DADDY'S LITTLE GIRL: THE NIGHT PORTER

Directed and written by Liliana Cavani, the controversial film “The Night Porter,”  “Il Portiere di Notte”, was released in 1974. The film features Dirk Bogarde, as Max, a discreet, unassuming night porter in an exclusive Viennese hôtel and Charlotte Rampling, Lucia, as the figure from his past, who continues to haunt Max.

The year is 1957. Max tends to the hôtel  guest’s needs; everything to providing a glass of cold water, to a bed-warming gigolo. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that during the dark years of World War II, Max was an S.S. officer at a Nazi concentration camp where Lucia was a beautiful, young prisoner. Lucia, became Max's sexual slave, a position that she apparently relished.

The moment where the two recognise each other in the lobby of the hôtel is compelling. Both remember. The flashbacks tell of the chilling photographs Max took of Lucia, while pretending to be a physician. Through the flashbacks appropriate to Lucia, the viewer learns of episodes of rape, sodomy, and torture. Lucia is afraid. The viewer soon realises that it is not Max that she is afraid of, but the primal, carnal power of their relationship.

Max was not simply Lucia’s tormentor. He was her protector. It is a scenario which we see rewritten in our own contemporary erotica. “The Night Porter” is a pertinent template for any “Daddy’s Little Girl”, tale; it whispers and awakens forbidden fantasies. It allows us the space to relish the darker side of desire.

Charlotte Rampling, for her part, insisted that she knew nothing about sadomasochism before embarking on the film. 'The girl had to be an innocent, both fearful, and tempted by the mysteries of unknown pleasures,' she said.

If the scene in the hôtel lobby is compelling, the scene at the opera is electric. Max is seated a few rows behind Lucia and her husband. A sensation causes Lucia to turn. She meets Max’s eyes. She turns away, then turns again. He is still there, willing her to hold his gaze. She turns away, then looks again. Max is gone.

Lucia stays in Vienna after her husband travels on. She wants to see Max, and they find themselves caught up in a renewal of their former sadomasochistic relationship. But Max is to be tried for his war crimes. His former S.S. comrades have been carefully destroying documents and "filing away" witnesses to clear all their names, and while Max tries to keep Lucia's existence a secret from them, they eventually find out about her. They consider her a threat, and they urge Max to turn her over to them. He quits his job, and he and Lucia hide out in his apartment, while his former friends keep watch, waiting for the opportunity to strike.

Filmmaker Liliana Cavani visited a Nazi concentration camp after WW II and interviewed a woman who had been involved in a sadomasochistic relationship with a guard. She then made her story the basis for this powerfully, compelling film.

 Liliana Cavani certainly gives her audience a  strange and unforgettable picture that questions deeply the psyches of torturers and the tortured, “The Night Porter” presents its psychoanalytically provocative material without exploitation.  On another level it deals with the psychological condition known as Stockholm Syndrome

  where the victim develops an empathy with his or her abuser.

In an iconic scene, Lucia sings a Marlene Dietrich song to the concentration camp guards while wearing pieces of an SS uniform, and Max "rewards" her with the severed head of a male inmate who had been bullying the other inmates. Max has previously described his relationship with Lucia as “Biblical,” but he cannot remember the story in the Bible that draws him. Then he remembers. It is the story of Salome. King Herod presents Salome with the severed head of John the Baptist as a reward for her display of erotic dance.

In responses to “The Night Porter”, Liliana Cavani was both celebrated for her courage in dealing with the theme of sexual transgression and, simultaneously, castigated for the controversial manner in which she presented that transgression: within the context of a Nazi Holocaust narrative. The film has been accused of mere sensationalism: film critic Roger Ebert calls it "as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering.” Given the film's dark and disturbing themes and a somewhat ambiguous moral clarification at the end, “The Night Porter”, has tended to divide audiences. It is, however, the film for which Liliana Cavani is best known.

