Introduction

 

Forough Farrokhzad is one of Iran’s most famous and influential poets. Her poetry and persona gave permission to me and many other Iranians to write openly and daringly about longing and desire. Forough Farrokhzad’s life was turbulent and transgressive, not just because she broke the social norms expected of Iranian women in the 1950s and 60s, but also because she published poetry which questioned the traditional structures of religion, marriage, and gender norms. Indeed, when she was a journalist in her youth, her pseudonym was bot shekan – ‘idol-breaker’. Although the publication of her poetry has been banned since the foundation of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Forough Farrokhzad’s poetry is still a best-seller on Iran’s black market. She still has a very strong fan base in Iran, especially within the Iranian queer community and her younger brother, Fereydoun was openly gay and a famous entertainer. (Although, tragically, a few years after the Islamic Revolution, he was murdered in his apartment in Germany.) Like most Iranians, I also prefer to refer to Forough Farrokhzad by her first name, Forough.

Below is a picture I took from a street bookseller in April 2018, in the Tajrish Square of Tehran, selling The Complete Poetry of Forough Farrokhzad with ‘Private Letters’. It is in the same row as other popular books in the Iranian book market: Sohrab Sepehri’s Complete Poetry, and a Persian translation of Mein Kampf. The rows beneath the top row include some of Iraj Pezekshad’s novels, including his canonical masterpiece: Dayi Jaan Napel’on (Uncle Napoleon), Farsi translations of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince.

 

 

Forough was born in 1935 to a middle-class family in Tehran. Her father was Colonel Farrokhzad, and her mother, Touran Vaziri-Tabar. Forough was one of their seven children and soon earned a reputation for competing with boys and defeating them. She climbed walls, jumped, and ‘howled’. Once she entered school, she became infatuated with the poetry of Ferdowsi, especially his Epic of Kings, and other classical Persian poets, such as Hafez and Rumi. At the age of sixteen, Forough married Parviz Shapoor and within a year, gave birth to their son, whom she lost two years later in the custody battle due to her love affairs.
—-The opening line of the poem Sin is: ‘I have sinned a pleasurable sin’. Forough wrote this poem about her affair with Naser Khodayar, the editor-in-chief of a literary magazine, who published derogatory pieces about Forough after their affair ended abruptly in 1954, until Farrokhzad’s family asked him to stop. Shortly after this public shaming in September 1955, Forough had a mental breakdown and attempted suicide, after which she was hospitalised in Rezai psychiatric clinic and received electroshock therapy, which also resulted in some magazines and newspapers to mock her by describing her as ‘insane’.
—-Her first poetry collection The Captive (Asir in Farsi) was published in 1955. The Captive consists of forty-two poems, most of which deal with sexual desire from the female point of view in a sorrowful tone, all composed in classical Persian poetic form. She was so prolific that only a year after that she published her second poetry collection The Wall (Deevar in Farsi).
—-In 1958, her third poetry collection Rebellion (Osyan in Farsi) was published. Although this collection is quite similar to her first two collections and is usually lumped with them under Forough’s early poetry and erotica, there is a shift towards existential matters such as God, life, and death. In this collection, Forough starts to question the figure of God, whilst adopting a more celebratory tone when describing her sexual desires and adventures, unlike the previous two collections, she does not have an apologetic tone towards God, but rather a more interrogating one.
—-In the same year, Forough Farrokhzad met and fell in love with another celebrated Iranian writer and film producer, Ebrahim Golestan. Despite the fact that he was married, they embarked on an intense and passionate love affair.
—-In 1962, Forough made her cutting-edge documentary The House Is Black, about the patients in a leprosarium in a deserted town in Iran. This poetic and unflinchingly realist film brought her universal recognition by winning the Best Documentary Award in the Oberhausen Film Festival in 1963. Hamid Dabashi states that with this film, Forough Farrokhzad ‘set Iranian film on a creative path from which it has not diverged.’ Below are three photographs I took in 2018 from the screening of the film at Mosaic Rooms in London:

 

 

Forough Farrokhzad’s fourth poetry collection Reborn (1962) is distinctly different from the previous three collections in terms of form, style, and content. The poems are not composed in the classical Persian rhyme schemes, instead Forough has adopted the Nimaic blank verse – the poetic form in free verse pioneered by Nima Youshij that was dominating the Persian poetry scene. This collection and her fifth collection Let Us Believe in the Dwan of the Cold Season (posthumously published in 1974) elevated Forough’s reputation from a ‘sensual poetess’ to one of the greatest poets of Persian modernism.

On the 13th of February 1967, returning from visiting her mother, Forough swerved her jeep in order to avoid hitting a school bus. She was thrown out of the car and her head hit the cement. She died immediately at the age of 32.

 

 

Hamid Dabashi describes Forough Farrokhzad as ‘the most celebrated woman poet in the course of the Persian poetic tradition and a seminal modern Persian poet, regardless of gender.’ Farzaneh Milani says about Forough that ‘her work has been among the most popular in modern Persian literature.’ Shaahin Pishbin explains that ‘Farrokhzad challenged, or even threatened, the normative values of her culture; innovative and exemplary, her place in the canon of modernist Persian poetry is well-established.’
—-Erotic poetry has always been an integral part of Persian literature. Passion is a common theme in the works of ancient Persian poets such as Hafez, Rumi, and Khayyam, but Forough Farrokhzad is the first woman who published her erotic verse. She is considered to be the pioneer of poets who wrote about female desire through the female gaze in Iran.

 

 

Note: Although I have translated a poem from Forough for this essay, all English translations of her poems have been taken from Sholeh Wolpé’s book Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad:

 

 

The Captive (1955), The Wall (1956), and Rebellion (1958)

Pleasure, in particular sexual pleasure, is one of the main themes of Farrokhzad’s early poetry, although this pleasure is often stained by a fear of God in her first two collections, in Rebellion, she started to adopt a more interrogating and fearless tone towards God and religion, for instance, the final stanza of Rebellious God is

Tired of being a prude, I’d seek Satan’s bed at midnight
And find refuge in the declivity of breaking laws.
I’d happily exchange the golden crown of divinity
For the dark, aching embrace of a sin.

