Antichrist..

[Adaryn]

I think we can fairly assess that this movie, which exhibits gratuitous acts of sexual torture and murder and mayhem is pathological, do you agree?

The way you pose that question I`m seeing you holding a pistol to my head with the intention to shoot if I answer negatively .

and

Don`t know why I`m reminded of a car sticker I`ve read recently: If we shoot all the sad people the world will be a happy place.

Do we see a pattern here? :)
Sorry if my phrasing seemed a bit confrontational.

I`ve just seen some of the Adam Curtis docus again and I`m sick of all that categorizing and putting stuff into labeled drawers. Maybe the film is pathological, then again, maybe it`s not.

Well for my part, I think the display of sexual torture for no other purpose than shocking the viewer, revelling in horror and violence and basically stating that human nature (and especially women) is inherently evil, is pathological. But maybe that's just me.

I cannot honestly answer your question.

I don't know, but maybe you could ask yourself how you did feel after watching that movie? Washed out, drained, disturbed, ... ?
As said CM:

Don't forget folks, we should be careful about impressions that enter our body

What were your impressions? Did you extract from it anything that you could consider as positive for your own life, for resolving your own issues, for learning about yourself?

While I feel similiar to what you are expressing, I wonder if my perception says more about me than about the film.
I tend to think that it`s ultimately flawed, albeit interestingly so + that von Trier does suggest what I think he suggests. But I could be too literal.

Picking some words from the article you quoted:
"disturbing. Its images are a fork in the eye. Its cruelty is unrelenting. Its despair is profound."
"Antichrist" presented the spectacle of a director going mad."
"the most despairing film you've ever seen"
"Despair is such a significant aspect of the human condition"
"material many audiences will find repulsive or unbearable"
" its depth are frightening."

"It will remain in my mind"

He can say that again. Quoting from Darkmoon's very relevant article "the Plot against art":

One of the founders of the Frankfurt School, Georg Lukács, asked
rhetorically, "Who will save us from Western civilization?" He began the
rescue operation himself, convincing himself that the best way to do
this was to create "a culture of pessimism" and "a world that has been
abandoned by God." Cool.

Another of these mental giants, Walter Benjamin, believed that the
purpose of art was to make people as miserable as possible, for
pessimism was an essential preliminary to world revolution. "To organize
pessimism," he pointed out portentously, "means nothing other than to
expel the moral metaphor from politics." Benjamin succeeded only too
well in making himself miserable. He committed suicide.

Marxist revolutionary Willi Munzenberg made no bones about his mission
in life. It was to destroy Western civilization. No kidding. To
accomplish this, he said, the Frankfurters would have to "organize the
intellectuals and use them to make Western civilization stink. Only
then, after they have corrupted all its values and made life impossible,
can we impose the dictatorship of the proletariat". (My italics).

To summarize: Let's create a culture of pessimism. Let's make Western
civilization stink. Let's create a godless world and drive people to
despair. Let's corrupt society's values and make life impossible. In
short, let's create hell on Earth.

It seems they have succeeded "beyond their wildest dreams", through modern art and various artists such as, apparently, Lars Von Trier.

 

[anart]

It seems they have succeeded "beyond their wildest dreams", through modern art and various artists such as, apparently, Lars Von Trier.

I think that pretty much sums it up, and they have, haven't they? They've truly succeeded beyond their wildest dreams when otherwise intelligent people will defend such mental and emotional poison and willingly expose their psyches to it. The horror of the situation seems to know no bounds and the tentacles reach into every crevice of our existence and society.

 

[ramaj]

It seems they have succeeded "beyond their wildest dreams", through modern art and various artists such as, apparently, Lars Von Trier.

I think that pretty much sums it up, and they have, haven't they? They've truly succeeded beyond their wildest dreams when otherwise intelligent people will defend such mental and emotional poison and willingly expose their psyches to it. The horror of the situation seems to know no bounds and the tentacles reach into every crevice of our existence and society.

hmmm sounds like a smashing event indeed. Psychopaty has created a "hell on Earth" at present.

 

[nemo]

All in all, that's not something one would "enjoy" watching, based on those reviews. But forumites might have another take on it.

They might, but then they will be seen as pathological. So it seems safer not to have another take on it. But I forego safety.

