Sasha Selavie on the problematic definitions of mental illness
Ever wondered if you’re seriously mentally ill? Then darlings, stay well away from any diagnosis from the American Psychiatric Association! Unbelievably, these fascistic fuckers took until 1987 to remove homosexuality from their painstakingly intolerant list of psychiatric disorders. Are you shocked and surprised? You should be – if the APA’s former, faux-Nazi guidelines were still in place, QX’s entire readership would be considered ‘disordered’! Tough – I’d rather wallow in same-sex debauchery than redneck bigotry anytime, but disturbingly, my additional quirk – transsexuality – didn’t get global, APA approval until 2013!
So pardon me if – and I’m speaking strictly for myself – I wonder if I’m somehow differently sane? Okay, by widening the accepted psychological goalposts, the APA’s finally taking reluctant babysteps to address complex cultural and sexual realities, but it’s a hugely challenging task. See, one part of the transsexual experience – or mine at least – is feeling utterly repelled by your body. And stupidly – way before I was aware of surgical or hormone options – I tried modifying my own flesh like a teenage, tranny Doctor Frankenstein. Sure, in retrospect, my method was pure madness, but I was just trying to hack my buried, ideal self free from its’ poxy, boy-body container. So, did it hurt? Oh fuck, yeah – never, ever try slicing your foreskin with a razor blade, or worse still, dipping your shy, stupidly inquisitive cock into wart remover!
Mercifully, time is a great healer, and I eventually learned to mould my unwanted male flesh into preferred femininity via the much gentler persuasion of hormones. Still, maybe that first, exploratory slice of my tender dick-tip cemented my fascination with fumbling mutilation as a means to create startling, unorthodox beauty? Nothing else really explains my intense devotion to what Hollywood calls body horror, and to this day, I’ll defend the Saw franchise as brilliantly transgressive art!
Am I a sick fuck? Who knows! I’ll leave that to the expertise of consulting psychiatrists. But I see modern cinematic body horror as an incredibly inventive metaphor for ruthless, capitalist exploitation. No wonder I adore The Human Centipede, arguably the best body horror ever!
Directed by avuncular Dutch director Tom Six, Centipede’s an unflinching stare down the anus of human grossness, a faux-Nazi, contemporary medical experiment set loose in the contemporary psyche. And the plot – like all the greatest horror movies – is geometrically simple and effective; two teen American chicks on vacation get lost in the deep, dark German woods. Pounding on a lonely house door in torrential rain, they’re suddenly face-to-face with the astonishing features of fabulously-named lead actor, Dieter Laser.
Cue Rohypnol cocktails and waking up tied to medical tables as Laser – a sand-blasted and acid-peeled Willem Dafoe –calmly states he’ll surgically join the girls, plus a freshly captured, Japanese tourist, mouths to butts as a human centipede.
If intended as ultra-gross, torture shock, Centipede’s also a masterpiece of black humour, at least to my deeply disturbed sense of humour. Throughout, Laser’s unflinchingly ruthless, the archetypical mad scientist, his body language more rigid and unforgiving than rape by rigor mortis!
Okay, while it’s appalling to watch the girls literally eat shit as the Japanese top of the ‘centipede’ feeds, one’s compelled to imagine if it gets tastier with time, in addition to savouring the incredible eroticism of forcibly conjoined bodies!
And mercifully, Six films his work with deadly, fillet-knife control – there’s no easy, disgusted escape with the stroboscopic frenzy of fast popcorn movie edits. Instead, there’s pure, perfectly-framed grossness in forensic detail, including the sickest climax in cinema history: a ‘middle’ girl surgically attached to a dead ‘front’, and a dying ‘behind’. Unable to scream or even move, she’s trapped between mounds of decomposing, human filth! Now that’s what I call controversial, cutting-edge art, but Human Centipede 3, allegedly, is even better – 500 hunky prisoners stitched mouth to butt in a pulsing ring of orgasm! No art imaginable – at least in my sick-fuck world – gets better than that!
