So I thought I came up with Holocaust Porn, which isn’t a real thing, but two words, in their essences meaningless (as all words are) when, said one after the other, cause an intense reaction in others. An experiment, of sorts. Of course such a thing doesn’t exist; just invoking its empty name implicates the listener, whose mind is in control of what images or ideas or symbols come forth.
Using my intellect to justify being willfully iconoclastic. Happy Monday!
Also I think it would be funny to tell people at parties that you’re currently working on a screenplay. “Essentially, it’s erotica that takes place at Auschwitz.” Just watch their faces.
Again, I thought I came up with it. But no, guess again! You’re right –– our friend David Mamet!
In a chapter entitled Sadomasochistic Phenomena; or, the Two Chelms
“The masochistic and sadistic imagination engages in fantasies wherein the cryptosexual delight of unlimited power is experienced (equally and perhaps interchangeably) as victim and perpetrator.
Holocaust films and slave epics are, essentially, these sexual fantasies. Their viewer is permitted, by the rectitude of the innocent sufferer’s cause, to engage in fantasies of submission, simultaneously enjoying fantasies of dominance.
…
Anti-Semitism is a profoundly sexual fantasy — a sado-masochism founded on religious or pseudoreligious (e.g. Marxist or Nazi) views, which views are variously called ‘social’ or ‘racial.’ It is (consider the bizarre paraphernalia of the Nazis, the impossibly intricate illogic of the Holocaust denier) a fantasy capable of being worked out endlessly in everyday life; quite literally, a dream come true.”
WOAH, David Mamet! You…are nuts.
Itinerantdaughter's Blog 
September 22, 2009 at 7:19 am |
Great post. I laughed for a good five minutes. I’m trying to remember the context of you discussing Holocaust Porn with me?
“Violence has its sexual side.” -Jenny Holzer, also see Warhol’s “Optical Car Crash” and J.G. Ballard’s “Crash”
September 22, 2009 at 4:54 pm |
We were super hungover on the couch all day one Saturday, and I had to go to a birthday party I didn’t want to go to and so I was planning to tell people that’s what I was up to…writing Holocaust porn…
September 22, 2009 at 6:33 pm |
I don’t know how I feel about this Holocaust Porn thing (worried me a bit) but how about a joke I heard on TV last night:
So Ahmadinejad walks into a restaurant in NYC and asks for a menu– the waiter says “No Holocaust, No Service!”
September 22, 2009 at 6:36 pm |
LOLZ!