Viggo Mortensen’s character in *G.I. Jane * says a similar line about pain during the first half of the training exercises portion of the movie.
The sci-fi porno flick Café Flesh (which I’m not going to google for, as this is a work computer) describes a post-apocalyptic world where some 95% of the population is unable to feel sexual pleasure. One of the closing lines, delivered by a character whose life has devolved into continuous masochism and self-torment declares that “pain is the only thing left I can feel any more” (or words to that effect).
It’s not an uncommon theme.
Ah, no. He said something along the lines of “I have seen the attack ships burning in the skies of Orion” – a brief monolog about all that he has experienced and become being lost. Obvious metaphor for human death and loss, but very well done.
I’ve seen that flick. For a porno it was actually not a bad plot. Not that anyone watches it for plot. But yeah, I could see how the loss of the ability to express emotion or sexual pleasure could drive someone to inflict harm just to feel something.
That came afterward. The sequence, roughly:
Deckard takes a shot at Roy and misses. Roy smashes a hole through a wall to grab Deckard’s hand and breaks two of Deckard’s fingers. Deckard takes a shot at Roy but only nicks Roy’s ear. Roy gives Deckard a few seconds to run (while he sadly examines the body of Pris), and tauntingly counts out loud: “Four, five, how to stay alive!”, then “six, seven, go to Hell or go to Heaven!” Deckard runs like hell. Roy starts to feel himself dying (his four-year lifespan is nearly up) and drives an old nail through his palm so the pain will stave off his growing torpor. Roy catches up to Deckard in a washroom and Deckard gives Roy a few solid whacks with a metal pipe. Roy: “That’s the spirit!” Deckard flees to the rooftop and falls, but Roy saves him by grabbing Deckard’s wrist with his previously impaled hand (the nail is still visible, in a fairly obvious but interesting Christ metaphor). Roy then talks briefly about the things he’s seen in his short lifetime, including “attack ships on fire, off the shoulder of Orion” and such, sinks into a seated position, lowers his head, and dies.
I shattered my left heel 11 years ago. Pain was my constant companion when this happened.
When I started physical therapy, a friend who had gone through over a year of an external fixator on his leg from a motorcycle accident, told the following two things: [ol]
[li]Pain does two things, when you first get hurt pain is telling you to leave the injured part alone. When you are getting better, pain is a sign of weakness leaving the body.[/li][li]The more pain you endure in therapy, the less you will endure the rest of your life.[/li][/ol]
During the physical therapy sessions, I would be juiced on Vicoden, and the pain from the therapy would be so great that tears would run down my cheeks, and I would be biting on the tounge of my tennis shoe to keep from screaming. I kept telling myself that weakness was leaving my body. Every so often the theripst would stop and ask if it was too much. My answer was allways the same, No give me more. Now 11 years later, I can walk, run, ride a mountain bike or road bike, and I rarely have any pain since the weakness has left my body. So yes I reveled in the pain, I pushed the pain, I made the pain leave me. The pain gave me a goal.
Both “pain is a sign of weakness leaving the body,” and “pain lets you know you’re still alive” are both old, old, old military (basic training) memes that probably go back to, as Heinlein would put it, Sargon the Great. I remember my dad telling me that his drill sergeant back in 1942 used them both liberally.
They certainly predate any modern pop culture or movie references.
In the Desert
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter - bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”
- Stephen Crane
Well. I’d read that on a bathroom wall 30 years ago, liked it, but never knew who wrote it. I assumed not the guy (assuming it was a guy) who inscribed it in the john. Thanks pravnik!
The concept appears in Shirley Valentine when a waiter, in response to Shirley’s “Who are you?” responds with, “I have leetle pain in my back. But I tell myself, if I can feel pain, means I’m still alive.” That was a Greek dude, and Greeks are WAY older than Shakespeare or Ogre’s dad.
I attribute this idea to the Greeks.
And I imagine he meant emotional pain as well as physical pain. You don’t get through military training avoiding either kind.
As a minor note, the director’s cut of Blade Runner is now playing and there’s an additional early scene of Roy feeling impending death and curling his fingers, trying to will feeling back into them. This happens shortly before his conversation with Leon and I think the same footage is used for the final scene later on.
I never liked the director’s cut, incidentally.