Hellraiser, Bataille and Limit Experiences

[Music] cliff barker the writer behind the hellraiser franchise being a gay man born in 1952 definitely knew both what it's like to have desires that society deems unacceptable and what it's like to be treated as some kind of foreign other however his movies have often been excluded from discussions of queer cinema on the grounds that the queer characters in his movies have no positive representation and although it's true that the so-called cenobytes in hellraiser are by no means straightforwardly sympathetic to portray them as merely negative is a very reductive mistake take a look at this quote from clive barker horror fiction tends to be reactionary it's usually about a return to the status quo the monster is the outsider who must be banished from the sanctum but over and over again i've created monsters who came from the outside and who call out to somebody to join them in the sanctum this is a very insightful quote and very true to the philosopher and writer george bataille whose books clive barker himself has read and whose theoretical works are extremely useful as a lens to look at a movie like hellraiser most traditional horror narratives function like this first some idealized and well functioning normal order is introduced that is the status quo then the normal order is threatened by some kind of invading or parasitic threat finally the threat is vanquished and the status quo is restored as shishak pointed out in his analysis of the movie jaws this is how certain forms of ideology work for instance nazi ideology first you have the ideal and healthy social organism the nation-state the reason people are clearly unhappy is not because of some problem within the organism but because of an invading or corrupting parasite for example people of other ethnicities this narrative functions in two ways first of all it is appealing to people because it allows them to structure the world in a very simple way while typically one would have innumerable fears such as unemployment abstract exploitation loss of meaning and identity and stability this ideological narrative allows one to trade all of those elusive and abstract fears into one concrete fear only secondly it is appealing to the established political order because rather than addressing internal problems that the system has it encourages people to focus on some kind of external threat clive barker in his works of fiction as well as bataille and his theoretical works actively fight against this kind of narrative the thai talks for example of how one responds to works of philosophy that threaten one's established system of thought and transgresses certain bounds for example nietzsche or marquis assad one response is to simply reject it it is too transgressive too foreign for us it is therefore dangerous and must be dismissed abolished ignored or vanquished another response is to first neutralize it and then accept it deprive it of everything that is different about it and then internalize it think for example of martin luther king jr during his life american state authorities and certain media outlets took the first route simply rejecting him as subversive dangerous hateful and illegitimate then after his death they took the second route they neutralized him started remembering him and teaching about him but only after stripping away almost everything that was radical about him thereby accepting him into the existing system this happens in many other ways too for instance when certain figures become commodified or turn into aesthetic fixtures or for instance like in my video on world music traditional music from other countries is commercially introduced but only after being stripped away of everything that's different about it both of these ways of treating the other are equally faulty because they refuse to accept what may be different but at the same time valid about the other and in this way protects the status quo whether it's a political system an ideology or some system of concepts batail just like clive barker himself suggests a third way we should note and even emphasize what's different about the other while neither neutralizing it nor rejecting it and being open to the ways in which it might change the status quo this can be a difficult thing to do it requires facing that which might make us uncomfortable without looking away if for instance batail's ideas about transgressing taboos make you a bit uncomfortable that's exactly what bataille would have wanted he wouldn't have wanted to be simply neutralized then made harmless but to be a source of change in our thinking this is how the cenobites should be viewed they can't be reduced to villainous monsters rather they are in some ways already within us representing our desires to transgress as well as that which is socially unaccepted within us it is made clear that the cenobites themselves were once human and that they do not actively seek out victims but only come when they are summoned by a person's desire this is a principle that was abandoned in the third film but only because clive barker was no longer working on it in this way hellraiser invites us to confront that which is different within us even that which we ourselves would sometimes like to reject this kind of transgression is a big topic in bataille's works he talks about the way in which transgression and taboo are not straightforwardly opposed they in fact reinforce each other transgression becomes even more desirable when we know that it is taboo when we explicitly think of it as forbidden it becomes alluring mysterious and inviting this can be seen in many instances whether it's a child taking pleasure and using a swear word forbidden by one's parents or an act of love that society deems unacceptable in this way the taboo reinforces the desire for the breaking of that very taboo at the same time taboos themselves are only possible if we also have transgressions that sometimes cross those taboos but tai gives the example of how the taboo against murder functions on the basis of that same