Poor Issues and the Pursuit of Pleasure

Perpetual Questing

The core of our identification is outlined by what we love, and the aim of our lives is the pursuit of this love.¹ Yorgos Lanthimos’s extraordinary movie, Poor Issues (2023), is a cinematic demonstration of this actuality performed out within the lives of strange, brilliantly acted characters residing in a spectacularly off-kilter world. Lanthimos is a grasp at creating worlds principally resembling our personal, but possessing an oddly affected bent that displays a darkish and scathing picture of our world.² Poor Issues makes use of its skewed world to testify to the disordered nature of our trendy longings and our quest to fulfill them. The fashionable self has no authoritative deity to which it’s beholden. Self-definition, being true to oneself, is the best worth of the day: something impeding that have to be forged apart. 

Lanthimos’s darkish comedy is a Frankensteinian fable wherein a scientist recreates a human from the useless. In a reversal of Mary Shelley’s unique gothic novel, which portrayed a scientist setting up an unsightly monster, Lanthimos’s scientist is the deformed monster who provides life to a lovely girl. In an extremely disturbing revelation, the viewers learns how this got here to be: A pregnant girl, practically useless by suicide, is discovered by the scientist together with her youngster nonetheless alive within the womb. He surgically transposes the kid’s mind into the mom’s physique, ensuing within the creation of a brand new girl named Bella. The movie chronicles her bodily and metaphysical journey as a toddler in an grownup physique quickly buying each data and expertise as she travels by means of international lands.

Ostensibly, the movie celebrates feminine empowerment. Bella lives in a world ruled by males who search to own and rule her. Her creator, Dr. Godwin Baxter (unsubtly named “God”), makes an attempt to guard her from the world’s ubiquitous risks by holding her imprisoned in his fort. He recruits a surgical pupil to meticulously catalog her behaviors and development. Over time, she turns into the coed’s object of fascination and want. God arranges their marriage underneath the situation that Bella by no means leaves the property, to which the coed agrees. The prospect of spending his life learning this fascinating specimen is a suggestion he can’t refuse.

This plan is thwarted, nonetheless, by a rakish villain who seduces Bella to journey with him to faraway lands. He does in order an unabashedly promiscuous lothario whose intent is to get his fill of her sexual choices and finally forged her apart. Paradoxically, he comes to search out himself entrapped by her unwillingness to belong to him alone; that she has no qualms about having intercourse with all comers drives him mad with jealousy. 

In an surprising flip of occasions, the person who was the husband of the girl who supplied Bella’s physique steals her away to be a prisoner in his personal fort, intent on controlling her. He’s decided to ensure that she’ll not roam by controlling her sexual urge for food by means of surgical manipulation. In a second of self-reflection, Bella confesses the enchantment of such a state as she would not be pushed by her perpetual “questing.” Nevertheless, she rapidly disavows such a prospect and turns the desk on him in dramatic vogue.

When the Physique Turns into an Object

All of that is, after all, fantastical. But, there’s something concerning the phrases, motives, and behaviors of those males that regrettably ring true in our personal world. A girl needs to be free from equivalent to these and Bella frees herself. She has, in essence, overpowered man. Poor Issues exalts Bella as the last word grasp of her physique, which turns into a software that she controls. She employs her physique to earn cash by means of prostitution, albeit not at all times on her actual phrases, however at all times together with her permission.

In my work as a psychiatrist, I’ve encountered many ladies with a historical past of sexual trauma who flip to intercourse work, be it prostitution, erotic dancing, or pornography. Past the plain motivation to generate earnings, some have pursued this path to achieve management over their very own our bodies. Having been abused by males and subjugated to horrors past their management, they choose that voluntary contractual intercourse work will protect their autonomy. On this mindset, the ladies’s solely actual asset—their our bodies—are offered to males on their very own phrases somewhat than stolen from them.

This invariably results in extra trauma. Bella, nonetheless, doesn’t seem to undergo any apparent penalties from her inexhaustible sexual encounters. The one potential consequence is an odd and misplaced remark on the movie’s finish when she returns to her surgical pupil fiancé and affords that she will likely be examined for sexually transmitted illness previous to their marriage. Presumably, Dr. Fleming has already found penicillin on the earth of Poor Issues and all will likely be properly.

