‘Where the Stars Don’t Shine’: The Moral Purpose of Immoral Art in 2019

Conversations around social justice and social awareness are more centralized in pop culture than ever before in 2019. In our fraught political climate, we have made a shift towards consuming art that is socially conscious, and we are beginning to hold our artists accountable for the intentions behind their work. So where in this approach do we canonise the long and troubled history of art which is purposefully shocking, debauched and intentionally immoral?

Perhaps since man first daubed figures on cave walls, the greater purpose of art has been a central debate in societies throughout history and across the world. Across most cultures, we accept that art should serve some sort of moral purpose - it should enlighten us, educate us, comfort us or invigorate us – all of this, of course, relevant to the standards and moral codes of the society wherein the discussion is taking place. Running parallel to this set of beliefs therefore is the inevitability of art inciting moral panic – art that maybe pushes a new boundary or draws into question accepted moral guidelines of the time. However, there is another, far darker corner of the art world – art which is wilfully volatile, art that rebukes any notion of a greater moral purpose. I am dubbing this art ‘immoral art’ – art which seemingly sets out to achieve nothing more than to systematically undermine any social or moral law it can, purely for the purpose of inciting a reaction of horror. Last summer, I encountered my first piece of what I felt to be truly ‘immoral art’ – a novel by the infamous Marquis de Sade, titled ‘The 120 Days of Sodom’. The title may give you a clue, but it doesn’t prepare you. The text is brutal – I read 80 pages, then read an entire other book as a pallet cleanser before slugging it through to page 397. It reminded me of Roger Ebert’s classic quip when reviewing The Human Centipede (2009), wherein he refused to give it a star rating as it existed in a place ‘where the stars don’t shine’. This parallel between these two different shock classics raises the question of what purpose these artforms can possibly serve within our society – after all, isn’t that the purpose of all art? 

The 120 Days of Sodom is the Marquis de Sade’s most infamous novel, and undoubtedly the most brutal piece of literature in the literary canon. Written by Sade in 1785 whilst he was imprisoned at the Bastille, the novel (which exists only in incomplete form, the last 3 chapters taking the form of numbered lists) concerns 4 wealthy and disturbed Libertines, who kidnap 16 teenagers and take them away to a castle in the heart of the Black Forest, and, inspired by stories told to them by four experienced prostitutes, enact all of their most twisted and disturbed sexual fantasies on their captives. The novel amounts to little more than a sulphurous deluge of ever more horrific tales of sexual domination and sadism (it is from Sade that we get the word sadism – if that doesn’t tell you enough), and it speaks volumes of the novels nauseating power that the reader’s only consolation in parts is the assumption that what they are reading is not in fact physically possible.  Nearly 50 pages alone are dedicated to acts of coprophagia. The entire last chapter is dedicated to what the author calls ‘murderous passions’. And when you consider that all these events are being enacted upon teenagers (some as young as 12), the book becomes a treacly thick swamp of horror and gristle that the reader must wade through – and even in its unfinished state, it comes in at nearly 400 pages.

What casts 120 Days as such an interesting case study in the history of immoral art is that for centuries critics, academics, philosophers, psychologists and feminists have all debated over the novels moral purpose, and historically the most common answer has been the most frightening - there isn’t one. At various times the book has been upheld as a commentary on free will and autonomy, a nihilistic comment on nature vs. nurture (the libertines in the story constantly reaffirm their inability to change who they are), a  comment on power fantasies under political repression, and even as a  piece of psychosexual scientific study (psychosexual psychiatrist Richard von Kraft Ebing, who coined the term sadism based on the works of the Marquis De Sade, references the book heavily in his foundational work on human sexuality Psychopathia Sexualis [1886]). But all these assessments begin to fall apart when you consider that the Marquis de Sade was a notable sexual sadist and criminal in his day to day life. Infamous across 18^th Century France for tales of his twisted sexual escapades, Sade had much blood on his hands, and ruined the lives of many young maidens that fell into his clutches. It becomes harder to reconcile the idea that Sade’s work has a higher moral purpose when the man himself lived a life which was deeply and proudly immoral. However, the work can neither be disregarded, because for all its intentional shock value, and the moral dubiousness of its author, the book is clearly the work of an artist – Sade has a definite flair for writing dialogue, for weaving philosophical debate into an admittedly thread-bare plot, and he is able to find moments of beauty and even humour even when his subject matter is so vulgar. One may feel it reprehensible to entertain the works of a proudly immoral man, but Sade’s credentials as an artist cannot be drawn into question. Nevertheless, Sade’s reputation has preceded his work ever since – a selection of his works (not 120 Days) were published briefly in the UK in the 50’s, until a copy of his novel Justine was found in the possession of Moors Murderer Ian Brady, leading to a further ban until 1989. In France, it is still prohibited to display his works in a bookshop window – a distinction he shares only with Adolph Hitler.

