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Grotesque Realism and the Carnivalesque in Tom Six’s

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) and The Human Centipede II
(Full Sequence)

Ellen N. Freeman

“Feed her! Feed her!” screams Dr. Heiter, mad surgeon and villain of
Tom Six’s 2009 film The Human Centipede (First Sequence). Three captured and
tortured subjects have been conjoined anus-to-mouth to share a single
gastrointestinal tract, creating Dr. Heiter’s magnum opus of surgical ability: his
fantastical ‘Human Centipede’. The ‘mouth’ and leading vassal of Dr. Heiter’s
‘Human Centipede’ swears in Japanese while his natural bodily functions defy
him for the first time since becoming conjoined in this twisted and abject
carnival tale, and he involuntarily defecates into the mouth of the subject
behind him. This is the scene for which many audience members wait in
expectation: the pooping, the suffocation, the gagging; this becomes a source
of imminent gratification in The Human Centipede franchise. The gruesome act
of defecating into a subject’s mouth is hardly Tom Six’s creation, however.
This paper will explore similar intimations in François Rabelais’ novel series
The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-1564), as discussed by philosopher
Mikhail Bakhtin in his book Rabelais and his World (1965), to highlight the ways
in which crude, scatological horror and humour have been censored and
celebrated for centuries. In her foreword to the 1984 version of Bakhtin’s
Rabelais and His World, Krystyna Pomorska writes: “Bakhtin claims that life
itself (traditionally considered ‘content’) is organized by human acts of
behaviour and cognition […] and is therefore already charged with a system of
values at the moment it enters into an artistic structure” (1984: viii). At the
core, Bakhtin claims that the human condition, and thus the art created by
humanity, is considerably solidified by common behavioural patterns and
____________________
Ellen Freeman holds an MA in Film Studies from Concordia University where she
specialized in the psychological and sociological functions of horror audiences like
herself. In 2018, she conducted a three-week course entitled "Shock Horror: The Human
Centipede Trilogy" with the Montreal Monstrum Society, and again in 2019 on The Twilight
Zone: The Movie as part of their "A Year in Horror: 1983" series. Currently, Freeman’s
research focuses on horror-fan receptions of cult, shock and exploitation cinema.
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cognitive archetypes. The idea that observation is linked both to the creator(s)
of the film and to its audience figure into the ways that Danish film director
Tom Six’s The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009; see Figure 1 below) and
its sequel, The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) (2012), can be conceived as a
cinematic practice of Bakhtin’s semiotic study of cognition, behaviour, and
mischief, as well as his theories on the tradition of carnival culture, and the
carnivalesque embrace of the grotesque.

Figure 1: The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

The Human Centipede films (THC and THC II from here, onward) operate
within a satirical narrative that showcases elements of grotesque realism and
are meant to be enjoyed in their evocation of carnivalesque excess.
Nevertheless, among the visual and auditory—and perhaps
phenomenologically olfactory, or gustatory—senses, Tom Six’s first two
Human Centipede films—although more so regarding THC II—develop
characters whose actions, situations, and reactions create affect. THC and
THC II have been actively censored by film censorship boards across the
world because of their “violent and pornographic” visual representations, yet
Six’s portrayal of his characters—an emotionally and intellectually disabled
man, a pedophilic psychiatrist, an abusive mother, and a megalomaniacal,
obsessed, mad-scientist surgeon—is equally disregarded as petty and
insensitive (BBFC, 2011). THC and THC II highlight the notion that graphic

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lacking a moral sense

entertainment intended to be amoral—that is, to hold our culture up to its

often misguided, constrictive values by means of satire—is still heavily
censored as immoral by reactionary tastemakers in popular culture, part of a
history of moral superiority (and panic) that seems destined forever to repeat
itself. This essay thus explores how ‘abhorrent’ entertainment can be fulfilling,
comedic, participatory, and critical of paradoxical morals and mores—and
why, after centuries, this form of participation in the overturning of the so-
called respectable continues to be alluring. For all their ostensibly base and
exploitative content, Six’s first two Human Centipede films rub their spectators’
noses in the contradictions of sanctioned morality.1

