Monday 18 July 2011

Recasting 'The Human Centipede'


Last night Claire declared herself unable to be bothered (that is, disinclined) to get sufficiently tarted up to go observe whatever cover band was playing at the Red Lion in the picturesque town centre, this in spite of having so enjoyed Herne Bay’s Eyelash Guilt, with its very bouncy girl singer and bruising drummer, two weeks before. Instead, we watched the remarkable Dutch film The Human Centipede (First Sequence), she for the second time, because the British Board of Film Classification, which doesn’t ban very many films, has banned the sequel, The Human Centipede (The Final Sequence) for being “sexually violent and potentially obscene”.

I can’t say I hugely enjoyed First Sequence, in which a fiendish German surgeon, overplayed with all his might by one Dieter Laser, presumably the namesake of the celebrated beam, surgically attaches a vituperative Japanese dude and two horrid young American women to one another, mouth to anus, with the Japanese dude in front, and thus able to to keep bellowing subtitled imprecations.
I think it was largely a casting problem for me. Had it been George Bush, Dick Cheney, and any number of others of that ilk (Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes) sewn together, I think I might have enjoyed the film in spite of myself, especially if Rove, Rumsfeld, or Rush were in the lead position.

I am not a vengeful person. I am not a vengeful person. I am not a vengeful person. 

On the other end of the spectrum, I derive considerable pleasure from the series Come Dine With Me, on which four or five perfect strangers cook for and host each other on successive nights, with he or she whose food and personality have most charmed the others winning £1000. The best thing about the show is announcer Dave Lamb’s laceratingly sarcastic remarks about the contestants’ preparations and impressions of their co-competitors. A real taker-of-the–piss, our Dave, who leaves no pretention unridiculed. I also love how at least a couple of the contestants invariably come, over the course of four or five evenings, to detest each another. 

I am reminded, watching CDWM, of another linguistic eccentricity of the British, who, when they really like food, describe it not as delicious, delectable, or scrumptious, but gorgeous, blithely depriving themselves of a perfectly useful term of endorsement for the vittles’ appearance.

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