Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
The Bloody Spectacle: Mishima, The Sacred Heart, Hogarth, Cronenberg, and the Entrails
of Culture
Author(s): Michael Thomas Carroll
Source: Studies in Popular Culture, Vol. 15, No. 2 (1993), pp. 43-56
Published by: Popular Culture Association in the South
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23413959
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Michael Thomas Carroll
Of the many acts of violence in literature, few compare with that which
forms the central scene of Yukio Mishima's "Patriotism," in which a young
lieutenant performs seppukuthe military form of ritual suicidewhen
he finds that his fellow officers have not included him in a coup attempt.
David Lodge, addressing the subject of literature in translation, notes that
literary narrative operates a number of codes simultaneously, and in most
of them "(for instance, enigma, sequence, irony, perspective) effects are
readily transferable from one natural language to another (and even from
one medium to another). A flashback is a flashback in any language; so is
a shift in point of view, a peripeteia, or an "open' ending" (105). Geoffrey
Sargent's excellent translation of Mishima proves Lodge's point, for there
is one narrative quality that must have been in the original and which is
forcefully apparent in the translation. This quality, however, is not one
that Lodge catalogueswhat Girard Genette calls focalization, a term
which attempts to disentangle "to say" and "to see," the two verbs which
are implicated in the Anglo-American term "point-of-view" (Genette 189;
cf. Newman 1029). In "Patriotism," Mishima's narration profoundly
privileges the gaze:
The lieutenant's eyes fixed his wife with an intense, hawklike stare.
Moving the sword around to his front, he raised himself slightly on the
hips and let the upper half of his body lean over the sword point. That
he was mustering his whole strength was apparent from the angry
tension of the uniform at his shoulders. The lieutenant aimed to strike
deep into the left of his stomach. His sharp cry pierced the silence of the
room. (1187)
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44 Studies in Popular Culture
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Carroll 45
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46 Studies in Popular Culture
Heart icon, however, Christ's left hand, rather than holding the Bible, is
holding open his robe to reveal his disembodied heart. The precise origins
of this devotional practice are obscure; there are some passages in the Bible
that make reference to the heart of Jesus, but these references, which will
be discussed later, seem to have little relation to iconographic practice.
Some accounts claim that it dates back to the days of the church fathers,
but there is little evidence for this (M.P. Carroll 134; Bainvel 127).
However clear the relationship of the Sacred Heart icon to the larger
Christian theme of human sacrifice and the attendant image of the
Crucifixion, the pagan elements of the worship of the of the Savior are the
more predominant, and thus it is more likely that the icon dates to
approximately the 12th century, to the pagan sensuality of medieval
Catholicism rather than the post-Alexandrian intellectualism of Augus
tine and the fathers.
During this era, for instance, several nuns Beatrice de Nazareth, St.
Gertrude the Great, and Mechtilde of Mageburghad visionary experi
ences in which they claimed to have seen the physical heart of Jesus.
Further, it is from this era that the earliest extant example of the icon is
found: an escutcheon of German or Flemish origin (Male 103). Clearly,
when we compare the Sacred Heart image as we know it with this original,
several things become evident: first there is, to our modern eyes, a peculiar
grizzliness here in that the most painful and visceral elements of the
crucifixion have been amplified. As historian Emile Male says, this "is a
strange world. [Here] we breathe an atmosphere of ardent and almost
uncivilized piety" (103). Also, during this time we hear the first promotion
of this practice on the part of a clerical figure: Dominic of Treves (1384
1461) suggested that devotees kiss a likeness of the sacred heart once a day.
In the next century, the Carthusian Lansperg's recommended (in 1572)
that Christians might assist their devotions by using a figure of the Sacred
Heart as a kind of focalizer, a suggestion later echoed by Francis de Sales
in 1611. More than a Christian abstraction, then, the sacred heart is an
image, a focalizer, just as Mishima's fictional, cinematic, and photographic
rehearsals for his own sacrificial death served for him as a focalizer.
The ultimate acceptance of this devotion was predicated on its popu
larity, which in turn was predicated upon the renown of Margaurite Marie
Alacoque, a French nun to whom, so it is claimed, Christ made a series of
visitations (the Paray-Le-Monial visions, 1675-1693) in order to proclaim,
among other things, that the worship of his heart was acceptable to him.
Alacoque recorded these proclamations in her autobiography, which is, in
essence, an imaginary lover's discourse between herself and Christ.
