Decapitating the Mindless Artist: "Toby Dammit" [Federico Fellini, 1968, Italy] / Cannibalizing the Corporeal Artist: "Satyricon" [Federico Fellini, 1969, Italy]

In Toby Dammit (as very loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's short story "Never Bet the Devil Your Head") the title character (Terence Stamp) is a washed-up alcoholic actor who resembles a vampire more than he does a human being -- his countenance possesses a sickly pallor and he shies away from light. But not natural light, since as a screen actor Dammit has grown to detest the artificial light of movie sets and the photographic flashes from paparazzi cameras even as he feasts at the neverending banquet of indulged celebrity. (Like the Faustian anti-hero that is every literal or metaphorical vampire, Dammit has made a deal with the devil -- he can have anything he wants but in order to do so must remain wedded to a celebrity persona and lifestyle he despises.) Dammit's aversion to the technological devices that have bestowed fame upon him is part of his larger aversion to the artificiality of a technological society that can accelerate through space at boggling speeds and disseminate media at mind-altering rates even though such processes make a mess of man's geographical, historical, and cultural orientation and perspective. The first fifteen minutes of the film depict the mess of signifiers that greet Dammit when he arrives in Rome via plane and then is escorted through the city by limousine, especially in the barrage of artistic references that sycophants pitch to him as the limousine circles the perimeter of the Coliseum and as surreal scenes of modern madness parade outside the vehicle's windows. When he arrives at a television studio for an interview Dammit spews back the mess of signifiers as a stream of sarcastic, absurd, and belligerent responses -- instead of making sense of and producing meaning from an overwhelming field of seemingly unrelated and/or possibly contradictory signifiers, Dammit can only express alienation from the artistic role he is supposed to fulfill. (Marshall McLuhan: "Pattern recognition in the midst of a huge, overwhelming, destructive force is the way out of the maelstrom. The huge vortices of energy created by our media present us with similar possibilities of evasion or consequences of destruction. . . . The most sensitive observers of these patterns will be artists.")

Much the same occurs later at an awards ceremony at which Dammit is presented a special honor: the ceremony itself is a grotesque spectacle that devalues art through freakshow exhibitionism and false sentiment, and after rejecting the offer of a mysterious woman to redeem his life through love Dammit once again fails as an artist by leaving incomplete a performance of Macbeth's "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" soliloquy (Dammit leaves unsaid the last two words, "Signifying nothing," because for him they go without saying -- "Signifying nothing" are to what both he and the larger world have been reduced) and then ranting about his miserable, drunken condition. No longer able to meet reality through representation, Dammit leaves the ceremony and decides to forsake representation for the Real by attempting to drive his Ferrari (recently gifted to him by his current movie producers) over a gap in a collapsed bridge. But even here he fails -- before he is able to vault the gap, a white rope that has been strung across the road decapitates Dammit as he drives at a furious speed. The whiteness of the rope is related to the deathly paleness of the little girl whom Dammit has seen as an incarnation of the devil in several visions throughout the narrative, and the film's final shots show the girl's white ball bouncing toward Dammit's decapitated head, the girl lifting the head from the ground, and a long shot of the collapsed bridge.

The moral of Toby Dammit is that though our technologically advanced, electronic society makes the artist particularly susceptible to failure by diminishing the signifying power of creative endeavor in relation to a surfeit of signifiers, nonetheless this same artist can never succeed in approaching or obtaining the Real by risking death at the expense of art. By emptying it of all substance (morality, creativity, curiosity, and even basic human affection) the failed artist has in effect abdicated his head -- the seat of his being and the engine of his metamorphic, self-actualizing artistic potential -- to the satanic powers-that-be in exchange for various nihilistic pleasures and material possessions that are even farther away from the Real than is any representation. Dammit mistakenly believes that he can re-employ his nihilism and possessions toward reclaiming the Real simply because that nihilism and those possessions bring him nearer to death, whereas it is only through the representational amalgamation and transformation of art that the Real can be imagined, even if never fully claimed.

