💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › paul-z-simons-curtains-of-blood.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 13:31:49. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: Curtains Of Blood:
Author: Paul Z. Simons
Date: Spring 2013
Language: en
Topics: Theatre, 19th century, anarchy, Modern Slavery, Modern Slavery #2
Source: Modern Slavery #2

Paul Z. Simons

Curtains Of Blood:

“Eyes wide open! Eyes wide open!

Do you not realize how much horror

is contained in those three words.”

from “In the Darkroom” 1911Maurice Level & Etienne Rey

The images conjured by the mention of the Theatre du Grand-Guignol are

ominous-- oozing madness, amorality run riot, blood flowing in the

aisles by the bucketful, and intricate sadistic revenges. One imagines

the conclusion of a night at the theatre off impasse Chaptal with

patrons stumbling out into the night and vomiting on the curb, and one

or two of the more suggestible types fainting outright in the street. A

little theatre situated in the north of Paris with its own house

physician to tend to patrons overcome by the images, content, and

presentation of the performances. The truth, of course, is somewhat

different than the image, but the image lives on in spite of the

theatre’s demise in 1962, the dearth of plays translated and available

in English, or any language, other than French, for that matter; indeed

the virtual loss of this entire theatrical tradition; considered by some

as an example of incredibly bad French taste, like Jerry Lewis worship,

taking the post-modernists seriously or inadequate personal hygiene.

Regardless, the Grand-Guignol seems as dead as one of it’s own

brutalized and tortured victims…yet perhaps the real fear of death is

contained not in its reality, but in the ultimate distrust by the living

that the dead won’t really stay dead for very long. And so it goes…

History

Of course I didn’t jump into Grand-Guignol without having the strong

feeling that somewhere buried in there were some deep, twisted anarchist

roots. The theatre was, after all, located just off the Place Pigalle,

the natural habitat of bohemians, drug addicts, revolutionaries,

prostitutes, proletarians and assorted flotsam; and this in Paris--the

Mother of Revolutions, and timed in the final decade of the 19th and

first decades of the 20th century. Which immediately brings to mind the

great anarchist terrorists Vaillant, Emile Henry and Ravachol, and from

the individualist anarchist menu, the Bonnot Gang—who, among other havoc

raised, engineered and perfected the motorized bank robbery getaway. And

sure enough without too much digging one uncovers the “Theatre Libre,”

the first artistic move towards what would become the Grand Guignol. The

Theatre Libre opened its doors in 1887, and presented comedies rosse,

short plays that showed various aspects of the lives and language of

workers, and the underclasses. The theatre was above all meant as an

experiment in naturalism, a theatrical philosophy which will percolate

throughout the entire existence of the Grand-Guignol. The Theater Libre

closed its doors due to bankruptcy in 1893, and one of its founders,

Oscar Metenier, walked away from the whole experience with a few ideas.

Why not stage what these Parisians appeared to enjoy? They read about

violence, mayhem, and death daily in such scandal sheets as Le Petit

Journal, the Petit Parisien and the faits divers sections of newspapers,

accompanied by graphic presentations of the crimes described. Perhaps

they’d pay to see some of the same. Further, what should ever really

stop anyone from doing his best to offend the sensibilities of just

about everyone? These two seemingly apposed notions co-existing side by

side in an intimate theatre of 285 seats and a stage measuring a meager

20 feet by 20 feet-- may just yield some interesting artistic results,

and a profit.

So Metenier opened the Theatre du Grand-Guignol in 1897, the name

Guignol is slang for puppet, based in part on a popular puppet-character

from Lyon (a Gallic version of Punch and Judy); therefore the Theatre of

the Big Puppet. A brief note about the building, originally a Jansenist

church it was deconsecrated during the Reign of Terror and probably used

for one of the areas political clubs, in the early 19th century a

blacksmiths shop, briefly a church again, an artists studio, and then a

theatre. A photo exists (figure 1) from 1947 of an audience watching one

of the plays and in it one can see the interior is decorated by

fleur-de-lis and one can also make out one of the two wooden carved

angels that adorned the side panels. From the very first season, Paris

knew it was in for something new, an experience of theatre that wrenched

you from your seat, that scared you out of your wits, offended your wife

and turned your stomach. One offering from the first two seasons shows a

general direction, the play is called Lui! (Jack) authored by Metenier.

In it two prostitutes are reading the Petit Parisien and commenting on

the story of a fellow prostitute murdered and mutilated horribly by a

customer. Eventually a knock comes at the door—a new customer, Jack (of

course everyone knows he’s the killer--now it’s just a question of time

and method, the emotional roller coaster starts to climb the hill). The

younger of the two prostitutes takes Jack into her boudoir--he pays for

champagne, sleeps a bit, she finds the proceeds from his previous murder

as she shakes down his pants-- and just as homicide draws near the

police close in and arrest him. A close call, not overly thrilling, nor

particularly erotic—but a nice start.