Honestly, I haven't see this movie - just the trailer. But I read several reviews both by critics and viewers, and I know what it shows. I think we can fairly assess that this movie, which exhibits
gratuitous acts of sexual torture and murder and mayhem is pathological, do you agree?

You`re phrasing seems to me not only "a bit confrontational" but also quite a bit manipulating. I strongly feel a "You`re either with us or against us"-attitude which leaves no room for any matter-of-fact based debate. It`s also paralogical, since you seem to seriously believe that you know what the movie shows without having seen it. You take the credibility of the sources on which you found your BELIEF for granted.

I haven't see this movie (...) and I know what it shows.
I think we can fairly assess that this movie(...) is pathological, do you agree?

These comments are an example of word salad.

Do we see a pattern here?

I see my emotional reaction based on your manipulative behaviour. Instead of pointing that out to you I tried hinting at it in a humerous way, in order to prevent a confrontational mood.

Well for my part, I think the display of sexual torture for no other purpose than shocking the viewer, revelling in horror and violence and basically stating that human nature (and especially women) is inherently evil, is pathological.But maybe that's just me.

Since you haven`t seen this film how can you know if there is a purpose to those scenes or not. You are making an assumption here.

Well for my part; I think the display of sexual torture for no other purpose than shocking the viewer, revelling in horror and violence and basically stating that human nature (and especially women) is inherently evil, is pathological.But maybe that's just me.

I`m confused. Is that what you mean? Or do you mean this?
"Everyone who disagrees with me is pathological."
Do you really allow other viewpoints or is it in reality that you accept only your own pov?

I don't know, but maybe you could ask yourself how you did feel after watching that movie? Washed out, drained, disturbed, ... ?

You already answered your own question by suggesting what you think I should have felt watching a movie you haven`t seen.
I have the impression that you`re so identified with your OPINION/BELIEF that anything I say which doesn`t feed your seemingly desire will be interpreted by you as pathological?
I feel trapped in a Catch-22 situation by you. And I feel being manipulated.
I can`t begin to describe the emotional and intellectual turmoil I`m in since reading your post yesterday. Do I feel washed out, drained, disturbed ? Yes, but not by the film.
I feel like I`ve been transferred to a parallel universe where the rules have changed subtly but significantly. Am I depressed now? You bet.

What were your impressions? Did you extract from it anything that you could consider as positive for your own life, for resolving your own issues, for learning about yourself?

In light of your later statement, in which you seem to declare unequivocally that this film is pathological, your question is manipulating. Any positive impression I might have gotten out of the film could be proof to you that I`m ponerized. You are not interested at all in what my impressions and feelings are.

Picking some words from the article you quoted:
"disturbing. Its images are a fork in the eye. Its cruelty is unrelenting. Its despair is profound."
"Antichrist" presented the spectacle of a director going mad."
"the most despairing film you've ever seen"
"Despair is such a significant aspect of the human condition"
"material many audiences will find repulsive or unbearable"
" its depth are frightening."

You are cherry picking the exact phrases which are useful for you to bolster your argument.
What you don`t agree with, you ignore.
Mr. Ebert has my respect because he understands the language of film and because he offers a well written, intelligent and (as far as that is possible) objective description of the film.
He refrains from emotional thinking and from secretly manipulating his audience to his own opinion.

To summarize: Let's create a culture of pessimism. Let's make Western
civilization stink. Let's create a godless world and drive people to
despair. Let's corrupt society's values and make life impossible. In
short, let's create hell on Earth.

It seems they have succeeded "beyond their wildest dreams", through modern art and various artists such as, apparently, Lars Von Trier.

You`re trying to construct the argument that modern art is pathological and that von Trier is just another example for sick psyche-infesting art. Regarding von Trier you offer no rational argument or verification for your opinion. I call these prejudices and unreflected emotions MASQERADING AS LOGICAL ARGUMENTS (paralogic). I`ve stated in another thread that there is a lot I agree with in Darkoon`s article, but to take this single article as sole confirmation that modern art is pathological is stretching my imagination enormously. Is that your idea of unbiased objective foundation? I remember the Law Of Three.
I`m in this forum for over 2 years and have always admired the critical and selfcritical, emphatic, intelligent and differentiated views expressed herein. Therefore I`m profoundly shocked by your post.
Your words put modern art close to an expression of pathology.

