Sex&Violence

The 1981 punksong with the same title, by the band The Exploited, is a well over 5 minutes form of gutter poetry. The lyrics are the repetitive speaking of the words: sex and violence, sex and violence, sex and violence, sex and violence... The music slowly builds up its intensity, as the speaking simultaneously becomes louder. As the music has the speed and rhythm of animal-like copulation, and the speaking has transformed in the shouts of a tortured man, all ends in an orgasmic death rattle.

Thinking about this song, it struck me that these two topics, so one-dimensionally approached in this piece of music, form extremely important elements in what it means to be an individual human, a society, and a species. Both sex and violence have been the subject of depictions from the earliest known artistic expressions of mankind and have never stopped playing a huge role since. Throughout history and within different cultures, the way the topics are approached highly varies. Can we call our current opinion valid or even superior, looking at this rich diversity? Why are we so attracted by these themes, but are repelled by them at the same time? The raw cold reality of the battlefield, against the warmth one feels for defending one’s ideals, freedom, or worldview. Taking a dive in unbound pleasures of sex, fertile and luscious, against the prison of the dusty tower of prudish repression, dark but safe. All of this doesn’t exclude eachother, they’re not opposites. Instead, they are parts of the same puzzle. A puzzle not like a jigsaw but like a tangram. A puzzle with multiple possible outcomes. An important puzzle nonetheless, because it is the puzzle of life and death.