I was transfixed by Liliana Cavani’s film when I first saw it, many years ago. I was transfixed again when I watched it yesterday. “The Night Porter” tells of terrible things,  and the Holocaust tells a tale of the worst that human beings can ever be. Would Max and Lucia have entered into this distorted, warped love affair -- and it is most certainly, definitely a true love affair, without the Holocaust? Well, of course we don’t know. Would our world today be the same had the Holocaust never happened? Again, we don’t know. The Holocaust is our shame as human beings. We need to be reminded, we need the mirror to be held up to our dirty faces, and if this can be only achieved through a film such as “The Night Porter,” well that’s fine with me.

“The bulk of the Nazi war crime trials took place right after 1945. Basically, from 1945 to 1949, there were parallel Allied tribunals and German courts. The German courts largely dealt with crimes committed against German citizens; the Allied courts dealt with all others, which meant the majority of Nazi crimes. These proceedings petered out by the end of the 1940s and early 1950s largely because West German society suppressed the past and preferred not to talk about it. Nazi crimes hardly found mention in public discourse in the early 1950s. 

Dieter Pohl

There is a video of Lucia’s dance available at Youtube, but they won’t let me embed it. Here’s the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDG7Ytkj_a4

BESTIALITY!

           

                                I want to have a discussion about bestiality -- but no one’s talking. People are avoiding me. Why is that? Why is everyone so damn touchy? Well, perhaps because bestiality is illegal; also it’s one of our oldest taboos. There’s also issues around consent and cruelty.

                                There’s a video, somewhere in the depths of  Youtube. A woman openly admits to having sex regularly with her minature stallion. If you search for Zoophilia on Youtube it’s probably still there. Her husband admits to having sex with the same stallion. Sheds a whole new light on keeping stuff in the family doesn’t it?

                               

                                And there’s those stories. The bestiality tales that we have told from long, long ago. So why can’t we speak about bestiality? We’re all grownups. Do we feel uncomfortable, because we think that by talking about bestiality we’re going to be tainted with debauchery? That depravity will hang over us, like a witches curse? We’ve even given it a new name; zoophilia. Maybe it sanitises it, makes it acceptable. But we’re still talking about the same thing; sex with animals.

                                And I’m willing to bet that more people will be upset with me for this post than they were about my necrophilia post a couple of weeks ago.

               

                Yes, it’s taboo, but it’s part of our cultural, literary history. Right up to the present day, Erotica writers are telling us ‘changeling’ stories. Lycanthrope stories; stories that are getting as close as you can to bestiality, without it actually being bestiality. I think it’s the publishers who are running scared, not the writers or our readers. On the Lust Bites site, Janine Ashbless tells us that the Black Lace editor wails;

               

                “It’s got to have a human head!”

 Janine also tells us;

“A few years back I wrote a story, The Dragon’s Bride, in which a woman has sex with a dragon. (Have you any idea how hard I’d get my ass kicked if I submitted that story these days?) It was a Big Cock Fantasy really. Some people loved it, and some recoiled from it: “Sex with a talking dragon is still bestiality!” they squealed.”

Jude Mason writes;

“Ah, bestiality. I follow guidelines carefully for that. Most pubs won't allow the girl/guy to get it on with an animal. Doesn't matter if both are changelings. They want the couple to be of the same breed. I've had m/m changelings, as beasties screwing. I've probably had other animals too. A pair of cougars, m/f and also m/m/f cougars. I always have them as the same breed. The sex play can start with one as an animal the other human, but before it gets too serious, one changes…I don't think I've ever written what is classically referred to as bestiality. Human/animal sex. It's not saleable to most pubs…”

            Is bestiality a fetish? Probably. Is it a perversion? Is it a fantasy? I think most people, in the broad light of day, would find the act, of a human having sex with an animal, weird, if not repulsive. But…there’s still those dark, tales whispered by the firelight. Stories…

      So, why are we telling ourselves these stories? Is it a craving for the forbidden? Is the taboo buried deep in our unconscious minds, resurfacing in our stories, fantasies and dreams? The Greek myths tell us real bestiality stories. Humans actually having sex with animals. Those stories are as old as time itself. Those old writers weren’t so timid. Are those guys just telling dirty stories? Or is it something deeper?