I`m very sorry, but this reminds me very much of some words spoken in german history, the history of my ancestors:

"It is not the mission of art to wallow in filth for filth's sake, to paint the human being only in a state of putrefaction, to draw cretins as symbols of motherhood, or to present deformed idiots as representatives of manly strength”.-- Adolf Hitler excepted from a speech made at a National Socialist Party rally, Nuremberg, September 11, 1935.

“The artist does not create for the artist: He creates for the people and we will see to it that henceforth the people will be called in to judge its art”. -- Adolf Hitler

"This has nothing at all to do with the suppression of artistic freedom and modem progress” -- Joseph Goebbels, November 26th, 1937, in Von der Großmacht zur Weltmacht on the seizure of thousands of works of German art.

“In July, 1937 Hitler and Goebbels decided to clear museums of all remaining modern works and to mount an exhibition of modern works as an example of the most horrific art ever created. The custodians of all government and private museums and art collections are busy removing the most hideous creations of a degenerate humanity and of a pathological generation of so called artists" -- the magazine Der SA-Mann September 18th, 1937.

“Art that cannot rely on the joyous, heartfelt assent of the broad and healthy mass of the people, but depends on tiny cliques that are self-interested and blasé by turns, is intolerable. It seeks to confuse the sound instinct of the people instead of gladly confirming it.” -- Adolf Hitler

"A Commission under the painter Adolf Ziegler, President Of The Reich Culture Chamber, aided by some art historians, including the Director Of The Folkwang Museum in Essen, Klaus Graf von Baudissin, seized over 5,000 works from private and public collections. Among the works were:1,052 by Emil Nolde, 759 by Erich Heckel, 639 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and 508 by Max Beckmann. They also took works by Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Giorgio de Chirico, Robert Delaunay, André Derain, Theo van Dösburg, James Ensor, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Albert Gleizes, •Alexei Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, El Lissitzky, Franz Masereel, Henri Matisse, •László Moholy-Nagy, Piet Mondrian, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault, and Maurice Vlaminck” Catalogue of the exhibition "Entartete Kunst"

"How deeply the perverse Jewish spirit has penetrated German cultural life is shown in the frightening and horrifying forms of the Exhibition Of Degenerate Art in München ..... This has nothing at all to do with the suppression of artistic freedom and modem progress. On the contrary, the botched art works which were exhibited there and their creators are of yesterday and before yesterday. They are the senile representatives, no longer to be taken seriously, of a period that we have intellectually and politically overcome and whose monstrous, degenerate creations still haunt the field of the plastic arts in our time”.Goebbels, November 26th, 1937, in Von der Großmacht zur Weltmacht.

Please compare the above statements with the following:

The first factor channels energy and talents toward accomplishing self-serving goals that reflect the lower instincts and biological ego - its primary focus is on survival and self-advancement. Often talents are used in antisocial or asocial ways. For example, at the lowest edge of Level I many criminals display this type of selfish behavior. They advance their own goals at the expense of others.

The second factor, the social environment (milieu) and peer pressure, constrains individual expression and creativity by encouraging a group view of life and discouraging unique thought and expression. The second factor externalizes values and mores, thereby externalizing conscience. Social forces shape expectations. Behavior and one's talents and creativity are funneled into forms that follow and support the existing social milieu. "My mom says we should always be aware of what our lawn looks like because we want other people to think well of us when they drive by". Because conscience is derived from an external social context, so long as society holds ethical standards people influenced by second factor will behave ethically. However if a society, church, or government becomes corrupt, as in Nazi Germany, people strongly influenced by second factor will not dissent. Socialization without individual examination leads to a rote and robotic existence (the "robopath" described by Ludwig von Bertalanffy). Individual reactions are not unique, they are based upon social contexts ("I cry at funerals and laugh at weddings - everyone does"). According to Dąbrowski, people primarily motivated by second factor represent a significant majority of the general population.

Dąbrowski felt that our society was largely influenced by these lower two factors and could be characterized as operating at Level I. For example, our emphasis on corporate success ("a dog eat dog mentality") means that many CEOs operate on the basis of first factor - they will quickly sacrifice another to enhance their own advancement. As well, our educational, political, corporate, and media systems are self promoting and discourage real examination or individual autonomy - the second factor. Alternatively, social justifications are often used: "of course I break the speed limit, everyone does". Or a soldier may explain that he or she was simply "following orders". Thus, this external value system absolves the individual of any individual responsibility.