Despite her early poetry being dismissed and mocked as traditionally-versed erotica, some of Forough Farrokhzad’s early poems are modern, feminist, and transgressive in terms of content in that they unashamedly explored and expressed female sexual desires in the 1950s and often questioned traditional concepts such as religion and marriage. A good example of this is a poem called The Ring, from Forough Farrokhzad’s debut poetry collection The Captive (1955). The Ring is a belligerent critique of the institution of heterosexual marriage. In the last stanza, the woman who has been married and congratulated and celebrated due to her marriage and ‘lustrous’ gold ring, is now mourning her status que and defines marriage as ‘slavery’:

… this band –
so lustrous and aglow –
is the clamp of bondage, of slavery

 

Reborn (1964)

Forough Farrokhzad’s fourth poetry collection Reborn (1964) is drastically different from her previous collections in that it has a modernist structure, and in terms of language and the use of literary devices it is much more innovative and original as it is full of eccentric extended metaphors, tangible vibrant and eerie imagery, and linguistic witticisms that have become a part of Farsi. Below is an instance of a strong extended metaphor and image from Those Days:

Those days are gone.
As uprooted plants wilt in the sun,
those days, too, rotted in sunlight.

—-In this collection, her lengthiest, Forough Farrokhzad’s feminism comes across as more confident and confrontational, especially with one of her poems called Wind-Up Doll in which she blatantly questions male authority, female subordination, and gender binaries:

one can cry out: I love!
In the oppressive arms of a man
one can be a robust, beautiful female

—-A few lines after this blunt criticism of the heterosexist power structures, she critiques the close-mindedness that can be caused by religion:

One can spend a lifetime kneeling,
head bowed,
before the cold altar of the Imams,
find God inside an anonymous grave,
faith in a few paltry coins.
One can rot inside a mosque’s chamber

Forough Farrokhzad’s renouncement of the institution of marriage and her blatant criticism of religion constitute only a few political elements of her poetry. Indeed, Jasmin Darznik correctly describes Forough Farrokhzad’s poetry as ‘at once political and poetic, particular and universal’.

 

 

Let Us Believe in the Dawn of the Cold Season (1974)

Forough Farrokhzad’s fifth poetry collection Iman Biavarim be Aghaaze Fasl-e Sard (Let Us Believe in the Dawn of the Cold Season) was written in 1965 but was posthumously published in 1974 and solidified her reputation as one of the greatest poets in Iran.
—-The first poem in the collection is the title poem, a great example of modernist poetry due to its content and techniques. The sense of doom, apocalypse, frustration, disappointment, and gloom in this long free verse has been expressed through unique and cryptic images. Jasmin Darznik has likened this poem to T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Below is an extract:

Hollow human.
Hollow, trusting human.
Look at his teeth singing as they chew,
and his eyes devouring as they stare,
and how he passes the wet trees:
patiently,
heavily,
lost,
at the hour of four,
at the very moment his blue veins,
wrapped about his throat like dead snakes,
pound his angry temples
with those bloodied syllables:
Salaam.
Salaam.

Many believe that this poem, and the whole collection was a dark prophecy of Forough Farrokhzad’s sudden and tragic death; especially the famous final poem of the collection The Bird Shall One Day Die and its final lines that have become a Persian proverb:

Preserve the memory of flight.
The bird shall one day die.

Many also claim that this dark collection was a prophecy of Iran’s political future, especially in the light of the Islamic Revolution as the poem is imbued with dark political symbolism, particularly one of its most well-known poem I Pity the Garden. The fable of the garden of Eden is one of the most famous fables from the Quran, and it is not just a part of the narrative of Christianity, but also an integral part of Islamic and Middle Eastern discourse. In this thought-provoking and dark poem, Forough Farrokhzad criticises and ‘pities’ the garden that constitutes the narrator’s family. This garden that is ‘dying’ includes nuclear familial figures such as ‘father’ ‘mother’ ‘brother’ ‘sister’ and the narrator who is observing and mourning the decay and emptiness of it. Below is an extract from I Pity the Garden:

Mother is a sinner by nature. She prays
all day, then with her “consecrated” breath
blows on all the flowers, all the fish
and all over her own body.
She awaits the Promised One
and the forgiveness He is to bring.

My brother calls the garden a graveyard.
He laughs at the plight of grass
and ruthlessly counts the corpses of the fish
rotting beneath shallow water’s dead skin.
My brother is addicted to philosophy.
He sees the healing of the garden in its death.
Drunk, he beats his fists on doors, and walls,
says he is tired, pained, and despondent.

My sister was a friend to flowers.
She would take her simple heart words
– when mother beat her ¬–
to their kind and silent gathering.

She now lives on the other side of town
in her artificial home, and in the arms
of her artificial husband she makes natural children.

Just like any other text, Forough Farrokhzad’s poetry is also open to interpretation. The intensity, urgency, and immediacy of her poems make them even more so. Whatever readings of her poetry, one thing’s for sure: her poetry, vision, and persona created a new way of seeing, writing, and expressing that is as necessary today as it was in the 1950s. Her untimely death always begs the question of what might have been had she lived longer.

