The Filth

The Filth is, oddly, one of the hardest books to post an entry about. As of where I am at in the story, it is extremely confusing. There is one thing that I could talk about though: the use of innocents as a means of making the "deviant" seem more so. It is more prevalent in the beginning of the graphic novel than throughout it, but there are a few examples. The novel starts with an innocent conversation about how bad smoking is. As the image pans out, the characters are talking about smoking as they are about to murder someone. They pit this "issue" against a serious and gruesome offense.

The next example is on the next page. Greg is buying porn in a small shop. As he is buying the porn, there are two school girls within feet of him. It is pitting the essence of purity against something thought of as gross and immoral. This battle of innonence continues a few pages later when Greg is picking his nose and eating it. Picking his nose is against all social norms and disgusting. The picture pans out a little and there appear to be Mickey Mouse ears on his head. This could mean a lot more than just pitting innocents against the grotesque, but I may get into that in a different post. The last two examples in the beginning are right as Greg is getting on the bus and once he is home. Greg is holding his porn as he steps on the bus. An elderly lady is just stepping off the bus as he waits. This evokes a sense of guilt in the reader. You know he has the porn and he's so close to an "innocent old woman" (innocent solely because we veiw the elderly as innocent). Once Greg is home, we meet his companion Tony. Tony is a cat. He is an elderly cat and Greg loves him with all his heart. Tony starts masturbating with the cat just feet away from him. This is the last obvious example of combining innocents with deviance. All of these make the deviant behaviors seem more dirty and uncomfortable.

The Filth is an entire book full of confusion and art. It is graphically amazing and full of interesting concepts and texts. I find it intriguing that sex is so prominant in the novel. As you read, there is sex on nearly every page. Is this the world we live in? America is extremely sexual as well as sexually stunted. We talk about sex and seem to see sex a lot, but we are afraid of nudity. Even sex education classes, students look at drawings of male and female genatalia because supposedly anything else is porn. America has a fucked up concept of porn. Anything about the human body is porn. We have movies where every few seconds a person is blown to pieces by a bomb, but once a movie has full frontal male nudity it is nearly pornographic. America's concepts of porn and its embarassment by nudity creates this country of people afraid of their own body. This is where The Filth is different. Although it pushes the boundaries between porn and art, it is not afraid to go there. The interesting thing though is that The Filth still does not show full frontal nudity. On some pages it even sensors the genatalia of the person. Even novels pushing the boundaries are trapped in our nude-hating society.