Dąbrowski also described a group of people who display a different course: an individualized developmental pathway. These people break away from an automatic, rote, socialized view of life (which Dąbrowski called negative adjustment) and move into and through a series of personal disintegrations. Dąbrowski saw these disintegrations as a key element in the overall developmental process. (...) developmental potential creates crises characterized by strong anxieties and depressions – psychoneurosis - that precipitate disintegration. (...) The greater the OE [overexcitability], the more intense are the day-to-day experiences of life. Dąbrowski outlined five forms of OE: psychomotor, sensual, imaginational, intellectual and emotional. These overexcitabilities, especially the latter three, often cause a person to experience daily life more intensely and to feel the extremes of the joys and sorrows of life profoundly.

Dąbrowski called OE "a tragic gift" to reflect that the road of the person with strong OE is not a smooth or easy one. Potentials to experience great highs are also potentials to experience great lows. Similarly, potentials to express great creativity hold the likelihood of experiencing a great deal of personal conflict and stress. This stress both drives development and is a result of developmental conflicts, both intrapsychic and social. Suicide is a significant risk in the acute phases of this stress. The isolation often experienced by these people heightens the risk of self-harm.

There is more which you can read here: _http://my.opera.com/cezaronu/blog/2009/01/11/theory-of-positive-disintegration-kazimierz-dabrowski

At this point I can`t help requoting this one:

“In this country we encourage "creativity" among the mediocre, but real bursting creativity appalls us. We put it down as undisciplined, as somehow "too much."”

 

[anart]

nemo, I saw nothing manipulative nor confrontational in Luthien's post. You, however, have responded with guns blazing. Why are you so emotionally identified with a movie that depicts what amounts to torture? It might benefit you to get to the bottom of why you've written what you've written here today - something is seriously off.

 

[Adaryn]

You`re phrasing seems to me not only "a bit confrontational" but also quite a bit manipulating. I strongly feel a "You`re either with us or against us"-attitude which leaves no room for any matter-of-fact based debate. It`s also paralogical, since you seem to seriously believe that you know what the movie shows without having seen it. You take the credibility of the sources on which you found your BELIEF for granted.

Nemo, we try to reach objectivity on this forum. This is not about debating. It's not just a matter of personal tastes here. We're talking about a movie depicting torture.
I've read the _detailed_ synopsis on Wikipedia and frankly, that's more than enough for me. I don't need to actually watch it to know that whoever shoots this has some serious issues and that the scenes graphically described are deeply disturbing (to say the least) for the psyche. I chose not to watch it, because I'm becoming aware of the impact that movies/music/art in general can have on our bodies and minds.

Several years ago, I watched a so-called independent movie called Man bites dog (in French: C'est arrivé près de chez vous). I watched it at the time because I used to like Pooelvorde's sketches and I was into "alternative" stuff. This movie was described as a "black comedy", and critically acclaimed and praised by the intelligentsia (those who tell us what we should like and what is trash) for its "corrosiveness" and provocation. It was depicted as a highly "subversive" movie the point of which was "to criticize - using humour - the obscenity of reality shows and the violence in society". So I watched it. After a few laughters in the beginning, and as the movie unfolded, I began to feel seriously ill at ease and to sense something was plain WRONG, wondering just where this film was taking me and what was the intent. I was feeling more and more disturbed by what it showed, under the cover of "humor" and subversion: random murder and torture in a very realistic way. It reached the unbearable when it showed murder of a family - of a child - and rape on a woman. All under the pretense of "subversion" and "criticism".
I wish I had never seen it. It affects me still today. I feel sick and dirty when thinking of it.
And critiques praise it for its "daring" quality. Amazon reviewers praise it, some find it utterly FUNNY. Now when I read this, I can say: yes, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams to turn otherwise intelligent people into sick individuals who condone a film showing rape and murder and finding it funny. If it's not pathology I don't know what it is.
Along with Von Trier, this movie illustrates the pathology that pervades art and our whole society today, including our psyches. It's easy enough to dismiss mainstream Hollywoods movies (and rightly so), but there's another trap, which is to fall into alternative and so-called "serious" movies thinking they're exempt of pathology because they show us disturbing things that Hollywood wouldn't show. This is a serious trap IMO.
As Galahad has said, we're all sick. That's true. And we have the choice to wallow in sickness and twistedness and remain as we are, or to aim for something positive and healthier - to clean our psyches of pathology.