There are fascinating parallels between Bella’s journey and the character Séverine in Luis Buñuel’s 1967 French movie, Belle de Jour, which chronicles the lifetime of a bored and prosperous newlywed who seeks a type of liberation and self-discovery by means of prostitution. Each movies painting naïve and exquisite ladies whose our bodies are repeatedly topic to degradation by the hands of males. Each movies characteristic a roguish powerful who wilts into infantile insanity when he can’t be the only possessor of “his girl.” Each movies characteristic a high-end Parisian brothel with a distinguished mom determine/madame who concurrently educates and exposes the heroine to hazard. Each Bella and Séverine have a surgeon husband/fiancé patiently ready for her to consummate the wedding in her personal time. (With all of those similarities, one wonders whether it is greater than a coincidence that Poor Issues’ protagonist is called Bella.)

Belle de Jour would have been an applicable title for Lanthimos’s movie. The gorgeous physique is on show just like the day’s featured menu merchandise. Within the brothel, ladies’s our bodies are lined up as delicacies from which the boys might select in line with their urge for food. Bella humorously, but fairly moderately, asks why the ladies mustn’t select the patron? Wouldn’t it not be extra engaging for the person to know that he was desired? She is summarily, but gently, rebuked by the madame to stay with the order of issues: it’s males who do the selecting, not ladies. (An identical factor occurs to Séverine.)

All through Poor Issues, our bodies are objects to be dissected and consumed. They exist as feasts for sexual pleasure or mental data. God’s workshop is an anatomy lab with useless our bodies organized on tables as slabs of meat ready to be carved like roasted pigs. Bella’s physique is handled equally to the corpses that are uncovered, bare on anatomy tables—materials objects with out personhood that exist for the pleasure of man.

We additionally study that, when he was a toddler, God’s father tortured his physique by means of a collection of weird experiments within the identify of scientific progress. There is no such thing as a respect for personhood, no look after physique and soul. Each the rake and the unique husband confess an vacancy inside their chests. They’re like the various cadavers mendacity supine with torsos reduce extensive open and emptied of inner organs. C. S. Lewis’s “males with out chests” involves thoughts. These objects are poor issues certainly.

Expertise, Dependancy, and the Lack of Pleasure

Lanthimos creates an alternate Backyard of Eden. He deploys the literary gadget of chimera all through the movie. Nevertheless, in contrast to the supernatural Chimera of Greek mythology, Lanthimos’s chimera are crafted by means of the technological achievement of man harnessing the legal guidelines of nature to his personal functions. We see bodily imperfections compensated with equipment, equivalent to a girl in a wheelchair, a person with a metallic hook hand, and God himself hooked to an elaborate digestive machine (necessitated by his father’s body-damaging experiments).

Within the backyard of God’s property, nonetheless, we see an abundance of pure creatures chimerically long-established collectively as whimsical oddities, just like the dog-duck and pig-chicken. Presumably, these residing wonders are stitched collectively by means of God’s genius surgical improvements. This experimentation has its crowning achievement within the creation (or somewhat, re-creation) of a girl. In contrast to the God of the Bible who creates ex nihilo, the movie’s god should use present materials and leftover components. He artificially joins collectively a girl’s physique and the mind of her toddler which have been beforehand joined collectively in a pure vogue as two individuals.

From this Backyard of Eden, Bella (like Eve) takes an apple as an object of delight and affords it to a different, as Eve supplied the fruit to Adam. As soon as consumed, she is guided by sensual want because the means to enlightenment and freedom.³ She escapes the backyard with the promise of larger pleasures within the bigger world. The transition from the backyard into the world is displayed because the movie transitions from black and white to paint. Right here we see a Dorothy transposed from colorless Kansas to the spectacularly coloured land of Oz, stuffed with wondrous prospects. The place Dorothy’s home lands on a depraved witch, Bella’s physique lands on a depraved man. The journey begins.

Carnal pleasure could also be a reliable means to a worthy finish (equivalent to sexual pleasure resulting in the creation of a kid) or a worthy finish in itself (such because the enjoyment of intercourse as a present of the wedding mattress). Nevertheless, when sensual pleasure turns into disordered as the last word finish, folks change into disordered. As a doctor specializing in dependancy remedy, I attempt to assist folks heal from these issues. With disordered want, pleasures dissipate and lose their luster. Bella learns this when she eats too many sugary pastries and will get sick. We additionally see Bella over-imbibe in alcohol which leaves her physique unconscious and displayed as a sadly contorted marionette.