     

      In Greek mythology, Zeus, the King of the gods, fell in love with the mortal girl, Leda. He came to her in the form of a swan, and raped her.

      You would think that as King of the gods, Zeus could have organised things differently. He could have just made Leda fall in love with him. But the ancient tellers of this story, must have thought it completely crucial, absolutely necessary for a human/animal sex scene to take place.

     

Another Greek myth tells the story of Pasiphae, the wife of King Minos of Crete. King Minos had a beautiful bull, which he was supposed to sacrifice to Poseidon. Instead, the King sacrificed an inferior bull. As punishment, Poseidon made Pasiphae fall in love with the bull. Queen Pasiphae devised a plan so that she could copulate with the bull. She asked the architect, Daedalus, to build her a wooden cow. The cow was hollow, for her to hide in. The bull was brought to her and they mated. From their union, the Minotaur, half man, half bull was conceived.

                The myths are beautiful, yet horrible; even right now, in the 21st century we know that we are being told something forbidden. But the stories will not die, they have been told, over and over again down the generations. The words have been spoken.

                In a similar vein, just take a look at European folk tales and fairy stories. Beauty and the Beast. Little Red Ridinghood. The Frog Prince. Are they so innocent? The stories have close, intimate relationships with animals as their theme. We assume that they are stories for children, teaching them ideals such as love, sacrifice and obedience. But I think that the themes are dark and tell us more about our sexuality, our yearning for the taboo and our relationship with animals than we care to dwell on.

                The stories have been retold many times, perhaps most memorably by Angela Carter. Angela spoke about the story of Cinderella, claiming that the glass slipper, was actually a fur slipper. A mistranslation; fourrure is fur, and verre is glass. She also retold the story of Little Red Ridinghood, in The Company of Wolves.

                “All the better to eat you with,” the wolf says to the little girl, at the end of the story.

“The girl burst out laughing; she knew she was nobody’s meat. She laughed at him full in the face, she ripped off his shirt…”

                The wolf doesn’t eat the girl, the girl has the wolf, in an erotic ending that has more than a suggestion of a bestiality story about it. Angela retells the old story without Disney. No saccharine sweetness here.

               

                I suppose the point that I’m getting to with this is that we know that we are being told these stories. Publishers and editors must think that their readers are stupid. A clever writer will get around the censorship, with a few dark hints. And yes, it is censorship. I expect more from publishers and editors. I don’t like being patronised and I don’t like being told what I can and can’t read. Writers are allowed those dark hints; those highly charged metaphors, as long as they don’t say it like it is.

                I don’t know about you, but this annoys the hell out of me. I think it irks Janine Ashbless too.

“Does this playing around with taboo smack of hypocrisy? Or is it the hallmark of the erotic always to be dancing on the edge of the Forbidden?”

            Well, is it?

Janine continues;

“One look at Furry communities lets you know how important the symbolic power of the animal-human is. Pony-girls are a favourite fantasy of many people. Cowboy erotica obsesses about horses and sex in stables. And what about the HUGE interest in lycanthropes in romantic fiction? The entire point of werewolf erotica is the fetishising of the fact they can turn into animals at any moment, isn’t it?”

            In her story collection, Cruel Enchantment, Janine tells a short story about a werewolf initiation orgy. Do you wanna read the bit where the heroine actually has sex with a wolf? Brace yourself; here it comes:

“As soon as she was released this time, Michel rolled her over onto her front. Someone took her from behind, quick and slippery and panting, his balls slapping audibly against her pussy, and after he had finished another mounted her. Her first thought was that this man had an extraordinarily hairy chest and thighs – and then her second thought was a white streak of incredulity., but Michel held her down hard so that she couldn’t wriggle round and look behind her. She buried her face in his leg, half laughing and half sobbing, and pure shock wrenched another orgasm from her.”

