THE SOAP MAKER’S HOUSE | The faces of death

Jorge A. Amaral

When I was a teenager, a friend from the United States put a VHS movie in my hands. “Let’s see if you can hold on,” he sentenced. At home, alone and secretly, I put the tape in the VCR. “Faces of Death”, it was called, and yes, I admit it, for a week I had a hard time sleeping, but I saw it again and the impression was less.

“Faces of Death” is a false documentary published in 1978. Framed in the “mondo” genre, the film shows death in its different forms. Guided by Dr. Francis B. Gröss, a pathologist played by Michael Carr, we travel different paths around the world to see the different ways death comes.

During the 1980s it was advertised as “censored in 40 countries” (New Zealand, Norway, Australia and Finland among them). The film was written and directed by John Alan Schwartz (although his name is changed), and to date it is considered a cult film. But it also has sequels and there are similar films, such as “Traces of Death” (in Mexico they were titled “Trauma 1” and “Trauma 2”), which, although strong and visually disturbing, do not have the charm of “Faces of Death”. ”.

With the motto “experience the graphic reality of death, up close”, the viewer of this comedy is immersed in a graphic hell at the hands of a bearded and bespectacled Virgil, Doctor Francis B. Gröss, a pathologist whose experiences with death around the world have given him “a greater awareness of the living.” This Virgil from the beginning announces: “Get ready for a journey to a world where each new step can give you a better understanding of your own reality, because I am sure you will gain a new perspective on the many faces of death.”

In the course of the saga we are shown death by homicide at the hands of a serial killer who records his crimes, in rituals, during autopsies, in sports accidents, the mummies of Guanajuato, attacked by animals, in road mishaps, suicides, drug addiction, disease This draws on actual media scenes, like newsreels, but also the good offices of special effects artist Allan A. Apone, who contributes about 40 percent of the footage with his staged deaths. But to keep the drama going, the soundtrack and sound effects provide constant chest-tightening, making you feel disgusted at times but intrigued enough to keep watching.

A little under this idea that in 2008 the television program “1000 ways to die” (“1000 ways to die”) came out, which recreated real events or urban legends about people who had had a tragic end, but whose death it had come to them in a peculiar way. Although always narrated with black humor and high doses of moralism and even racism, the program, intentionally or unintentionally, picks up the spirit of “Faces of Death”, which stamps a sentence on us: “you can die in all these ways”.

Death is something inherent to every living being, and that is obvious, but the human is the only one verified with awareness that he is going to die, with awareness of his finitude and temporality. That is why death has been approached throughout history from all angles: religion, spirituality, art, philosophy, medical science, metaphysics, law, etc.

Death seen anonymously always intrigues, causes curiosity, horror, sometimes an inexplicable pleasure, as in the works of Georges Bataille or the Marquis de Sade, but it never goes unnoticed. That’s why horror movies are so successful, that’s why action movies are so popular: the shootout, the explosion, the hand-to-hand fight in which someone is defeated and killed.

For this reason, bullfights are a tradition: they constitute the art of defying death. Contrary to what anti-bullfighting people think, in bullfighting the enjoyment is not in seeing the bull die or seeing it bleed with the banderillas. No. The enjoyment is in seeing a man defy death, face it, have it face to face and capote it, deceive it, fight it knowing that an error or a whim of fate will put a horn in his body and possibly lose his life. The bullfighter, when he is carried on the shoulders, is not for having killed a bull, it is for not having died and, moreover, having saved his life with grace, with fine movements and a lot of gallantry. The anti-bullfighting are foolish and very radical, they will never understand.

But beyond the aesthetic enjoyment that the representations of death provide, their encounter is the only thing that we have for sure, guaranteed. When a child is born we do not know what his personality will be like, if he will be sickly, if he will be tall or short, if he will be intelligent or giddy. The only thing we know, although we don’t know when, is that this baby is going to die, just as we will. It is the only sure thing, the only given.

For this reason, when we say we are afraid of death, in reality it is not the end that frightens us, it would even be stupid to fear the inevitable. No, what we are afraid of is the way it will come to us. It seems like a common place, but most people want to die in full old age, asleep in their bed. Just close your eyes and stay that way. Others want to die doing what they like. There are those who say that in an accident and fast so as not to feel anything, so as not to suffer. I remember years ago, in an interview with Vice (if I remember correctly), a hitman and torturer from a cartel in Guerrero said that he wanted to die in a shootout or be caught by the police, because if he fell into the hands of rivals he would They were going to do everything he has done to those whom the cartel leaves in their hands.

That’s why tapes like “Faces of Death” have value. There is an exercise that, they say, is to see our own nature: it consists of looking at the mirror, fixedly and in the eyes, for a few minutes, in a dimly lit room. After a while we will see our disfigured face. This is how this type of film is: a mirror in which the human being looks at himself, but his image appears disfigured, sometimes mutilated, other times eaten away. All with a zoom that borders on the pornographic.

Think about it and, although this is not the case, it seems that the “mondo” cinema and movies like “Faces of Death” were actually preparing us for what would come later, in which the internet democratized information and barbarism became the domain public, and then there was no longer any need to pass the VHS or the magazine from hand to hand, but everything was already, without regulation or control, just a click away. Today you can go to certain Internet pages and find the video of the accident, of the execution, of the bombing. And if you scratch a little deeper and go to the deep web, you can find any number of things, and more if you pay for it.

That is why, although death and violence continue to be well-selling products both in the media and on entertainment platforms, in a certain way we have become desensitized and that is why we require new levels of violence. Today, in Mexico, for example, if you show someone “Faces of Death” or “Traces of Death”, they may be surprised at a certain moment, and enjoy it because of how well the sequences are carried out, but not he’s going to be shocked.

This makes criminals also devise crueler methods to kill and display their victims. The other week, on a highway in San Luis Potosí, a cartel left the bodies of 7 victims. Some of the corpses were semi-naked and others were naked, but contrary to what we are used to, this time there were no signs of torture, no burns or blows, no blows or blood. What’s more, they didn’t even have gunshot wounds. In this crime, the perpetrators were more subtle but more malevolent: they taped up their faces in such a way that they suffocated to death. A silent and clean death for the criminals, but desperate and eternal for the victims. I assure you that as they were suffocating, more than one of them asked for a bullet in the head to finish it once and for all. The truth is that if the bodies had been shot or even dismembered, it would be one more case of many that occur every day in a country mired in drug violence.

Let’s be frank, although being in the place, of course you feel fear, in reality and unfortunately today there is little that surprises us, because in Chiapas a group of 100 gunmen can go around taking over a market and, although it attracts attention, later comes the phrase “ah, they are crafty”; in Guerrero there may not be a damn chicken to eat because organized crime has devastated farmers and merchants, and of course it worries, but we say “it’s Guerrero, nothing new.” In Morelia they can arrive and gun down women and children of a family, and it hurts but it is not surprising, because we know that all traces of empathy and sensitivity have been removed from criminals. His job is to kill, not to walk around feeling sorry.

The bad thing about all this is that right now we are still moved by the tragedy, but the time will come when nothing matters more than our own survival. I don’t want to be pessimistic but here we go. It is how much.