terrible. But, I argue that all enjoyment has the capacity to be equal to one another. Feeling good in your gut is just as positive as being intellectually stimulated in to glee. Seriously, people can get spiritually uplifted by anything.
I bring this up because I was very impressionable growing up. If someone said something critical of something that I liked, I felt like I was retarded for not feeling the same way, and that it really was as bad as they said and I was a fool. But falling for that is the real foolishness. Now to me it's clear that when it comes to enjoyment, nothing is 'wrong'. Just because I think something is crappy doesn't mean you are dumb, it just means I can't get in to it.
It actually sucks when we don't like something, because think of how much more joy we could have if we liked more things. How much do we miss out on because we don't want to be seen as worse people for liking something for whatever reason? Happiness is happiness, right?
It's respectful to try and understand why people like/dislike something, too, and to acknowledging that they largely can't help it.
Being pushed to enjoy something we cannot is also bad. If we can't like something there's no helping it and I wouldn't fight that because that's also unfair and judgmental.
But we're intelligent enough to be able to deal with very complex situations, like enjoying something we know is qualitatively poorer than other things we like because we like anyway for other reasons. Not everything we enjoy has to be made to the exact same level as everything else. That does not make ourselves poorer people.
This hole thing is a tangled web of values and social engineering and still has lots of problems to explore and piece apart. But so far this way of thinking has benefited me a great deal, and that makes it worthwhile to me.
There's been plenty said already about the movie. The grotesque concept is in total contrast to the clinical and clean set, execution, and minimal gore. The Doctor is superbly done - slick German mad scientist, with massive BDSM / fetish overtones. How he degrades, slowly, over the movie, was great and unexpected. The film isn't moved by plot so much as our curiousity to see how the experiment pans out. Overall it is an open, simple, more contemplative horror movie, with powerful psychological tugs. How much the subtlety grabs you and how well you can imagine and sympathize determines how successful you find it.
Yet something so forthright is just asking for a metaphorical bent. At the end, I couldn't help thinking that the centipede is a literal expression of something that is normally vague and unseen- how, yes I'm going there, we are all connected. Normally we don't care much about people, let alone strangers, but what happens to one effects everyone in harder to see ways than the movie shows but happens nonetheleess, and we really should be concerned because of that. The movie is about working together, communication, boundaries. What the Japanese man says about being selfish digs this home. Could this ridiculous movie have an important moral? How could it not be more clear?
-------------------
What I find really interesting about this film is how extremely opposed the reviews are. Some found it poorly edited, badly written, with gaping plot-holes with lack of real conflict and characters no one cared about. Boring, slow, unsatisfying, with little actual gore, action, or understanding. Others thought it was one of the most memorable films of the year, refreshingly new horror that dug in to deep philosophical conflicts. It is simultaneously the worst and the best.
Which one is right? Do the existence of opposing viewpoints discredit both? How can there not be one clear answer?
This movie is but one clear example how dealing with art is dealing with subjectivity in value.
My current understanding is that, if your reaction is enjoyment, it's good, and if its not enjoyable to you, it's bad. It is relative to the viewer. This is why my view of the silly argument of 'what is art / what is not art' is so open. Anything and everything, because there is the chance that someone, somewhere, will enjoy it. I know from experience that people can be captivated by the strangest things. Even the shittiest DeviantArt scrawling is included. That also allows for unintentional art, such as nature. Sure, there are things that have a higher ratio of viewer enjoyed versus didn't enjoy, but that doesn't discredit other things.
The problems arise when people don't like the people who do / do not enjoy something. Responses are complicated because people are complicated, bringing different experiences that influence their reactions. Viewers focus and gain pleasure from different aspects of a work. What one person takes for granted the other may overlook completely. We often judge one another based on what parts they favor. It's crucial to keep this in mind if we are to understand one another as equals instead of deem one inferior to the other.
For example, I am visually oriented. I am predisposed to enjoy things that look interesting more than other things, or focus on the visual aspect of something. Therefore, it's unfair to judge my likes, that are based on me being programmed to like new visual stimuli, to those of someone who is more inclined towards some other aspect. Our brains don't operate the same. I think that's the biggest fallacy in thinking someone who has a different conclusion here is somehow stupid or wrong. They are not focusing on the same things. You wouldn't tell a fish it was a terrible bird because it's not a bird.
But our culture complicates things by judging the different aspects as more or less important, and people who like certain things better or worse people. You just like how it looked? Shame on you, the writing was terrible. But, I argue that all enjoyment has the capacity to be equal to one another. Feeling good in your gut is just as positive as being intellectually stimulated in to glee. Seriously, people can get spiritually uplifted by anything.
I bring this up because I was very impressionable growing up. If someone said something critical of something that I liked, I felt like I was retarded for not feeling the same way, and that it really was as bad as they said and I was a fool. But falling for that is the real foolishness. Now to me it's clear that when it comes to enjoyment, nothing is 'wrong'. Just because I think something is crappy doesn't mean you are dumb, it just means I can't get in to it.
It actually sucks when we don't like something, because think of how much more joy we could have if we liked more things. How much do we miss out on because we don't want to be seen as worse people for liking something for whatever reason? Happiness is happiness, right?
It's respectful to try and understand why people like/dislike something, too, and to acknowledging that they largely can't help it.
Being pushed to enjoy something we cannot is also bad. If we can't like something there's no helping it and I wouldn't fight that because that's also unfair and judgmental.
But we're intelligent enough to be able to deal with very complex situations, like enjoying something we know is qualitatively poorer than other things we like because we like anyway for other reasons. Not everything we enjoy has to be made to the exact same level as everything else. That does not make ourselves poorer people.
This hole thing is a tangled web of values and social engineering and still has lots of problems to explore and piece apart. But so far this way of thinking has benefited me a great deal, and that makes it worthwhile to me.