Another recent and very telling example of pathology in art and its link with the PTB:
A few days ago, I was thinking of Polanski and the movie the Pianist (in the context of Polanski's recent arrest), feeling a kind of cognitive dissonance at the thought that this quite good movie was made by a pedophile who raped a 13 year old-girl. Now that bothers me and befuddles my mind. Apparently it doesn't bother some of the French intelligentsia (in the government, in film industry, and in so called intellectuals and philosophers), who ran to the defense Polanski, highlighting the fact that he's a great artist. For such people, apparently, being a great artist gives you immunity to do anything you like. Whatever you do all of a sudden becomes "OK" and morally acceptable. I've even read a comment by another "great artist", Costa-Gavras, who, pleading in favour of Polanski, argued that the girl "looked 25" -- implying poor Polanski had been deluded. Blaming the victim, anyone?
I do think we have some glimpses of Polanski's twistedness in such movies as Rosemary's Baby, Bitter moon or The Ninth Gate. They should tell us something. Yes, they may be good movies, and he can be a talented director. The Marquis de Sade may write very well too. That doesn't take away the fact that both their works and themselves are pathological.

 

[manitoban]

Another recent and very telling example of pathology in art and its link with the PTB:
A few days ago, I was thinking of Polanski and the movie the Pianist (in the context of Polanski's recent arrest), feeling a kind of cognitive dissonance at the thought that this quite good movie was made by a pedophile who raped a 13 year old-girl. Now that bothers me and befuddles my mind. Apparently it doesn't bother some of the French intelligentsia (in the government, in film industry, and in so called intellectuals and philosophers), who ran to the defense Polanski, highlighting the fact that he's a great artist. For such people, apparently, being a great artist gives you immunity to do anything you like. Whatever you do all of a sudden becomes "OK" and morally acceptable. I've even read a comment by another "great artist", Costa-Gavras, who, pleading in favour of Polanski, argued that the girl "looked 25" -- implying poor Polanski had been deluded. Blaming the victim, anyone?

Yes this is an excellent example of pathology - I can't work out either how so many well known actors etc can possibly find Polanski's actions acceptable. I read somewhere one of his defenders saying it was simply a "youthful mistake" on Polanski's part. He was 44 at the time and his victim 13. Pathology alright, people can't even think anymore it seems to me.

 

[anothermagyar]

[quote author=Lúthien]All in all, that's not something one would "enjoy" watching, based on those reviews. But forumites might have another take on it.

They might, but then they will be seen as pathological. So it seems safer not to have another take on it. But I forego safety.
[/quote]
I have to say that after I read the full synopsis of this movie Antichrist:

_http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0870984/synopsis

Chapter One: Grief

At the child's funeral, She collapses and spends a month mostly unconscious in the hospital. When she wakes, She is crippled with grief and He, a therapist, takes it upon himself to talk his wife through the grief process. He has her flush her prescribed medication down the toilet. After a less-than-fruitful time of catharsis at home, during which She tries to hide the pain with sex, He decides exposure therapy will be effective. She tells him that she is most afraid at a cabin in the woods at which she spent time alone with Nic the previous summer, whilst writing a thesis on gynocide. The couple travel to Eden, the cabin. During the journey He sees a deer which is mid-stillbirth - a calf is protruding from its rear end.

Chapter Two: Pain (Chaos Reigns)

When at the cabin, She again attempts to have sex with her husband. He does not comprehend her fear of the natural world and tries to solve her fears with psychotherapy, despite their relationship creating a conflict of interest. She becomes increasingly manic and grief-stricken. Meanwhile, the natural world surrounding the cabin continually proves itself to be forbidding and nihilistic; acorns pelt the cabin like gunfire, and at one point He comes across a self-disembowelling fox which seems to utter the words, "Chaos reigns". He begins to understand his wife's fear of nature: that the nihilism seen in nature is just as present in humanity.