 

Rome 1956. Forough (on the left) with her ‘artistic soulmate’ Behjat Sadr (on the right). Behjat was an Iranian Modernist artist who died in 2009.
Photo Source: Photo Source: (last accessed: 10/10/2018)

 

Referenced and cited works:

Meetra A. Sophia, ‘Forough Farrokhzad: Twelve Poems; Notes and Translation by Meetra A. Sofia’, American Poetry Review, 35.1 (2006)

Michael C. Hillmann, A Lonely Woman: Forough Farrokhzad and Her Poetry (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1987)

Hamid Dabashi, ‘Why Iran Creates Some of the Best Films’, BBC Culture (16/11/2018)

Jasmin Darznik, ‘Forugh Farrokhzad, Her Poetry, Life, and Legacy’, The Women’s Review of Books, 23.6 (2006)

Jasmin Darznik, ‘Forough Goes West: The Legacy of Forough Farrokhzad In Iranian Diasporic Art and Literature’, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 6.1 (2010)

Forough Farrokgzad, The Captive (Tehran: Amir Kabir Press, 1955)

Forough Farrokhzad, Let Us Believe in the Dawn of the Cold Season (1974)

Forough Farrokhzad, Rebellion (Tehran: Amir Kabir Press, 1958)

Forough Farrokhzad, Reborn (1964)

Forough Farrokhzad, ‘The House Is Black’ (Studio Golestan, 1962)

Forough Farrokhzad, The Wall (Tehran: Amir Kabir Press, 1956)

Mahrokhsadat Hosseini, ‘Feminist Culture and Politics in Iranian Women’s Post-Revolutionary Poetry (1979-2017)’ Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, 2.7 (2018)

Farzaneh Milani, Veils and Words: The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1992)

Farzaneh Milani, Words, not Swords: Iranian women writers and the freedom of movement (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2011)

Parvin Paidar, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)

Shaahin Pishbin, ‘Forough Farrokhzad and the Persian Literary Canon’, Iran Namag, 1 (2017)

Amir Hussein Radjy, ‘Overlooked No More: Forough Farrokhzad, Iranian Poet Who Broke Barriers of Sex and Society’, The New York Times (30/01/2019)

Sholeh Wolpe, Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2007)

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. And today the blog receives the great gift of this guest-post by the very wonderful writer Golnoosh Nour introducing the works and life story of the Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad. I had never heard of Farrokhzad before, and maybe you have or haven’t, but, in any case, this is golden opportunity to explore her beautiful poetry, so please do so in your respective fashions. As always, it would be an excellent thing if you can say a word or two in the post’s regards to our generous guest-host. Thank you, and thank you greatly, Golnoosh! ** Shane Christmass, Hi, Shane. Thanks for chiming in, man. ** Ferdinand, The generosity was/is all yours, sir. Everyone, A little corrective from your weekend’s host, Ferdinand: ‘In my intro I mistakenly called it a revenge porn film, I meant to say a revenge rape film. English is my second language so I tend to swop some syllables like C with S hence some mispelling in the text.’ Thank you so much again. It was a hit in all respects. ** Paul K – Wake Island, Hi, Paul. Thanks a lot for coming in here. It’s great to see you! I saw Chris’s mention of his episode and that thematic right before I launched the weekend’s post, and, yeah, synchronicity city. Excited for the episode. Huge fan and addictee of Wake Island, as I think you know. Thanks again, and big respect. ** David Ehrenstein, It’s something if you get the chance to watch it. ** Chris Kelso, Hi, Chris! That is rather astonishing that ‘Vernon Subutex’ was nominated for the Booker. Very, very weird. But good. Yeah, cosmic alignment or something on the Wake/Chris thing for sure. It would be dreamy to be on Wake Island, but he had Diarmuid Hester talking about my stuff not so long ago, so I suspect I am maxed out as a potential Islander for the time being. Thanks for thinking that! ** Dominik, Hi, D!!!! Well, you’re almost to the deadline, right (?), so there’s that little prize at least. My weekend? Well, Gisele Vienne and I are making a film of our now-retired theater piece ‘Jerk’, and I spent a day watching/supervising the last day of filming. That went well. I wandered about to see what the confinement is like and it seems pretty soft. A bunch of stores closed, but lots of people out and about like usual. I decided for some weird reason to scroll/fast-forward through a replay of the Grammy Awards, I guess to see what normal people listen to and to put some musical context to all the current stars’ names that I’ve read about but never heard. Jesus, what a dreary, watered down, retro bunch of conservative nothingness, except for a very few fun-ish things (Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, Billie Eilish, and … yeah, just them). And I wrote some, etc. Okay not an amazing couple of days. Ha ha, lama farm, I’m so there. Love giving Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, Black Pumas, Doja Cat, Post Malone, Bruno Mars, and Anderson .Paak permanent laryngitis, G. ** Bill, Oh, you met Jon Rose! Wow, that’s interesting. Good stuff, his. The lockdown is annoying but, so far, it could have been worse. A bunch of Parsians did storm out of the city on Friday, but not as many as in previous lockdowns. The streets are still reasonably packed. ** ian, Hi, ian. I’m hanging in here, you? Spring is springing here too, a little fitfully, but still. Our little lockdown ‘reward’ is that our curfew got changed from 6 pm to 7 pm. Oh, gee, that makes everything totally okay! Ha ha. ** Jack Skelley, MaJACK Mountain! Hey, that’s not bad. Am I the first to tag you as such? Should I copyright that? Strangely, or not (?), I remember some of the Disneyland trips when I was blasted by acid better than some of the clean and sober visits. I hereby order you to spend at least an hour this week eating Mexican food — meatless — and then astral projecting the taste into my mouth. Wait, that sounds scary, never mind. You can ‘go your own way’ to quote the worst incarnation of Fleetwood Mac. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Well, at the time, during their early days, Dury, Costello, and Lowe were put in the punk category by quite a number of people, and I don’t remember any of those three complaining. Other than ‘Vernon Subutex’, which I quite liked, I haven’t read any of the later Despentes books, few if any of which are translated. People I know here say her work is not as exciting as it used to be. ** _Black_Acrylic, Aw, you look happy in that picture, and very daylit. Very nice to gander at. Oh, man, thank you for the alert about the Styrene doc being on youtube. I’ll go watch that post-haste before it gets taken down. Yeah, thanks a lot buddy! Everyone, The new documentary about the very great Poly Styrene is up on YouTube, fuck knows for how long, so I strongly recommend hitting this link and watching it ASAP if you’re interested. ** John Newton, Hi. No, I’ve never met her as far as I know. Well, I guess if she and I were very likeminded, collaborating might be possible, but I’m pretty spoiled by working with Zac who almost seems to share the same brain with me sometimes, so I don’t know if I’d want to collaborate with someone where there isn’t a deep innate mutual understanding. Mm, maybe Catherine Breillat’s fiction would qualify as in the same realm? I’d have to think about it to suggest others. Nothing pops into my head instantly. Good luck with your busyness. I’m going to angle for busyness this week. Best way to get through a lockdown for sure. ** ae, Hi. Oh, no, I haven’t received that package yet. I really want to, though. Hopefully any second. Thank you a million for sending it. I’ve gotten pretty good at staying sane through lockdowns. If I wasn’t a writer and okay with solitariness, I might go nuts, though, it’s true. May any incompetence around you this week melt. ** Okay. Please spend the local portion of your day with Golnoosh’s lovely post. Thank you. See you tomorrow.