After two years Metenier handed control of the theatre over to Max

Maurey, who after familiarizing himself with Montmartre and its artists

turned immediately to stamping the theatre as The Theatre of Fear. He

was a master at playing on the public’s impressions of the theatre and

the hiring of the house doctor was done with much publicity and it

figured in many of the early reviews. A cartoon from the era shows a

doctor examining patrons before entry to ensure that they have a

sufficiently stout constitution to withstand the horrors inside. Maurey

loved the cartoon so much it was included in early publicity and

playbill material. Metenier also introduced Maurey to Andre de Lord who

for the next two decades would become the writer par excellence of the

Grand-Guignol style. In virtually all GG revivals at least one, and

occasionally several, of his plays are included. De Lord would always

maintain a tone of naturalism in his works, and as the plays became more

bloody and horror filled he sought out help in looking into the souls

and psyche of the insane and the criminal; as an example, one of his

collaborators was the psychologist and Director of the Laboratory of

Physiological Psychology at the Sorbonne, Alfred Binet, the developer of

the Binet Intelligence test (and De Lord’s psychotherapist). A fact I

find incredible, like having Jung on the set of the Texas Chainsaw

Massacre to rework dialogue. A final example of this commitment to

naturalism is the content of the plays, which avoid all supernatural

causation; no werewolves or vampires at the GG. Rather what makes the

plays so immediate is that much of the content is so damned possible;

like being bitten by a rabid dog, or suffering a terrible vengeance by

the hand of a jealous, crazed lover. Maurey also paid close attention to

the unique stage tricks required to pull off a GG play. In this he was

assisted by Paul Ratineau, effectively the theatre’s stage manager, and

a master of making the grisly happen (cheaply and effectively) on stage.

The stage gags and tricks associated with GG are legendary and are

written about by theatre professionals to this day. It is said that

Ratineau and those managers who came later had perfected at least 9

different types of stage blood. Note that each type was for different

kinds of wounds, or effects, some flowed, some stuck to the skin,

another type squirted. The most popular blood at the GG actually

coagulated after application—it is known that this type required heating

just prior to use and “scabbed” as it cooled. A neat fact understood by

return patrons of the GG who when they heard whispered from

backstage—“Edmond quick! Warm the blood!” knew that things were going to

get intense—and soon. One other gag that was uniquely Guignol was the

eyeball gouged from the socket. For this trick Ratineau used sheep eyes

purchased from local butchers, they were drained of fluid and anchovies

dyed red were placed (sewn? stapled?) inside. At the Grand-Guignol the

stage eyeballs bounced when gouged and squirted horrifically when

stomped on. Add to this the knives with retractable blades, scissors

that squirted blood, artificial limbs hacked off and you have an idea of

what the audience so feared, and had paid to see. Recall also that these

stage tricks were being done within feet of the first row in the

audience, and there were neither retakes nor do-overs—an eye gouge had

to work for every performance, perfectly. Ratineau put his skills to

making all these stage tricks effective and after his leaving the

theatre several other masters of the trade stepped in and developed upon

his promising start. The theatre and its troupe hit the big time,

throughout the first decade of the twentieth century and right up to the

start of the First World War. The Grand-Guignol became one of three

theatre experiences on every tourists list for Paris, the other two

being the Comedie Francaise, and the Folies Bergeres. This period,

written about ably by Zerzan in his Elements of Refusal, was one of

economic expansion, solidarity and working class agitation. The ancien

regime in France and elsewhere cracked and split under the twin

pressures of seething cultural and economic forces, the Third Republic

showed increasing strain and even the election of Georges Clemenceau (an

odd equivalent to Obama in many ways) from 1906 to 1909 could only slow

the increasing rot at the core of the French state by offering a mild

appeal to proletarian support. The Theatre thrived in this era and also

defined itself against other theatrical experiences and even in some

respects in contradiction to its own naturalist roots. The plays

launched in this era include some of the tried and true guingoliere

classics, like The Light Housekeepers 1905 (Autier and Cloquemin), The

Final Torture 1905 (DeLorde and Morel), and The Final Kiss 1912 (Maurice

Level)—more on the plays later. One thing all observers agree upon is

that the theatre fit into the neighborhood, an area of commercial sex

work, cocaine sniffing, hash smoking, opium eating, absinthe quaffing

artists and déclassé intellectuals, and of workers just beginning to

feel their strength after the long interlude of somnambulism between the

Commune and the reorganization of the Left via the Dreyfus Affair.