Shocking, wasn’t it? I doubt you’ll ever recover.

And finally, here’s an extract from Jude Mason’s story; Cat’s Claw.

“Turning back to the male, she took a couple of tentative steps closer, and sniffed at him. Close to swooning from the heady aroma, she stumbled forward and butted her head against his shoulder. Hard muscles met her, his purring increased in volume.

She felt something touch her ear. An ear that seemed somehow jointed as it twitched at the soft caress. Another caress, and then to her wonder, she felt her chest rattle in an answering purr.

The male rose and stretched beside her, his body touching hers unobtrusively. His head was at her shoulder and he faced her rear. She watched his tail flick.

Suddenly, there came a weird wrenching from deep inside her belly. Her vision blurred as pain tore at her stomach. She grunted, felt herself falling, and then suddenly held as pain wrapped its vicious arms around her. Opening her mouth to scream, she was surprised when all that came out was a mewling whimper.

The pain was gone before it was fully realized, and her body shifted. That was the only way she could describe it, a shifting, stretching sensation that frightened her, yet felt right and familiar. Her skin crawled. Searing agony gripped her thighs and she realized they were actually elongating, reshaping into human form. The fur, soft and gorgeous as it was, drew into her skin, absorbed to feed the change. Her shoulder snapped, and for an instant, pain wracked her full force as her upper body realigned itself. The rest came easily. Her hands and feet shifted, reforming to a more recognizable shape. Her face went numb, and she was glad that she couldn't feel those changes as they took place.

Falling to her side, she lay exhausted and panting, while the last few transformations finished themselves; and saw the male beside her.

He too lay stretched out on the grass—on his belly—gasping from his own change. She watched his back rise and fall with his breathing.

For a moment, she thought to flee. Panic—insidious, half-formed—gnawed at her. Who was he? What had just happened? What would Joshua think when he found her missing? Her dreams, nightmares, were real.

A groan from beside her brought her focus back to the here and now. He moved, not much, just tensing his muscles and stretching his arms ahead of himself. Long sleek muscles, gorgeous ass and powerful legs—again she yearned to reach out and stroke him.

She knew it was insane. How could she be so drawn to him—it—she didn't even know what he was, or what she was.

The man groaned and turned over.

Morgan gasped. Joshua lay facing her.

His eyes were closed. He had a soft smile on his face, as though he were dreaming some sweet dream and was unwilling to awaken. And like her, he was naked. His soft pelt had vanished, or was in the process of doing so as she watched. Fur seemed to melt into him. His face, although close to human, was in the last stages of the change. Chin and cheekbones formed, and then it was him—Joshua.”

     Stories are so important to us. We’ve told, and been told stories since our beginnings, way back. We’ll continue to tell them into eternity. We’ve come a long way as a species, but our primitive, earthy side still wants more stories. I suppose a sulky publisher would tell me to go and look at the porn on the Web. I don’t want to, it’s crude; there’s no finesse. The stories don’t have to include animals, neither do they have to include the sex act. There’s a great erotic story, by Julia Moore; Bad Doggy, which includes neither. With a bit of imagination and some of those dark hints, the most prudish publisher needn’t be offended.

     I don’t want to be ‘allowed’ to read what a publisher thinks I need to read. I’m a grown up. I wish publishers would grow up too. I want stories from great writers like Angela, Janine and Jude. Writers who know their craft and don’t want to be patronised any more than I do.

“In the Church-oriented culture of the Middle Ages, zoosexual activity was met with execution, typically burning, and death to the animals involved either the same way or by hanging. Masters comments that:

"Theologians, bowing to Biblical prohibitions and basing their judgements on the conception of man as a spiritual being and of the animal as a merely carnal one, have regarded the same phenomenon as both a violation of Biblical edicts and a degradation of man, with the result that the act of bestiality has been castigated and anathematized [...]"