Trailer:

Dance scene:

 

“Makes Thelma and Louise look like a Merchant-Ivory film”

“Makes Thelma and Louise look like a lighthearted Disney movie”

“Thelma and Louise get laid”

“Thelma and Louise with actual penetration”

“Thelma and Louise with cum shots”

“Thelma and Louise without Hollywood sentiment”

“The French Thelma and Louise”

 

“All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.” —Jean-Luc Godard

 

Film synopsis, background and basic analysis:

The uncompromising film adaptation of Virginie Despentes’ debut novel “Baise Moi” stars Karen Bach as Nadine and Raffaela Anderson as Manu. Two friends who go on a killing spree after one of them is gang raped. What is interesting is that like the characters, the actresses themselves also happen to be involved in sex work, specifically porn. The two directors of the film: Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinch Thi also have a background in sex work and porn respectively. Furthermore three of these women at the helm of the film have also been gang raped. Together these women have created an unflinching, thrilling and stylish revenge porn film that was initially banned in France and remains banned in Australia today.

“Baise Moi” which translates as “Fuck me” has an elaborate history of sensorship in many countries and becauce of this exists in a few formats. The definite version being the UK 2013 uncut DVD release by Arrow. The film despite its serious subject matter does have a cartoonish punk sensibility. Early in the film Nadine a tall brunette is shown masturbating to porn in a small living room when she is rudely interrupted by her obnoxious female flatmate who she later strangles to death out of exasperation.

“Are you still watching that smut?” the flat mate sniggers.

“I didn’t expect you,” Nadine replies unembarrassed, “Go to the kitchen, I’m tired of beating off in my bedroom.”

According to The Paris Review: “the novel that the film is based on is trashy, crude and incredibly violent. It is very much a book of the early 90’s and the nascent grunge movement.” Virginie Despentes has said that Kathy Acker was a big influence aswell as the controversial feminist theorist Camille Paglia.

What is important aswell as radical about “Baise moi” is that the character Manu, a rape victim on the run for killing her brutish brother, is not defined and crippled by her rape. She is defiant.
“I dont give a shit about their scummy dicks” she informs her distraught friend who was brutally beaten when gang raped alongside Manu in an abandoned warehouse.

“How could you let them do that?” the friend cries, admonishing Manu for not putting up a fight or giving a terrorised response.

“I leave nothing precious in my cunt for those jerks.” She explains, having seemingly endured previous violation at the hands of men. Later in the film Manu and Nadine are shown enjoying sex with two studs. The sex in the film is unsimulated and depicts different types of experiences of getting penetrated.

With “Baise moi” Virginie Despentes has made a film that vividly depicts women who endure rape, rataliate violently and are still able enjoy sex. But for the censors this depiction of brutal rape, violence and unsimulated sex in cinema prooved too radical.

 

X Rating in France and ban in other countries

Originally released in cinemas in France under an age restriction of 16, it caused outrage particularly from right wing religious groups and the Nation Republican Movement who litigated against the classification decision. The Council of State acted unusually fast by removing the film from the circuit and reclassified it with an X rating. Under this classification any cinema showing the film would be fined and the film could only be sold in porn shops. The Council in their X rating statement deemed the film pornoghachic and said that it had the potential to excite violence in viewers.

France is a country who prides itself on it’s liberal constitution. “Baise moi” had been the first film in 28 years to be banned in France and the ban received a lot of media coverage. Suppression of the country’s highly valued freedom of expression in art came into question. France minister for Culture, Catherine Tasca, finally ended the debate by re-introducing an 18 certificate without the X classification, allowing the film to be re-released in mainstream theatres in France.

The film release followed a similar pattern in Australia with an initial 16 rating and backlash from the conservative right and politicians leading to the film being pulled from the circuit. The banning of the film was permanent and the ban remains in place in Australia today along with other films like Kenpark and the uncut version of Pink Flamingos.

In New Zealand the film was screened in cinemas in its uncensored form but politicians and right wing groups in N.Z also had it in for “ Baise moi” and an injuction filed by the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards led to its ban on Home Video.

In Singapore and Malaysia the film was banned on release. Screenings in cinemas were uncensored in Germany, Finland and Bulgaria and met without controversy. In America it was released without classification and screened at art house cinemas. In Hong Kong and the U.K a censored version of the film was shown in cinemas. In Canada, Onttario deemed the film too pornographic to be screened in cinemas. In Quebec the film saw moderate success on the circuit in its uncensored format but one movie goer had a violent reaction during a screening and broke into the projection booth and stole the print, ending the screening.

Critics also responded hostilely to the film apart from Time magazine who listed it in their top 10 films for 2000. They remarked “Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi’s festival sensation is stark, serious and original. And as one of the amoral avengers, Raffaela Anderson has true star quality – part seraph, all slut.”

