Midges Smoking the air

     In the Realm of the Senses 

 Nagisa Oshima (1976)

49 min 30 sec

“The mouthed the beginning or, if one prefers , the prow of animals; in the most characteristic cases . It is the most living part, in other words , the most terrifying for neighboring animals. But man does not have a simple architecture like beasts, and it is not even possible to say where he begins. He possibly starts at the top of the skull, but the top of the skull is an insignificant part, incapable of catching one’s attention; it is the eyes or the forehead that play the meaningful role of an animal’s jaws …….And on important occasions human life is still bestially concentrated in the mouth: rage makes men grind their teeth, while terror and atrocious suffering turn the mouth into an organ of rending screams. On this subject it is easy to observe that the overwhelmed individual throws back his head while frenetically stretching his neck in such a way that the mouth becomes, as much as possible , an extension of the spinal column, in other words , in the position it normally occupies in the constitution of animals .As if explosive impulses were to spurt directly out of the body through the mouth, in the form of screams. “

Georges Bataille “Visions of Excess (selected writings, 1927-1939)” page 59 

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 “,as we returned to the first row of the arena. ……., there in broad sunlight , on Simone’s seat , lay a white dish containing two peeled balls,  glands the size and shape of eggs, and of a pearly whiteness, faintly bloodshot , like a globe of an eye : they had just been removed from the first bull , a black-haired creature , into whose body Granero had plunged his sword.”

Georges Bataille ‘Story of the Eye’  (1928 ) page  28