The Philosophy of Hellraiser

among horror fans Hellraiser is a bit of a touchy subject though Clive Barker's Artistry as a director and writer and Doug Bradley's performance are considered unimpeachable Classics anytime Hellraiser comes up in conversation it's always with the tone you might use to talk about like someone whose promising modeling career was cut short by a devastating car crash oh yeah I loved Hellraiser when it first came out really too bad about its face this is made even more tragic by the sheer number of opportunities Hellraiser has had to find a good plastic surgeon leave the painkillers behind and move on with its life there are in total 11 Hellraiser movies most of which are considered by most horror fans to be embarrassingly irredeemably bad a franchise as unrecognizable from its original form as if it had opened the lament configuration itself like the Hellraiser franchise includes some of the straight up worst movies I've ever seen in my life and I love trash they're coming they the cyes there are several videos on YouTube that recap every Hellraiser movie rank them review them so I'm not going to do that here instead I want to track what happened to make this franchise the hot trough of vomit that it is and what it could and should have been instead let's begin with some mind reading that's right I'm actually psychic that's how I know that some of you just had the following thought oh I know why the later movie suck it's because the Weinstein Company was about to lose the rights to the concept their long-awaited remake was in development hell and so a few of the movies were just made on like $2 in a Nokia just to keep their ownership of the intellectual property from expiring what's known in publishing as an ash can copy that is true and it's certainly important to understanding the legacy of the franchise but I think this gets an oversized amount of attention in Hellraiser studies the Ashan movies which are 8 n and 10 are awful but they're far from the only awful Hellraiser movies many of which did have a budget people got paid for this the rights battle is a fun bit of trivia but it glosses over what I think is the fact that all the Hellraiser movies suck at least compared to the first two this goes a lot deeper than just cynical Studio Behavior there's an overwhelming feeling across the franchise that the people in charge of it after Clive Barker left just didn't get it almost like they were trying to make something in a language they didn't speak Troll 2 style and this extends to public understandings of Hellraiser 2 which kind of makes sense because the facts on the ground are weirdly not immediately recognizable as Horror in the classic sense like the cytes aren't ghosts or a distortion of something normal like a clown or a scary child they're not even really a metaphor like the babadook the premise of Hellraiser is this there exists in the world a puzzle box called the lament configuration sought after by hedonists looking for more extreme experiences but sometimes stumbled upon by unlucky idiots when you open it these BDSM entities take you back to their Dimension and torture you that's it that's all Hellraiser is oh so they're demons no this is the sticking point for a lot of conversations about what Hellraiser means thematically including I have to assume those that happen in studio boardrooms and that makes a lot of sense because as visually interesting and disturbing as the cytes are it's not immediately intuitive what they do it's easy enough to get the idea that you solve the box and these things appear and torture you but that leaves an important question question why the answer of Any Given Hellraiser director to that question is ultimately what determines how good their Hellraiser movie is going to be and is Central to why so many Hellraiser movies completely blow because for reasons we'll get into shortly I think that if you ask the average person the question why might a collection of weird-looking violent people hypothetically arrive to torture someone the thing they're most likely to say is that person is being punished and indeed this is how it works in most horror and and this is how it works in most Hellraiser movies the movie happens and then Pinhead arrives in the literal last scene to explain to someone the hell they hath created for thems and this is the hell you have created for yourself this is made most explicit by the most recent Ashan Hellraiser judgment directed with wholehearted effort by Gary J tunder Cliffe where the cyes are characterized as being literal demons presiding over a faction of a literally Christian hell I'll give tonac some credit for creativity and a very fanfiction way his version of Hellraiser does do some interesting World building but this last Hellraiser movie before the 2022 remake exposes the mishandlings that happen when people generally try to make Hellraiser movies which ton Cliffe helpfully stated outright I am in no way religious but if you are writing a story that acknowledges the presence of hell then you have to acknowledge the existence of Heaven do you though to be fair Clive Barker does place the cenobites in a Christian hell in The Scarlet gospels but that's not the case in the Hellbound heart or the first two Hellraiser movies for which the Hellbound heart was written as a sort of proof of concept but this is important so I want to emphasize it the story Barker