 

Protest of film ban in Paris / Virginie Despentes on early 90’s milieu:

 

Accusations of pornography, sencorship statement and X-rated status of the film:

 

Actresses talk about working in porn and starring in the film:

 

Australian ban:

 

New Zealand ban:

 

Watching the censored version:

I had a suspicion when finally watching the dvd copy of “Baise Moi” I recently purchased through a private dvd seller here in South Africa that my copy had been censored. It doesn’t say anywhere on the dvd that scenes have been cut. Despite having seen it two decades ago on VHS from my local video store – I remember the scenes in question were longer, more vivid and in the case of the rape scene,unbearable. I have mixed feelings about the sencored and shortened rape scene. A part of me is relieved that the scene with it’s unsimulated penetration has been shortened. The original rape scene as I remember it was drawn out, the anguished bellowing of one of the victims being mercilessly beaten and raped in a godforsaken warehouse – every second of it was pure terror.

It was while compiling clips for this post that I came across a reviewer comparing his two UK copies of the film: the 2003 release I have and the more recent 2013 uncensored Arrow release – that my suspicions were confirmed: my copy had been censored. I feel like censored versions of films should come with notifications : “the film you’re about to watch has been censored.” I had the same experience with Velvet Goldmine years after seeing it in the cinema here. Watching it with a friend on Home Video I was amazed that the tame gay “sex” scenes or hints at gay sex were removed. It’s a specific feeling watching something and having the suspicion that it has been censored with no warning. Along with the idea of people unknowingly watching a film that has been censored – it is like being duped.

My opinion after having watched the censored version of “Baise moi” is that the pacing of the film is somewhat off. The parts don’t fit as well especially towards the end of the film where the gruesome gunfire scene has been tampered with. The overall feeling is that the film ends too soon and with decidedly less of a bang. The definite version of the film would then have to be the 2013 UK Arrow DVD release with the horrid rape scene intact.

“The character of the loser in the stakes of femininity doesn’t just appeal to me, she’s essential to me.” – Virginie Despentes

 

Behind the scenes:

 

The novel

“Baise-Moi is one of the most controversial French novels of recent years, a punk fantasy that takes female rage to its outer limits. Now the basis for a hit underground film that was banned in France, Baise-Moi is a searing story of two women on a rampage that is part Thelma and Louise, part Viking conquest.

Manu and Nadine have had all they can take. Manu has been brutally raped, and determines it’s not worth leaving anything precious lying vulnerable–including her very self. She teams up with Nadine, a nihilist and prostitute who watches pornography incessantly, and they enact their own version of les vols et les viols (rape and pillage)–they lure men sexually, use them up, then rob and kill them. Drawing from the spiky cadences of the Sex Pistols and the murderous eroticism of Georges Bataille or Dennis Cooper, Baise-Moi is a shocking, accomplished, and truly unforgettable novel.” — Grove Atlantic, who published the english edition translated from French by Bruce Benderson:

 

Novel excerpt from Groveatlantic.com

Chapter I

Nadine’s sitting in front of the TV, wearing a suit, pushing fast forward to get past the credits. The VCR’s an old model, without a remote.

On-screen is a fat blonde, trussed to a wheel, her head at the bottom. Close-up on her congested face: sweat pouring under the foundation makeup. There’s a guy in glasses energetically masturbating her with a whip handle. He calls her a fat, dirty pig and she chortles.

All the actors in the film look like storekeepers from the neighborhood. It has the unsettling appeal of a certain kind of German cinema.

Offscreen, a woman’s voice bellows: “And now, bitch, piss your brains out.” Urine gushes out like a show of holiday fireworks. The voice offscreen says the man can take advantage of it, and he pounces eagerly on the stream. He throws the camera a few frantic glances, getting totally into the piss and exposing himself spiritedly.

Next scene, the same girl is on all fours carefully spreading the white cheeks of her fat ass.

A guy who looks like the first one is silently pumping her.

The blonde has the affected airs of a young leading lady. She licks her lips with relish, wrinkles her nose and makes a big deal out of panting. At the top of her thighs, the cellulite moves in bundles. There’s a little drool on her chin, and it’s easy to see the pimples under her makeup. Her old, flabby body tries to project “young girl.”

By moving her ass as convincingly as she can, she even manages to divert attention from her belly, her stretch marks and that homely mug of hers. A tour de force. Nadine lights a butt without moving her eyes from the screen. Not bad at all.

The scene changes; now it’s a black girl packed into a formfitting red leather dress, walking into the stairwell of a building. She’s blocked by a hooded guy who promptly handcuffs her to the banister. Then he grabs her by the hair and forces her to suck him.

The door to the apartment slams, Nadine grumbles something about “that idiot who doesn’t have to come home to eat,” just as the guy in the film says, “You’ll see, you’ll end up loving my cock, they all end up loving it.”

Before she’s even taken off her jacket, Séverine yells, “Still watching that junk.”

Without turning around, Nadine answers, “You’re here just in time, the beginning would’ve turned you off, but even you would like this black girl.”

“Turn that off right away, you know very well it disgusts me.”
“Besides, handcuffs really do the trick, I love them.”

“Turn that TV off. Now.”

It’s the same problem as insects developing a tolerance to insecticide: you’ve got to find new ways to liquidate them.

The first time that S’verine found a porno cassette left out on the living room table, she was so shocked she couldn’t complain. But she’s hardened a lot since then, and it keeps taking more and more to get the best of her.

As far as Nadine’s concerned, this is actually therapy she’s offering. She’s loosening up that tight ass of Séverine’s, bit by bit.

Meanwhile, the black girl really has developed a taste for the guy’s dick. She swallows it hungrily and shows a lot of tongue. He ends up coming on her face, and she begs him to take her from behind.