Chapter Three: Despair (Gynocide)

While searching the cabin, He finds materials studied by his wife for her thesis: pictures of witch-hunts and a scrapbook filled with articles and notes on misogynist topics, in which her handwriting becomes more illegible as the pages go on. She, due to intense self-blame over Nic's death, comes to embrace the belief that women are inherently evil. He confronts her with Nic's autopsy report, which states that the bones in both of his feet were distorted. In a toolshed, He finds photographs of Nic, in which his boots are regularly on the wrong feet. She attacks her husband mid-coitus in the shed, crushing his genitals with a block of wood. While he is unconscious, She masturbates him until he orgasms, ejaculating blood onto her shirt and face. She then drills a hole through his calf, and bolts a heavy millstone to his leg. She flees outside leaving him unconscious in the shed, throwing the tool She used to tighten the millstone under the cabin.

He wakes up and drags himself away, finding a foxhole in which to hide. While She frantically searches for him, He finds a crow buried alive, which makes noise upon waking, giving away his hiding place. He beats it repeatedly but it survives. She finds him and tries burying him alive, but digs him up several hours afterwards.

Chapter Four: The Three Beggars

During a confrontation in the house, She takes a pair of scissors and performs a clitoridectomy upon herself, and curls up on the floor in agnonising pain.

During the night the couple are visited by "the 3 Beggars" (a deer who represents grief, a fox who represents pain and a crow who represents despair) and acorns again beat against the roof of the cabin. Hearing the crow under neath the floor board he breaks through the through the floor of the shed, discovering the tool with which to release the millstone from his leg, and then strangles his wife, killing her. He burns the body outside the cabin on a pyre, which was shown upon his arrival at the cabin.

Epilogue

He makes his way from the cabin, finding a patch of berries along the way and eats the berries from the ground. Upon reaching the top of a hill, he turns around and sees "the 3 Beggars" (deer, fox and crow) behind him slowly fading away until completely gone. He looks down to see hundreds of women rushing up the hill towards him, their faces white and blurred.

So if you would ask me if I want to see this movie I would say:
No, thanks.

 

[ana]

[quote author=Lúthien]All in all, that's not something one would "enjoy" watching, based on those reviews. But forumites might have another take on it.

They might, but then they will be seen as pathological. So it seems safer not to have another take on it. But I forego safety.

I have to say that after I read the full synopsis of this movie Antichrist:

_http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0870984/synopsis

Chapter One: Grief

At the child's funeral, She collapses and spends a month mostly unconscious in the hospital. When she wakes, She is crippled with grief and He, a therapist, takes it upon himself to talk his wife through the grief process. He has her flush her prescribed medication down the toilet. After a less-than-fruitful time of catharsis at home, during which She tries to hide the pain with sex, He decides exposure therapy will be effective. She tells him that she is most afraid at a cabin in the woods at which she spent time alone with Nic the previous summer, whilst writing a thesis on gynocide. The couple travel to Eden, the cabin. During the journey He sees a deer which is mid-stillbirth - a calf is protruding from its rear end.

Chapter Two: Pain (Chaos Reigns)

When at the cabin, She again attempts to have sex with her husband. He does not comprehend her fear of the natural world and tries to solve her fears with psychotherapy, despite their relationship creating a conflict of interest. She becomes increasingly manic and grief-stricken. Meanwhile, the natural world surrounding the cabin continually proves itself to be forbidding and nihilistic; acorns pelt the cabin like gunfire, and at one point He comes across a self-disembowelling fox which seems to utter the words, "Chaos reigns". He begins to understand his wife's fear of nature: that the nihilism seen in nature is just as present in humanity.

Chapter Three: Despair (Gynocide)

While searching the cabin, He finds materials studied by his wife for her thesis: pictures of witch-hunts and a scrapbook filled with articles and notes on misogynist topics, in which her handwriting becomes more illegible as the pages go on. She, due to intense self-blame over Nic's death, comes to embrace the belief that women are inherently evil. He confronts her with Nic's autopsy report, which states that the bones in both of his feet were distorted. In a toolshed, He finds photographs of Nic, in which his boots are regularly on the wrong feet. She attacks her husband mid-coitus in the shed, crushing his genitals with a block of wood. While he is unconscious, She masturbates him until he orgasms, ejaculating blood onto her shirt and face. She then drills a hole through his calf, and bolts a heavy millstone to his leg. She flees outside leaving him unconscious in the shed, throwing the tool She used to tighten the millstone under the cabin.

