Bestializări de Belle Époque

Vestigii de ritualism arhaic în estetica și ethos-ul tradiției Grand Guignol

Abstract

Belle Époque Bestializations: Remnants of Archaic Ritualism in the Aesthetics and Ethos of the Grand Guignol Tradition
From its tumultuous and relatively humble beginnings in the late 1890s until its official closure in 1962, the Parisian theatre of horror colloquially known as the Grand Guignol has managed to consistently eschew and challenge the conventional techniques of stagecraft associated with the more mainstream forms of Belle Époque dramatic performance. Operating in the bohemian district of Montmartre, the Grand Guignol sought to bring about a radical shift in public perception and normative culture, not only in relation to the more unseemly varieties of subject matter that theatre productions could feasibly showcase on-stage, but also with regard to the transformative power of theatre itself. Transgressive through and through, the ethos and the aesthetic framework of the Grand Guignol successfully proffered a lively alternative to the etiolated supremacy still held in local culture by the middle- and upper-class traditions of drawing room plays or well-made plays. Placing an emphasis on urban marginality, visceral horror and the grotesque as the principal rudiments of its phantasmagorical cosmology, the Grand Guignol also cultivated a marked fascination with gratuitous displays of ritualized violence. It is through this penchant for all things ceremonial and tenebrous that its productions actualized a tangible connection with a plethora of archaic thought patterns and motifs. The present study will endeavour to highlight some of these underpinnings, while also positing that one of the greatest countercultural triumphs of the Grand Guignol rests in its intuitive cultivation of a soteriological dimension, whose principal social outcome was an unforeseen set of communal therapeutic benefits, capitalized on and reinforced by the theatre’s ghastly repertoire.