The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel

Mikhail Bakhtin’s classic of Renaissance studies Rabelais and His World,

finished in 1940 but published in 1965 due to decades-long opposition and
informal censorship by the Soviet authorities, explores the immediate
reception of the stigmatized novel series by French renaissance writer Francois
Rabelais The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel, written and published from 1532-
1564. The ethos of The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel is found in the author’s
prologue. Rabelais states: “Most illustrious Drinkers and you, most precious
Syphilitics, for it is to you, not to others, that my writings are dedicated”
(1946: 47, original capitalization). It is clear that Rabelais had no intentions of
winning over high-class readers with his stories, and instead wrote these tales
specifically for the hedonistic, rude, and boisterous.
The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel is a series of five novels that tell of
the adventures of two giants, Gargantua and his son Pantagruel. Written in an
amusing tone, the stories of Gargantua and Pantagruel are extravagant
and satirical and feature an abundance of crude, scatological humour and
violence, which was quite controversial for 16th Century literature. In the
socio-political conditions of increased religious oppression in the period
leading up to The French Wars between Roman Catholics and Calvinist
Protestants, the Collège de la Sorbonne censored these ‘obscene’ novels; thus,
The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel, fully equipped with wordplay and risqué
humor, were treated with varying levels of reluctance and suspicion as “‘too
excessive and too eccentric’” (Putnam, 1946: 3). In fact, François Rabelais’
“gross robust humour, extravagance of caricature, and bold naturalism” is now
marked by the literary term Rabelaisian (Merriam-Webster). The philosophy
and spirit of these novels, according to Rabelais, focuses on what we can refer

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to as ‘Pantagruelism’, deeply entrenched in “‘a moral doctrine that implies a

constant elevation and breadth of soul,’ or, in the Maître’s own words: ‘a
certain cheerfulness of disposition preserved in spite of fortuitous
circumstances’” (Putnam, 1946: 37). To be good ‘Pantagruelists’ folks must
“live in peace, happiness, and good health, enjoying yourselves always, [and to]
never put any faith in such folks as that, who look out upon the world through
a peephole” (Putnam, 1946, 365). Although most chapters of Life of Gargantua
and Pantagruel are wildly fantastic and absurd, a few relatively serious passages
have become famous for expressing humanistic ideals of the time, and for
mocking and challenging bureaucratic behaviour. For instance, one passage
states,

DO WHAT THOU WOULDST for the reason that those who are free
born and well born, well brought up, and used to decent society possess,
by nature, a certain instinct and spur, which always impels them to
virtuous deeds and restraints [sic] them from vice, an instinct which is
the thing called honor. These same ones, when, through vile subjection
and constraint, they are repressed and held down, proceed to employ
that same noble inclination to virtue in throwing off and breaking the
yoke of servitude, for we always want to come to forbidden things; and
we always desire that which is denied us. (Rabelais, [1534], Putnam,
1946: 214, original capitalization).

Rabelais describes Gargantua, Pantagruel, and their community as free from

societal restraints—and virtuous in their fun, and honest lifestyles, their
celebration of ‘that which is denied us’—as a commentary on the opposing
religious oppressions and censors that rule art and ideology during this period.
Bakhtin argues that, for centuries, The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel had been
misunderstood, and wrongly censored. In his Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin
attempts to ease this misunderstanding by studying two important subtexts:
carnival (the carnivalesque) and grotesque realism, both discussed in more detail
below.
Rabelais’ Pantagruelism aligns with the aesthetic intentions of THC
director Tom Six. In two different interviews, Six explains his intentions for
the films. The first, he calls “a dark, dark comedy. It’s very over the top and
silly, but also explores a darkness in humanity” (Hanley, 2015: n.p.). In regards
to the entire franchise, he says, “I really took it to extremes the second time
for the audience. […] I can’t imagine anyone will see part two [or three] and
take it seriously anymore. It’s such an extreme attraction that it becomes really

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over-the-top” (Barone, 2011: n.p.). Like Bakhtin, Tom Six has often spoken
out about the absurdities of art censorship. In an interview with Charlie Nash,
Six declares: “I believe in movies that bite, burn, shock, hurt, and are
unconventional. Where a filmmaker is still a warrior fighting the mediocrity. I
want audience to smell the dirty laundry. Nobody is forced to see a movie.
Give audiences their own choice to watch it or not” (2017, n.p.).
Tom Six, it seems, wrote these films to parody not only horror fans and
the genre’s ostensibly over-simplified and over-produced conventions, but to
poke fun at those offended by the humour that lingers beneath the filth. He
confesses that his need to create a second, and third film—both of which,
arguably, are aggressively more ‘shocking’ than the first—was for the
satisfaction of an audience that, he suggests, ‘desires that which is denied
them’.