He wakes up and drags himself away, finding a foxhole in which to hide. While She frantically searches for him, He finds a crow buried alive, which makes noise upon waking, giving away his hiding place. He beats it repeatedly but it survives. She finds him and tries burying him alive, but digs him up several hours afterwards.

Chapter Four: The Three Beggars

During a confrontation in the house, She takes a pair of scissors and performs a clitoridectomy upon herself, and curls up on the floor in agnonising pain.

During the night the couple are visited by "the 3 Beggars" (a deer who represents grief, a fox who represents pain and a crow who represents despair) and acorns again beat against the roof of the cabin. Hearing the crow under neath the floor board he breaks through the through the floor of the shed, discovering the tool with which to release the millstone from his leg, and then strangles his wife, killing her. He burns the body outside the cabin on a pyre, which was shown upon his arrival at the cabin.

Epilogue

He makes his way from the cabin, finding a patch of berries along the way and eats the berries from the ground. Upon reaching the top of a hill, he turns around and sees "the 3 Beggars" (deer, fox and crow) behind him slowly fading away until completely gone. He looks down to see hundreds of women rushing up the hill towards him, their faces white and blurred.

So if you would ask me if I want to see this movie I would say:
No, thanks.
[/quote]

Same here

 

[Mrs.Tigersoap]

I've seen Dogville and really liked the concept. There is something always really sad indeed in Von Trier's movies. I think what a lot of people like in his work is the fact that it is truly his own and in this respect, authentic. However, that the man is disturbed is a given. I wanted to see Antichrist (I did not know what the movie was about, I never watch trailers, they're full of spoilers) but reading the mutilation things really put me off!


I just wanted to say that at some point in my life I liked horror or somewhat 'disturbed' movies (nothing too far off though). I noticed that the more light (reading, work, etc.) I was shedding on my 'darkness' (depression, suffering, etc.), the more sensitive to my feelings I became and the less I liked these movies.

I think sometimes people enjoy watching these movies not because they are sick or ponerized but because the realities these movies portray is something they need to come to grip with. Some people have a way of dealing with what scare them the most by just confronting it head on, so to speak, a bit like people afraid of fire becoming firefighters.

So maybe Nemo, you are going through something like that?


Now I enjoy a 'scary' movie if humour is involved or when there is a real reflection in it (Let the Right One in)otherwise I tend to think they're creepy.

 

[alphonse]

The Times (London) film critic was very outspoken in her dislike of the film

Wendy Ide comments :

There’s always one film in the Cannes competition selection that seems calculated to outrage in the most cynical and manipulative way imaginable. This year, that film is Antichrist. Lars von Trier, we get it. You really, really don’t like women. The Danish arch-provocateur who challenged the movie world to get back to basics with the Dogme movement, and famously fell out with Bjork in the Palme d’Or-winning Dancer In The Dark, returns from a creative wilderness period resulting from a bout of chronic depression. He has described Antichrist, a melodramatic psychological horror film, as being a therapeutic and deeply personal piece of work – which suggests that there is a special circle of hell which exists solely in Lars von Trier’s head.

But the cynical might suggest that it’s not the work that von Trier finds so cathartic, but the attention that results from the shockingly graphic mutilations in the movie’s overwrought final act. It’s fair to say that one particular scene is easily the most controversial image ever to be screened in competition in Cannes. It’s calculated to affront and it does. So on that level at least the film must be considered a success.

She goes on to say:

The movie is packed with arresting and atmospheric images, some of which you’ll wish you could permanently erase from your memory.

As far as 'erasing those images' is concerned, and prevention being better than cure I will be giving it a miss.
Here is the link if anyone is interested to read the full article

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/cannes/article6312877.ece

 

[Approaching Infinity]

Whenever I think of a particular film or show, it's pretty easy to see if it was pathological. (And keep in mind pathology is the norm in our culture.) Would a person like Gurdjieff, or Dabrowski, or Laura, or anyone who has a achieved a level of personality development even slightly greater than the average, make a film or piece of art like that? What kind of imagery would they include? Would they show scenes of extremely graphic torture or sexuality? As we know from the research we've done, moral development is not subjective and relative, and at the "esoteric" level, values are held by all and there is unison in understanding. Some films may be well made, and even have a good message, but that does not mean they are not subject to the pseudo-values of "official culture".