All of this becomes deeply interesting therefore when, in 2016, The 120 Days of Sodom, a novel that circulated almost exclusively amongst academic circles, or had received only minor publications for over 200 years, received widespread publication – as a Penguin Classic. And perhaps what is even more surprising, is that this choice received little to no fanfare or controversy. True, revisions of classic literature do not make headline news in the 21^st Century – certainly there was never going to be a repeat  the uproar experienced in the 1960’s – but Sade’s inclusion in the Penguin Classics collection is tantamount to ushering him into the literary cannon amongst the greats, and his inclusion by its very nature feels dangerous and uncomfortable. However, as surprising as this revision may seem, the publication of the novel came at a time when its reputation was somewhat neutralized by the political climate it was entering. True, some work had been done to soften the novels reputation in decades previous. In 1975, director Pier Paolo Pasolini loosely adapted the novel into the film Salό, wherein the events are transposed from early 18^th Century France to fascist-dictated World War II Italy. Though the film proved to be extremely controversial in its own right, being banned in various countries even into the 21^st Century, it made progress in rephrasing the novel as having real artistic merit – a first in its long history. By teasing out the novel’s themes of political corruption, and by reframing the story through an admittedly beautiful aesthetic lens through the power of film making, Pasolini succeeded in giving the story a deeper subtext, both socially and aesthetically. Similarly, small publications of the novel were made worldwide as concerns over the censorship of literature began to wane in favour of prevailing artforms such as film and television. All these small, incremental changes led to the novel’s reputation, and by extension the reputation of its author, being tamed.

It is also crucial to consider the political atmosphere the novel entered upon its re-publication. 2016 was one of the most politically fraught in recent memory, with the rise of far-right politics being felt heavily across the globe. It is perhaps no surprise that a novel as brutal and wilfully immoral as 120 Days… could make some sort of twisted sense. If we are to conclude that the novel serves no higher moral purpose other than to serve as an excuse for the Marquis de Sade to flex how vulgar he could be, then the novels purpose becomes purely to be a cesspool of filth and anger, and that serves as an interesting reflection of the context in which it was written. Sade wrote the novel in 1785, just as the tensions that led to the French Revolution were reaching absolute boiling point. France at this time was a violently unhappy nation, as Sade would have been all too aware, adopting the status of the ‘the Other’ through his imprisonment despite his life of wealth and privilege. The combination of France’s social climate at the time - where heavy taxations led to widespread poverty and increased mortality rates- and Sade’s deteriorating physical and mental health goes some way to explain the primal scream that is 120 Days of Sodom. Compare this to the political climate in 2016, and the parallels are much the same – increasing austerity in Britain, the rising threat of a Trump presidency in America, and a general shift towards the right across Europe. A novel written within an atmosphere of pre-revolutionary tension holds some relevance when reconsidered in a similar context centuries later. This is perhaps one explanation as to the relevance of immoral art in trying political times – they reflect an atmosphere of violence to shake us out of our complacency.

Far more contemporary examples of this phenomenon can also be found. In the early part of the 21^st Century, especially post 9/11 North America, a similar moral panic was started over the proliferation over what the mainstream media dubbed ‘torture porn’ films – movies which contained graphic and supposedly gratuitous depictions of torture and mutilation. The list includes films such as Saw, Hostel, August Underground, Murder Set Pieces, and at times the definition was broadened to include European films belonging to the New French Extremity movement such as Martyrs. These films, stylistically, are vastly different. They all have varying degrees of artistic or aesthetic merit, varying levels of socio-political commentary, and some have since been reappraised as skilled or even important pieces of cinema. However, contemporary critics unified all these films for their graphic depictions of torture and sexual violence, and desperately clambered to decipher their intentions. Again, some, like Hostel, make interesting observations on world politics, whilst others, like Murder Set Pieces (wherein a deranged photographer rapes, tortures and murders prostitutes – and that’s kind of it), make no heroic attempt at any notion of moral or social commentary, amounting to little more than a procession of ever more graphic crimes. Not all these films, it must be said, carry the excuse of artistic flair like 120 Days – they are simply gargled screams of twisted immorality, wilfully depraved and purposefully corrupt. Whatever the intention of these films, however, their one unifying connection is that they are products of their time, a time characterised in American history as being a sharp spike in violence perpetuated against minorities, an uptick in depictions of death and violence on television though news broadcasts, and a general feeling of danger and uncertainty in the zeitgeist. This era of American cinema is almost reminiscent of the surge in exploitation horror films that appeared following the Watergate scandal in the early 70’s, though these 21^st Century descendants seem to lack any of the social commentary their forefathers used.

