Impeded

Today is Sunday and I transmit from a cottage in Republican country after having suffered the worst of a terrible bout of flu. It’s early afternoon and already I’ve worn myself out doing laundry and a few other minor chores. I may not finish this column. 

You learn stuff when you’re sick, like how bad your head hurts before you cry; like how much depends on you: the son, the employer, the coworkers, the dogs and cat.

Your paycheck. Your novel. Your short story collection. Your column. Your sanity. Your joy.

Then there’s closing on a house in two weeks and packing fifteen boxes of books along with everything else. There’s also all that cooking and cleaning stuff I do. The fucking cat box, dog poop in the yard. 

When you’re sick you think, I really need to downsize.  What can I get rid of? 

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Thursday my head hurt so bad I cried. I had a migraine on top of a sinus headache. Also, I’d been beating myself up on top of having the flu. You’re sick? You suck. It’s bad enough to feel ill. It’s another to feel guilty about it.

I grew up with criticism, not praise. What do you expect? It’s why I went to graduate school. I’m still twelve years old and telling my father, “I can pour my own milk, Daddy” until he finally agrees to let me try and then observes with cool, sadistic pleasure as I spill milk all over the place just so he can say, I knew you couldn’t do it.

Birth of an over achiever, ladies and gentleman. What I mean is, I hate to fail. I hate messing up. It’s humiliating. The result, ridicule and/or punishment. My worst nightmare involves me and an angry mob and a public stoning.

Like an angry mob stoning me.

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When you’re sick you experience your humanyness to the limit. Either that or you don’t feel human at all.

I couldn’t lay down Thursday because lying down made my head hurt three times worse. But I couldn’t sit up either because my body felt as if it had been hit by a truck then backed over and hit again. Also, I was congested. I finally propped myself up against a few pillows on my son’s bed so I could stream movies from Netflix onto his Xbox and distract myself. This is difficult when breathing through your mouth makes you sound like Darth Vader.

Obviously, in my weak and wretched condition, I decided to watch something called The Human Centipede (First Sequence) because you always want to compound human suffering with more human suffering. It just makes sense or makes you feel less alone, something. I mean, I had the flu but at least my mouth wasn’t sewn to a stranger’s asshole.

The sick begets sick, something. 

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Interesting to note my favorite horror blogger, Pax Romano, didn’t review The Human Centipede for his blog, Billy Loves Stu. Once I realized this, I sort of panicked. If Pax hadn’t publicly acknowledged this movie as a horror film maestro then how could I publicly acknowledge having watched it, a horror film fan? 

Well. I could always blame the flu.

Upon more research, I discovered Brittney-Jade Colangelo didn’t review the film for Day of the Woman either, but Brian Solomon of  The Vault of Horror did, although he wrote his review on someone else’s blog. Overall, his is a thumbs up review in which Solomon writes, “The Human Centipede is an intense horror film that is short on plot, but long on shock. It may not be as graphic as it was sold to the public as being, but that does not take away from the fact that there is insanely horrendous stuff taking place, and it’s depicted with a level of emotional realness that doesn’t allow you to check out and merely have fun as a distant viewer, as, say, a slasher film might. Rather, if you understand what you’re in for, which is a very psychologically based film, it can be a very upsetting experience (which for a horror film, is meant as a compliment.)”

My favorite piece written about The Human Centipede is from Alison Nastasi. She calls her review “Beyond Anguish” and provides a philosophical perspective on the film that involves French writer, Georges Bataille, who wrote one of my favorite books, The Story of An Eye. Does Nastasi’s review of the film imply it’s more high brow than low brow shit?

I think that depends on viewership. 

Oh. I forgot to mention The Human Centipede isn’t one of those sci-fi horror films in which you encounter a half human/half insect thing like in that Mira Sorvino film, Mimic.

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The reviews I’ve read at Netflix for The Human Centipede (First Sequence) vary. Viewers call the film everything from brilliant to entertaining to clever to hilarious to ridicules to perverted, gross, and sick. Someone wrote she felt dirty after having watched the film. Another person said, “Someone should kill the writer.”

Kill the writer?

Yeah. See. You can’t hold a mirror up to society without society wanting you dead. Didn’t Nazis do that? Kill writers, I mean.

Where they burn books, they eventually burn people.

Speaking of Nazis, my son once printed a photograph of Adolf Hitler then carried it outside, thumb tacked it to a fence, then proceeded to riddle it with holes using his pellet gun. When he brought what was left inside and said, “Look, Mom,” I said, “Good boy.” 

I mean, I wasn’t going to tell him he couldn’t shoot Adolf Hitler in the face. Why would I do that? Quenten Tarantino wrote the ultimate revenge fantasy film, Inglorious Basterds, and did exactly that. SHOT HITLER IN THE FACE.

Who doesn’t want to see that happen?

