Artaudian Cruelty (That's so metal)

As I've been working my way through The Theater and its Double, I've constantly been reminded of something that would, at first glance, have nothing to do with theater: metal music. Jarrod is much more of a fan of metal than I am, although I do like Between the Buried and Me and Bulb, but through the shows we've seen together and his frequent introduction of new bands and songs to me, I've come to understand this genre of music better. And I think it exhibits several connections with Artaud.

The Theater of Cruelty, Artaud's theory of theater in defiance of traditional western theater and literature, is an assult on the senses, a dramatic spectacle of metaphysical battles and an exploration of the dark power of freedom. Essential theater plays to all of the senses simultaneously, resulting in a frenzied, trance-like state in which the spectators are liberated and exposed to an intellectuality that goes beyond language and the traditional theater of psychology, which merely explores already-codified anxieties and conflicts. There is something anarchic in the midst of the strict, structured precision of this theater; although every movement must be carried out with almost mechanical accuracy, so that nothing is superfluous or void of meaning, the power of the gestures and sounds brings the audience to the edge of chaos.

Something very similar happens in metal concerts. A dream-like detachment from the body occurs as a response to the overwhelming physical force of the sounds and flashing lights in the darkness of a small room. Artaud's notion of "organized anarchy" is especially applicable to metal, because there is that duality of Apollonian order and Dionysian ecstasy. The music itself can be highly technical, even mathematical in its complex and tightly structured rhythms. Like the Theater of Cruelty, the sheer super-abundance of elements, all inextricably linked together, creates an impression of near-chaos, almost-anarchy. These elements-- guitar, drums, bass, vocals-- all crash against one another in a precise, calculated manner that nevertheless creates that other element of chaos.

In his manifesto on the Theater of Cruelty, Artaud is adamant about the elimination of the stage. Rather than perpetuating this notion of art as separate from life, that the life on the stage must be hermetically isolated from the life outside the theater, Artaud posits that the spectators should be enveloped by theatrical action. The fourth wall is nonexistent in Artaud's theater, and the only "sets" consist of the very costumes and props carried or worn by the actors. Most of the metal shows I've been to are in small venues, so the barriers between individuals in the crowd, and between audience and performer are often transgressed. The concert is not contained only to the stage, but infiltrates the entire building; the performance extends everywhere and the crowd is unknowingly transformed into performers themselves, responding to the music and creating a sort of communal dance which is impossible to fully escape. Musicians occasionally jump from the stage into the audience, or pull audience members onto the stage.

At first, I was frustrated because I could barely understand the lyrics of metal songs, but after reading Artaud, it's more apparent to me that the voice is used more as an instrument to contribute to an overall thematic effect than as a clear transmitter of words. Artaud's ideal theater liberates the mise en scene (everything apart from the written text, which Artaud claims is everything that is essentially theatrical: props, costumes, gestures, sound effects, lighting, etc.) from the hegemony of the text. Speech is not eliminated in Artaudian theater, but it does not serve its usual function of describing emotional states and psychological or social conflicts. Artaud explains that "it is not a question of suppressing the spoken language, but of giving words approximately the importance they have in dreams" (94). Words spoken in dreams may be completely incomprehensible upon waking, but within the context of the dream, this distorted language is efficacious. The same is true of the growling vocal technique often used in metal, which distorts the words. The intonation becomes more expressive than the words themselves; a primal scream or guttural roar contributes far more to the mood of the song and the performance than an abstracted description of anger, aggression, or ecstasy.

That intonation, in metal and in Artaud's notion of pure theater, expresses something dark, cruel, and dangerous; the two art forms are connected thematically as well. Artaudian theater must furnish "the spectator with with the precipitates for dreams, in which his taste for crime, his erotic obsessions, his savagery, his chimeras, his utopian sense of life and matter, even his cannibalism, poure out, on a level not counterfeit and illusory, but interior" (Artaud 92). Metal music often picks up these themes as well, especially in several sub-genres like death metal and black metal. The imagery, band names and song titles (such as Cannibal Corpse or "Hammer-Smashed Face"), and lyrics often center around the very themes that Artaud attributes to pure theater: humanity's taste for crime, his erotic obsessions, his savagery, his chimeras, a sense of danger. The most important theme for theater is that "we are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads" (Artaud 79). This is the type of cruelty, danger, and metaphysical that Artaud promotes; the only way to recover life's value is to be made aware of how precarious our situation is, how little humanity counts in a vast, inhuman universe. Metal music is not perhaps always so eloquently existential in its lyrics, but this sense of dangerous forces is most certainly present. Taken in isolation, the lyrics are sometimes flat-out absurd; take, for example, Cannibal Corpse's "Shatter Their Bones": "Putrid foul zombies make their ghastly approach / A dreadful horrid feeling sets in / Scrambling for weapons, an attempt to defend / Against a gruesome horde of the undead." The zombies in this song are, perhaps, a return of the repressed, an indication of western society's alienation from death and the inherant horror the living have of the dead.

To me, these essential themes are most evident, not in the words (which I cannot immediately comprehend), but in the mood created by all of the elements of the performance. This sense of fear and danger cannot be fully captured in a recording; one needs to feel the bass and the drums reverberating through one's body and experience the indescribable sort of anxiety and euphoria that this sensation induces. Likewise for the Theater of Cruelty; a script can tell virtually nothing about the true theater, because theater does not lie in the words, anymore than the full experience of music resides in the score. It's in the mise en scene that theater exists, in the present creation of gestures that can never be repeated in precisely the same way, the aggregation of all the sensory elements so interconnected that one experiences them all simultaneously and throughout the entire body as a snake is lulled by the vibrations of a charmer's horn.