Within a year of the beginning of the First World War, Maurey had sold

the theatre to Camille Choisy and a silent partner Charles Zibell. No

explanation was ever given for the change, but the bloodletting in the

trenches is said to have sickened Maurey and his early retirement may

have been a general withdrawal from the world. He may also have felt

that a Theatre of Horrors, after the global slaughter of millions may

become redundant, or worse, boring for future audiences. Choisy had

spent most of his life in the theatre performing in second-rate

melodramas, though it was soon obvious that he was uniquely suited to

administer the second decade of the Grand Guignol. Of all his

achievements perhaps the most singular is to have established a “star

system” for his genre. He was responsible for the retention and

marketing of L. Paulais and Paula Maxa (figure 2), the two actors whose

names are most associated with haute Guignol. The two originated many of

the various roles most associated with the theatre, and Maxa’s

autobiography contains an insiders perspective of the theatre during its

apex of popularity. Of the two very little is known of their actual

stage presence or acting styles, though much is made of the tortures

they either perpetrated or endured on stage. It is said that Maxa,” was

the most assassinated woman in Europe”, and that she had died 10,000

times in 60 different ways, and had been raped 3,000 times. Yes,

raped—sexual violence featured prominently in the GG tradition and we

will examine it later.

One of Choisy’s many innovations for GG was to move the acting into a

far more plastic and changeable paradigm. Thus at the beginning of a

horror play the acting may lean to the extremely natural, an almost

lackadaisical acting style, but by the end as the horrors are unfolded

and the blood flowed the actors had adopted an overtly emotional style

characterized by sweeping hand/arm/shoulder movements, exaggerated

postures and wild facial contortions. In general, critics seem to regard

this as a part of the theatres change and growth—in the same way that

German Expressionism would have its effect on the GG. The Cabinet of Dr.

Caligari was produced in 1925, based loosely on the 1919 German film and

authored, once again, by André de Lorde and a collaborator, Henri

Bauche. Rather there seems an interest on the part of the GG troupe to

maintain the naturalist theatre method within the fact that what is

happening in the plot is something other than the Natural, as in being

blinded by two old women in a lunatic asylum, self-diagnosed with

rabies, and so on. The emotional and physical response in the natural

world to such an event would also be exaggerated, off—turn around on a

roller coaster and observe the faces and bodies of the passengers behind

you. What seems more likely is that this theatre of naturalism was

experimenting with ways to bring the responses to horror into a

relatively natural, at least explicable, acting paradigm. What resulted

may have looked melodramatic—but it wasn’t.

Choisy runs the theatre through 1928; his partner Zibell, facing

bankruptcy, sold his share to Jack Jouvin in 1926. Jouvin and Choisy

stayed together for two acrimonious—though productive years. Choisy left

thereafter and Jouvin fearing that the success of Maxa could ruin the

theatre let her go in the same year. Both Choisy and Maxa found other

work in the then thriving market of small theatres in Montmartre and

over the years Maxa would return for revivals and occasionally to work

on new roles. Though it was said by the mid-1930s that her voice had

suffered so much from her trademark bloodcurdling scream that her skills

were a mere shadow of her previous over-the-top victimhood. Jouvin

assumes control during a particularly difficult time for the theatre,

crowds were thinning and the notoriety, while still there, was no longer

a palpable, unavoidable presence. While not abandoning De Lord

completely (he stages a De Lord play every year during his stewardship)

