by Katherine Harris
Society
By Conor McCusker
Society (1989) is an equal parts sleazy and cheesy critique of the 1% and their treatment of the lower classes. The message of this film disguised in the form of a nightmarishly campy 80’s body horror leads to an unforgettable visual assault of the senses.
Brian Yuzna from ReAnimator (1985) fame brings his affinity for body horror and practical effects to this grotesque insight into Beverly Hills’ High Society. Bill (Billy Warlock) the alienated son of a very wealthy and established family feels that his family
aren’t quite normal. Bill suspects that his family and others in his family’s circle are involved in a ritualistic orgy cult of sorts and to his surprise and the audience’s we find that Bill is only partly correct in this assumption. The real intentions of the orgy cult are much more sinister than initially thought.
Unravelling the secret of the orgy cult throughout the film, it is the third act that is the most memorable for Bill and the audience. We are met with one of the most infamous scenes in horror history that forces us to try and comprehend the mass of moulting flesh that
“How do you like your tea? Cream? Sugar? Pee?”
intertwines, meshes and engorges itself on its lowerclass victims.
We understand that the members of this high society are not of this earth and indeed have infiltrated the human populous of Beverly Hills, masking themselves as humans in positions of power.
Yuzna successfully shows through this film that it is indeed the people in positions of power (i.e. families built from generational wealth, politicians, police, therapists, doctors and even preppy high school bullies in this case) that possess the most influence on the lower classes. Due to the power imbalances at play and the reliance that the lower classes have on them due to their role in the film, this allows the high society to prey on the people outside of their rank and station. The society then uses lower-class people for their own sexually charged gluttonous needs, grafting themselves onto their victims and consuming them whole, symbolically bleeding them dry so they can reinvigorate themselves
from their pain and sacrifice. Societyand its over the top and gross commentary of the 1% allows Yuzna to be metaphorically and symbolically insane with his visuals. Some of the most disgusting practical effects of the 80s can be found within this gem of a movie and if nothing else interests you about the plot, these visuals alone make it worth a watch.
The whole duration of the infamous “shunting” scene, the mansion is bathed in a putridly warm red hue, each member of the flesh phalanx glistening with either sweat or the primordial ooze which they have came from makes this an unforgettable and horrifying moment. An unflinching cheesy piece of horrific media combined with a thinly veiled critique of the rich. To me this is a perfect combo. The film is best enjoyed with a relatively scathing hatred for capitalism and the proponents of the system from which they benefit. Eat the rich before (like this film) they start consuming us physically too instead of just merely financially and spiritually.
Albert Spica is a cannibal
-Robert Louis Stevenson
By Fionntán Macdonald
The titular thief in Peter Greenaway’s iconic film The Cook,TheThief,HisWifeand herLoveris a nouveau riche gangster whose ravenous greed and appetite for violence drive his every action and threaten to consume completely anyone unlucky enough to enter his orbit. Albert Spica, played to perfection by an oafish, salivating Michael Gambon, dominates Greenaway’s film much as he attempts to dominate the technicolour banquet hall he has secured for himself with the purchase of the Le Hollandaise gourmet restaurant, overseen by Richard Bohringer’s stoic cook. His nightly feasts in the crimson dining hall are framed as almost ritualistic consumptions, not only of food but of people’s lives. He attacks fellow diners, he ritually humiliates both enemies and friends and he churlishly pontificates his vulgar perspectives from his central seat at the table, like a contorted Christ sermonising at what will inevitably be
‘Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.’
someone’s last supper when his engorged appetite finally devours them.
Albert Spica is a glutton for sadism, and he is deliciously loathsome. As a cinematic creation Spica is an absolute wonder. Greenaway and Gambon moulded a man so odiously objectionable that he ignites on the screen with a searing malice so utterly villainous that it is delectable. He is an intoxicating presence in Greenaway’s classic film, in the same way as absinthe: caustic, potent and hallucinogenic. Consume too much of Albert Spica’s vapours and you’ll start to wonder if you’re really seeing what you’re seeing.
As an entity Spica works as something of a centrepiece for Greenaway’s banquet table. The characters’ actions are dictated by his moods and movements, he unites all of them with a common problem (his continued existence) and he is the driving force of the film’s narrative. His wife Georgina (the legendary Helen Mirren) begins her affair with a bookish restaurant patron partly as an escape from Spica’s abuses and partly because she sees
her new lover as everything her boorish husband isn’t: gentle, intellectual and kind. Her primary motivation throughout the film is to regain her agency and autonomy from Spica, her abuser, and in doing so alters herself from a reactionary victim to an active survivor.