In 1468, Jean Beisse, accused of bestiality with a cow on one occasion and a goat on another, was first hanged, then burned. The animals involved were also burned. In 1539, Guillaume Garnier, charged with intercourse with a female dog (described as "sodomy"), was ordered strangled after he confessed under torture. The dog was burned, along with the trial records which were "too horrible and potentially dangerous to be permitted to exist" (Masters). In 1601, Claudine de Culam, a young girl of sixteen, was convicted of copulating with a dog. Both the girl and the dog were first hanged,and finally burned. In 1735, Francois Borniche was charged with sexual intercourse with animals. It was greatly feared that "his infamous debauches may corrupt the young men." He was imprisoned. There is no record of his release.

On the other hand, other accounts are more possibly fictitious, such as Pietro Damiani's, who in his "De bono religiosi status et variorum animatium tropologia" (11th Century) tells of a Count Gulielmus whose pet ape became his wife's lover. One day the ape became "mad with jealousy" on seeing the count lying with his wife that it fatally attacked him. Damain claims he was told about this incident by Pope Alexander II and shown an offspring claimed to be that of the ape and woman. (Illustrated Book of Sexual Records)

Clergyman and chronicler Gerald of Wales claimed to have witnessed a man having intercourse with a horse as part of a pagan ritual in Ireland.

^(Wiki) In the Church-oriented culture of the Middle Ages, zoosexual activity was met with execution, typically burning, and death to the animals involved either the same way or by hanging. Masters comments that:

"Theologians, bowing to Biblical prohibitions and basing their judgements on the conception of man as a spiritual being and of the animal as a merely carnal one, have regarded the same phenomenon as both a violation of Biblical edicts and a degradation of man, with the result that the act of bestiality has been castigated and anathematized [...]"

In 1468, Jean Beisse, accused of bestiality with a cow on one occasion and a goat on another, was first hanged, then burned. The animals involved were also burned. In 1539, Guillaume Garnier, charged with intercourse with a female dog (described as "sodomy"), was ordered strangled after he confessed under torture. The dog was burned, along with the trial records which were "too horrible and potentially dangerous to be permitted to exist" “(Masters). In 1601, Claudine de Culam, a young girl of sixteen, was convicted of copulating with a dog. Both the girl and the dog were first hanged,and finally burned. In 1735, Francois Borniche was charged with sexual intercourse with animals. It was greatly feared that "his infamous debauches may corrupt the young men." He was imprisoned. There is no record of his release.

On the other hand, other accounts are more possibly fictitious, such as Pietro Damiani's, who in his "De bono religiosi status et variorum animatium tropologia" (11th Century) tells of a Count Gulielmus whose pet ape became his wife's lover. One day the ape became "mad with jealousy" on seeing the count lying with his wife that it fatally attacked him. Damain claims he was told about this incident by Pope Alexander II and shown an offspring claimed to be that of the ape and woman. (Illustrated Book of Sexual Records)

Clergyman and chronicler Gerald of Wales claimed to have witnessed a man having intercourse with a horse as part of a pagan ritual in Ireland.

(Wiki)

THE VOYEUR. CAUGHT LOOKING!

Hey You! Yes, you peeping through the keyhole. Yes, you, the guy masturbating in the peepshow booth, watching the lady dance her erotic tease.

And you, you, who thought you were safe looking at dirty pictures in secret, while your wife sips her tea from her favourite china cup; you’re not safe. And neither is the sophisticated  gentleman cruising the National Gallery London, pretending to look at the chiaroscuro, form and line, in the masterpieces.

You’ve been spotted.

The naked females stare boldly back at you.

You’ve been caught out. You’ve been caught looking.

Your quest to fulfil your carnal desires has landed you in big trouble. Your desire to obtain knowledge of the female form cannot be obtained in any innocent way. In the vernacular, you are a Peeping Tom. To give you your polite name; you are a Voyeur. You are no better, no different to Tom, blinded for his crime of looking at his Lady, as she rode, naked, through the streets.  Peeping Tom saw what was taboo; forbidden. So have you.