Séverine plops down next to Nadine, scrupulously avoiding looking at the screen, and gets aggravatingly shrill: “You’re really sick and you’ll end up making me sick.”

Nadine asks, “Would you mind going into the kitchen? I’d rather masturbate in front of the TV, it’s really a drag always having to do it in my room. “Course, you can stay if you want.”

The other girl freezes. She’s trying to understand what’s happening and figure out how to answer. Not easy for her.

Satisfied with having disconcerted her, Nadine turns off the VCR. “I was joking.”

Visibly relieved, the other sulks unconvincingly, then starts talking. She reels off some of the annoyances of her workday as she goes to the bathroom to check her face. She monitors her body like a drill sergeant, determined to keep every hair and every inch in line with current standards, whatever the cost. She yaps, “And nobody called me?”

She holds on to the thought that the guy who laid her last week is going to show up. But this guy didn’t seem stupid, and fat chance that he will.

S’verine asks the same question every day. And every day, she comes out with a stream of irate complaints: “I never would have believed he was like that. We really talked a lot to each other. I just don’t get why he’s not calling back. It’s disgusting the way he used me.”

Used her. As if her cunt were too high-class to get any good out of a prick.

Where sex is concerned, she comes up with a mind-boggling wealth of such stupidities, a complicated treatise full of contradictions she never admits. Right now she just keeps vehemently repeating that she’s “not that kind of girl.” For her, the generic “that kind of girl” sums up the worst part of human beings. Somebody should reassure her: she isn’t “that kind of girl”; she’s idiotic, unbelievably pretentious, brazenly narcissistic and nauseatingly banal no matter what she says. There sure is nothing easy about her.

It’s no surprise she rarely gets laid, despite the fact of how much good it would do her.

Nadine gives her a sideways look, resigns herself to playing confidante. She suggests, ‘draw up a contract for the next time. The guy has to promise to keep you company the day after or call you during the week. If he doesn’t sign, don’t spread for him.”

Séverine needs a little time to understand whether she should take this as an attack, a joke or good advice. Finally, she opts for a tiny, delicate laugh. It’s a show of subtlety that ends up sounding in bad taste. Then relentlessly she goes on: “What I don’t understand is that it wasn’t the kind of guy who’d jump on just any girl, otherwise I wouldn’t have wanted to from the very first night.

Something really happened between us. In fact, I think I scared him, believe me: guys are always afraid of girls with strong personalities.”

She loves tackling the theme of her ‘strong personality.” Just as she always brings up her sparkling intelligence or how cultured she is. It’s one of the mysteries of the mind, God alone knows how she got it into her head.

It’s true that she does put some effort into the way she talks. She laces it with hip words okayed by the crowd she hangs out with. She works up a list of cultural references for herself, choosing them as if they were fashion accessories: in line with the times and good at making her look like her peers.

In fact, she pays attention to her personality as you would to your bikini waxing, since she’s aware that you have to play all your cards to seduce a man. Her ultimate goal is to become somebody’s wife, and with all the trouble she goes through, she’s expecting to hook a good one. Masculine intuition tells guys to keep their distance from this bonsai. But sooner or later she’ll get one of them and fill his head with her crap on a daily basis.

Nadine stretches, sympathizing with the poor bloke who finally gets taken in by it. She gets up for a beer. Séverine follows her to the kitchen without stopping talking. She’s finished with that boor who won’t call, but she’ll start on it again tomorrow. Now she dives enthusiastically into the latest malicious gossip.

Leaning against the fridge, Nadine watches her eat her salad.

They moved in together for purely practical reasons. Little by little, their living together became pathological, but neither has the means to live alone. In any case, Nadine can’t collect unemployment when she doesn’t have a pay stub. And S’verine doesn’t mind her as much as she pretends. Fundamentally, she’s a masochist and gets a certain pleasure out of rough treatment. She’s perverse, but not the user-friendly version.

Nadine finishes her beer, looks in the ashtray for a serviceable butt because she can’t be bothered going down to the tobacco shop. She finds a half-smoked joint. It’s more than enough to get stoned, and the discovery puts her in good humor.

She patiently waits for S’verine to go back to work, politely wishes her a good day. Then she rummages through S’verine’s room because she knows she’s stashed some whiskey there. She fills a large glass with it and sits down in front of the TV.

She lights the roach, concentrates on holding in the smoke as long as she can. She pushes the volume of the stereo all the way up and starts the VCR without sound.

She can feel the space between her and the world suddenly mellowing out, nothing worries her, everything is fun. Joyfully she recognizes the symptoms of being really high.

She slides down to the bottom of the chair, gets out of her pants and lets her palm play under the material of her panties. She watches her hand moving between her thighs in regular circles, speeds up the movement and tenses her hips.

She raises her eyes to the screen again, to the girl bent over the banister of the staircase, shaking her head from right to left as her undulating ass swallows the guy’s penis

 

Liberation interview
Translated from French with google

Three women take possession of their sex.
Catherine Breillat in Dialogue with the two directors: Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi. Article by François Armanet and Béatrice Vallaeys published June 13, 2000

“Baise-moi” by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi, screened in Cannes as part of the Film Market, arrives on French screens on June 28, while “A Real Young Girl,”the first production of Catherine Breillat, is in theaters for a week, after 25 years of purgatory. Two women’s films adapted from two novels which bring back the old debate of pornography in cinema.

For “Baise-moi” the bloody run of two killers played by porn professionals, the censorship commission proposed on June 6 a ban for those under 16 (not rated X) and we are awaiting the green light from the ministry of Culture.

Last year, Romance had earned Catherine Breillat the same route for scenes deemed also pornographic. The sex explicitly shown on screen by the filmmakers is part of a persistent movement of auteur cinema. Films that have not been met without indignant reactions. Because if the spectacle of violence has no more limits, sexual images, as soon as they leave the commercial framework of the porn industry, are today the last place of scandal.

Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi directed Baise-moi. From “A Real Young Girl” twenty-five years ago, to Romance, Catherine Breillat hit the headlines. Two generations, three women who like to disturb. Here is their discussion.

 

Pornography

Catherine Breillat: A film is pornographic if it is conceived as an object of concupiscence. In 1975, when the classification of X appeared (particularly repressive at the time), “A Real Young Girl” was simply banned for children under 18. The censorship commission had not even imposed a warning on the public, while Emmanuelle had been X rated because her sole purpose was to eroticize fantasies. This is not the case with the sex scenes in Virginie Despentes’ film. One does not feel sexual urges while watching Baise-moi, while the images are pornographic, proof that there is confusion between image and illusion.

Virginie Despentes: The films of the 70s have a lightness that we have completely lost.
CB: It was the Warholian era, the sexuality was chic, intellectual, jet-set.
VD: Four years ago, when we started casting for Fuck Me, I was surprised to see girls worrying about whether they should really suck. I understood that what bothered them was not so much to do it as to assume that they had done it. Any girl can do it, while a guy can’t get hard on a set. He wonders if his cock will be big enough to show off, if it will work.
CB: For “Romance” I had the same problem. I had to take Rocco Siffredi, because all the non-porn actors turned down the role.
VD: We deliberately chose porn actors when we saw the two actresses Karen Bach and Rafaella Anderson in Exhibition 99 (by John B. Root). Porn actresses fascinate me. They are the freed, those who transgress. In my imagination, not in reality.

CB: Some women have found “Romance” demeaning to women. It’s old feminism. Françoise Giroud and Agnès Varda, for example, lashed out against me. They defend abortion, but not the type of thinking that has been engendered in women and forms part of their gender identity. According to these feminists, female sexuality is taboo and shameful. Talking about it makes them dirty. These are the same arguments as those of the fundamentalists. This is what I call the Stockholm syndrome of women: hostages of men, they end up adopting their position vis-à-vis female sexuality. But things are changing. Women thought I was a prostitute, that I hated men; today, they are very happy that a woman can make these types of films.
VD: Do we make women happy? There is surely an element of exorcism. What interested me in filming “Baise moi” was to show that sex scenes don’t doom girls to turn all guys on. They fuck. Period. They are individuals.
Coralie Trinh Thi: Their sexuality is their integrity.

CB: “Romance” was an incredible pain before it’s creation, until the moment of the transgression, of the rediscovered innocence. Before asking the actors to take action, I accumulated sleepless nights. Freud says that taking action does not release fantasies. Me, I believe that it frees alienations. In life, you just keep having sex that isn’t that complicated or sordid and even when it is, there is a beauty of the sordid.
CTT: The woman is cut in two: the head on one side, the ass on the other. This idea in “Romance” overwhelmed me. It is up to the woman to prove to the men and to herself that she can remain whole and that it does not defile her.
VD: When you test the actors, you realize that they know their face very well, not their body.
CB: They are more puritanical than the women, who are cut in half but find a certain delight in reconstituting themselves. The men remain in a prudishness which mutilates them.
CTT: It’s not that simple. The phallus is not ashamed, it is also a symbol of power.

 

Eroticism

CB: Eroticism is the total humiliation of women. The idea that it is acceptable, because it is pretty. Pornography is ugly, I prefer ugly.
CTT: Why is it so crucial that we need a border?
CB: The aesthetic codes must be changed. We can begin to love and find beautiful the flowing, the oozing. Moral disgust is aesthetic. You have to face the fact that the organic scares you. The sex of women is like the black hole of the universe. The proof: fundamentalist Islamists disembowel after having raped.
VD: I don’t know what’s on the mind of men, but the fear is there. We really carry their burden. Rebalancing must be possible. There are starting to be male prostitutes for girls. When we go to pay, we will understand better what we want.
CTT: All men are afraid of women. They are not educated to control their desires, while the woman is more used to controlling hers. Finally, by dint of restraining them, she did not lose everything.

 

Revolt

CB: My films are not provocation, but revolt. That of having undergone an education which made me extremely puritanical. In life, I conform to all inhibitions, all guilt.
VD: I feel the same anger, but I trust that this will change. Hatred of man? It’s not real: they don’t necessarily blame us. It’s just what women think of it.
CB: But it is the men who founded this morality, these oppressions, these Churches.
VD: Yes, but we put a lot of ours into it. We women.
CB: The straitjacket of laws has placed women in a state of ignorance, doomed them to be the womb destined to procreate. They didn’t have a conscience, we can’t blame them. You believe that Afghan women will not soon be persuaded that they are inferior to men. This is the subject of “A Real Young Girl” one begins to fall prey to man as soon as it appears physically that one becomes a woman.
VD: They will have to get stronger. I feel like I have a mission to fulfill, I was going to say a mission of revenge, but that’s not quite it. We have to blow things up. To give back dignity, to humanity.
CTT: The previous generation has a lot more guilt and shame about their sexuality. But it’s getting better.

 

The word and the image

VD: I was very surprised that so many people wanted to read my book. I wrote it for the punks, there were some, but not that many. In fact, I didn’t really appreciate the reaction of readers who mistook me for their new girlfriend.
CB: The image is more unacceptable than the words because we have no choice to walk away.
VD: It all depends on the reader and the viewer. We can go further in literature, because the book belongs to the bourgeois class, while the cinema is accessible to all: fear is there. I am supposed to take precautions with the image, while making people completely ignorant, leaving them in misery.
CB: The film is hypnotic. People are caught up, forced to enter into the discomfort in which they are put. I love to lose the normative benchmarks of good and evil, to shatter moral grids. Censorship creates entirely what it claims to protect us from.