Georgina is undoubtedly the protagonist of this film, an intelligent and empathetic person trapped in a cycle of violence and abuse by a domineering gormandizer of misery, and it is her story of emancipation being told on screen. Yet, it is Spica in all his bawdy barbarity that centres the film’s thematic exploration of abuse, violence and greed. He is a fascinating portrait of capitalist criminality brought to heinous life at the tail end of the Eighties - when greed was good.
Albert Spica in all his heinousness is a microcosm of the capitalist bandit, willing to destroy anyone who challenges his constant pursuit of emotional and literal capital. He is a stomach whose acids are so corrosive it digests even itself.
THE SURREAL STAGE OF LUIS BUÑUEL
ACT TWO, SCENE NINE THE COLONEL’S DINING ROOM. NIGHT.
CURTAIN UP.
At rise a long dinner table draped in white linen is set for a party of eight; complete with silverware, two tabletop candelabras, crystal ashtrays and wine decanters.
A party of seven sits round the table in ornate chairs upholstered in mint green: three women in cocktail dresses and four men, three in black tie finery and one in the cassock of a French Bishop. The party cast their eyes around in shock and confusion until one of the women looks downstage and leaps to her feet, gasping, and clutches the man beside her. The woman is SIMONE and the man she clings to is DON RAPHAEL ACOSTA.
He is not her husband. Her husband FRANÇOIS sits two seats over from DON RAPHAEL, holding a life-sized roast chicken made of rubber.
SIMONE, DON RAPHAEL and ALICE, who sit between them and FRANÇOIS, leap from their seats and scarper upstage in a panic.
A whisper can be heard from someone under the stage apron.
WHISPERER
And to prove your courage you invited to dinner, the Commander’s ghost.
The BISHOP turns his head to hear the whispers.
BISHOP
(PARROTING) And to prove your courage… you invited … to dinner…
HE TRAILS OFF THEN, SUDDENLY, STANDS UP.
BISHOP exit stage left, followed by the rest of the party except HENRÍ, ALICE’s husband, who sits in place, dripping with sweat.
HENRÍ
What am I doing here?
He looks around nervously.
HENRÍ
I don’t know the lines.
HENRÍ is suddenly alone on the surreal stage of Luis Buñuel; an arena outside of human logic where the upper classes and old money always congregate to dine but never eat. Belief cannot be suspended, for Buñuel will soon appear with a razorblade to sever all the suspension wires. The stage is populated by bourgeois socialites whose selfishness and corruption are evidenced by performatize acts of feasting, which are frustrated constantly by the surreal happenings that surround them. They are the kind of hypocrites to belittle a chauffeur for not sipping his martini, but who betray their poor palaets by ordering red wine with fish; people who will expel a man in gardening clothes from their house when he asks to be their gardener, but hire the same man for the same job when he returns in Bishop’s robes. They are constantly preoccupied with gastronomical amusements but will never be satisfied with a meal, wanting merely to play at sophistication, pantomime conversation and be pampered and envied by the proletariat classes.
But when left alone on the surreal stage of Luis Buñuel, they can do nothing but sit in shock, exit abruptly or simply sweat.
CURTAIN DOWN.
SCENE TEN
HENRÍ AND ALICE’S LIVING ROOM. NIGHT.
HENRÍ awakens from sleep on the chaise sofa in full tuxedo. He rubs his eyes in discomfort and stands, moving upstage to the fireplace where ALICE sits in an armchair.
ALICE
What’s eating you?
BY FIONNTÁN MACDONALD
The bagel, an ever popular icon for everything from the nihilism of the universe to the pivotal turning point from scientist to villian, bagels are having their movement right now. But have we ever stopped to think about the humble beginning of this pop culture staple, how it shifted from a present given to those after childbirth to a metaphor for everything in the universe?
Bagels have a hole-lotta history and can’t really be talked about without talking about Jewish historical experiences. Initially found in Polish cuisine, the word bajgiel meant ring or bracelet and was a bread given as a gift to women after childbirth as it was make with expensive wheat and symbolised good luck. The shape and classic process of boiling was taken up due to Jewish bakers being limited in what bread they could buy and sell and needing to create a distinctive different bread. Thus the obwarzanek as they would have been called then, were boiled before baking, creating the classic chewy texture. As time went on, the bagel moved to Austria and Germany where it was sold as a street food to the public, starting the bagel’s journey to a multi-national dish. The shift to American bagels came when jewish migrants from Poland took the tradition of the bagel with them, causing a massive increase in popularity that never really stopped. In 1999 it was reported by William Safire that more bagels were being sold than doughnuts in New York. Bagels have since remained a key cultural food for Jewish people, as well as now a staple of American street food, although they are now able to be enjoyed globally from Japan’s BAGEL & BAGEL to our local Bodega Bagels, as well as most recently being featured in A24’s EverythingEverywhereAllAtOnce ‘SpiderMan: AcrosstheSpiderVerse’.
-By Katherine Harris