And girls, don’t think you’ve got away with it either; so wipe those smirks off your faces. That wonderful statue of David, by Michelangelo; did you know that David’s eyes follow you? He’s watching you, looking at his beautifully sculpted cock. He maybe flaccid, but you are dreaming of an erection. He can see the lust in your eyes.

Goya painted the “Nude Maja” in 1800. She stares at the viewer, with an autocratic gaze. She refutes any suggestion that she is debauched; she  flaunts  her nakedness. The viewer is incidental; an anachronism. The Nude Maja does nothing to titillate; she is simply there -- naked. So what?

From Wiki.

Without a pretence to allegorical or mythological meaning, the painting was "the first totally profane life-size female nude in Western art". Goya refused to paint clothes on her, and instead created a new painting of her clothed. The clothed Maja, eyeballs the viewer with her irritated stare.

The identity of the Majas are uncertain. The most popularly cited subjects are the Duchess of Alba, with whom Goya is thought to have had an affair, and the mistress of Manuel de Godoy, who subsequently owned the paintings. Neither theory has been verified, and it remains as likely that the paintings represent an idealized composite. In 1813, the Inquisition confiscated both works as 'obscene', returning them in 1836.

Le dejouner sur l‘herbe ("The Lunch on the Grass") is a large oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet. Created in 1862 and 1863, its juxtaposition of a female nude with fully dressed men sparked controversy when the work was first exhibited at the Salon des Refusés. The piece is now in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. A smaller, earlier version can be seen at the Courtauld Gallery London.

The shock value of a woman, naked, casually lunching with two fully dressed men, was an affront to the propriety of the time. But the naked woman in the painting negates any suggestion of indecency. She simply doesn’t care, and that is perhaps what is so shocking. Like the Maja, she confronts the viewer with an expression that seems to find the viewers’ excitement, boring. It’s as if she’s saying; “Oh, do grow up.” Faced with that, the viewers’ lust is diminished.

Manet embarked on his painting of Olympia  after being challenged to give the Salon a nude painting to display. (1863) The painting was controversial partly because the nude is wearing some small items of clothing such as an orchid in her hair, a bracelet, a ribbon around her neck, and mule slippers, all of which accentuated her nakedness; her comfortable courtesan lifestyle and sexuality. The orchid, upswept hair, black cat, and bouquet of flowers were all recognized symbols of sexuality at the time. This modern Venus' body is thin, counter to prevailing standards; the painting's lack of idealism rankled viewers who noticed it despite its placement, high on the wall of the Salon.

Manet’s Olympia stares out of the canvas at the viewer. No attempt at seduction, in her frankly, bored gaze. Manet has used the idea of the Classical pose and borrowed it from a much earlier work by Titian. “Venus of Urbino” (1538)

The women are posed in a similar fashion; relaxed, reclining. But Titian’s Venus is a seductress. She invites the viewer in. You can see it in her eyes and her full lips. Her plump mouth is suggestive of swollen labia lips; engorged and wet.

The viewer is on his way to being redeemed. This woman wants him.

The nudes discussed here, disconcert the viewer with their challenging stare. They have turned the tables on you; you are now the one on the receiving end of the gaze. Briefly, you crumble. You are shocked. Oh, you’ll get over it, but you’ll always remember that feeling of being found out; caught looking.

LET'S GO FUCK A CORPSE! NECROPHILIA! FUCKING DEAD PEOPLE!

Necrophilia; it’s a tough one. Is it a fetish or a perversion? What do you think? It’s a strange and disturbing phenomenon. It’s haunting; it’s taboo. But let’s not be squeamish; we’re going to talk about fucking dead people.

Yes it’s tough, but because it’s tough and makes us squirm, that’s not a reason not to talk about it. I think it’s a good reason to talk about it. Google is always a good place to start, so that’s where I went. And going on what you can find on the Web, with just a basic search; there’s a helluva lot of folk, curious and wanting to know more.

