I thought “skullfucking” was just an expression
It wasn’t the best day for the picture of a German soldier simulating sex with a skull to have appeared in the nation’s biggest newspaper.
The outrage Wednesday about photographs of German troops posing with a skull in Afghanistan swept through parliament just as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s administration announced a major restructuring of the military to handle increased international missions.
The five pictures appeared in Bild, a paper known for titillating scoops, under the headline: “German Soldiers Desecrate a Dead Person.” They show the skull in various positions, including mounted on a jeep and held near the waist of a soldier with his fatigues unzipped. The newspaper blocked out the troops’ faces.
My reaction to this story, aside from the obvious revulsion and outrage, is three-fold:
Fold the first: War dehumanizes. No news there. Soldiers become inured to the spectre of death, callous to suffering and indignity. See Abu Graib, the Haditha massacre, and, well, basically the entire history of warfare.
This desensitization can also take the form of morbid humor, the purpose of which is to provide the soldiers with some kind of psychological anesthetic to the horror that surrounds them. I’m reminded of how trenchmen in World War One adapted to the constant presence of corpses, skulls, and assorted body parts by making gruesome jokes. In one British trench a hand sticking out was dubbed “Jack,” and all the men routinely shook “Jack”’s hand whenever they passed by.
Fold the second: War and sex go together. Again, not news. A comment made at Twisty’s the other day is apt:
Ron, Mandos: For some reason your discussion is making me think of an article I read not long ago. The reporter was interviewing a soldier about “how does it feel to be here” or something like that. The soldier commented, “Fucking and shooting, it’s the same thing, right?” He felt good, I guess.
The thread in question is a wide-ranging discussion on Halloween, war, and whether someone named MaggietheWolf is an asshole, with no reference to this German business. But the comment sums up the fucking-shooting nexus with admirable brevity. Stan Goff’s Sex and War explores the connection at length, building on both the 30-year radfem critique of war as sexual conquest and Goff’s own Special Forces background. It’s no coincidence that the link page for the book features a photo from Abu Graib.
Fold the third: It’s interesting that the soldiers’ sideline in corpse desecration is somehow more disturbing than their main job, which is to create corpses in the first place. To desecrate living bodies, as it were, and turn them into dead ones. It’s curious, isn’t it? It’s as if the response is something like, “Oh, sure, killing people is understandable — but don’t mess with the bodies afterwards! That’s just sick!”
It’s powerful, this taboo against defiling a person’s physical remains. And transgressing that taboo is, historically, an effective way of expressing extreme contempt for the vanquished: traitors’ heads on pikes, enemies’ skulls made into drinking cups. Somehow these acts obliterate the human being even more than the actual physical death. You’re not just dead; you’re no longer even human. You’re somebody’s drinking cup, somebody’s lampshade, somebody’s — god help us — sex toy.
11 Responses to “I thought “skullfucking” was just an expression”
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will says:
Too often, we ignore the consequences of war on the men and women who have to fight the wars.
It really is sad how little we know about post traumatic stress syndrome and the other consequences of war. Was doesnt just impact the families of people who get killed. We can count the physical injuries. The mental one are much more difficult to count.
The VA, although far from perfect, needs far greater funds.
On a slightly related note, Apocalypse Now and the Deer Hunter should be required viewing.
October 27th, 2006 at 8:01 am EST -
SimSabalim says:
What about jokes about bodies, or body parts, in medical schools?
Jokes regarding bodies does dehumanise the dead person, yes. But I have always assumed that once you’re dead, you’re dead. The body is just meat, and no longer a “person”.
My worry with joking about dead bodies, is that it’s a sign of becoming desensitised to death, and especially war.
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gordo says:
SimSabalin–
That’s the same concern I had, that the playing with body parts indicates that the soldiers are becoming badly desensitized.
Will–
The Deer Hunter is a pro-Vietnam War propaganda film. It’s worthwhile as a piece of art, but I definitely wouldn’t make it required viewing for people who want to understand war.
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Violet says:
The Deer Hunter is a pro-Vietnam War propaganda film.
No, it is not. That’s largely a meme spread by the Coming Home crowd, who opposed The Deer Hunter at the Oscars that year. You can argue that the Deer Hunter is racist in its depiction of the Vietnamese torturers, but the film by no stretch of the imagination pro-war.
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Mandos says:
Have any of you seen the recent movie _Last King of Scotland_? So, yes, it’s yet another Africa-through-the-eyes-of-the-white-man flick. On the other hand, the white antihero is so contemptible it may well justify it. Idi Amin is portrayed not only as a brutal dictator but a buffoon, but what he says about the antihero is quite astute.
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Infidel says:
I think SkullFucking actually has to do with gouging someones eye out and inserting your penis into the vacant eye socket.
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Violet says:
Have any of you seen the recent movie Last King of Scotland?
No, but I’m intrigued by it. Forest Whitaker is always good. Alas, I’m a little concerned about depictions of violence, which I cannot tolerate well.
Several of the reviews I’ve read suggest that the film is deliberately inverting the “white interpreter of Africa” motif by making the white antihero contemptible and myopic. Or at least that was the intention of the filmmaker/original novelist.
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Mandos says:
Yes, it’s a violent movie but until the “climax” the violence and gore is rather subliminal and on the side—since the antihero doesn’t even really notice it until he’s directly affected by it. But at the end it’s gruesome enough that one of the people I was seeing it with had an anxiety blackout (we thought it was a heart attack and called an ambulance, but that’s another story), so maybe you shouldn’t see it. But it was still an impressive movie.
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Paul Tergeist says:
One cannot go to war without being permanently affected by it. Dead people were so common that, although even the thought of a hurt kitten causes me major distress, bodies in the street are no big deal unless they aren’t scraped up before they bloat. Then the flies are a problem.
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Infidel says:
Louis Gossett Jr in his oscar winning performance as Sgt.Foley “Only two things come from Oklahoma”…”are you eyeball’n me boy?!”
Close comes the tirade of Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men” but I think he wants to rip eyes out and piss into Tom Cruises’ brain, not fuck.
Anyway it is powerfull language but not much of a useful act, even if meant to terrorize, people who would do such a thing are just stupid. Saying it though, or screaming it, that is where the power is.
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Jeric says:
You’d have to be thick as a brick to classify “The Deer Hunter” as a pro-VietNam propaganda piece. Have you even SEEN it?
Talk about drinking the Kool-Aid.
