| Title | : | Chapel of Gore and Psychosis: The Grand Guignol Theatre |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 184068187X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781840681871 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 128 |
| Publication | : | First published September 30, 2012 |
Chapel of Gore and Psychosis: The Grand Guignol Theatre Reviews
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Ever since I first listened to The Naked City’s bestial grindjazz album The Grand Guignol at the tender age of twenty, I have wondered, what the heck’s The Grand Guignol? For years I settled for what little I learned from skimming Wikipedia’s article on the subject, but seeing Alexander Theroux use the neologism “grandguignolesque” in his great and powerful novel,
Laura Warholic, I decided it was time to sate one of the 3,568 subjects of interest I have boiling in the Mulligan stew that is my brain.
Jack Hunter’s Chapel of Gore and Psychosis is a breezy, picture-laden primer for the history of the Grand Guignol, which was a Parisian theater known for its sensational and lurid plays, packed with simulated mutilation, rape, disembowelments, melting faces, eyeball gougings, dismemberments, decapitations, torture, unethical surgeries, poisonings, shootings, burnings, and hundreds of other inventive ways to maim and murder another person. Founded at the cusp of the 20th century, the theatre lasted for the better part of seventy years, exchanging managerial hands numerous times but never losing sight of its shock-and-horror aesthetics. Influenced by the Gothic art and fiction of the century or two before, along with increasing popular interests in psychology and serial murderers, the theatre was a haven for the eccentric and weird as well as a premiere tourist attraction for anyone keen on an authentic French experience. Hunter traces the rise and then decline of the theatre, arguing that the advent of film—and in particular the rise of grindhouse splatterflicks in the 1960’s—ensured that the people could get their catharsis for simulated violence elsewhere.
This guide isn’t much of an in-depth analysis of the theatre, truth be told, but though it is brief (only fifty or so pages of a hundred are dedicated to actual text on our topic), Hunteer’s descriptions of various plots of plays makes for some outlandish fun. Plus the supplements (which take up the other half of the book) make this, all in all, a worthwhile read: glossy prints of slick and stylish promotional posters, snapshots of actual acts of on-stage play-violence, a full text translation of one of the more famous plays that the theatre produced, and a sleazy, disturbing micro-memoir from Paula Maxa—the Grand Guignol’s star actress and owner of the sobriquet “the most assassinated woman in the world”—which recounts her harrowing and sexually violent adolescence and her emotionally draining fascination with the inherent bloodlust locked away inside every human being, no matter how meek or how kind they may seem.
Only 3,567 curiosities left to go! -
More of a pamphlet than a book really - very quick, very over priced for the page count. But, it's a handy guide to something I wanted to learn more about with some very cool illustrations.
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Very shallow.
Not everything needs academic style referencing, but uncritically sourcing someone like Leo Taxil is a) lazy and b) potentially discredits any valid work that comes later.