taboo being regularly broken such as human sacrifice in ancient societies or the death penalty and war in contemporary ones and once again this is how the cena bites work the reason they are so alluring is because of the taboos that they at once break and reinforce and the primary way in which they do this is through what bathai calls limit experiences let me explain the subject with a pretty shocking starting point and i warn you that the images shown may be disturbing one day bataille was shown a photograph of lingchi also known as death by a thousand cuts that is the chinese method of torture where one's body is slowly cut into pieces this photograph was a public instance of linchi a man being tortured surrounded by a large crowd how did bataille respond to this image well he hung it on his wall and often looked at it throughout the years sometimes just stared at it why well not just because he has major problems although probably that too but because he saw it as an extreme example of a limit experience he was intrigued by the shocking and disturbing way in which the face of the victim seemed almost ecstatic and batail's own words at the sight of this photograph what burst upon me was the fact that these two complete contrasts were identical divine ecstasy and extreme horror that's what a limit experience is a kind of extreme experience in which we are taken to the limits of our being where boundaries are broken down such as the boundary between pain and pleasure anguish and ecstasy and this is exactly the experience that hellraiser focuses on explorers in the further regions of experience demons to some angels to others in fact one can even see a similarity between the face of the victim of linchi and frank in the movie as he is being torn apart by hooks it is the paradoxical nature of joy and passion that bataille was interested in the aforementioned paradoxical relationship between taboo and transgression but also the paradoxical nature of the highest pleasures we often take pleasure in things even more when we risked something for them when they are also a source of danger for us and what interested bataille is that because of this the height of pleasure is not just pure pleasure but pleasure intermixed with danger fear or pain a passionate experience of joy that at the same time risks to destroy us such experiences for batail are philosophically interesting because they lead us to the boundaries of our thinking at which language breaks down and the limitations of our thought are exposed he himself wanted to live at the edge of such limits even going so far as to form a secret society called asephal with some acquaintances and offering himself up as a sacrificial victim in it although no one wanted to adopt the role of executioner it opens doors what kind of doors doors to the pleasures of heaven or hell i didn't care which i thought i'd gone to the limits i hadn't the cenobites gave me an experience beyond the limits pain and pleasure indivisible but i often compared such transgressive experiences at the same time to religious experiences and for understandable reasons think for example of the aesthetic who purposefully deprive themselves of food and test their body to the point where their suffering meets divine ecstasy in a mystic experience an experience that takes them to the limit of thought and thereby becomes also an experience of revelation think also of the way that angels are portrayed in the bible they are often not simply attractive humans with wings as is portrayed in neutralized christianity in which everything transgressive about it is stripped away instead cherubs are winged lions while seraphim are six-winged snakes and take ezekiel's vision of god which is almost like a monster from a work of cosmic horror they are not merely pleasant human figures there to affirm our beliefs instead like the cenobytes they take us to the limit of our thought and in their radical difference make our boundaries less stable it is no wonder then that just as in battal's work religious experiences are related to limit experiences the cena bites also have religious connotations not just their ritualistic behavior but also the name cenobite itself which means a member of a monastic community and the fact that their world has a god this religious connotation is then contrasted while at the same time strengthened by their say the masochism and their fetishistic leather clothes the familiar and the taboo here intersect but of course you do not have to be tortured to reach a limit experience such experiences can be found in many other sources whether it's art eroticism religion or perhaps substance use you might have already thought of certain forms of fetishism for example where pain and pleasure become indistinguishable leading to new forms of pleasure that we can uncover this is where eroticism is also connected to art both are activities in which we can transform that which is usually seen as negative into an object of affirmation and thereby encounter limit experiences just like hellraiser batai connects eroticism even to death as both the encounter of death and the sexual encounter destabilize our boundaries for instance the boundaries between one person and another in hellraiser the breaking of such boundaries is symbolized by the literal transfiguration of the human body in his book the accursed chair volume 2 battali says that eroticism is contrary to customary behavior as expenditure is contrary to acquisition our self-assertion in the social sphere is always tied to behavior aimed at growth but in the fever of sexual passion we behave in a contrary fashion we expand our forces without counting and we lose substantial amounts of energy without restraint and without gain sensual pleasure is so closely connected with ruination that we have named the moment of its paroxism la petite the last phrase literally means little death in french and sometimes in literature refers to the sensation in which the orgasm is likened to death or an anticipation of death in which we experience a moment of losing ourselves