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Carroll 47
Alacoque reports, for instance, that Christ said to her, "I wish thy heart to
serve Me as a refuge wherein I may withdraw and take My delight when
sinners persecute and drive me from theirs" (8). And later: "Our lord loves
you and wishes to see you advance with great speed in the way of His 1
ove Therefore, do not bargain with him, but give him all, and you will
find all in His divine Heart.... We must love this Sacred Heart, with all
our strength and with all our capacity. Yes, we must love Him, and He will
establish His empire and will reign in spite of all His enemies and their
opposition" (61). Alacoque's visions yield a number of interpretations
concerning, for example, the essential imperialism of Christianity and the
m ale/female power matrix expressed within the formulation of male body/
female worshiper. Also significant are the psychosexual elementsthe
veiled language of surrender, of penetration and of exchange. As M. P.
Carroll, drawing on Kleinean psychoanalysis, suggests, there is an ele
ment of phallic symbolism in the heart image with may explain the
enduring power of this icon.
Alacoque's director, a Jesuit priest named D'Columbre, promulgated
this practice with particular zeal, and he was soon joined by other Jesuits.
While the beatification of Alacoque did not occur until much later, in 1864,
the act firmly established the practice, and since that time the feast of the
Sacred Heart has been kept at Catholic churches, appropriately enough,
on the Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi. And here it is worth
noting that while the Sacred Heart vision in medieval visionary history is
seen only by women, men have been primarily responsible for the promo
tion of the ritualDomnic of Treves, Francis de Sales, D'Columbre. This
suggests a binary code in which the essential creative force is feminine
while the bureaucratizing, commercializing force has been male, a code
which of course in imbedded in the structure of Catholicism if not all
organized religion.
In addition to its manifestation in female visionary experience, the
devotion to the Sacred Heart also had an impact on a more ethereal realm
of the late medieval supersturcture, that of philosophy. This form of
devotion was, as one might expect, subject to the controversies which
resulted from the conflicts of philosophical and pagan forms of Christian
ity. The Jansenists, for instance, stood in particular opposition to the
practice, and they denounced the "Cardiolartrae" for worshiping a divided
Christ and thus giving to the created humanity of Christ worship which
belonged to God alone. The conflict here is between the worldly and
transcendent elements, between, appropriately enough, the heart and the
head of Christianity, an elemental conflict indeed, for as Elaine Scarry
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48 Studies in Popular Culture
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Carroll 49
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50 Studies in Popular Culture
Valentine's Day celebration. And as the word "passion" has reared its, well,
passionate head, we might pause momentarily to consider its dual role, in
phrases like "the passion of Christ" and "passionate lovemaking."
If the psychosexuality which informs Mishima's concept of seppuku is
sublimated in the Catholic icon, so too is the violence. The exposed heart
is not violently ripped from the chest, but simply hovers there, mysteri
ously. Nonetheless, images of violence and violation are evident. The
Sacred Heart is surrounded by thorns, a reminder of the humble crown
bestowed upon Christ by Pilate's soldiers; and it is pierced on the left, blood
dripping from the wound made by the spear of Centurion Gais Cassius.
This violent image, perhaps, finds its biblical source in John 19:34, "One
of the soldiers struck a spear into his side, and immediately blood and
water came forth", while the more idealized element of the icon has its
origins in Matthew 11:29, "Learn of me for I am meek and humble of heart".
Moreover, the sheer viserality of Christ's heart is contradicted by the
transcendent fire of divine love, emanating from the aorta like a sacred gas
jet, and by the celestial glow which surrounds this exposed organ.
No treatment of this subject would, I think, be complete without
consideration of William Hogarth's series of engravings, The Four Stages
of Cruelty. This series, a typical didactic narrative, depicts the moral
decline of Tom ero, whose career of gratuitous violence includes acts such
as inserting an arrow into a dog's rectum, flogging a horse, and finally,
murder. The most shocking picture, however, and the one that warrants
our interest here, is the finale, entitled "The Reward of Cruelty," a
thoroughly gory depiction of an autopsy being performed on Nero's cadaver
following his execution. The last of the verses accompanying the engraving
read: "His heart, expos'd to prying eyes/ pity has no claim:/But,
dreadful!/from his Bones shall rise/His Monument of Shame."
"The Reward of Cruelty" captures, as does much of Hogarth but rarely
as well as here, that odd combination of civility and brutality that was
18th-century England. That dichotomy is pictorially realized in the line of
descent which extends from the subordinating gaze of the chief surgeon
seated at the center of the picture to the more vigorous engagement of the
surgeons who are actually performing the autopsy. As James Twichell
notes in Preposterous Violence, "we find one freshly killed monster being
dissected by other monsters, who are made all the more frightening by
virtue of their social and ethical position" (242). The dichotomy is also
paradigmatically realized in the contrast between, on the one hand, the
symmetry of the surgical theatrea symmetry informed by the
Enlightenment's ideology of reason and orderand, on the other hand, the
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Carroll 51
William
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52 Studies in Popular Culture
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Carroll 53
by yoking Tom Nero's violation of a dog's body with the violation of Nero's
own corpse by medical men, Hogarth suggests that science may not, after
all, have gotten very far away from more primitive forms of violence.