Anybody who has suffered from dependancy is aware of properly the seductive and enslaving energy of chasing the repair solely to be repeatedly pissed off by the drug’s incapacity to supply lasting satisfaction. Dopamine ranges lower with frequent and intense stimulation. Over time, the mind accommodates and rewires such that each one pleasure is diminished. Even pleasure within the easy pleasures of life is blunted because the reward middle of the mind is disfigured. 

Dependancy is, at a really fundamental stage, a compulsive pursuit of corporeal pleasure. This pursuit goes hand in hand with the reciprocal pursuit of assuaging ache (ache usually produced and compounded by the pleasure-seeking). One’s physique and soul are denigrated as this quest subsumes all different priorities, leading to stimulus-bound our bodies that operate extra like animals. Pointedly, the time period “reptilian mind” has been utilized by addictionologists to explain the primitive circuits of the mind run amok with out the moderating affect of the upper, distinctly human cognitive processes. 

Human beings are physique and soul; due to this fact, true pleasure includes each. Individuals weren’t made to be in the end glad by the issues of this world. We have been made to be glad by a Individual from a larger world. As Saint Augustine confesses, “You might have made us for Your self, and our hearts are stressed until they discover their relaxation in Thee.” Life is a stressed eager for this One.

In distinction, Lanthimos presents human beings as pushed solely by bodily want and earthly data. All through the movie, Bella is pleasured sexually. By males, by ladies, by herself. The intercourse scenes are gratuitous. One is left asking, why so graphic and why a lot? Is the viewers meant to be peephole-people, voyeuristically consuming our bodies in varied states of copulation? Power-fed a weight loss program of titillating photographs with out souls and pornographic pixels devoid of personhood? Is that this an indictment of our exhibitionist, fetish-foisting, image-driven tradition? Noteworthy relating to the fast evolution of mores over the previous 5 a long time, Belle de Jour was thought of extremely erotic on the time but confirmed little nudity. There are scenes of characters wanting by means of peepholes, however no scenes of bare intercourse. In Poor Issues, the digicam lens is the peephole and little is left to the creativeness. 

Jesus taught his disciples to gouge out the attention if it causes one to sin, as the attention is a automobile by which the lust of the guts is roused (Matthew 5:29). Early within the movie, Bella gleefully and repeatedly gouges the eyes of a male cadaver with a scalpel. Males sin by in search of to own Bella’s physique as they forged their gaze upon her and are pushed by want. As she takes issues into her personal palms, we see one other instance of her empowerment. Is Lanthimos doing the identical to the eyes of the viewers by sardonically scolding the indulgence of our trendy pornographic proclivities? Is he gouging out his personal eyes because the filmmaker who has peddled these photographs?

A Competition of Intercourse and Dying

In contrast to the photographs offered within the movie, persons are created physique and soul by Yahweh. Individuals have supreme dignity as creatures made in his picture. We aren’t our personal. We aren’t permitted to make use of our our bodies in any method we deem match (or others, for that matter). Relatively, we’re beholden to the One who created our our bodies and in the end owns them. Individuals are supposed to glorify and revel in Yahweh by receiving and reflecting his love and to share this love with different individuals. All artistic endeavors in the actual world additionally move from Yahweh’s creation and exhibit His inventive inclinations in our personhood. 

The place the god of Poor Issues recycles present materials, Yahweh makes the fabric, and due to this fact, rightfully holds the patent (a translation of “Yahweh” is “He Brings into Existence No matter Exists”). His goal as each Creator and Artist is supreme. Every thing else is less-than. Opposite functions are merely foolish and little. After the Fall, we’re left to our personal units. Adam and Eve ridiculously weave collectively ready-made fig leaves to cover their existential disgrace from their Creator. The human story is that of a hodgepodge folks making an attempt to reinvent for themselves which means, goal, and pleasure, in addition to immortality. Invariably, this leads to diminution, degradation, and other people bent on dominating different folks. 

Bella involves study that the individual of her former physique, Victoria, was a vicious girl who behaved vilely in the direction of others. In a poignant scene, Victoria’s former maidservant tells Bella that Victoria despised being pregnant and referred to the infant because the “monster” inside her, an invader. That is the view of 1 who sees folks as mere issues. Essentially, such a view is monstrous, and Victoria is revealed because the true monster. 

Many monsters are on show on this movie as they deal with people as issues with out the Aristocracy—issues for use for one’s pleasure or issues to be destroyed if interfering with one’s pursuits. In Yahweh’s world, every individual is of utmost worth. We’re obligated to respect this worth by treating ourselves and others in line with His picture. We aren’t free to do no matter we please. Makes an attempt to take action will at all times reduce us, even when we, like Bella, change into queen of the backyard.