initially wrote and adapted to film is hellish but it is not hell and I think the role Hellraiser plays in horror culture reflects this there are a lot of movies about demons about Satan about the Christian moral dichotomy but there is only one Hellraiser Hellraiser is special so now that we've established that Hellraiser is doing something different let's talk about some specifics Clive Barker based his imagination of the cenobites on what he personally saw during visits to BDSM dungeons during his youth an interest that tracks throughout his work as a visual artist clyve Barker's photography and drawings are full of images that while not necessarily representative of satom masochism are certainly evocative of the aesthetic drama that satom masochism is meant to inspire the organic warm and soft colliding with the cold mechanical and indifferent and that's really a pretty potent construction of the Human Experience isn't it how do we reckon our existence as beings with Consciousness and agency what some people would call a soul with the fact of our weak disappointing flesh prisons and its interaction with a world full of violence and Decay this is totally where the impulse for body modification comes from right if you've done any kind of body modification from makeup to plastic surgery you live somewhere on the caby Spectrum I myself have punched multiple holes in my head and carved several permanent designs into my skin which is a pretty weird thing for an animal to do some animals decorate themselves for camouflage but humans appear to be the only ones who willingly put themselves in a lot of pain to do so there are two reasons this makes sense to do one is as a matter of identity you want to take control of who you are and be seen as something permanently new more beautiful more unique a different gender nested within that though and what I think is arguably more interesting is the possibility that pain and the evidence of having experienced it is half the point inkbox and clipons exist there's no reason for anyone to get piercings or tattoos anymore so why do we do it well in my opinion this has almost everything to do with the secularization of society over the past couple hundred years specifically secularization from Christianity hi Oh Come here oh you too oh everyone's here existence is pain babies the Christian Bible forbids any kind of Mutilation of One's Own body which makes sense because the kind of Enlightenment offered by Christianity involves intentional rejection of the physical world you're supposed to turn all your thoughts to Daddy not involve yourself in worldly Pursuits Pagan cultures who incorporate scarification tattooing or other body modifications by direct contrast often do so as a specifically spiritual exercise an intentional interaction with one's physical presence in the world and an acknowledgement of the suffering and obligations involved in having physical form frequently attribute to some small G god of the Earth the sea the sun food sexual maturity some entity that has concrete effect on you and that you can see with your eyes every day can you not honestly this makes more sense to me than trusting the word of some people who Hear Voices telling you everything's going to be fine if you just wait until you're dead but I digress but what all of these religious Traditions have in common is an insistence that one way or another The Human Condition involves a lot of pain abrahamic religions might frown upon tattoos and piercings but in a lot of ways they still worship suffering you're supposed to deny yourself most forms of satisfaction as a spiritual exercise especially if you're anything but a straight man oh and let's not forget that the Christian symbol is literally an instrument of torture and this seeps into our culture in ways we don't always recognize for example tattoos and piercings might be cool and fine now but among the entrepreneur influencer crowd I've recently been noticing a lot of attempts to make stoicism the trendy new secular religion of the day stoicism is an ancient Greek philosophy that incorporates a lot of interesting ideas but which today you can see most often boiled down to how you can best maximize your productivity under capitalism and the idea that suffering is not a fact of reality but is in fact a result of your own misperception of your place in the world suffering is a story you tell yourself it's been said that a wise stoic philosopher can receive news of the death of a child and have no stronger reaction than if he were being told of the weather and that's basically Christian behavioral expectations repackaged right even if the engine running the behavior is using different fuel they're in a better place don't worry God has a plan everything after all happens for a reason the commonality in all spiritual Traditions is that they all incorporate either a justification or a solution for pain arguably pain is the root of all spiritual and philosophical thought because spirituality and philosophy are an interpretation of The Human Condition and more than anything The Human Condition is painful the cites take this fact to its most extreme conclusion a sort of grim severe logic reflected aesthetically in the face of Pinhead that supersedes all these high-minded attempts to impose order onto an existence defined more than anything by chaos in the cenobites understanding of the universe sensation including and