We're all perverts somehow

In this podcast episode, the host discusses various works of literature and film that explore dark and twisted forms of sexuality. He mentions the book "The Story of the Eye" by George Bataille, which delves into extreme forms of intercourse and perversion. He also discusses another novel by Bataille called "My Mother," which explores a taboo relationship between a teenage boy and his mother. The host believes that these works highlight the dangerous and destructive aspects of sex and eroticism. He also mentions the film "Eyes Wide Shut" by Stanley Kubrick, which explores the hidden world of sex and desire. Lastly, he discusses the film "Black Narcissus," which tells the story of nuns struggling with their own desires in a remote monastery. The host concludes by inviting listeners to share their thoughts on the episode. Hi and welcome, yeah welcome to my first episode. Well first, I'm so sorry for saying you're mental in the name of the episode. I just wanna tell you that it's going to be a bit intense, erotic, maybe a bit disturbing. So, get ready. What I always wanted to dive into is the realm of sexuality. In one of the next episodes, we'll try to navigate around the concept of sex orientation and gender identity. We all know how complex and obscure the psyche is, in particular the psychology of sexuality. In this episode, I'd like to give you a new and a darker perspective of sexuality, mentioning warped and twisted forms of eroticism. Now, in attempt to do this, first I'd like to start with the book. And I'm gonna say that I'm probably going to have you drop the listening here. I'm not joking. Now, before revealing the name of it, I want you to know that I've already talked to friends about it. And every person got literally horrified by what I told them. Blasphemy, profanation, horror, evil are all underlying themes of this book. It's called The Story of the Eye, and the author is the brilliant George Boutaille, a French novelist of the past century, who loved to explore sub-subjects such as eroticism, mysticism, surrealism and transgression. Well, I don't know whether I can tell you the entire story here. I honestly think Spotify is going to ban me for the rest of my life. But in essence, it's the story of two teenagers, the anonymous narrator and the young Simone. They begin a journey together, a dark journey into sexuality and its most obscene forms, leading to absolute debauchery and extreme forms of intercourse, including, not sure if I can say this, but including urination, necrophilia and the cult of sexualised objects such as eggs and oval-shaped objects in general. The eye, quintessentially speaking, becomes the symbol of perversion and warped sexuality, and it's actually the dominant character of the final episode of the story that I can't really mention here, but I highly suggest you give it a read. I got quite intrigued that George Boutaille got me reading another short novel, that is My Mother, and yeah, it's not a Christian story from the Bible, as you may have guessed, but it's on the same track as the story of the eye. It's all about the initiation to sex and the orgy of this guy by his mother. The book follows, in fact, the infastious relationship between a 17-year-old boy and his attractive, promiscuous 43-year-old mother. The small-b story ends with a feverish episode depicting the mother dragging the son into death with a final act of masturbation. Now, it's just impossible not to feel dirty after this reading. Awful and irrational thoughts assaulted me for some time. When I first read it, I just wanted to forget everything. George Boutaille's novels are the maximum expression of sexuality and sex, but I believe that sex and eroticism are dangerous forces that, if not limited, may bring humans to extreme forms of intercourse, violence, transgression, ultimately death. So, he writes novels proposing different scenarios about what could happen if sex and eroticism were totally freed. Now, sex is a force that can't be quenched, he says. A feeling of inability to achieve real satisfaction, even after a climax, is actually quite common and dominant in the story. There are some aspects of the story of The Eye which do make me feel very uncomfortable. Now, apart from its explicitness of the dodgy territory of necrophilia, the final episode is just horrible. Eroticism in particular is so overwhelming according to the author that religion is also vulnerable to it. Even priests may be victims of it. And also what I found so disturbing was that even rape in the narrator's fantasy is something that should be explored. And the two characters even find the victim of this bleak fantasy. I found a very interesting interview of Bataille explaining some key concepts of his literature. And he deeply explained his intention to intertwine literature with evil to make it more interesting. In particular, the interviewer asks, What evil are you talking about? And he replies, I think there are two opposite kinds of evil. The first one is related to the necessity of human activity going well and having the desired results. And the other consists of deliberately violating some