Carl Trueman provides desecration to C. S. Lewis’s record of disenchantment and liquidity as prime traits ailing our trendy society.⁴ Poor Issues is a portrait of this tragic trifecta. There is no such thing as a thriller or magic on the earth of Poor Issues. To make sure, there are wonders to behold, however they’re all human-wrought. The cinematography is a superb however unnatural array of colours artificially long-established by the filmmaker. This provides the movie an otherworldly presence, however not one most would wish to inhabit as the sweetness pales compared to our personal. Distinction this cinematography with superb shows of earthly grandeur seen within the works of basic filmmakers equivalent to John Ford and David Lean, or extra up to date administrators like Terrence Malik and Jane Campion. Right here we see the spectacular phases of our pure world in such a manner that our hearts are crammed with transcendent longing and gratitude. 

In Poor Issues, human cause reigns and serves to perform no matter it’s going to. There is no such thing as a solidity both in creature or in place. Expertise has produced a state of fluid boundaries in Bella’s physique in addition to her fast travels. The divine spark throughout the human physique is extinguished and the physique is left profaned. Trueman astutely identifies modernity’s base attitudes towards intercourse and demise as the important thing cultural drivers of our age. What as soon as was imbued with a way of reverence and respect is now joyfully trashed. Poor Issues is a veritable fecal competition of intercourse and demise.

The Liturgy of Love

Trueman has clearly recognized the distinctly trendy illness of desecration. He additionally affords the treatment: a restoration of the correct worth and goal of human beings by means of acts of consecration. Coming into liturgical area with different individuals to worship Yahweh is the one viable antidote to counteract the powerfully degrading cultural forces upon us. In Yahweh’s liturgy, we’re formed in line with his divine design. We observe the right way to give and obtain, to not take and demand. We achieve what each individual yearns for and what the world can not give: the love of our Creator. This love will not be the superficial emotion of worldly want, somewhat it’s the prime animating drive bursting forth as a fountain between the individuals of the Trinity from all eternity. The Trinity is a liturgy of affection. Not solely are we invited into this intimate union, however Yahweh needs our participation. As a substitute of neutering want and obliterating pleasure, he beckons us to be intoxicated by this love. 

The place Poor Issues is a portrait of the insipid choices of modernity, the Previous Testomony’s Music of Songs is a stunningly stunning image of the mutual possession between Yahweh and his folks. Right here a backyard is the Holy of Holies the place rapturous intimacy is loved between a bridegroom and a bride. Lovely animals abound on this backyard as erotic descriptors. The choicest fruit is consumed, lips drip with nectar, tongues play with honey, palms drip with liquid myrrh, breasts are caressed, hearts are thrilled, cedared fragrance is inhaled. The holy name of this music is an ecstatic chorus: “Eat, buddies, drink, and be drunk with love!” These lovers are buddies, they usually give themselves freely to at least one one other in joyful intoxication. Every other pleasure is a poor substitute for, or weak echo of, this bliss. 

Our trendy longings are formed by a libidinous liturgy of carnal consumption. This liturgy guarantees freedom and success by means of autonomous pleasure devoid of all boundaries. Yahweh affords us the  various liturgy of a divine marriage feast. We’re invited to feast upon Immanuel, “God With Us.” Immanuel took on our flesh, with each temptation identified to our human body. But, his passions have been rightly ordered and, for the enjoyment set earlier than him, he endured the cross. His physique was desecrated and traumatized for the desecrated and traumatized. His debasement ennobles our flesh and soul and permits us to enter the Trinitarian love music of everlasting delight. As we collect collectively in our eucharistic worship, we accomplish that as his bride in mutual possession and pleasure. He dwells with us, and we change into fountains of his overflowing love. That is an exceedingly wealthy liturgy for an exceedingly wealthy folks.

1.  For a wonderful apologia for this declare, see James Okay.A. Smith’s You’re What You Love. (Smith, James. You Are What You Love: The Religious Energy of Behavior. Brazos Press: 2016.) ↩︎
2.  Think about Lanthimos’s 2015 movie The Lobster as a primary instance. ↩︎
3.  Within the third chapter of Genesis, the fruit is a temptation, each as an object of want and to data. ↩︎
4.  Trueman, Carl. “The Desecration of Man.” First Issues (January 2024). ↩︎