he effectively removed the playwright as the literary force behind the

theatre. Jouvin began substituting plays where physical violence was

replaced with psychological and sexual menace. Jouvin himself wrote a

majority of the dramas during this period, and for all his hard work the

theatre maintained its slow, barely perceptible decline. By 1938 it was

over for Jouvin and the theatre was purchased by Eva Berkson, an

Englishwoman who staged comedies until the Nazi occupation forced her to

flee to England. Almost everyone believed that because of the Nazi

presence the theatre would be closed until the liberation—Choisy,

perhaps reading the Germans better than most of the French, knew that

those zany, bloodthirsty Nazis would just love a good Theatre of Fear,

so he, Maxa, and a few members of the old cast and crew reopened the

theatre, and staged performances steeped in de Lord and Metenier

revivals. The Nazis were exactly what Choisy thought they were and

proved just as receptive an audience as the Parisians. In fact, Hermann

Goering attended at least one, and probably several, performances and

though the genre was not wildly popular—it was acceptable for the Nazi

occupiers and censors and far enough from Vichy for the French Right

(always an ominous presence) to pay little attention. So Choisy and crew

had a grand run until 1944. Even the Allies proved susceptible, and

George “Blood and Guts” Patton among others attended the theatre after

the Liberation. Eva Berkson returned from England to reclaim her theatre

in 1946, and there began the final downward slide—even the rehire of

Paul Ratineau as director for the ‘46 and ‘47 seasons did nothing to

halt the decline. The name Grand-Guignol had become something of a

curse, or a theatrical albatross. The mood, post World War II, was very

different than after the First World War when the theatre had passed

through its apex of popularity and growth. Audiences seemed less—not

more jaded—as if a trip to the GG was like visiting a cynical and senile

uncle—a downer. Part of this is clearly the infection of American

culture into Western Europe; the gee-whillikeristic worldview of the US

troops and the assorted bureaucratic and ruling class flotsam sent to

“revive” the Allied Countries via the Marshall Plan slowly became a

raging cancer of anti-intellectualism, Christian moral sentiment, and

Juicy Fruit Gum—and some of the most obvious victims of this infection

was the GG, political and economic contestation, and any decent

scholarship from the Europeans for decades. America’s Greatest

Generation?—compared to what, primordial slime? I am reminded that

Jacques Lacan began his seminars in 1951, and from the beginning the

leering tri-circular face of Mickey Mouse seems an apropos symbol for

his much hailed return to Freud and those final years of his in Orange

County—just minutes from Disneyland. So by 1962 the theatre was finally

closed—the last few years characterized by multiple owners—including Max

Maurey’s sons at one time—and countless vain attempts to recapture the

attention and imagination of Paris—suffice it to say Paris had been

stripped of both as a result of the triumph of global capital. The last

performances were in November of 1962 and on January 5, 1963 all scenery

and props were offered at public auction. Grand-Guignol was no more—sort

of.

The Total Theatre Experience

One of the keys to the success of the Grand Guignol, over and above it’s

obvious attraction as The Theatre of Fear, is its cobbling together of a

total and totalizing experience. From the movement through the urban

space to the impasse Chaptal, to the design of the theatre and stage

right through to the restraints and torture/death visited upon the

victim—all elements created an increasing paranoia, a boxing-in without

escape, claustrophobia leading ultimately to a catharsis of almost

sexual intensity. A few contemporary reviews of Grand-Guignol begin not

with the lowering of the house lights; but with the walk from the

Pigalle Metro station to the theatre. As an example, a review from the

1940’s;

“ Leaving the Metro at Pigalle, you had to walk down the Rue Pigalle

between the ranks of fishnet stockings and cigarette smoke, in the light

of the neon signs and the sound of music that emanated from the clubs

lining both sides of the street. At the crossroads you took a right turn

down the rue Chaptal. The contrast was alarming; darkness and silence, a

sad street, curiously barely lit, without any shops, deserted. You could

hear the sound of your own footsteps on the pavement. Three hundred

metres further along, suddenly emerging on your right, the cite Chaptal,

a narrow dead-end alley… culminating in the barely lit façade of the

theatre.”

See also Figure 3 a view of the impasse Chaptal in daylight--note the

narrowness of the alley, the termination of street into theatre. This

narrowing or squeezing of perspective and space, with its accompanying

restriction of movement continues upon entering the theatre. The layout

of seating was designed such that most audience members, save the ones

in the boxes at the rear or the balcony, were only a few feet from the

stage (see Figure 1). Then as we are squeezed into smaller and smaller

spaces there is the stage of 20 feet by 20 feet, a cramped dark space

lit (usually) with only splashes of light here and there to facilitate

both the stage tricks, and also the sense of dread and closeness, an

escape-proof nightmare. Finally there is the play itself, which

telescopes not only space but time. As the horror approaches, time

bends--moves alternately fast and slow, inexorably carrying audience and

players forward to the finale with its spurting blood and bouncing

eyeballs. At the level of space note that most of the plays include some

type of restraint as the torturer or assassin does his work. In figure

4, from Crime in a Mad House, two old insane women gouge out the eyes of

a pretty new inmate from jealousy and to release the mockingbird they

believe is imprisoned in her head. Note the precision of the movement,

the grasping of both hands by one of the old women while the other hag

does her grim work. Such restraint is critical to the success of the

theatre pieces, and it takes many forms--in Au Telephone (1925 and you

guessed it--DeLord again, and a collaborator Foley) restraint is a

function of distance, the businessman Andre away in Paris to complete

some transaction listens helplessly on the phone as his family is

slaughtered by “tramps” at their vacation home. Here the explicit

inability to intervene-to stop the action and justly capture and punish

the murderers is palpable. Andre is reduced to a spectator—another

member of the audience as it were—experiencing just as the audience

experiences—the horrible scene playing out on the telephone. In Figure 5

we see how this telescoping effect can be rendered graphically, thus as

one approaches the theatre the squeezing and narrowness, the

claustrophobia and dread expanding in direct relation to the loss of

movement, the helplessness of total restraint. The final piece of this

movement is then the staged instrument of restraint itself, the hands of

the insane old woman, the listening piece of the phone, the hand-cuff,

the anesthetic, or the French Consulate in Peking hemmed in by Boxer

Rebels—terminating in the denouement, the bloody and final scenario;

Grand-Guignol’s money shot. And the audience, as much as the restrained

player on the stage, is helpless to intervene, to stop or slow the

action, the feeling of being out of control, of falling into horror

without benefit of either crash mat or helmet.