so this paradoxical connection between sex and death that hellraiser explores has been felt by many people in different ways throughout history but this quote mentions another interesting notion that pervades battal's philosophy the distinction between acquisition and expenditure in our daily lives we try to acquire energy and resources try to increase our wealth this leads us to view everything in terms of utility this is the world of profane things however during a limit experience at the height of passionate art sex or celebration we let ourselves go we forget acquisition and waste resources with no expectation of return or gain this is the sacred world in which we escape from the servitude of utility and affirm life itself one of the things but i found distasteful about contemporary life is the way in which everything must be justified in terms of utility even the value of human life being given a number in cost and benefit analysis done by corporations however during a moment of pure expenditure of pure wastefulness we engage in an act for its own sake and so if one asks what the purpose of the cenobites is what utility they serve the answer might be precisely that they do not have any utility their purpose is the pure expenditure of energy the elimination of surplus energy and this is precisely where their sacredness comes from perhaps to an extent good horror movies bring us in a very mild way closer to limit experiences where that which we find horrifying repulsive or disgusting at the same time attracts us fascinates us even entertains us for bataille that's probably what a good horror movie should do first of all it should not simply treat the monster as an invading force threatening an otherwise healthy and ideal system nor has something to be simply neutralized and ingested but something at the boundary between the two something that is different yet in a way valuable and perhaps already residing at the limits of our thought threatening our comfortable ways of conceptualizing things at the same time such a horror movie would bring us closer to a limited experience perhaps even a revaluation of our values and our perceptions of difference and horror as the media scholar henry jenkins says the best artists working in the horror genre don't just want to provoke horror or revulsion they want to slowly reshape our sensibilities so that we come to look at some of the most outrage images as aesthetically pleasing and erotically desirable and further representing the monstrous gives popular artists a chance to move beyond conventional modes of representation to imagine alternative forms of sensuality and perception and to invert or transform dominant ideological assumptions and this is why it is wrong to exclude clive barker from discussions of queer cinema hellraiser reaches the extreme core of what it is to encounter difference while neither rejecting it nor neutralizing it to encounter a monster that's not just a parasite to be eradicated but something that uncovers the limits of our thought and shakes us out of our prejudices forces us to look at things with new eyes so that was my halloween video i hope you enjoyed and i'd like to of course thank my patrons there's so many of them at this point that this might be the last video in which i'll be able to read out all of them and i'm sorry for any mispronounced names mani hamidi lucy pearson dassan esketix alex wenberg jin woo lee red panda meet alexander gilnetsky mall cops are bastards keith bergen greg boyarco john han brennan georg haegon galileo but johnson philip dabrovsky peggy leonard bongo teeth running johann stridsman royal boo william kearney richardson dylanny thomas edwin camarina i will not give you my full name joseph ullman simon peter sebastian roll genesis chaveris igor dark killer 228 ka el baba jones alexander seth daniel grimmer evan hill timpee shimin quang simulacral irene adler maxwell koppelman john o'brien eric goldman always your comrade matt hutchinson do you know psy anton guilla i didn't enjoy bard college alan jensen some kind of deviated prevert i always thought this said pervert but it's actually prevert marshall lordon christopher simon shaw jacobson michael q warnock josh bowling stephen hicks and the postmodern feminazi marxist revival band musso gaius gratis trevor stevenson evie roske nathaniel lark koba dunning krueger poster child brian j knuckles hayley husk a pronounceable name sean oscar bad dreams sean brocklehurst ben kalziki nikolai lisac eric coronado tom mourinho mary of magdala comfy acre man ilya pippa jason bourne aperture 413 criminally vulgar kato last azzy the mazzy donald e strong jr noah trapolino cancer pigeons simon cook yavin arba arc stanton space smile pistol pete stephen z aiden williams elizabeth ward joseph patron bad horn choir quantum computation rooftop korean industrial robot kelly rankin john drumm no jinsu on gibbering idiot kerry juan chavez tim ormar numu andrew burns d lang cinebe isabel abdullahi robert phillips adam johns tendees123 john beatles and susie o thank you

Channel: Jonas Čeika - CCK Philosophy

Views: 131,687

Rating: 4.9375587 out of 5

Keywords: hellraiser, bataille, clive barker, limit experience, hellbound, horror, philosophy

Id: 3ge0P8z_q1M

Length: 18min 31sec (1111 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 29 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/powerbath]

Really enjoy this video. Though something that always irked me about Hellraiser is how, to me, it steps just a bit too far in making the cenobites completely villainous. The idea of creatures who seem evil only becaus they offer something unimaginable and grotesque is so clever, but they always seemed too consciously malicious, like they will take you even if you call by accident. Though you could say they respond to desires we dont even admit, bit still, if they were drawn back just a bit that would be perfect

[u/evildeadgirlfriend]

I always think of Bataille’s talk on limit experience and Kristeva’s talk on abjection when I watch or read horror, thank you for linking this