fundamental taboos, like for example the taboo against murder and against some sexual possibilities. And then the interviewer asks, That means that evil and literature are inseparable. And he says, I think so, yeah, maybe it's not very clear at first, but to me it seems that if literature stays away from evil, it rapidly becomes boring. This might seem surprising. Nevertheless, I think that soon it becomes clear that literature has to deal with anguish and that anguish is based on something that is going the wrong way. Something that no doubt will turn into something very evil. Does this title mean that evil and literature are inseparable? In my opinion, yes. Obviously, it doesn't seem so at first, but it seems to me that if literature stays away from evil, it rapidly becomes boring. Now I'm gonna mention Eyes Wide Shut. I honestly reckon it one of the greatest works by Stanley Kubrick I ever watched along with An Orange Clockwise. And incidentally, we'll talk about it one day on this podcast. But now let's stick to Eyes Wide Shut. Now it is an erotic mystery psychological drama film. And what got me thinking a lot was the choice of the name of the film. Why Eyes Wide Shut? Now normally it would mean a person who refuses to see something in plain view. Maybe because of preconceived notions of what this something should look like. Well, in fact, Kubrick's lens followed the revelation of by this woman Alice, played by Nicole Kidman, to her husband Bill, a distinguished doctor played by Tom Cruise, about her meeting a very interesting person in the past and fantasizing intercourse with him. Then from this point on, an odyssey into the occult world of sex begins. Bill is in denial and can't really come to terms with this revelation, since he has always felt a wife to be extremely committed to her husband. But at some point, Alice is able to unleash her sexual desire in her dream, where the celebration of nudity, orgy, homo and hetero sex come into play. And Kubrick here brilliantly explored eroticism deeply explored by Freud and Schindler, the last one author of the dream story that is the novel that actually inspired the film. Freud, in particular, sexualized mental illnesses, principally neurosis. For him, all types of neurosis would be caused by sexual repression. In one of his articles, Civilized Sexual Morality and Modern Nervousness, he states that the sexual repression caused by a morality that restricts sex to marriage and procreation is the source of neurotic illnesses. Openly criticizing Catholic morals, the two of them, Schindler and Freud, claim that people naturally repress their innermost sexual instincts in order to meet the constraints imposed on them by civilized life. At some point, this latent repressed sexual drive is merged with memory of daily episodes, and then it is finally freed in our deepest dreams, and that is the theory of the dream work. Now, I did love the scene, the very first scene of the film, depicting Alice undressing in front of a mirror in her nudity, inducing sexual desire even in the audience. And iconic is the very last scene of the movie. Give it a listen. Fuck. Now, I'd like to mention the very last movie of this episode, that is Black Nun Scissors, a film directed by Michael Powell and released in 1947. Now, it is a story of an odd group of missionary nuns who take over an empty monastery high up in the Himalayas. Five nuns take over the building in order to help the locals with education and any sort of illnesses. But soon the air gets heavy and filled with undercurrents of desire. One of the sisters, Sister Clodagh, begins to have visions of a past love, partling these by the constant and masculine presence of a local Englishman. But she's not the only nun who lusts after him. Another nun, Sister Ruth, begins to disintegrate because of her lust for him, eventually turning manic, violent, unpossessed. Eventually she even attempts to kill Sister Clodagh, but she herself tragically ends up falling down a cliff, a full weakened thigh, into her own perverted psyche. And it's absolutely extraordinary. You can sense the jealousy and the evil in her voice. Listen to this. Now, spots in the film is a recurrent word. The nuns complain having weird spots covering their skin during their accommodation in the monastery. And in my humble opinion, the director here intends to point out that even nuns have their spots on their apparent transparency. They are not really maculate, pure, as we used to think in. And I can't forget the expression on Sister Ruth's face in the heat of the moment of hurting Sister Clodagh. A devilish smile that recalls Jack Torrance's sneer in the film The Shining, still directed by Stanley Kubrick. At the end of the day, the overlook of Hotel, the setting of the film, The Shining, resembles a lot the nunnery, the monastery of Black Knife Sisters. The hotel is remote, solitary, and its past, like the one of the monastery, arouses violence and sexual desire within the ones who choose to live in such places. Okay, that was the last thing I wanted to tell you in this episode. Tell me what you think in the comments, on Instagram, and see you guys in the next episode.