CARNAL NATION

My most delectable Halloween treat last week was attending The New Guignol, an evening of short, ripped from the perverse-but-true headlines plays presented by The Blood Brothers and Nosedive Productions at my new haunt, The Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Of course a Grand Guignol show, theater's answer to a haunted house, is pretty much critic-proof, akin to reviewing a night of campfire tales.Either you delight in the horror – which I unequivocally did – or you find yourself nodding off anxious to crawl into the nearest sleeping bag. (I was especially fond of the patter and chemistry between “blood brother” actors/directors Pete Boisvert and Patrick Shearer, who served as our Uncle Fester looking guides through the simultaneously gory and hilarious vignettes.) Acting, directing, sets, lighting and costume design are mere accompaniments to the spectacle of body parts and stage blood, and savoring that which is taboo in proper real life.

One of the most interesting aspects of the original, turn-of-the-last-century Paris, Grand Guignol was its (modern-day) political incorrectness, especially with regards to sexual violence against women. The "Sarah Bernhardt of the Grand Guignol" Paula Maxa found her characters raped thousands of times over the span of her career. (Of course this figure pales in comparison to the murdered rate for this actress also known as "the most assassinated woman in the world.") Not surprisingly, The New Guignol that I saw featured only one rape, a case of coercion occurring in an incestuous relationship between a father and daughter in "A Room With No View." The only other incident of sexual violence was directed against the male character in "Dominique," who engages in a night of drug-fueled sex then awakes to find his lover's name carved into his chest! It's hard to imagine anyone staging a version of that play with the genders reversed and getting the same outrageous laughs.

I probably wouldn't have picked up on this double standard, or merely chalked it up to the rise of feminism and likened our distaste to the intolerance for minstrel shows in the wake of civil rights, had I not already spent most of the week wading through a muck of misplaced charges of misogyny. I went from defending Danish director Lars von Trier (see my essay "It's Only a Flesh Wound: In Defense of Lars von Trier's Antichrist" at The House Next Door) to sitting on a panel at the Doomsday Film Festival sticking up for Canadian director David Cronenberg during a discussion of his 70s film "Shivers." There just seems to be something in the American DNA that delivers a knee-jerk reactive cry of misogyny whenever women and sexual violence are combined in a cultural product that doesn't attempt to apologize for that depiction. (In music the controversy surrounding Eminem comes to mind.) The Grand Guignol and directors like von Trier and Cronenberg merely present this taboo subject for the audience to explore, acting as artistic messengers while ridding themselves of any simplistic moralizing. That sexual violence could be titillating is what seems to unnerve so many, and yet that discomfort cannot be blamed on any heinous images in front of our eyes. The mirror art holds up to its audience is the real nightmare, one that must be confronted in the light of day if we are to come to terms with the irrational side of ourselves. For better or worse The New Guignol is here to stay.