especially the sensations humans instinctively try to avoid is itself a god which you can only really deny if you're in a position to think of yourself as safe from it part of the reason this pseudo stoicism Trend annoys me is because the hypothetical suffering these people talk about always seems to be completely divested from its context kids sometimes Drop Dead with no Rhyme or Reason I guess but more often something like killed them right in the Belgian Congo people who didn't make their rubber quotas often got their hands and feet cut off one of the most famous and harrowing photos from that era is of a father contemplating the severed hand and foot of his 5-year-old daughter who was mutilated and then killed I feel pretty correct in saying that that's a case where the structural Integrity of your personal peace is pretty low on the list of moral priorities if you can greet this photo with an air of beatific Serenity then I have another subject you may want to include in your studies oh wise philosopher pain never happens in a vacuum its effects up to an including our feeble attempts to ignore it Ripple throughout human behavior to a certain extent it dictates everything we do no matter how hard we try to deny or conquer our material reality that reality continues to Define us possibly even more so the harder we try to run from it so even though they act and look something like demons even though they're supernatural beings who cause harm on purpose words like demon and Hell come with moral polarities attached that the cyes in their original form simply don't recognize and that don't accurately describe what they do since the beginning of Storytelling monster stories have functioned as a sort of Talisman onto which we can project our understanding of where pain comes from this understanding can come in a lot of different forms but in storytelling Traditions influenced by abrahamic religious structures monsters always exist as an effigy something we ritualistically burn as a confirmation of the Eternal truth of the status quo but because I'm an adult I would posit that the existence of demons doesn't imply the existence of a onetoone angel corollary not everything does happen for a reason and I don't think there's an essential truth to which Human Experience can always follow like a North star what the cyes do is assume that this idea that life has no intrinsic meaning or direction is not a malicious void but a doorway into a new structure of thought so let's play by their rules for once let's remove the idea that there exists sin and virtue and Punishment and reward and really consider what we're left with there's a YouTube video by cck philosophy that explores the philosophical structure of Hellraiser and in it the idea of an Agony that transcends into ecstasy is explored Lord George maai was a crackpot philosopher who is obsessed with this sort of thing one day he came across some photographs of a condemned prisoner in China undergoing the lynchy execution Death By A Thousand Cuts where the victim is dismembered alive he was struck by the look on the prisoner's face which wasn't of Anguish but apparent Euphoria an expression that would be more at home on the face of a saint in a religious painting so what did he do well he took those photos and framed them and hung them in his office so he could look at them every day but Tai didn't do this because he was a stist we don't know for sure I guess but we don't have any evidence that he got pleasure out of suffering sexual or otherwise he did this because he thought he saw in those photos a glimpse of something in the potential of human experience that was unknowable by default because to know it meant to reach a state from which it was impossible to return and explain what you saw Bai devoted most of his philosophical life to exploring the nature of these so-called limit experiences events where the sensation you're experiencing is so strong that it starts to warp your previously held understanding of where the boundaries between diametrically opposed ideas like Pleasure and Pain and life and death really lie this is what the cyes are doing so to really drive this point into the ground since apparently so many of the people in charge of these movies truly need it spelled out the cyes are not beings who worship pain because they love evil they are beings whose theological order regards pain and Transcendence as the same thing if they were just demons who love evil they would have no principles no rules they would be chaotic little Havoc spreading freaks the opposite of the structured measured form of thoughtful study that defines the clergy of all religions in fact they'd be exactly what they start to be in the third movie Hell on Earth where the cyes are set loose in the city whoa that's a WP but that's counter to everything the cyes stand for because they are structured they are measured and they are thoughtful they are a specifically religious order that's what the word cabit means a member of a religious organization so to project them in a Christian setting removes any of the bite from what makes them disturbing which is that they are attempting to reach for a sort of perfection that we as beings who naturally avoid pain are incapable of ever achieving in moments they would be here the ones ker had called the sen theologians of the order of the gash summoned from their experiments in the higher reaches of