The Rape of Christ

Imagine a film by a top "auteur" director so controversial that even today, with our "evolved" sensibilities, Warner Brothers can't release it in its uncut entirety.

The film, made in 1971, is Ken Russell's The Devils and Richard Crouse, film critic, has written about it in:

 

I haven't finished the book yet - I'm about half way through - but I am enjoying Raising Hell so much that I have to write about it.

I've become obsessed with the film and the story of 1634 Loudun, France, where a group of nuns, allegedly possessed by the Devil, along with the inquisition, conspired(?) to get Urbain Grandier (played by Oliver Reed in the film) tortured and burned at the stake.  Aldous Huxley wrote about this history in the non-fiction book:

 

The Devils, the film, is full of notable scenes like this ONE, where Sister Jeanne (played by Vanessa Redgrave) imagines she's being ravished, maybe even raped, by Christ just off the cross, but the one scene that is maybe too provocative for our "evolved" sensibilities is called the Rape of Christ.

In short and to the point, the Rape of Christ scene is basically an orgy scene - orgy is such a 1970s word - involving nuns that has been described by an eye witness in the 1634 book: The History of The Devils of Loudun: The Alleged Possession of the Ursuline Nuns, and the Trial and Execution of Urban Grandier as follows:

           

           [The nuns] struck their chests and backs with their heads, as if they had their necks broken, and with inconceivable rapidity; they twisted their arms at the joints of the shoulder, the elbow or wrist, two or three times around.... their eyes remained open without blinking....  Their tongues issued suddenly from their mouths, horribly swollen, black, hard and covered with pimples....  They uttered cries so horrible and so loud that nothing like it was ever heard before.  They made use of expressions so indecent as to shame the most debauched of men, while their acts, both in exposing themselves and inviting lewd behavior from those present, would have astonished the inmates of the lowest brothels in the country.

(Quoted from Richard Crouse's Raising Hell)

The description above is worthy of William Peter Blatty.

Crouse does a excellent job explaining how the Rape of Christ scene went down. 

Coincidentally, I recently asked myself, whatever happened to Derek Jarman, the director of Edward II--a significant film for me.  The answer, oddly enough, came in Raising Hell.

Ken Russell, it should be noted, also directed Altered States, Gothic, The Lair of the White Worm and some other films which can be described as soft core porn.

Prediction: Warner Brothers will release The Devils, in its uncut entirety, within five years.

Christmas Books 2012 (Part I)

I got a number of books for Christmas and Kind of like a parent who has a favourite child, but will never admit it, I do have a favourite book—two, actually.

Raising Hell:

Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils

(by Richard Crouse)

The book cover is so vulgar, it’s going to be almost embarrassing to read on the bus—almost, but not quite.  The story is about the (un)making of what Richard Crouse calls one of the most controversial films ever made, Ken Russell’s The Devils. 

I’ve never seen the film, but watch this amazing scene from The Devils:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8Xgm1u_SF4

Out of Africa

(by Karen Blixen)

“Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road.”

–Out of Africa

What makes this book extra special is that it is illustrated and therefore, for me, a collector’s piece.

In apocalypse films, book-lovers always die first because in the game of survival, book-lovers take too many books in place of food.  After the apocalypse, I can almost guarantee Out of Africa will be found on my dead, half-eaten body.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

(by Maggie O’Farrell)

How would you react if your aunt, whom you never knew existed, returned home after spending years – a life time – in a psychiatric hospital? 

I discovered Maggie O’Farrell on Writers and Company with Eleanor Wachtel on the CBC. 

Listen to the Maggie O’Farrell  interview  here.

We Need to Talk About Kevin

(by Lionel Shriver)

It took years for this book to get published – no publishing house wanted to touch it because of its topic - and like George Eliot, Lional Shriver uses a male pseudonym because she knows the industry, which includes readers, will take her more seriously.



Picture of George Eliot

 In the Garden of Beasts:

Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin

(by Erik Larson)

If In the Garden of Beasts is 60% of The Devil in the White City then it is a good book.

The Other Queen

(by Phillippa Gregory)

I once saw a Phillippa Gregory novel in my cousin’s car and thought, rather snobbishly, trashy whore(!) and then I read The Other Boleyn Girl.  The Other Queen marks the end of Phillippa Gregory’s The Tudor Court Novels.

(I plan to write a blog about The Tudor court Novels because some are better than others; like, for instance, The Queen's Fool - book four of the series -  is fun, but The Boleyn Inheritance - book three of the series - was disappointing.)

Indian School Days

(by Basil H. Johnston)

What makes this story especially interesting is that it’s autobiographical.

I look forward to reading this book, but is it sad that I prefer reading stories about European royalty and world history?  Some would say I am colonized - the neo way of calling an Indian an apple.  I would say I am just well-and-widely-read.

Manitowapow:

Aboriginal Wirtings from the Land of Water

(Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair & Warren Cariou, Editors)

This book is an anthology (a textbook, so-to-speak) of local Aboriginal writers and contains the poem by a dear cousin, Adventures in Dating a White Guy.

If I read half of the books above by the end of 2013, I’d be happy.

Christmas Books 2012 (Part II) is forthcoming and will contain the following books I bought with my gift certificates:

Chappaquiddick

“The way you make your life, the love you put into it—that’s God.”

--Black Water (page 73)

The Chappaquiddick incident/scandal has always fascinated me, I think in part because of the nature of the the accident - a girl drowned in the car below and the question remains could she have been saved(?) - and because Chappaquiddick – one need only to say the word – represents another Kennedy scandal.  The Chappaquiddick incident is interesting as well because it has woven itself into the cloth of American identity – kind of like O.J. Simpson - and there’s an argument to be made that Teddy Kennedy would never become President because of Chappaquiddick.

(Picture of the Chappaquiddick accident scene)

Joyce Carol Oates (JCO) is an author I always thought I should read one day.

(Photograph of Joyce Carol Oate by Murdo Macleod for the Guardian)

Rather conveniently, in 1992 JCO wrote a novella called Black Water: The Senator, The Girl, The Accident which is, by extension, the Chappaquiddick story.  I say by extension because the story doesn’t take place in 1969 – when the Chappaquiddick incident occurred – but many years later.
 

I don’t know when I bought the book, but it’s been in my library for years.  I notice I tried reading Black Water once before, but quit for some reason: I got up to Chapter 8, page 20.

I finished the novella on September 21, 2012.  At 154 pages, it was just enough.  The story is pretty much the crash and as Kelly Kellecher (the fictional Mary Joe Kopechnee) slowly drowns, waiting for The Senator (who could only be Teddy Kennedy) to save her, the reader is given a glimpse of Kellecher’s life (her childhood, her time at Brown, that morning, day, evening, etc), which becomes a symbol for gender, class and race to an extent—to put it simply.

Kellecher, it’s said, is also only of average beauty, compared to her friend at least, and is self-conscious, but who isn’t--this, I think, is important to the overall meaning of the story.  It should also be noted that the two – The Senator and The Girl – were on their way, rather excitedly (eagerly even), to have sex when The Accident occurred.

(Late 15th Century Painting of "LUST" by

Jheronimus Bosch called: Table of Mortal Sins)

  

In 1997, Black Water: A New American Opera premiered.

I enjoyed reading JCO (and Black Water: The Senator, The Girl, The Accident) that I think I’ll read Blonde: a Novel, JCO’s Marilyn Munroe story.