One of the consequences of this squeezing inward is that the audience is

effectively pushed onto the proscenium stage, simultaneously bringing

the actors down into the audience, ultimately blurring the line between

spectator and player. Paul Ratineau’s sound design further facilitates

this blur. He became a master of using minimal sound effects to great

advantage, as in the explosions and far off sounds of struggle

associated with The Ultimate Torture, a drama which takes place during

the Boxer Rebellion in a French Consulate. The rebels movement closer

and closer to the consulate is evidenced both by script and sound, and

again the space becomes rapidly smaller as this occurs. Ratineau found

that he could also use sound effects from the rear of the theatre and

these, while utilized sparingly, had the effect of tearing down the

fourth wall completely and turning the audience into one of the players,

a character mostly silent and observant, but acknowledged and

occasionally vocal. This tearing down of the Fourth Wall is also

evidenced by the occasional comment from the stage to various audience

members. Bernard Charlan, an actor, was to recall that during one

performance he was distracted repeatedly by a couple in one of the

booths who were engaged in some very heavy petting causing him to shout

out from the stage,” You enjoy yourselves in there!” The audience also

had something to say and as the theatre and its repetoire became

increasingly familiar, a group of devotees sprang up called the

guignoleurs. This amorphous group knew all the plays, actors, and

probably some of the longer monologues, were notorious for shouting out

“Assassine!” at the antagonist, and could recite the number of faintings

that had accompanied any given play. Hand and Wilson note that players

and management alike, while not encouraging it, tolerated such heckling.

Another consideration is the suspension of disbelief, the real goal of

many dramatists is the individual psychological response where what is

happening on stage is taken not as art, or representation, but as

fact—the Real. In one sense the number of faintings may be a base count

to the number of persons who had suspended disbelief; as the authors

above note, the suspension of disbelief was often followed by the

involuntary suspension of consciousness. There is a video on youtube

illustrating an audience morphing into performer

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehqqpDekEgA), it is of one of the Vienna

Philharmonics News Years Day concerts which always conclude with the

Blue Danube, and the Radetzky March. During the playing of the March the

audience traditionally claps during the martial reprise. In this video,

the audience has lost their motivation and the conductor Carlos Klieber

turns slightly to the audience and waves his baton twice, as if to say,

we are playing here--where are the hand claps required by this piece?

The audience in response dutifully begins keeping time again. Finally

there is a single piece of video available of a play from the

Grand-Guignol (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dN06iALMTk), from the

Italian shockumentary Ecco. The stage production presented is unclear,

but appears to be a telling of a Bluebeard or Svengali type story, with

an innocent and pretty young redhead as victim. In the piece one sees

the Svengali character lure the woman to lie down, hypnotizing her, he

then looks out into the audience—for two full beats—before returning to

his victim and making a small incision on the arm closest to the

audience. The victim rises slightly and screams, the Svengali character

again re-hypnotizes the girl, reaches off-stage for a hacksaw-- faces

the audience a second time for two full beats--then proceeds to cut the

arm off which also includes one final look into the audience. The effect

of the glances at the audience are to bring us onto the stage, to make

us feel a part of the action—and our identification is not with the

victim and her impending doom, rather we are enticed onto the stage by

the madman and in our joining the scene we become his silent accomplice.

The Play is the Thing

And what of content? What actually is in these plays? What would an

evening at the Grand Guignol be like?

Working in reverse order, an average playbill at the Grand Guignol would

encompass between 4 and 6 twenty-minute plays; mostly one acts, with an

occasional longer offering. These then were staggered between a

horror/drama/hallucination and a sex comedy. This mixture, dubbed “the

hot and cold shower” was intended to wind the audience in knots—from the

tingly anticipation of where the climax of the play may lead to raucous

laughter grounded in a lightly erotic comedy. The application of

emotional stress and anticipation relieved by the tonic of erotic play,

a very Hitchcockian mix. And like Hitchcock, the Guignol troupe were

cognizant of just where and when to raise the ante on horror for maximum

emotional effect, and on eroticism, for the maximum of relief and

détente thereafter. This formula, hot and cold, laughter and tension,

was repeated at least twice, and sometimes three times, the finale of

the last horror play (the end of the evening’s performance) was always

saved for the most disorienting, nasty piece of torture/death the troupe

could produce. Thereafter, a few curtain calls, wild applause and the

audience leaves, glancing on occasion over the shoulder to make sure

that none of the horrors from the theatre are following them home.

