Gore and pornography are united by a spectacular exhibitionism of bodily fluids. Their exhibition, fetishized by the close-up, acts as a revealer of the ambiguous relationship that the subject, the spectator or his cinematographic double (the characters with whom he identifies or not), maintains with his carnal envelope.

The various liquids of the human body – whether secreted, excreted, or expelled – are not always present in gore and pornography, but they occupy a central place in the demonstration of sex and violence.

This obsession with fluids distinguishes these two genres and forms part of film audience’s obsession with them. This is also why they are paradoxically often misunderstood and criticized. Indeed, it reveals an attitude towards the body which goes beyond simple affective participation to join the symbolic space and, by the same fact, the great existential questions.

It is at the heart of aesthetic research which flirts with abstraction at times, of a narrative economy, which apparently translates an emptiness constraining to pure exploitation and, finally, of the astonishing power of identification which emerges from the two genres. Why? How? What meaning can we get from it, from both cinephiles’ obsession with these genres, and its presumed moralistic abhorrence?

This lecture will address different issues (anthropological, sociological and psychological) through the analysis of the representation of bodily fluids. Objects of disgust and fascination, they are the expression of an existential angst that gore and pornography insidiously force us to face.

Please note this is a live broadcast event – the class cannot be watched later, so please be sure you are available at the date and time the class is being offered in before registering. All sales are final, and we will not give refunds for any reason other than class cancellation. Classes curated by Miskatonic New York are in Eastern Time.