Both Artaudian theater and metal music are efficacious only to the degree that they can enact on the audience's senses. They appeal directly to the senses, but there is obviously something of intellectual value in both; the cultural tendency to avoid the topics that these two art forms discusss indicates their importance, their necessity to give expression to these forces that surround us and, perhaps even more frightening, within us.

Madness? This is Rome!

In the past couple of days, I've taken a break from Swann's Way and started re-reading Ovid's Metamorphoses. Although I want to study 20th/21st century British literature in grad school, I love mythology, legends, and folklore. So I periodically return to classical literature, epic poetry, and ancient legends.

The unifying motif of the Metamorphoses is, of course, transformation; Juno's jealous rage causes her to take revenge on Io and change her into a cow; Echo's unrequited love for Narcissus dwindles her to nothing more than a voice; a nymph's grief dissolves her into water. Ovid's work is often viewed as less "serious" than other Roman epics like the Aeneid, but his stories construct a psychology of the passions.

In the grips of their passions, characters are frequently changed into animals and plants, becoming sub-human, irrational or insensate beings. Ovid appears to uphold the binary opposition between emotion and rationality; the fits of passion are sudden, impuslive, and irrational, often leading to uncharacteristic behavior. But the individual is not expected to purge himself completely of all passion; Ovid presents them as natural, irrascible forces which everyone must confront, including the gods. For example, Jove criticizes Pluto's impulsive abduction of the girl Proserpina, but he reasons with the girl's mother, Ceres, that the god's actions were unthinking, instinctive, and therefore more forgiveable. He did not premeditate the abduction. There was no malice in his intentions, because he did not have any intentions; he was overtaken by passion. He lost his rational capacity under the influence of love and desire; even a god is helpless to overcome that.

Ironically, Venus, the goddess of love, is primarily motivated by pride; she instructed Cupid to fire his arrows at Pluto because of her desire for power over the other gods, and her anger with the virgin goddesses Minerva and Diana, whose rejection of love and sexuality constitutes a "revolt" in Venus' mind. Yet, this quest for domination accompanies her sense of duty; she will perform her task and inspire love, even if it leads to dischord (as it did here between Ceres and most of Italy, on which she took her revenge because the earth opened up and swallowed Pluto and Proserpina).

Similarly, Juno's punishment of Jove's (often unwilling) mistresses is just as fueled by her pride in her reputation as it is jealousy; she is mighty Juno, the queen of heaven, and any offender must pay dearly for daring to cross her. Juno is terribly jealous of Ino for having conceived a child with Jove, but she is even more jealous of the son of their union, Bacchus: "My rival bears a child, and he has power / To transform sailors, give the flesh of a son / For his mother to tear to pieces, turn the daughters / of Minyas into bats. and what can Juno / Do beyond weeping at insults unavenged? / Is that enough? Is that my only power?" (Ovid, Book IV, lines 423-428). Juno takes her revenge by deigning to enter the underworld and seeking the assistance of the Furies to drive Ino mad. Her own desire for revenge is irrational; Ino cannot be held responsible for the power of her son. Juno's pride and anger blind her to the injustice of her own actions, her misplaced anger and vengeance, even though Juno represents justice. Diana is also unjust in preserving her honor; a man accidentally sees her naked, and she punishes his inadvertant spying by changing him into a beast. And even Minerva stoops to seek Envy's assistance in enacting revenge. The passions, even among gods, lead them to break their character, even as they strive to uphold their reputations.

Bacchus is a common culprit for the worst and most animalistic madness. During Ovid's time, Bacchanalia (the festivals celebrating Bacchus) were officially illegal, but the cult continued to practice underground. Book IV is largely devoted to stories centering on these frenzied rituals of drink and dance, which act as agents of transformation. Ovid seems to view the Bacchanalia as distractions to an individual's proper vocation, as evidenced in the story of Pentheus. While everyone else indulged in ecstatic festivities, Pentheus was repulsed by their dereliction of duty: "What lunacy is this, oh sons of Mars, / Sons of the serpent's teeth, that dulls your wits? / ... / my fine young peers, who used to carry / Spears once, not wands, do you think it decent of you / To stick your heads through garlands, not in helmets?" (Ovid III. 545-547). Rather than being honorable warriors, rational beings, and responsible citizens, they have all given in to madness and superstition (symbolized by the wands). From Pentheus' view, they ought to be ashamed of themselves and hold their duty to their country higher than their obligations to this questionable god.

In Book IV, Ovid opposes servants of Bacchus with servants of Minerva. A group of women, the daughters of Minyas, decline to join in the orgies honoring Bacchus and spend the day weaving and telling tales instead. They "worship a better goddess, Pallas," (Minerva) and will not recognize the divinity of the wine god (Ovid IV.42). Their tales criticize uncontrolled passion-- the feud between two families that led to the senseless deaths of Pyramus and Thisbe, the jealousy of Clytie and Apollo's excessive preference for Leucothoe, etc. Rationalism is the enemy of Bacchus, and the daughters are punished for their transgression when Bacchus transforms them into bats, which symbolize the occult (in another story, Bacchus changes another irreligious individual into a screech owl, an omen of death). Minerva may be the better goddess, but she cannot defeat the madness that abounds, for Bacchus gets his revenge and expands his dominion across Greece, into Egypt, and beyond. I need to do more research on Rome under Augustus, but this could very well be a criticism of Roman society.

The passions come upon characters in a flash, but the repercussions of acting on those passions are permanent. The effects are not always negative; a few are elevated to godhood, or taken out of a dangerous situation and placed among the stars as a constellation. Other transformations reveal the true nature of an individual, like the blood-thirsty Lycaon's metamorphosis into a wolf. Ovid offers a nuanced view of the effects of strong emotion, with a wide array of consequences for the ways individuals confront these forces within them.