Does shock value work for art and audiences? Have we seen it all? Are we simply over it? Or as the caption above suggests, has too much been made of too little for too long?
Theatre ‘shockers’ will tend to divide audiences and critics alike: some will speak positively about almost anything that makes granny’s hair stand on end whilst others will puff up like indignant turkeys demanding the restitution of “public morality.” But does shock value of necessity produce good theatre? And when we talk about a good theatre – does that only mean a good night out and lots of laughs? Or can it also include notions of social responsibility, politics, war and human suffering?
As part of its Theatre Archive Project, the British Library has been collecting interviews with actors, theatre workers and audiences about their theatre experiences between 1945-1968. One interesting interview with theatregoer William Crow delves into the socio-political challenges made by theatre at that time.
Described by acclaimed English playwright Howard Barker as the Theatre of Catastrophe – he makes a brilliantly clear distinction between theatre that leaves us feeling comfortable and theatre which shakes our very foundations. Barker contends that good art leaves the witness with many unanswered questions and complex thoughts, sounds and images.
Are we the generation that is finally unshockable? Or are we unusually desperate for our two hours of pure and unsullied entertainment because the complexity of our world is almost too much to bear? And what is it about breaking taboos that makes people so anxious? And does the notion of a taboo even make sense in an age where you can watch just about anything on the web/television/DVD and attend sex clubs at any time of the day or night?
Theatre has a lot to teach us here. Long-revered and feared for its capacity to break the ice (aka the capacity to carry scary and raw ideas into the public realm) – theatre has a very long and glorious history of outing the new, the hidden, the crazy and essential aspects of life. One only has to look at works such as Oedipus, Electra or The Agamemnon to see plenty of sex-induced neurosis and family troubles. Many popular films and television shows have been based on these fundamental dramatic archetypes that explode subjects such as murder, infanticide, infidelity and madness. “Dysfunctional family with deep dark secret must hold on to its power and deflect its enemies,” does sound familiar? The Sopranos, Dallas, or Desperate Housewives?
In the past 40 years we have been treated to onstage nudity, sodomy, child abuse, incest, torture, live-sex, and a variety of other activities you would not take your poor old gran along to see. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Audiences the world over had to confront these questions in 2001 when La Fura dels Baus, toured with their red-hot version of de Sade’s, Philosophy in the Bedroom. Renamed XXX, the show was a full-frontal and sensory assault on audience sensitivities and taboos.
La Fura dels Baus, a Catalonian company, works on the very margins of what is acceptable theatre. Their production of XXX featured on-stage threesomes, foursomes, fellatio, cunnilingus, sex with baked-beans, sodomy, rape, S&M, incest, genital mutilation and cigar-smoking vaginas. La Fura dels Baus’s XXX was bound to send the media into a total tizz, wherever they went. And it did. This show was not for the faint-hearted!
Fura’s director Alex Olle said: “No one should come out of our show thinking: ‘That was nice’.” And they didn’t. The company’s work is all about confronting no-go zones and sensory overload. One minute you’re laughing at an impossibly large dildo and the next you are shocked by graphic screen-sized visuals of genital mutilation.
Responding to questions about the validity of such shock tactics, Fura dramatist Valentina Carrasco claimed that the company was well aware of the potential ramifications of their choices. “We are trying to make people face some aspects of their own being, especially their sexuality. We bring things out into the open. Normally people watch pornography in the darkness, and alone.” She added: “…People don’t want to show the stuff that comes from our deep, hidden desires. When sex is related to love, then everything’s okay, but when sex is just sex, there’s a problem – it’s an aspect of intimacy people don’t want to expose.”
“XXX still touches taboos,” Carrasco says. “You read De Sade and it’s like ‘Oh, my God’. He puts you in front of an extreme situation and makes it apply to you too.” The explicit sexual violence of the protagonist’s attack on her mother feeds on basic psychological and primal aggressions, Carrasco argues. “In the book, the final scene is quite hard… This also touches taboos about our parents’ sexuality, which are very deep…this urge to kill our parents…And by watching horrible things on stage you can have a catharsis of your own deepest and darkest desires,” claimed Carrasco.
Sigmund Freud’s development of the Oedipus Complex (the ‘urge to kill your parents’) was a central part of his ground- breaking work. A body of work that re-defined our concept of the human being and the psyche. In Totem and Taboo Freud likened the ‘neurotic patient’ to the ‘indigenous native.’ Freud saw both as being in a state of enthrallment to cultural norms of acceptability and taboo.
Social theorist Durkheim went a step further when he declared that the totem of a society is the symbol of that society; the visible representation of the reality that structures our being and our thoughts. Totems and taboos are therefore only symbols within their society of origin, that is – they are specific and relative. Durkheim later went on to define cultural studies as the unnamed totems and taboos that all cultures live by and are bound to.
According to Fura, the aim of a show such as XXX is “…not to break taboos for the sake of it, but to confront people with things that they may not like, but which are part of our hidden lives. Like …the idea of violence in sex – there’s a strong connection between pain and sex, which most people ignore or are afraid of. But it’s part of human nature.”
Of course, Fura did not invent the exploration of dark themes. By the 1960s, Western social and cultural shifts were on fast forward. There was a huge gap between what writers and actors wanted to put on stage and what was culturally permissible. Performances such as Hair, anything by Orton or Pinter, Look Back in Anger, Edward Bond‘s Early Morning and a plethora of other seminal works, were rocking the foundations of ‘common decency.’ As late as 1995 London critics struggled to comprehend and revolted against Sarah Kane’s frightening vision of the world when her play Blasted premiered.
There are always warning signs that a Shocker is upon us; from the rape and violence of taboo-busting Blasted (a direct response to the catastrophic events in Bosnia) to Mark Ravenhill’s deeply disturbing Shopping and Fucking and Anthony Neilson’s Penetrator. Without exception the edgy content of these plays were manifest attempts to address issues of genuine concern and to confront specific social ills and dis-ease.
Taboo-shattering productions are sometimes so powerful and overwhelming, that they can prevent us from asking searching questions. One such question might be; what is the actual merit of this work; artistically, politically and socially if one were to remove the hype? And yet, on occasion, what we see and experience in the darkened theatre can be so piercingly truthful, heartfelt and intelligent that it can change the way we think. Experiences such as these are few and far between but when they unexpectedly arrive it is like the rain to one lost in the desert. This is the undeniable power of theatre and it is why we keep going – year in year out. Even if we don’t ‘enjoy’ it, even if we don’t like the way it can make us feel; we do yearn for the promise of revelation and truth.