The plays themselves are difficult to render judgment on, primarily for

the fact that so few have been translated into English. In all I count a

total of 16 plays, out of several hundred, that are currently available

to an English speaking audience, or theorist and while many are

considered “representative,” it is doubtful that any such judgment could

possibly be defended; our position is comparable to the man who has

fallen from the terrace of the Empire State Building who was heard to

remark while passing the 37th floor, “ So far, so good.” An accurate

assessment at the time, but more data will reverse the judgment. So

let’s look at a few plays…

The Ultimate Torture cited above deals with a handful of colonials

trapped in the French Consulate presumably in Peking during the Boxer

Rebellion. The political content is almost pure Gallic xenophobia, the

classic Western European “yellow peril” scenario. Assorted soldiers,

volunteers and the consul D’Hemelin make up the visible contingent in

the drama, behind a door are the women and children, including

Denise—D’Hemelin’s daughter. As the Boxers draw closer D’Hemelin lets on

that he will kill his daughter rather than allowing her to be raped and

tortured by rebels. Bornin-a Russian who had earlier tried to get

through the Boxer lines to safety returns with his hands cut off, he

describes the tortures that await those who fall into the Boxers hands,

fingernails pulled out, eyes gouged, decapitation; and then he dies.

D’Hemelin brings his daughter out from the off-stage room, begs her

forgiveness and shoots her in the heart. As the battle sounds grow

louder, the inmates of the consulate realize that it is the forces of

the Western powers fighting to get through to those trapped in the

embassies and consulates. D’Hemelin realizes his terrible mistake and

slips into inconsolable guilt and then insanity—the ultimate torture.

The Final Kiss (Maurice Level, 1912) is classic revenge Guignol, and

probably the best-known and most re-worked piece of drama from the

theatre. Henri’s ex-fiancée Jeanne in a jealous rage threw a bottle of

vitriol (sulfuric acid) on Henri’s face disfiguring him grotesquely. He

testifies for her in court and after serving a short six-month sentence

she is released. He writes a letter to her begging her to come and visit

him. She does, they both taunt and flirt with each other and finally

Henri secures her in his arms, opens a bottle of vitriol and dumps it on

her face. She falls screaming in agony and Henri pronounces himself

revenged and says that they are both now alike—the perfect couple

(Figure 6), his last words in the play are “Like me! Like me!” as he

removes his bandages so the audience can get a good look at the too

gruesome couple. Again, a very interesting piece for many reasons, note

that his line comparing the two as the same is very true. She now

resembles him physically and he has disfigured himself by the act of

vengeance, which in turn now resembles her own tortured inner-self. This

play was re-interpreted in the comics, one could say almost lovingly, by

Al Feldstein and William M. Gaines, with drawings by Jack Kamen in the

EC comic, The Haunt of Fear, Issue 11, January 1952. The title of the

graphic interpretation—The Acid Test. Finally the Kids in the Hall

filmed their take on the play and it may be the best adaptation so far,

a recommended guilty pleasure

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QlBFpfShJc&feature=related).

The Lighthouse Keepers (Paul Autier and Paul Cloquemin, 1905); Father

and son are lighthouse keepers on their first day of a full month,

no-outside-contact stint at a remote island lighthouse. As the play

progresses the son begins to develop many of the symptoms of rabies,

which is bad because a dog bit him before they left. Finally the father

kills the son before he becomes a raging hydrophobe. The horror is that

father must now spend a full month in close quarters with the

decomposing corpse of his son before the relief boat returns.

The Torture Garden (Pierre Chaine and Andre de Lord, 1922; from the

novel by Octave Mirbeau). Mirbeau was an anarchist who among other

things was identified with the extreme journal The Social War, and any

number of anti-democratic publications. The novel The Torture Garden

while a bit decadent, also has a glimmer of anarchist thought which

makes it into the drama. The play is based on the final section of the

novel, which tells the journey of a minor French diplomat Jean Marchal

through Asia. He encounters and becomes enamored of Clara, who may or

may not be a secret agent, but who is definitely the far side of wild—a

sexual adventurer and sadist. In the play Marchal kills Li-tong a

servant of the mandarin Han, and one of Clara’s many lovers. Marchal and

Clara visit the Torture Garden (off stage) where numerous ingenious

tortures are interspersed with elaborate floral displays, and in the

penultimate scene a woman is tortured by flaying while Clara, observing

the torture, has a toe-curling orgasm and faints. Finally, the secret

anti-mandarin, and perhaps socialist/anarchist Red Dragon Society, which

includes the woman previously being flayed, take Marchal and Clara

prisoner. Marchal is lead to safety; having killed Li-Tong he is a hero

of the Red Dragons. Clara, having been unveiled as an agent of Han is

then subjected to the Hot Needle Torture as the curtain descends.

