It’s good to read disgusting works now and again. They challenge you, make you think. That being said, I stopped reading Justine about 1/3 of the way through. It gets boring and repetitive, and you start saying, “Yes, Donatien, you are so shocking.” :rolleyes:
I’d be very careful about flinging those stones around, about how awful someone must be to have thoughts like that. Otherwise, when you have a bad thought or two, you’re going to freak out. de Sade (as a person) was far from normal, but a lot of pretty normal people write some shocking things.
Sort of like how The Passion of The Christ could have been a loving portrayal of The Son of God giving up his life so that our sins might be forgiven (if you believe in that sort of thing).
Instead, in the hands of Mel Gibson, all anyone can remember is seeing Jesus’ flesh get ripped off and a crow pecking at his eyeball.
I won’t deny that I am morbidly fascinated by de Sade but I can’t see any normal person being “aroused” by it since almost all the sex is perverted .
He wrote literally thousands of pages of reptititive mixture of violent sex, torture, and murder. Indeed some works like 120 Days of Sodom seems to be almost a catalogue of perversions then a real novel.
I found a copy of Justine and read it cover to cover at the age of about ten. It was vivid in ways my other reading had not been, but I wouldn’t say it was upsetting. I didn’t come across 120 Days of Sodom until my late teens, but don’t regard it as being difficult to take either. Some find The Story of O to be pretty far out there, but it was really pretty tame. I think these things all offer useful views helping one understand the range of human behavior and interest. I actually feel creepier reading evangelical Christian material.
I’d say that something isn’t “perverted” unless and until it become self destructive. Arranging to have yourself eaten because it gives you a thrill? That’s perverted. And I wouldn’t call rape perverted; I’d call it evil.
Too bad Iris Chang chose to do a National Enquirer version of what happend. The Rape of Nanking was sufficiently awful that it didn’t need an exagerated sensationalized write up that allows deniers in Japan to point out the obvious historical errors and claim nothing happened. Iris also later blew her brains out. Wiki’stake.
BTW, I took my mother to the Nanjing memorial site, which is built on a partly excavated mass grave, is full of graphic photo’s and is a pre.tty horrific experience.
De Sade. Maybe I never read enough of him to be so thoroughly disgusted. I only made it half way through ‘The Philosophy of the Bedroom’, but it seemed like Penthouse Forum 300 years before its time to me. Granted, it had a nasty and grisly end, but damned if parts of it weren’t just discovery of straight, gay, and group sex along with some piercing and BDSM towards the end.
Hell, someday I fully expect it to be done line-for-line on Showtime.
And this makes you an expert? How can you make such a judgment, and say it should be banned, and that the man is evil in carnate, when YOU’VE NEVER EVEN READ THE MATERIAL IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!
This might be the thread for figuring out what this book was called that I read about 10 years ago.
It was written by a man on death row in the US and published after his execution. It was essentially his confession. I remember that he had killed his cousin (or niece?) and her friend after raping them, and stuffed the bodies in a hot water tank (I think). In another rape and murder, he raped and killed a toddler and it’s mother. I vividly remember one murder where he cut her nipples off and stuffed them in her mouth while she was still alive. I think some of the women’s bodies were dropped in to some sort of marshy area.