Are they all shouting “disgusting” and running away? It seems not; they’re intrigued. Reading about it; writing about it. Yearning for it…

Janine Ashbless writes a great necrophilia story, in Montague’s Last Ride,” in her “Cruel Enchantment.” collection. Jan Vander Laenen writes another great necrophilia  tale in his short story, “The Epistle of the Sleeping Beauty.”

So, necrophilia is there. It’s in the stories that we tell each other, from Classical Greek and Egyptian Mythology, to the Victorian Gothic. It’s in Fairy Tales and it’s in Popular Culture.

In the Greek legend of the Trojan War, the Greek hero Achilles slays the Amazon queen Penthesilea in a duel. Upon removing her helmet and seeing her face, Achilles falls in love with her and mourns her death. The soldier Thersites openly ridicules Achilles and accuses him of necrophilia. Achilles responds by promptly killing Thersites with a single blow. (In some traditions, Thersites' accusation is not unfounded—Achilles was so stricken by Penthesilea's beauty that he could not control his lust for her, even after her death.)

In Egyptian mythology, we are told of the myth of Osiris and Isis. It tells of the god Osiris, who had inherited his rule over the world from his ancestor Ra. Osiris was murdered and dismembered by his jealous brother Set, a god often associated with chaos. Osiris' sister and wife Isis reassembled Osiris' body so that she could impregnate herself and conceive an heir.

So the template for necrophilia is there, in our oldest stories. Mythology gives us permission to explore those dark and secret ideas.

And what about our current obsession with vampire stories? Starting with Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula, are they not a fantasy about a physical union with the un-dead?

And as for Heathcliffe in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, he sure as hell didn’t dig up Cathy’s body to gaze on her beautiful face.

And there’s so many more. In Cormac McCarthy's Child of God (1973), the protagonist Lester Ballard finds a dead couple in a car, and carries the female corpse back to his cabin to engage in sexual acts with it. After losing the corpse in a fire, he begins murdering women to create dead female sex partners for himself.

Georges Bataille's gruesome novella Story of the Eye ends with the main characters performing perverse and sacrilegious sexual acts on a passive priest, who is raped and strangled to death as he climaxes. After murdering him, the characters continue to perform sexual acts with his dismembered eyeball.

Edgar Allan Poe once described the death of a beautiful young woman to be one of the most beautiful images. (By this, he was not saying that it is a good thing for young women to die; to him melancholy and pain were sources of beauty.) Also, his poem
"Annabel Lee" includes, towards the end, possible necrophilic imagery. As does his short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

Oscar Wilde's scandalous play, Salome, based on the Biblical story of a Judean princess who performs the Dance of the Seven Veils for the Tetrarch, Herod, in exchange for the head of John the Baptist. When Salome finally receives the Christian prophet's head, she addresses it in an erotic monologue that has highly suggestive necrophiliac overtones.

And coming closer to today’s literature.

In Toni Morrison's novel Song of Solomon, (1977) Macon Dead is explaining to his son Milkman that he is disturbed by the relationship that his wife Ruth had with her father, Dr. Foster. Shortly after Dr. Foster's death, Macon caught Ruth lying naked in bed with her father's corpse, while sucking on his fingers.

In Canadian author Barbara Gowdy's short story, "We So Seldom Look On Love", a funeral parlour employee learns how to make the penises of recently dead men erect, and she commits sexual acts on the corpses until she is caught. In 1996, the story was adapted into the film Kissed.

Can’t leave out Fairy Tales either. Some Commentators like Marina Bychkova read the story of “Snow White”, as having a necrophiliac theme. Disney has sanitised it, just as he has done with “The Sleeping Beauty.” In a much older version of the story, the handsome Prince doesn’t just kiss the sleeping/dead princess, he rapes her.

From the Web.