Some Musings

First, it must be said that I can find no discussion of the

Grand-Guignol anywhere by any theorist of note—which is odd, given where

it was and when it was—not even the avant-garde—Dada, Surrealist axis

had much to say. The same with the politicals, Sartre, Deleuze, the

Situationists are stonily silent on the Grand-Guignol, which is a real

clue that somewhere in there something interesting is hiding. There are

two very different ways that critical theorists interact with horror as

a cultural artifact. First, it is irretrievably reactionary, as

individuals trying to break outside of bourgeois morality are

slaughtered and tortured to drive them back into the arms of Capital and

society—think early slasher cinema where hormone-redolent teens have sex

and then endure decapitation by masked maniacs. Then there is the other

side—Emma Goldman started this critical engine, where each of the

tortures shown is merely a reflection of the brutalization rampant in

society and hence horror is a mirror held up to the fanged and drooling

visage of Capital. Guignol falls outside both of these though. First,

while revenge is a part of many of the dramas, there are a significant

number that are utterly amoral—Good does not triumph, Evil has its way,

and that’s just how it is. And in the revenge pieces there is a certain

symmetry to the vengeance, hence the acid scarred face of Jeanne pays

back Henri’s disfigurement, or Clara’s death by torture avenges her

sadistic fantasies made real. No one returns to the bosom of society,

unlike the heroines in the slasher films who, while injured, live to

fight on in the sequel. There seems to be little in the plays that even

imply that they are to be taken as examples of the brutalization of

Capital, Clara who may be bourgeois, hangs out in the roughest bars in

Asia, loves torture, and has a Chinese lover; hardly an identifiable

ruling class villainess. Additionally there is not a single play I could

find that included a maiming or death by a machine, or as a result of

greed—which would have made an obvious statement about the

dehumanization of society. So classic critical theory as applied to

horror seems worthless when discussing what went down at the Theatre du

Grand-Guignol. But what is relevant? First I believe is the incredible

competence of the pieces as written, and as played. GG was a writer’s

theater—the written and spoken word, plot and nuance brought each play

to a unique level of craftsmanship and consistency. There is a coherence

to the classic Guignol plays that one rarely encounters in other theater

ensembles, or even within the oeuvre of any given playwright. This

expertise is matched by the actors, who play day in and day out some

very difficult pieces which span the range from light sex farce to grim

blood streaked hallucination daily, twice daily for matinees. Finally

the stage manager and effects crews provide an example of excellence and

experimentation in order to make the unreal real. And where does all

this theatrical competence lead to? To making the audience believe that

what is happening on stage—is happening. This mystique still obtains

decades after the last curtain call, as I was preparing this essay a

friend asked about any accidents during performances where actors might

have been harmed. And that question asked in 2012 really is the crux of

the thing, when you have so successfully abolished disbelief, and in

this case instilled foreboding, then you have achieved the artistic

goal, the raison d’être for the whole endeavor; there is to this day a

haunted fear that at the Guignol victims really were dismembered and

flayed and had acid dumped on their faces. Odd that anarchism has a

similar effect, where long past the heyday of Haymarket, and the IWW,

and the Up Against the Wall Motherfucker chapter of SDS, that the word

anarchy today produces a similar haunted political fear in the

uninitiated. In the case of anarchism, however, the real glue that

sticks it to the popular conscious is made up of either the dread of a

lawless, stateless society (chaos?), or the example of anarchists as

being nothing if not committed, principled, and relentless political

opponents capable of just about anything. Horkheimer mentions just such

a mechanism in The Eclipse of Reason when he illustrates how the

dominant culture, in order to limit dialogue to acceptable parameters,

makes some words and concepts virtually unusable and as such, he

continues, these words revert to their magic form becoming something

feared, unmentionable—the darkness on the other side of the Real. And

Capital and its media, in the final twist, portrays them as such in

order to decisively relegate them to oblivion.