 

[Gertrudes]

Several years ago, I watched a so-called independent movie called Man bites dog (in French: C'est arrivé près de chez vous). I watched it at the time because I used to like Pooelvorde's sketches and I was into "alternative" stuff. This movie was described as a "black comedy", and critically acclaimed and praised by the intelligentsia (those who tell us what we should like and what is trash) for its "corrosiveness" and provocation. It was depicted as a highly "subversive" movie the point of which was "to criticize - using humour - the obscenity of reality shows and the violence in society". So I watched it. After a few laughters in the beginning, and as the movie unfolded, I began to feel seriously ill at ease and to sense something was plain WRONG, wondering just where this film was taking me and what was the intent. I was feeling more and more disturbed by what it showed, under the cover of "humor" and subversion: random murder and torture in a very realistic way. It reached the unbearable when it showed murder of a family - of a child - and rape on a woman. All under the pretense of "subversion" and "criticism".
I wish I had never seen it. It affects me still today. I feel sick and dirty when thinking of it.
And critiques praise it for its "daring" quality. Amazon reviewers praise it, some find it utterly FUNNY. Now when I read this, I can say: yes, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams to turn otherwise intelligent people into sick individuals who condone a film showing rape and murder and finding it funny. If it's not pathology I don't know what it is.

I have seen that movie as well... very, very, disturbing. I have seen it in a very similar context to yours Luthien. My friends at the time were trying to make me see this very funny (??!!?) movie. So I did, and yes, I did have a few laughs, after a while I started to wonder what was really going on, when that murder/rape scene came up. It was nauseating and horrific. But the most disturbing was, when leaving the cinema, people still found the movie funny!
I think that our senses have become very numb, watching sadistic violence in cartoons since we're children doesn't help either.

About Lars V. Trier, I have also watched Dogville when it came out and had ambivalent feelings. The movie delves deeply within some of the worst sides of human interactions..but then again, all of Trier's work does. I have watched a few of his movies and he seems to have a pattern of mixing naivety with the loss of innocence in the grossest of manners. He picks an empathic character and corrupts it, brutalizing his/her (usually a women) emotionally and physically with what I now find to be unnecessary extremes of violence. I used to like his movies, but in the more recent years I tend to feel he over does it, going round in a vicious cycle of corruption of a human being.
However, these are my personal and still very subjective feelings towards his work.

I just wanted to say that at some point in my life I liked horror or somewhat 'disturbed' movies (nothing too far off though). I noticed that the more light (reading, work, etc.) I was shedding on my 'darkness' (depression, suffering, etc.), the more sensitive to my feelings I became and the less I liked these movies.

Same here.
In my case, I think a lack of emotional maturity often led to persuing violence of some sort in movies. The more bottled up and unresolved the state, the more gratification I would get from delving more deeply in it by watching movies that would enhance my dark feelings.
I think everyone's process is different, and as Mrs Tigersoap as pointed out, sometimes it might function as a way of coming to grip with an unresolved issue.

I also want to say that this thread together with the thread on Positive Dissociation (http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=14103.0) is really getting some skeletons out of the closet for me. I feel that I am gaining so much from everyone's insight that I wish to thank you all.

 

[anothermagyar]

[quote author=Mrs.Tigersoap]I just wanted to say that at some point in my life I liked horror or somewhat 'disturbed' movies (nothing too far off though). I noticed that the more light (reading, work, etc.) I was shedding on my 'darkness' (depression, suffering, etc.), the more sensitive to my feelings I became and the less I liked these movies.[/quote]

Same here. Horror movies out of question for me .
Long time a go I felt raped after I was watching horror movies. Nightmares and fear of darkness.
I don't do it anymore, I quit watching horror 10 years ago.
I think these violent pictures raping our mind.
The reality is enough disturbing.osit.

 

[mkrnhr]

I stooped watching horror and violent movies when I read about psychopathy because I got the sentiment that if I had a soul I had to protect her from oppressive thought and I somehow equated the fascination to those kind of movies as a program of self-calming (I can watch a horror movie so I am strong enough to protect myself) and also to that fascination some victims have to their tormentors.