CB: Sexuality is the greatest violence today. If we show a woman who kills, she is not accused of obscenity. If we show her having sex, she’s a prostitute. Everything becomes obscene in a woman from the moment a law decides it. If there is a law to hide hair, hair becomes obscene.
VD: In “Baise moi” we did not set limits. The heroines belong to a specific social background, a good working class and a white middle-class girl. From there, everything is a balance of power. And since they are women, it adds up. They feel anger against all that is dominant, which crushes, suffocates. The man and his sex, but also his economic weight.
CTT: Heroines don’t kill everyone they fuck. They only kill everyone at the end, in the orgy box.
VD: It made me very happy to kill everyone in there. Orgy clubs are bourgeois, sad, it’s death. I like the idea, to go somewhere to have sex with everyone. But there, it is the men who decide. This is not a place of sex and delirium.

VD: In the movie, we wanted to show creepy sex, but also gay sex. It is not so much a manifesto as the story of a slippage.
CB: It is a war that is declared on men. When a woman wants to say what she is, she must claim it very violently.
VD: I am happy to put people off. There is a pleasure to piss them off. It makes for discussion.
CB: People have to understand that cinema is fiction. Murderous desires, everyone has them. It’s very good to channel, to tame these impulses, especially when you are a teenager, alone with your impulses. This fiction avoids the passage to the act. The prohibition of violence incites violence.

 

Homosexuality

CB: I recognize myself very well in homosexual cinema and homosexuals recognize themselves in my cinema. We describe the reality of love and physical desire beyond the sentimental, moralistic and religious codes that have been put into our heads.
VD: Homosexuals feel wrong, me too.
CB: Fassbinder was the only one to show the brutal, physical and silent side of these meetings. We know we’re going to sleep together. What other filmmaker was able to film this? There always had to be silly foreplay. The immediate desire, gay filmmakers know how to film it.

 

Family

VD: I try not to think about my parents, because I know I hurt them, but the money I earn redeems me in their eyes.
CB: I don’t care what anyone says. The only problem, my children. I have a 27-year-old daughter, a 20-year-old son and an 8-year-old son. They can’t stand my films because, like all children, they are normative.
VD: Even at 27 and 20?
CB: It’s worse, because there is the girlfriend, what will she think of my mother?

 

Broadly meet Virginie Despentes:

“I find it strange that today, when so many people walk around with tiny computers in their pockets-cameras, phones, personal organizers, iPods-there exists no object at all to slip into your pussy when you go out for a stroll that will rip up the cock of any fucker who sticks it in there. Perhaps it isn’t desirable to make female genitalia inaccessible by force. A woman must remain open, and fearful. Otherwise, how would masculinity define itself?” From King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes

 

R.I.P Karen Lancaume:

A tale of Suicide, sex and violence:
https://lostgirls.home.blog/tag/virginie-despentes/

Plagued by demons of the past and by bad relationships with men, Karen Lancaume who played Nadine in the film comitted suicide in 2005 at age 32.
Virginie Despentes has said of her:

“She’s the only girl I knew whose big dream was to be a housewife. The first time she told me that, I preferred to put it aside, but knowing her better, I understood that it existed as a dream. It was her thing. We do not always do what we want.”

“Karen had a sweetness, an incredible femininity. And at the same time one felt she was ready to take an ax and destroy a wall.”

 

Soundtrack:

Virago – Ouvre moi (Rock music video)

 

Varou Jan – Ca commence mal (Opening theme)

 

Wei ji – Sweet belly (Sex solicitation scene)

 

Cox 6 – I’ll stay outside (Dance scene)

 

Pussy Killer – Cash

 

X syndicate – Fight

 

Varou jan – conscience feminine

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** This weekend d.l. Ferdinand gives us a rich and far ranging look into the film ‘Baise Moi’ and the Virginie Despentes novel on which it’s based. Whether you know the film but not the novel, know the novel but not the film, know both or neither, there’s a lot to learn, contemplate and/or enjoy on the blog’s plate. So please dig in, scour, etc. and pass along remarks to our kind and cogent guest-host, please. Thanks a ton, Ferdinand. ** David Ehrenstein, Merci for your merci. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Oh, darn, Tuesday. So your weekend is spoken for, I guess. Sorry. I hope you find unexpected nuggets of foxiness somewhere in that dreary slog. Well, of course, your love would save the day. Thank you. Love turning every word in your assignment into a comely young emo trans being with their jeans worn pubes-low and a come-hither look on their face, G. ** Misanthrope, The blog is a multi-timeframe locale. Yes, urgh, ugh, the confinement. The best I can hope for is that it’s a really soft one that looks and feels only slightly different than yesterday, and I’ll find out when I venture outside, assuming the govt. allows, shortly. 12 year-olds who think they’re too cool for school constitute some of the finest people in the world, but I do hope you whip his ass — not literally — at Xbox. Enjoy that, your guitar, and your freedom. ** Jack Skelley, Jackster! Me too, all the way, 1,000,000% on board. I grew up with a Disneyland map hung on the wall over my bed. You went to Heritage USA?! Now, that’s something. Remind me to pump you for details during the next book club. Yes, of course remember our Disneyland trip well and clearly, which is pretty good given that I’ve been to Disneyland … oh, 50 times maybe? I will try to turn my weekend into a hot slut, and me into a Viagra-crazed businessman, and you too. ** Steve Erickson, The punk in Cyberpunk made sense in the sense of a punk attitude relative to what I understood to be the general attitude towards scifi from its authors at the time. Or that’s how I took it. Although it was more New Wave than punk, I guess. Jeez, the landlord stuff, best of luck. I’m not sure about the effect pedal question. I would guess not, but I wish Paradigm was still around to answer you. ** Jeff J, Indeed, it was super great to talk! I don’t believe you’ve mentioned Patois Counselors to me, no, or I spaced if you did. Sounds extremely intriguing, I’ll snag that album. Thanks a lot, man, and have a peaceful weekend with a creative fount. ** Right. Let Ferdinand’s post wash over you fully and utterly until I see you next, which, technically, means on Monday.