Having identified that these supposedly ‘immoral’ art pieces are unified by their context and their environment, it begins to suggest some explanation as to what purpose we can assign to them. Granted, it’s dangerous to assign meaning to something which is designed to exist in a moral vacuum. And of course, in many cases, shock value is an invaluable marketing tool. But it seems highly unlikely that nothing can be gleamed from such works when they are direct products of times in history characterised by violence. There is an old adage that work made to have ‘shock value’ with no further intention or purpose amounts to bad art, but I would instead argue that art made purely to rebuke to moral standards of the time acts as a camera that captures a snapshot of a moment in history, and perhaps awakens us to the underlying tensions we are unaware of. True, this approach to making art does not lend itself to longevity – the continual descriptions of sodomy in 120 Days, surely very scandalous in 1785, hold no power in 2019 – but in their wild abandon of moral codes, they become recurring motifs whenever violent hysteria creeps into a society’s consciousness. They serve as catharsis, though admittedly their therapeutic value is dubious.

Whether the auteurs of these works intend it or not, these artefacts shock us out of complacency to the horror going on around us, and in some regard, we are perhaps reinvigorated – if not comforted – to see our disparate fears synthesized into one coherent if abhorrent statement. Once you identify this purpose in immoral art, it can be used to explain a multitude of examples, even ones no-where near approaching the levels of brutality found in 120 Days. There is an undeniable thrill in unapologetically anti-moral work, but its effect is only palpable at times of great social or political upheaval, because it is only then that the raw brutality makes any kind of higher sense.

And that leads us to now, in 2019 – where do these artefacts fit into our current political climate? I would argue that, really, they don’t, and its not because we live in peaceful political times. On the contrary, the socio-political climate is tenser now than ever before. However, we have entered an age of action rather than reaction, and in such a climate immoral art fails to serve its purpose. We don’t need to be shocked out of our complacency, that has already been achieved by most – in our current age of globalization, thanks to the shifting dynamic of online political discourse, we are more aware of the social issues happening around us than ever before, and the task now is to engage with them and find solutions. Immoral art presents the problem, but it fails to provide a solution. Conversely, in it’s twisting of moral logic, nothing changes in immoral art, a nihilistic tone that is at odds with a society attempting to grapple with its own demons. In 120 Days, the libertines enter the castle as monsters, and they leave as monsters with the blood of dozens on their hands. There is no retribution, no lesson to be learnt. Brutality is where the narrative begins and ends. In failing to provide a solution, the novel fails to help us find solutions in our own lives. Horror cinema is often an accurate yardstick by which to measure a societies moral compass – contrast the prevalence of ‘torture porn’ around the year 2005 to the rise of ‘highbrow horror’ we enjoy in 2019 – Get Out, Hereditary, Us. Though it is most probable that schlocky horror is being made in 2019, it is not drawing in revenue at the box office. There’s something quite reassuring about that.

To roundly disparage art of no higher moral purpose other than to shock and dismay is a dangerous prospect because in many ways these art pieces are necessary. They appear at opportune times – times when people need catharsis, and though reading a book or watching a film in which people are raped and dismembered cannot be considered a healthy form of catharsis, it underlines a major problem in a society that needs to be addressed. These artefacts are like banshees, primal screams warning us of the dangers ahead, the horrors bubbling just under the surface. Or maybe they highlight current issues we are unwilling to face, as is this case with torture porn in post 9/11 America. And to say a film or a book is immoral is not to claim it has no artistic merit – it is simply to suggest that it refuses to provide solutions. Like JG Ballard said of his novel Crash (1973), they rub the human face in its own vomit and force us to look in the mirror. What we choose to do after we’ve looked at our reflection is entirely up to us. If this analysis holds any weight, it also provides some reassurance – the explosion of deeply moral, socially conscious work being released as of late hopefully signals a society chasing its demons into the light and grappling with them one by one. The process starts with a grim piece of artistic filth, and from that pot of dirt sometimes pop culture can grow a flower. I don’t think it’s necessary any of you read 120 Days of Sodom – as a profound an effect as it had on me, I’d never say I enjoyed it – but if I can add anything to the conversation that has surrounded this book for the last 235 years, it’s that in 2019 we may have finally recognised its purpose – largely in part to the legacy of deeply immoral work that exists in its lineage – and that it is as relevant and important today as it has ever been.