One difficulty when dealing with Grand-Guignol is the damned ambivalence

of the whole experience, its utter lack of pretension and silence on

larger historical or spiritual forces. There is an amorality to many of

the plays which stretch the very meaning of the word. The very silence

on all things social, political, and economic is thundering,

particularly given the theatres geography, and background. It struck me

then that perhaps this is not a measured, Gallic ambivalence

(schadenfreude?) on the part of the writers, players, and

management—perhaps this is a choice, a deliberate refusal to play the

guessing game of politics and ideology. And if it is a choice, a

stubborn refusal in light of all that’s wrong with both left and right

in France, then perhaps the Guignol was for several decades the

post-left institution par excellence in Europe. Note here that this type

of refusal, far from being a further sign of alienation and hence

Capital’s doing, moves beyond the Zizekian Ur-belief that all things

ring when struck--with the chime of ideology. Rather, there are glaring

examples of people, institutions, and events that move in a critical

fashion beyond the confines of severe ideological constraint. Does this

resonate then, almost palpably, with the greater and greater narrowing

of movement, perspective, and time noted in the Grand-Guignol total

experience? Also it is necessary to dispel the one objection that such a

choice could be motivated by an “art for art’s sake” justification. This

is possible, that the removal of the theatre and it’s works beyond the

realm of ideology may indicate the simple avarice of the owner who would

rather count money than worry about theory—and this moves the theatre

back into the realm of Capital, and hence ideology. The problem is that

such a choice inherently also places the theatre squarely onto the false

shifting battleground of left and right—and if that’s the case where

then is the play extolling the virtues of the proletariat…or the French

army? They don’t exist, and you can’t have one (the non-choice of

left—right) without the content to echo it (the patriotic or

revolutionary play). So taking this refusal of politics, hence as a

post-political statement, as fact for a moment what does the theatre

provide to us as an example of a post-left institution? First, as

mentioned, the theatre was precociously meticulous in it’s craft, its

survival was a function of its integrity; second, it was blind to class

in it’s appeal, on any evening minor Magyar aristos sat next to absinthe

besotted artists; third, the plays were written to be both

intellectually and sensually communicative, whether you were disgusted

by the blood (the irrational) or by the rapid, effective plotting (the

rational), the emotive result was the same—fear; last, there was a

coherence between the psychogeography of the city, the theatre, and the

context, the fact that at the termination of the impasse Chaptal a

theatre rose up out of the street, a theatre of fear, blood, and sperm

such that none other could have taken it’s place at that time is

testified to by history.

And the Now Question

So what of now? Where are the cultural repercussions of the

Grand-Guignol today? Before the answer, a disclaimer—yes, all horror

films, horror stories written since 1920, and all other horror cultural

artifacts have some small piece of Grand-Guignol in them, even the

current middle-east war which looks more and more like a decades long

snuff film than it does the real tragedy that we feel must be happening,

has also had some guignolesque moments. However, there are only a select

few pieces of culture that look and feel like the Guignol; as an example

the 50s French film—Eyes Without A Face, especially the gruesome

face-lift scene, and the death of Louise by scalpel. In yet another

French film, Les Diaboliques, particularly the scene where the

not-so-dead husband Delassale rises out of the bathtub and scares his

ex, the not-so-widowed Christina, to death. I’ll be hated for saying it,

but Alice Cooper and his earlier permutation as necrophiliac, the stage

antics with guillotine and babies, and his use of makeup are all very

Guignolesque. The uber-zine Answer Me! presents some very apt Guignol

moments particularly in the Rape and Suicide Issues. And speaking of

rape, where does sexual violence fit in with all this. In the Guignol

plays my understanding is that the victims were mostly nuns and virgins,

thereby a dual stigma is attached to the violation. The act transgresses

not only juridical law per se, it also violates moral, religious and

traditional sexual codes, thereby increasing its impact twofold. The

real question remains-- was the GG misogynist, or was it purely

misanthropic, such that when it came to women, men and sexual mores the

greatest violation possible was chosen, at the artistic level, to

portray. I have no answers for this question, but will state revulsion

is revulsion regardless of what act is being presented, torture or rape.

And revulsion, terror, and fear were the emotive destination of any

Grand-Guignol drama. Finally the new film “God Bless America” directed

by Bobcat Goldthwait has some purely Guignol moments and is recommended

for your viewing pleasure. In one scene a victim is attempting to elude

Frank and runs into a butcher knife held by Roxy, the teen protagonist.

Roxy’s face is sprayed by blood from the wound, and after the victim

falls she raises her hands in an adolescent victory hand pump, like one

sees at high school football games—brilliant.

So, there it is, the Grand Guignol with all its warts and wounds

attached. Is there a place for such a theatre now? Probably, especially

if attuned to the mess we find ourselves in, and not as some lame mirror

held up to current social mores and economic privation. Rather as a

theatre that pushes the false options of left/right, good/bad into the

background, and brings center stage a language and content grounded in

what will be necessary to destroy this whole mess, and to ensure it

never, ever returns.