Our probing the entrails of culture will conclude with the 1988 film,
Dead Ringers, the product of the Canadian director, David Cronenberg.
Cronenberg"s bizarre psychodrama, based on a true story, concerns the
lives of identical twins, Elliot and Beverly Mantle, who at an early age
evince a peculiar fixation for the internal workings of the female body.
They progress from performing mock surgery on a plastic model, to
Harvard medical school, and finally into a lucrative private practice in
gynecology, supplemented by research grants bestowed upon them for
their innovative techniques. The first of these techniques is the "Mantle
Retractor," a device the brothers invented in medical school for holding
open the abdominal wall of the patient and which later became, in the
words of a speaker at their Harvard commencement, "the standard of the
industry." This idyll of prenatal identity, perversely extended into adult
life and institutionally legitimated, begins to unravel when the twins are
faced with the prospect of "an unexpected turn in the Mantle saga;" that
is, a woman, Claire Niveau, comes between them. Niveau's presence
causes a "rupture" in the brother's intense psychic bond, a bond which has
its roots in the biological bond of identical twins and which lies at the very
core of their identities.
And, indeed the problem of identity is the prime motivation for the
Mantle brothers' obsession with the internals of the female body, for
through visceral knowledge, through the subjugation of the female to their
subordinating medical gaze, they hope to solve the mystery of their own
origins and to obtain self-knowledge. Their obsession with female internals
take a bizarre, aestheticised turn, for as Elliot Mantle proclaims, "There
ought to be beauty contests for the inside of the bodyyou know, most
perfect spleen, most perfectly developed kidney." In one alarming dream
sequence which has the brothers conjoined at the hip like the Siamese
twins, Chang and Eng, Elliot watches as Claire bites through the twin's
shared flesh to draw out their shared viscera with her teeth. And in the
final sequence of the film, Beverly makes a surgical incision into his
brother's abdomen in an attempt to solve their psychic dilemma, a solution
which proves fatal to both.
There are of course, many other examples of torsic violation coupled
with the transfixed gaze. Examples that readily spring to mind include
Eraserhead, in which David Lynch's existential nerd/anti-hero, in a
moment of what would seem to be irrepressible curiosity, carves open the
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54 Studies in Popular Culture
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Carroll 55
According to Julia Kristeva, "The corpse seen without God, and outside
of science, is the utmost of abjection. It is death infecting life. Abject. It is
something rejected from which one does not part, from which one does not
protect oneself as an object" (3-4). The bloody spectacle is often seen in the
light of God, but never entirely; often in the light of another god, Science,
but again, never entirely so. Thus, the spectacle of torsic violation is always
somewhere between godliness and defilement, between, on the one hand,
the purity of science and transcendent idealism, and, on the other, the
degradation of mere brute fascination and sexual drive. It is through this
overdetermination that the bloody spectacle is, and will remain, an
enduring image in the gallery of culture.
Works Cited
Alacoque, Margaret Mary. Thoughts and Sayings of Saint Margaret Mary For Ever
Day of the Year. Compiled by The Sisters of the Visitation of Paray-le-Monial; Tr
The Sisters of the Visitation of Partridge Green, Horsham, West Sussex. Rockfor
Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc. 1935.
Bainvel, Rev. J.W., S.J. Devotion to the Sacred Heart: The Doctrine and Its History.
from 5th French; ed. by E. Leahy. London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1924
Black, Joel. The Aesthetics of Murder. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1991.
Clover, Carol. Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.
Princeton UP, 1991.
. Interview with Johnny Ray Huston. The SF Weekly. San Francisco. July 8,199
Vol XI, No. 19. 23-24.
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56 Studies in Popular Culture
Scott-Stokes, Henry. The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima. N.Y. Knopf, 1973.
The Shape of Rage: the Films of David Cronenberg. A publication of the Academy of
Canadian Cinema. General Pub Co. Ltd. Toronto Ed. Piers Handling.
Steinberg, Leo. The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and Modern Oblivion. NY
Pantheon, 1983.
Tsukamoto, Shinya, dir. Tetsuo: The Iron Man. 1989. Script by Shnya Tsukamoto,
Produced by Kaiyu Theatre.
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