pleasure to bring their ageless heads into a world of rain and failure at its best Hellraiser kind of looks more like folk horror cult horror than body horror what's scary is the question of the degree to which the cabit spiritual organization might be reflective of Truth or at least reflective of a force so overwhelming that it's indistinguishable from truth and to think I hesitated what if sensation the things that we can tactically perceive and which in some way arrange all our experiences are the only true source of knowledge what if all you really are is a collection of nerves this is one way to understand Hellraiser and it does accurately explain the levels of sacrifice made by members of certain religions monks who mummify their bodies as their living for example or the Catholic saints many of whose Holiness is directly associated with suffering and personal sacrifice but whether limit experiences are actually real is a matter of philosophical debate B Tai's preoccupation with lingchi seems to have left out a pretty important part of that punishment which is that the suffering of the victim was not really the point for a variety of reasons religious practical and humanitarian oddly enough and so people subjected to this kind of capital punishment were often maybe always drugged which means that that the exalted look on this poor soul being executed might have had something to do with the probability that he was at the time on a lot of opium but more to the point I don't think that understanding limit experiences and how they're Illustrated in Hellraiser is necessary to get what Hellraiser is doing or defines the parameters of what it could mean part of what I try to do every time I sit down to analyze something is figure out what its appeal is why did people like or not like this thing and I don't think that Hellraiser connected with so many people because it's meditation on limit experiences most people aren't interested in limit experiences I'm certainly not I'm good with all my skin attached to my body thank you Frank in the first movie is arguably interested in limit experiences but Julia the original intended antagonist Clive Barker had in mind for Hellraiser and the person on whom all the drama of the first two movies turns isn't she just regrets her life choices and wants to dick down with her hot brother-in-law accordingly we have in the possible interpretations of H are two main levels of analysis unless you want to be a child and focus on how pin head fits into the kingdoms of the Christian hell how many angels can dance on the heads of the pins on pin heads head the literal interpretation is the one we just went over an exploration of the idea of limit experiences the broader interpretation the one I think holds more subconscious appeal might be described as an exploration of a sort of metaphorical limit experience a kind of horrific reversal of the same hero's journey story that some Scholars think provides the groundwork for all stories in human history what if you come back from your journey changed and enlightened but unrecognizable to yourself and everyone you know these are the questions available in Hellraiser that interest me because through them you can start to come up with the kinds of questions the cytes themselves might be trying to answer in their experiments how much of you has to be physically taken away before you are no longer yourself if you put somebody else's skin on are you still you if not what kind of being are you so by another Avenue the more Salient metaphor for Hellraiser is not evil but change deliberately crossing the threshold past which you will in ways you can't yet predict cease to be yourself and become something different what it feel like a joyful note without [Music] change without and Heaven there's no music in that BDSM is a pretty genus way to express what the cyes do as I touched upon before as Kinks go BDSM is a pretty sophisticated one because so much of it relies on a kind of aesthetic that has almost nothing to do with sex in the Nela the Hellbound heart Frank is as horrified as anyone by the cenobites appearance he had expected something different expected some sign of the numberless splendors they had access to he had thought they would come with women at least he would be exalted by his lust instead of despised for it but no no women no size only these sexless things with their corrugated flesh he expected pretty ladies but as Julia knows satisfaction and Euphoria are more complicated than that boning down with your hot brother-in-law might be the activity she's pursuing but that's not what she wants what she wants is a fulfillment so strong that it'll justify at least in her own conscience the violence she's being asked to commit and we do this both on an individual and societal level all the time the death penalty for example is a form of murder we commit societally basically entirely for emotional satisfaction on smaller scales there are forms of damage we inflict on ourselves and others to reach a greater more Transcendent more spiritually complete satisfaction constantly that's something that the Hellraiser franchise though it introduces the concept sometimes has a hard time writing itself around Hellraiser as a franchise has to have a curiosity killing the cat formula because this is a horror movie and no one but Kookie George batai wants the cyes to show up at their door but that means that