David Bowie in Darkness: A Study of 1. Outside and the Late Career by Nicholas P. Greco

Author:Nicholas P. Greco [Greco, Nicholas P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland
Published: 2015-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

The painting draws attention to various physical mutilations, and brings to light some of the more gruesome aspects of the execution, such as the force necessary to drive nails through a body part. In so doing, the painting makes the event more real; the Crucifixion is no longer a romanticized event or fable. The grotesque details, such as the stiffness of the hand or the onset of decomposition, serve to emphasize the terrible experience of Christ’s sacrificial death.

The notion of sacrifice as the only means by which to achieve salvation underlies much of Western thought due to the vast influence of the Christian Church. Generally from the perspective of evangelical Protestant Christianity, the idea of salvation through personal suffering would be discouraged, because in such an action salvation is arrived at through the self or self-action rather than through faith or belief in Christ. Therefore, the examples of attaining salvation through some physical action, whether by empathizing with Christ or by some analogous sacrifice to that of Christ, represent alternative methods of salvation. Through the cultural saturation of Christian images of mutilation, spilling also into secular literature in the case of O’Connor, the idea of salvation through physical means may be a motivation for the act of body modification as a transformative action.

Images of mutilation are also present in various myths of creation—in particular, in the Rigueda (India), Greater Bundahisn (Iran) and Prose Edda (Scandinavia) religions—where creation is the result of the sacrifice and mutilation of the primordial hermaphroditic being. Favazza explains that this sacrifice and mutilation resulted in the establishment of the ordered world. With the repeated reenactment of religious rituals of sacrifice and mutilation, the world and its social order are recreated. In such rituals, the suffering that accompanies sacrifice and mutilation is replace by well-being and order.

Finally, Favazza discusses examples from disparate traditions which suggest that bodily mutilation is a method of attaining wisdom, healing and a transcendent sense of self. He goes on to explain the importance of sacrifice and suffering in the context of religion, suggesting that there is a link between sacrifice and prayer. For example, a person offers a valuable sacrificial gift, in the form of an animal, to a deity anticipating a favorable response in return; the blood and flesh of sacrificial victims serve to rejuvenate the deities themselves. Also, there is a communion that is established between a people and their deity as a result of their partaking of the sacrificial animal. Furthermore, a sacrifice is an act in which, through the consecration of a victim, the moral state of the one who offers the sacrifice is changed; the act establishes a communion between the sacred world and the present one. As with O’Connor’s charracter, a relationship with the divine is facilitated through physical sacrifice.

Some may view the behavior of self-mutilation or body modification in a religious context as pathological. To differentiate between clinical self-mutilators and those involved in activities mentioned above (for instance, self-flagellating monks in ascetic orders), Favazza comments

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