'Defaced' is All Art, No Argument

What is it about violence that we find so alluring? The cult of the slasher film, once considered a perverse, transgressive genre, has morphed into the unapologetic torture-porn fad. The genre of television detective drama has collapsed into gore-fests like those featured on “CSI.” Violence has become the stuff of the banal, and yet retains its mystic and exotic appeal. Valentin Groebner, one of Germany’s up-and-coming historians, takes a look at this phenomenon, grounding it centuries ago in the visual culture of the Middle Ages. Groebner’s claim provides the basis for “Defaced,” where he attempts to link today’s media-led fascination with horror and graphic depictions of mutilated bodies to the torture and religious martyrdom that was commonplace in the 15th century. He claims that his interest in the subject originally “did not lie in material from the past, but in the heightened presentability of opened and mutilated bodies in close-up, in concert with political events—with the return of war in the everyday life of the European media.” While an appealing and quick read on the dark side of the Middle Ages, “Defaced” falls short of its goal: to provide a lens with which to understand the modern fascination with horror.

“Defaced” is both well-written and accessible. Filled with visual aids, it serves as a comprehensive introduction for readers with no previous exposure to art history or medieval culture. Despite its qualities as a work of art history, however, it lacks credibility as a work of social theory. The book begins with a comment on a photograph of the mutilated body of an anonymous Haitian in Port au Prince in 1994. At the end of the book, Groebner revisits the framework of modernity with insights about the media driven obsession with anonymity and gory coverage of current events in the news. But he never convincingly substantiates the link between violence in medieval culture and contemporary fetishization of the gruesome. His myriad examples of medieval brutality serve to illuminate a variety of individual points about the culture of the Middle Ages—the importance of blood to embody sacrifice, the symbol of the nose as linked to sexual mutilation, or the violent religious expressions of martyrdom—but it’s difficult to see the coherence of his overall argument about its meaning today.

Groebner’s exploration of the medieval obsession with the nose as the prime organ of sexual mutilation is particularly engaging. His examination of 15th century Nuremberg reveals that the cutting of one’s nose was most often associated to adultery, homosexuality, and other sex crimes. The nose was also supposed to reveal whether or not a woman was still a virgin, based on the thickness of her cartilage. Anecdotes like this, revealing a common and fascinating trend in the medieval understanding and cultural depiction of the body, provide much of the book’s worth, which ultimately resides in Groebner’s masterful knowledge of the mores of the Middle Ages.

Considerable attention is also given to the emblematically horrific depiction of the Passion of Jesus Christ in the Middle Ages. Groebner astutely renders Christendom’s dualistic fascination, both with “fear-inducing images on one side and a more positively connoted ‘affective piety’ on the other.” Religion was a haven for violent representations of sin and punishment, boosting numerous tales of severed organs and sexual mortifications, as well as an emphasis on the shedding of the Christ’s blood. The chapter on religion and representation of the Christ is the longest, and emphasizes the weight of religious images in the visual culture of the Middle Ages. Although Groebner raises insightful assertions about this phenomenon, he never effectively links it to its modern connotations or interpretations, therefore weakening his wider argument about medieval visual culture influencing the modern appeal of violence.

Although Groebner does not convincingly support his thesis about the influential weight of medieval images on modern day depiction of violence—aside from pop-cultural references such as Pulp Fiction’s famous “I’m gonna git Medieval on your ass”—his array of violent and terrifying stories are not devoid of meaning. Groebner weaves them together through the notion of “Ungestalt,” the “reflection of violence that the narrator locates beyond his ‘own,’ ordered, regulated realm in a savage ‘outside.’” The idea that violence must be found in an exotic “other” permeates the themes of the book, with otherness taking the shape of sexuality, religion and the polity in the Middle Ages. Ungestalt is also found in modern depictions of terror, with what Groebner refers to as “lustful and aggressive self-victimization.” Although most European societies are maintaining an ever increasing level of peace and order, he stipulates that the violent news coverage trend in the media keeps growing. Groebner argues that people need fear and violence, regardless of its actual predominance—or lack thereof—around them. Still, it’s a shame that he couldn’t manage to use the skill with which he depicts the evolution of Ungestalt in the rest of “Defaced.”

Beyond its redemptive educational and entertainment value, “Defaced,” remains simply an historical account of violence and its depictions, one that fails, for the most part, in its attempt to ground itself in the present. This still doesn’t negate the fact that Groebner has assembled a compelling assortment of bizarre and intriguing stories that our collective past would otherwise rather forget.