Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman
Japanese horror films
include themes that, foreign to American audiences, seem not only
original and daring in concept, but also bizarre in their
presentations of such themes.
It may be that, in some
cases, the originality of themes and the grotesque imagery in which
these themes find expression stem, in part, from Japanese erotica,
which is, from a Western standpoint, also seen as being unusually
creative and outlandish. Not only does Japanese erotica include
“tentacle sex” between sea creatures and women, which is often,
but not always, non-consensual in nature and contains an element of
bestiality, but sex between men and women is apt to include practices with which
Westerners are more or less unfamiliar, the depictions of some of
which have resulted in criminal prosecutions in the United States
(Violence Against Women in Pornography
by Walter DeKeseredy and Marilyn Corsianos, 33).
One Japanese erotic horror
film, Empire of the Senses
(1976), is based on the “true story of Sada Abe,” whose
sadomasochistic relationship with Kichizo Isgida, a married man,
reached its climax with “his death and castration during sex.”
Perhaps Sada might have gotten away with the murder had she not been
so unwise as to carry her victim's severed “penis in her kimono
sash,” a practice which resulted in her arrest (Introduction
to Japanese Horror Film by
Colette Balman, 22).
Paradoxically,
although Japanese erotica also excludes any depiction of pubic hair,
genitals, or sexual penetration (70), it is much less concerned about
the exhibition of semen. According to Balman, Japanese horror films
are as likely to feature male victims as these movies are to feature
female victims. She offers, as an example, Entrails of a
Virgin (1986), in which Asaoka,
“pursued by the enraged Kazuyo, is choked to death as a large hook
wielded by the monster lifts him into the air and copious amounts of
viscous fluid—the monster's semen—gush into the water nearby”
(159).
Thematically,
tentacled monsters were a theme in painting before they became a
theme on film. The Dream of the
Fisherman's Wife,
an 1814 erotic woodcut by Hokusai, shows a supine woman receiving
oral sex from an octopus while one of its tentacles probes her mouth.
Text
that accompanies the woodcut indicates that the woman enjoys the
octopus's aggressive behavior and its use of the suction cups on its
eight arms.
The
tentacles of a cuttlefish, jellyfish, octopus, squid, and other
tentacled creatures of the deep are strange by virtue of their
possession of multiple arms, the better with which to please their
human lovers. These appendages are long, strong, flexible, and
equipped with suckers that are capable
of rotating “in any direction”; lengthening, or elongating, “to
twice . . . [their] normal length,” experiencing intense “touch
sensitivity” and walking “an item along an arm simply by moving
the sucker.”
As
Hokusai's woodcut clearly shows, tentacles are also capable of
probing cavities, oral and otherwise. A tentacled creature, in fact,
can perform several sexual acts simultaneously, a fact which might
make them desirable partners, despite their hideous appearance.
There
is, of course, also the element of taboo. Bestiality is a practice
that is generally condemned by most societies. Engaging in sex with a
tentacled marine monster violates this taboo, adding the spice of
performing a forbidden act to the erotic nature of the behavior
itself.
Several
American horror movies have also included tentacled menaces:
- It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) (octopus)
- Tentacles (1977) (octopus)
- The Beast (1996) (squid)
- Octopus (2000) (octopus)
- Octopus 2 (2001) (octopus)
- Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep (2006) (kraken)
- Monster (2008) (octopus)
- Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus (2009) (octopus)
- Grabbers (2012) (alien)
- The Creature Below (2016) (octopus)
What
eliminates the threat posed by these tentacled terrors?
- It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) (octopus): torpedo (technology)
- Tentacles (1977) (octopus): killer whales (natural predators)
- The Beast (1996) (squid): fuel explosion (technology)
- Octopus (2000) (octopus) (nothing)
- Octopus 2 (2001) (octopus)
- Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep (2006) (kraken) (shot with machine gun) (technology)
- Monster (2008) (octopus) (?)
- Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus (2009) (octopus) (shark)
- Grabbers (2012) (alien) (explosives) (technology)
- The Creature Below (2016) (octopus)
Although
these films don't have overt sexual imagery, the subtext created by
Hokusai's woodcut and by the works of other artists whose work has
featured tentacle erotica is certainly a subtext in some of them.
Perhaps one reason for the appeal of tentacle monsters, whether in an
erotic subtext or otherwise, is their symbolic significance, as
phallic symbols.
Just
as Hokusai's woodcut inspired a theme that appears in Japanese erotic
horror films, it also inspired such other artists as Western painters
Félicien Rops, Auguste Rodin, Louis Aucoc, Fernand Khnopff, Martin
van Maele, and Pablo Picasso “Tentacles of love and death: from
Hokusai to Picasso” by Ricard Bru, 55-71).
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