Run-a-go-go: 4.46 miles (Tiger Balm is the shit, at least as far as my aching calves are concerned)
So, gifts I ought to acknowledge:
Lance, Angelique, and Drake gave us a lovely picture of Drake (in a frame he had painted), some dirty gum, a Black Apple print, and some awesome potholders Angelique made:
I’m still trying to get non-glare-y shots of the picture and frame, and the BA print.
Gillian’s freaking awesome package included two gorgeous pictures (that I’ll have to scan in, or something – because my attempts to take a picture of the pictures is not working), a cool as hell CBC pin, a very sweet note, and, of course, a granny square:
My granny squares have all been pretty hideous – the ones I’m making, I mean. But I’m using up scrap yarn and leftovers, which is the original point, more or less, right? I’m down with kitschy and ugly granny squares, but I’ve also been taken with the pretty ones I’ve received so far. I plan to use them to edge the log cabin blanket I’ve been knitting (if it’s ever finished). I’m very much looking forward to this next round of granny square swapping, and I’ve already finished two of my six squares to mail out. (I’ve been doing one an evening, so my hand doesn’t get fucked up again, now that the carpal tunnel is behaving itself.)
And last night, Greg and I watched Cannibal Holocaust. I wanted to see it because I’d read a review of Grindhouse over at FourFour, and basically got the impression that Grindhouse doesn’t really live up to the genre it’s trying to resurrect. (I’m pretty sure this is one of Rich’s main points, but I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth, so, this is what I got out of his review, which may or may not have been his intention. Disclaimer done.) So I thought I’d check out some “real” grindhouse, so Greg and I rented Cannibal Holocaust last night. And the clerk that rented it to us assured us that it would make us “physically sick” to watch. So, it opens with this cheesy music, and establishing shots of the rainforest (or wherever, Brazil, actually, I think – is that rainforest?), and I turn to Greg and say, “I know this is supposed to be pretty awful, but watching this opening, it looks pretty fucking lame. Like that witch movie, you know? That was supposed to be sick, but was just so *bad* that we had to stop watching?” (Said “witch movie,” by the way, was Hexen, aka Burn, Witch, Burn, and I figured if Udo Kier was in it, it had to at least be watchable, right? WRONG. It was so fucking awful. And the back of the box touted the film as gory and unwatchable? Really, the effects were laughable. It was sooooo bad.)
Well, that statement turned out to be half-prophetic, half-ironic (in a fucked up way) foreshadowing. Let’s deal with the half-prophetic part first. I don’t know whether the clerk was referring to the rape, torture, murder, and dismemberment scenes when he said we would get “physically sick” from watching CH, or whether he was talking about what actually upset me (which is the half-ironic-foreshadowing), but the rape, torture, murder, and dismemberment scenes weren’t really that shocking or upsetting for me. I think this is because of a couple things. First, I was expecting it – the title of the film is Cannibal Holocaust, after all. Second, after Greg sent me the links to two viral videos (the ass beer bong, and the poop-eating contest, which I will not link to, you’ll have to find those on your own sick time), my shock-and-nausea threshold has been pretty high. (Each of those two very real videos made me start actually gagging, and I had to shut them down before I threw up. So…yeah, that’s a pretty high bar, and if I know what I’m watching isn’t real, I’m not sure it’ll ever evoke the gagging response again.) Third, I’ve seen shit like this before. I’m not proud of it, because I think it’s really just me giving into my prurient impulses, but I’ve seen other movies that could probably be called exploitation movies, that made more of an impact on me. (Especially Salo, and I can never decide how I feel about it – whether it’s pretty brilliant social and historical commentary, or whether it’s just garbage.) And honestly, nothing that happened to humans in Cannibal Holocaust came anywhere near grossing me out as much as the ear-in-the-pudding scene from Dead Alive. (Which I really need to watch again soon.) Fourth, the four documentarian characters were so repulsive that I was cheering for the cannibals to eat them already.
Okay, now for the half-ironic-foreshadowing. And “ironic” in a fucked up way. Because I was thinking the movie would try to be shocking, and just turn out to be pretty lame. Which I think it did, in terms of where it specifically tried to be the most shocking. I think, at the time it was made, the scenes we’re expected (as an audience) to find most shocking are the ones involving rape, torture, murder, dismemberment, cannibalism, of the human characters. I’m not sure that, at the time the film was made, the filmmakers were thinking that the animal-killing scenes would be *all that* shocking. Shocking, yes, but the film was made 1979-1980, and I feel like obviously they didn’t think killing animals on film was all that fucked up, or they wouldn’t have actually killed live animals on film – they would’ve faked it. And I want to say that late 70s, early 80s, there wasn’t a huge concern with ethical treatment of animals, at least when used in experiments, according to what I remember from my psych classes. I’m not excusing it, by any means – I don’t think we need ethical guidelines to avoid cruelty to animals or our fellow humans. I think all we need to avoid it is some damn common sense and a little bit of compassion. Well, most of us. Some of us do need the guidelines to be in place, sadly. But what I’m saying is, I don’t know how much stuff like this (cruelty to animals, ethical behavior, etc) was thought about, so I don’t know how much the filmmakers thought about what they were doing with regards to the animals in the film – and in fact, the director has since said he regrets “introducing the animals” in the film, which I take to mean that he regrets the animal cruelty, and if given the film to make again, he would have omitted the animal-killing scenes. Not that that excuses him, again, because duh, dude, you’re cruelly killing live animals on camera for shock value. But I kinda think that, at the time of filming, people in general weren’t so enlightened (although a lot of the cast had problems with the animal killings, for what that’s worth), and I’m not sure the filmmakers intended the animal scenes to be the most shocking ones of the film.
Hence the “half-ironic-foreshadowing,” because the animal-killing scenes were what made me extremely upset. (“Ironic foreshadowing” because I’d expected *not* to be upset, so it was ironic that I was. But ironic “in a fucked up way” because I was upset by something I wasn’t expecting, and totally blindsided by.) The female impaled on a post? A little gross, yes, but my main objection to it wasn’t on a visceral level – it was more just feminist irritation on my part, that (sarcasm) of *course* the more hardcore torture and dismemberment scenes would involve women(/sarcasm). What shook me up, and upset me, and hit me on a visceral level (not enough to start gagging, but enough that if I’d seen any more I think I would have started crying, and I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t cry) were the animal scenes. And I hadn’t really done any research on what the film involved – didn’t check IMDB, didn’t check Wikipedia, didn’t check shit before watching it, other than knowing it was a grindhouse film about cannibals. If I’d known it involved real animal cruelty, real animal deaths on film, I don’t think I would have wanted to see it. All that being said, I do see it as a kind of statement about “civilized society,” and a statement that, in the end, I can agree with, although I certainly don’t agree with *how* the statement was made. And I found that statement obvious enough that I didn’t need Harold to spell it out for me at the end by saying, “I wonder who the real cannibals are.” (And I felt it was a lot hypocritical to pose that question in a film, when you’ve also cruelly killed six animals in the film for shock value.)
Bleah. Tonight I’m planning to knit and watch The Man Who Knew Too Much, which I’ve never seen before, and I’m sure I’ll actually enjoy watching. So that’s something.
