The Sadist Revolution
Sir: There is one thing I would like to emphasise, over my article 'Amid the Sadist Revolution,' in reply to some of those who have written to me about it. They say things like "the trend to violence and sadisni is even worse than the trend to porn." I would say that the sadism was there from the beginning, in the porn.
In the light of the study of unconscious life, and the incorporative elements in sex, when our society tolerated shows like Oh! Calcutta! on the stage, it gave assent to a certain kind of gloating on the humiliation of others. "An evening of elegant pornography "
Spectator, February 5, 1972 means "an evening of charming hate," The cruelty is surely evident — in the stripping of a girl tied LIP by her hands, the bottom beating ' episodes, the shouts of insulting things like "I expect you're wondering what she does when she has her period." The women are cruelly humiliated by being made to show what they would not he willing to show voluntarily in such exhibitionist circumstances: the audience is humiliated by such ells' tressing sights as a man turning round, after masturbating, with his penis sticking out of his flies. The anal-sadistic cruelty is evident la, such shouts as that of 'Shit!', aau in the unpleasant familiarity Pf the title (meaning ' Oh, what a lova' arse you've got '). As Merleau" Ponty explains, such over-familiarity exerts a deep enslavement over the naked body, and deprives the other person of individuality', freedom and value. No one who has laughed at such sadism can CO plain now, at the laughter at; audiences today at film rape. But' are like the laughter of stortn' troopers who made naked Jevves' ses dance on the tables at Trebiinka. Yet all this loathsome tramPl on human sensitivity is advertise , daily as breathtakingly l0ve1Y1, next to Covent Garden. This rna; acceptance of pornography as 'liberation' has opened the &curt gates to an ever-increasing tide ° brutalisation. Those who receg" nised the sadism from the first are not surprised, any more than the, t were surprised by the news tile, actors and actresses have beconl.' physically and psychically illIll 'sex' shows. Like us, they are i1.1; valved in the madness of sadis,th', perversions. At Danish Sex Fair' there is a magazine on disci's); which juxtaposes pictures _0, mutilated bodies from Vietnal"' and pictures of sexual activit!'d'' while some pornographic films ell in images of atomic explosi Children take in, at a distance, th!i adults enjoy and condone sextl° cruelty. The mental, masturbatory ‘ricr lente of all this is a mark of crelli live failure and of a failure to 04, the reality of love, and humannes'* i The hopelessness is now rela.,r1,' test in films in which 11",, ' human solution is impliete ridiculed, and false pseudo-ad, solutions of a black-jacketed 10" are seen as the only possible (Mese' It is this kind of ' mascarld protest' that breeds hate, or nr fosters violence and contempt 'yt, others at large. But that conternPre and implicit violence, was the'5 from the beginning of this spuriTid, 'liberation.' To use James 13,Tat win's words, it represents "I:is contempt for the audience which it the death of art." This is WRY to was such a terrible mistake tolerate those ' sex ' shows wIlte, have no overall creative purP0'00 to justify their frenetic attack human nature. Ok
Lustleigh, Newton Abbot, Deva
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