Anyway, my son was shooting paper with a pellet gun. I did nothing but permit a normal adolescent expression of violence toward someone who deserves it.  Nazis are everybody’s favorite villain these days. You can get shit all over a Nazi and nobody cares. Poetic justice. Kill the Nazis. Kids kill them in video games every day. It’s cool. Justified simulated violence on human beings. I mean when it comes to monsters you really can’t get much worse than them, can you, Nazis?  Of course, the kicker is they really were human beings.  We forget that. No, we ignore it. Human beings are monstrous. We are the monsters. Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler was certain he wasn’t human. He considered himself on the level of godliness. I think you’d have to be cruel to be a god. Consider what gods do. Anyway, nothing is more terrifying than a man with a God Complex.

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Apparently to get attention these days you have to be either absurd or obscene or both. Or write Twilight.

As I sat propped against pillows in my son’s room suffering through a terrible bout of the flu and watching The Human Centipede (First Sequence) I decided the movie was stupid. Later, I realized how disturbed I felt. Maybe as I stood in the shower letting snot run from my nose and shivering.

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Tom Six, who wrote and directed The Human Centipede, said the idea came from a joke in which he commented to a group of friends sitting around one day the best and most deserved punishment for a child molester would be to sew his mouth to a fat trucker’s asshole. Yeah. Let him eat shit.

And also, who doesn’t want to see a rape victim cut off her rapist’s dick then feed it to him? See I Spit on Your Grave for that. More poetic justice. What? Ted Bundy deserved to keep his dick? I say castrate the asshole and let him live.

Except The Human Centipede isn’t about poetic justice. It’s about dehumanization. It’s about Nazis. It’s about how Nazis dehumanized other human beings in a desperate and depraved attempt to elevate themselves nationally and personally.

It’s about a man with a God Complex.

It’s about how Germans hate Americans and the Japanese.

Tom Six claims the procedure his villian accomplishes in his movie is surgically possible. He says a real live surgeon explained exactly how it would work. During WWII, Nazi doctors performed terrible experiments on other human beings, such as one Josef Mengele. So the ultimate poetic justice would have been if  Tom Six wrote a story in which his villian, Dr. Heiter, conducted his inhumane experiment on other Nazis with Dr. Mengele cast as the “middle piece.”

But then we all would have been cheering before asking ourselves, “Who cares if one asshole tortures other assholes?”

Writers never do anything by accident. Every word on the page is there for a reason. Every scene, every nuance counts.

Ultimately, The Human Centipede is about just how fucked women really are. We get it coming and going. Adolf Hitler used to refer to Jewish women as “sows.”  Tom Six takes the insult further. Women are insects. Women eat shit. Take that.

I’m not saying Tom Six hates women. In fact, most reports claim he was very careful with his two actresses on set, very respectful. I’m simply stating he wrote a misogynistic film. Like the misogynistic film. I can take it. I listen to Eminem. 

Anyway, a great deal of horror films objectify, demonize, and/or dehumanize women.

One time, a male student in one of my fiction writing classes wrote a story in which his male protagonist jacks off then comes in the face of a girl passed out at a party. I didn’t tell my student he couldn’t write that kind of story. I said, “Write that kind of story in a way I understand misogyny better. Why does your character hate women? Show me a human being and not just a misogynist.” In Six’s film Dr Heiter doesn’t say he hates women. He says, “I hate human beings.” And he hates women most. Sure, you could say the young Japanese man in the film isn’t having a fun fest, but you have to ask yourself why Tom Six made sure we know the reason one of the women is “the middle piece” is because she defied the villain; she almost got away. 

“You,” Dr Heiter says with cool, sadistic pleasure, “are the middle piece.”

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Throughout The Human Centipede (First Sequence) one things rings poignant. The bond between the female victims. Tom Six shows us more than one shot in which the two women seek out then grasp each other’s hands. This is what we see: hands finding one another, holding on. I wasn’t alone this past week. My son played sick on Friday to stay home with me. He says he had a sore throat, but I know the truth. He wanted to stick around and keep an eye on me. He let the dogs out to poop. He brought me water. He fed the cat. He asked, “How are you, Mama?”  My friend Judy sent me a text every day to ask if I needed anything. My boss called and offered to bring me Nyquil and green chili. Green chili! Of course one might say my boss was keeping tabs on me, making sure I wasn’t in Mexico, but I think she called every day because she was concerned about me. 

And then there’s my friend, Rich, who’s a licensed RN. He came by the cottage with a specific combination of over-the-counter remedies and told me just how to take what and when. He also brought me tissue, lip balm, and Carmex for my nose. He brought Gatorade and popcycles. He brought my son and I lunch and dinner.  Rich took out the garbage.

Wow.

Writers hold a mirror up to society and sometimes what we see is horrible. But what we see is also beautiful sometimes. What a responsibility, this thing we do. And an honor too. I’m lucky. To my friends, XO.