“Sigmund Freud maintained that our deep childhood experiences (or lack of them) affect our adult lives in a profound way. In other words, when people are highly functional in their childhood experiences, this mirrors their adult reality, and when adult people are highly dysfunctional as children this, too, mirrors and mars their adult experiences.
There seems to be strong indications to support this concerning necrophilia. The list of necrophiliacs seems to clearly support Freud’s viewpoint. Here is a brief list: Ed Gein, Jeffery Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Albert Fish, Denis Nilson. All of these personalities had strained strange childhoods, felt abandoned, felt rejected and felt worthless. According to Dr. Jackson it is the perverted and extremely aberrant feelings of loneliness, rejection and abandonment, this feeling of total isolation, and total inability to connect to another human being that propels necrophilia.

As disturbing as this approach might be for some, in a nut shell what is being said here is that the necrophilia evolves to a state where the surest and easiest way to have total control, total acceptance, and total success in relating to another human being tragically descends to the point that the human being which is to be the object of intimacy is, of all things, a corpse.”

From the Web again.


“Erich Fromm, the psychologist and philosopher  considered that necrophilia is a character orientation which is not necessarily sexual. It is expressed in an attraction to that which is dead or totally controlled. At the extreme, it results in hatred of life and destructiveness. Unlike Freud's death instinct, it is not biologically determined but results from upbringing. Fromm believed that the lack of love in the western society and the attraction to mechanistic control leads to necrophilia. Expressions of necrophilia are modern weapon systems, idolatry of technology, and the treatment of people as things in bureaucracy.”

It’s described as “the highest taboo,” worse than rape, paedophilia, bestiality. So what’s going to happen if you do get caught fucking a corpse? The law in the United Kingdom says that fucking a corpse is very definitely illegal.

From Wiki;
“In the United Kingdom, sexual penetration with a corpse was made illegal under the Sexual Offences Act 2003. This is defined as depictions of "sexual interference with a human corpse" (as opposed to only penetration), and would cover "depictions which appear to be real acts" as well as actual scenes (see also extreme pornography).
As of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, it is also illegal to possess physical depictions of necrophilia, electronic or otherwise. Necrophilia-pornography falls under the governmental description of extreme pornography, of which, possession is classed as illegal under the aforementioned act.”

So in the U.K. you’re not only breaking the sexual offences act law if you indulged your profane urges and fuck a corpse, you’re going to be hauled up for possessing “extreme pornography” as well.

In the United States, there doesn’t seem to be a blanket law covering the whole country. The law varies from state to state. As of May 2006, there is no federal legislation specifically barring sex with a corpse. Here’s a few examples of how the states differ in their application of the law.

In Arizona, It is unlawful for a person to engage in necrophilia. A person engages in necrophilia by:
1. Having sexual intercourse with a dead human body.
2. Having sexual contact with a dead human body, other than the contact normally required to store, prepare, disinfect or embalm a dead human body according to standards of practice in the funeral industry.
1. "Sexual contact" means any direct or indirect touching, including oral contact, fondling or manipulating of any part of the genitals, anus or female breast by any part of the body or by any object.
2. "Sexual intercourse" means penetration into the vulva or anus by any part of the body or by any object or masturbatory contact with the penis or vulva.
F. A person who violates this section is guilty of a class 4 felony.


In California, you can get up to eight years in prison, for the act of necrophilia. In the state of Georgia, you can get ten years in prison, for the same offence. In Nevada it’s considered a Class A felony with a maximum penalty of life in prison.

I still don’t know whether necrophilia is a fetish or a perversion. Certainly the sub-text in the Sigmund Freud statement, and the quote from Erich Fromm, seem to see necrophilia as something that needs to be “cured.”

So I’m lost for a proper conclusion.

How would I feel if a relative of mine who had passed, was “played” with? I would not like it at all. I would be distressed, incensed, livid. But, as I don’t think I’m likely to come across a necrophiliac any time soon, that’s as near to making it personal as I can get.

Let's end with a joke. (from Fulani)

..That said, it's often treated in a lighter fashion in the goth world, given that goth culture tends to be quite big on death, decay, and so on. So there are numerous goth jokes about it. For example: goth couple have sex. The girl has an orgasm and the boy, shocked, asks her what's wrong. Nothing's wrong, she says. Why do you ask? Well, says the boy, you moved...