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There's so much going on in Satyricon (a "free adaptation" of the eponymous Petronius novel from the First Century A.D., which survives only in an incomplete and fragmented state) that I'd like to concentrate on just a single plotline, albeit one that gets to the heart of Fellini's complex ideas concerning art, death, and madness: the story of the poet Eumolpus (Salvo Randone). Early on in Satyricon the protagonist Encolpius (Martin Potter) encounters Eumolpius on his way to an epic feast hosted by the wealthy landowner Trimalchio (Mario Romagnoli). To Encolpius Eumolpius criticizes Trimalchio -- as well as the entire artistic epoch Trimalchio embodies ("Once upon a time, man's ideal was virtue, pure and simple. That's why the liberal arts flourished. Exdoxus grew old on a mountain studying the movement of the planets. Lysippus kept drawing the same model his whole life and died of hunger. But we, with our drinking and whoring, don't even know the masterpieces that exist now.") -- for selling out: whereas once he wrote vital poetry, Trimalchio now only pretends at creativity while much more sincerely employing his energies toward greed, gluttony, lasciviousness, and cruelty. All of these despicable qualities (and more) are on display by Trimalchio and his friends at the feast, during which Eumolpius denounces Trimalchio for stealing from Lucretius a poem he (Trimalchio) recites. For this Trimalchio orders his servants to torture Eumolpius with the fire from an enormous furnace in which the feast's food is cooked. Not long afterward Eumolpius appears to expire as he and Encolpius journey from Trimalchio's estate to regions unknown, and his final words seem to be: "I leave you poetry. I leave you the seasons, especially spring and summer. I leave you the wind, the sun. I leave you the sea, the good sea. The earth is good, too. The mountains, streams, and rivers. And the big clouds that move by solemn light. You'll look at them and maybe remember our brief friendship. And I leave you the trees and their agile inhabitants. Love, tears, joy, stars, Encolpius. I leave you sounds, songs, noises. The voice of man, which is the most harmonious of music. I leave you." Up to this point Eumolpius represents the last remnants of pure creativity in a dying civilization whose artists have been corrupted by nihilistic pleasures and material pursuits -- and whereas Eumolpius represents creativity through a spiritual connection to the "body" of the natural world that he commemorates with his dying breaths, Trimalchio represents nihilistic pleasures and material pursuits through a corporeal body that can only consume and devour the natural world, a world he perceives as a mere object to fulfill his desires.

Yet toward the end of Satyricon Encolpius re-encounters Eumolpius as the sort of wealthy landowner that he (Eumolpius) had once derided -- not only has he evidently avoided death, but Eumolpius seems to have ever since thrived through decadence and self-indulgence: "Luxury, riches, beautiful women. Tasty suppers that last until the cock crows. Weaknesses that dull the heart and mind. Vices never rejected and always accepted. In short, all this happiness has infected me," he tells Encolpius. As a former poet and current libertine Eumolpius cures Encolpius's impotence by eventually bringing him to a libido-restoring witch. This witch, however, is as much a harbinger of death as she is of life (upon entering her lair Encolpius sees the witch's countenance change from that of a beautiful woman to that of a decaying corpse), and Encolpius's sexual reawakening takes place at the same time as his friend Ascyltus (Hiram Keller) is murdered. Encolpius has rescued a major dimension of his corporeality, but at what price -- and will he pay even higher prices in the future to indulge the pleasures of the flesh? To retain his moral manhood after reclaiming his corporeal manhood Encolpius must draw the line somewhere, and this he does upon Eumolpius's death. For rather than espousing the beauty of nature as a corollary to the beauty of the spirit, Eumolpius's final words now take the form of a grotesque last testament: "All those named as beneficiaries in my will, except the freemen, will come into possession of all I've left behind on the condition they rip my body into pieces and eat me in full view of everyone. I urge my friends not to reject my invitation but to devour my body with the same enthusiasm with which they sent my soul to hell." Eumolpius knows that he has sold out as an artist by forsaking creativity for superficial pleasures and that, in one way or another, he has consigned his spirit to perdition. It is only fitting, then, that he should allow those that survive him to obtain his material goods by way of ravenously consuming the body that could at the end of life only ravenously consume. Through such a demented request, and no longer in service to the poetic muse, Eumolpius in effect forces his friends into confronting the Real -- this isn't cannibalization as a representational metaphor, but as an actual feasting upon human remains. Yet this cannibalization is the Real by way of selfishness, morbidity, and savagery, and Encolpius rejects it for further adventures as he boards a ship with other members of his generation -- those who have stayed behind to eat Eumolpius's body are all members of an older generation, the generation that has led Trimalchio, Eumolpius, and all of Roman civilization to ruin. More importantly, the final images of Satyricon transform Encolpius into a fresco that exists alongside painted images of other characters from the narrative -- by renouncing the corporeal Real as an act of self-indulgent consumption Encolpius has likewise accepted the spiritual value of representational art and in doing so has made his life and self a work of art.