there's a big narrative hole in pin head's statement that the cyes are demons to some angels to others I don't think the news Hellraiser remake is perfect but there's a lot to love and one of the things that I think it absolutely Nails was the casting of Jamie Clayton a transwoman as pin head that's a pretty genius bit of metatextual story in that in my opinion really nicely introduces the pleasure aspect of the cyes that's missing from almost all previous films including the first ones we see evidence of the most invasive and irreversible sensory pain but where's the coraly what about intimate and Indescribable sensory pleasure like touching your baby's face for the first time after an agonizing birth or the piece of say a body that matches your gender a process that often requires no small amount of painful modification unless you think I'm being a groom or lib cuck by saying that you can flip this around too for what is the agony of gender dysphoria compared with the Peace of knowing God Made You In His Image and has you in his loving Embrace see sensation is the god that supercedes all gods whether you avoid pain or accept it its presence defines your life the idea that Hellraiser as a universe supposes is that the most extreme Human Experience Agony and Euphoria are woven into each other because all forms of Agony and Euphoria require you to accept the fact of your physicality that you are on this earth now in physical form and are thereby subject to the authority of its chaos Barker came of age during the height of the AGS epidemic which means his identity and understanding of queer culture especially as it relates to gay men is in some ways impossible to divest from Pain alienation and death his understanding of pleasure is intimately connected connected to Taboo and a certain seedy underground a way of life transformed into something physically Dangerous by the dominant heteronormative culture of the time through its very Assumption of homosexuality as spiritually dangerous clag Barker is sometimes compared to HP Lovecraft and his creation of old gods and forces indifferent to daily human society but I don't think that's entirely right in fact though I love HP Lovecraft I think that he and Clive Barker are basically doing opposite things quite possibly because of opposition between the two which is that Clive Barker is part of a community that is hated while HP Lovecraft was very much part of a community that did The Hating HP Lovecraft is saying that the universe is indifferent at best and quite possibly malicious that the horrors of the world are external a byproduct of humans being just another animal on the planet destined for eventual ruin Barker on the other hand tells us that far from being a matter of incomprehensibility the horrors of the world come from human consciousness from our very singular ability among animals to make a moral hierarchy out of an amoral existence this is important maybe the most important thing to understand about how Clive Barker writes when we're looking at a story like Hellraiser because the way Clive Barker and everyone in his generation and before were forced to relate to any kind of non-heteronormative sexual impulses they had was as a secret a sin a sign of the chaotic Abyss lurking under the thin crust of your public Persona being a member of any kind of counterculture means that all culture becomes strange by default and therefore counterintuitively easier to see with Clarity when Clive Barker tells a story about a giant penis monster that indiscriminately Slaughters a bunch of peaceful denisons of the British Countryside but avoids menstruating and pregnant women he's not telling us about Cosmic Horrors Beyond human comprehension he's telling us about a very specific human horror that we have become blind to not because it's been designed that way Way by archaic external forces but because of how it's been woven into the Bal the quotidian how the history of how human beings have treated each other comes back in the present in ways we don't expect and can't prepare for because we can barely even describe it ourselves that is after all why we invented monsters to begin with not as a totem we can destroy to tell ourselves everything is going to be fine but as a representation for layers of meaning we just don't have the right words for something we can show other people when the myths of how the world is supposed to be ordered fall flat and the best we can do is make ourselves known to each other through a collection of symbols like hieroglyphic standin like no the way I feel about the world can't be described because it's all feeling and I can't transfer that feeling into you but I can kind of let you look at it and what pain looks like is this [Music] crowed room busy walls smell of boo sounds of songs it's a [Music] morning full of faes you would cage your way for the abto to slay they've been gone for so long but now they're here to stay

Channel: The Morbid Zoo

Views: 310,161

Keywords: hellraiser, monster analysis, hellraiser analysis, hellraiser meaning, hellraiser meanig, pinhead, doug bradley, clive barker, hellraiser 2022, hellraiser 2, hellraiser cenobites, cenobites meaning, cenobites analysis, horror analysis, horror philosophy, hellraiser frank, hellraiser scene, hellraiser review, hellraiser reaction

Id: xZBFxX5Obyk

Length: 27min 10sec (1630 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2023