Behaviour and the Senses

The term “behaviour,” as discussed by Raymond Williams, has been

developed under the study of semiotics and cognitive thought, ranging from
neutral positions to moral definitions contingent to one’s worldview (1983:
43). The term “behaviour” signifies a reaction to a specific circumstance.
Williams also understands the term in relation to ethics (morality), as a way in
which subjects behave according to social law—that is, the marking of one’s
“dignified sense of public conduct” (1983: 43). Williams’ definition sheds light
on the evolution of the term within psychology as, collectively, “mimicry,” the
“science of ethics”, and the “science of character” (1983: 44). In a reading of
the Human Centipede films, however, his use of the term “experimental” in
discussion of controlled and measured conditions of behavioural observation
can be situated nicely to the film’s narrative, which details the medical
experiments and post-experiment observations of German Dr. Josef Heiter
(Dieter Laser) upon a group of three tourists (two American, another
Japanese). The film’s premise begins when the two American tourists become
stranded in the dark forests of Germany after their car breaks down. They find
a house amongst the trees and are invited in by homeowner Dr. Heiter, who
offers them water, food, and a telephone to call a mechanic. His décor is
uniquely carnivalesque; he has wall-to-wall photos of Siamese twin babies and
dogs plastered on his wall in an artistic fashion, signifying the doctor's pride in
his previous work of separating subjects who appear impossible to separate (See
Figure 2 below).

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Figure 2: Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser) and his thematically suggestive décor in The Human Centipede
(First Sequence)

The American women trust Heiter to call the mechanic, but when they
realize their drinks have been drugged with powerful sedatives, the doctor’s
newest medical obsession is revealed: he will attempt to conjoin those who are
not meant to be conjoined. Dr. Heiter, having respectfully earned the title of
“doctor” from what we assume is years in the medical field, proposes to his
subjects and the film’s audience a “100% medically accurate” bodily
experiment that aspires to attach three subjects mouth-to-anus in order to
create one digestive system—a “Siamese Triplet”, or rather, a “human
centipede.”
Dr. Heiter observes his subjects’ behaviour within a “controlled” system,
or what Bennett, Grossberg, and Morris call “systems behaviour” (2013: 11).
This behaviour of observing ‘systems’ is linked more directly to machines, or
biological systems – a controlled science, as medical procedures often are
(Bennett, Grossberg, and Morris, 2013: ch. B). Thus, it is clear that, as a
scientist, Dr. Heiter is interested in studying the “manner in which a thing acts
under specified circumstances or in relation to other things” (Bennett,
Grossberg, and Morris, 2013: 11-12).
Similar to passages found in The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel, as
discussed by Bakhtin, THC depicts death and birth as both ultimately
humiliating. “Birth” in this instance refers to the creation of Dr. Heiter’s
centipede, but also as stemming from his enthrallment with Siamese twin

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babies and their survival. “Death,” of course, is the impending demise of his
creature creation (and possibly, the demise of our characters’ former selves); if
you thought this movie ended happily, think again. On the generation of
amusement from such abject (and in the case of death, dire) bodily
circumstances, Bakhtin writes:

The images of feces and urine are ambivalent, as are all the images of the
material bodily lower stratum; they debase, destroy, regenerate, and renew
simultaneously. When death and birth are shown in their comic aspect,
scatological images in various forms nearly always accompany the gay
monsters [me, you, horror audiences] created by laughter in order to
replace the terror that has been defeated. (Bakhtin, 1984: 151).

While the idea of laughter ‘replacing’ terror applies to Heiter and his absurdly
awful experiments, Bakhtin’s intentions in the above statement are more
situated in the study of audience engagement, or cognitive and behavioural
reaction to, a film or piece of literature. As I mentioned above, THC concerns
the bodily experiments and post-experimental observation of the mental and
physical “systematic behaviour” of three involuntary subjects. Likewise, THC
and THC II depend on the behavioural reactions and cognitive responses
from their audience. This intention is made obvious in a scene in THC where
Heiter takes a moment to demonstrate his surgical intentions to his medical
victims using a (hilariously unsophisticated) overhead projector, whiteboard,
and pointer (See Figure 3).

Figure 3: The demonstration by overhead projector in The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

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There are two audiences implicated in this direct-address telegraphing of the

dreadful experiment to come: the victims, and the audience, both of whom are
left to feel the tension of knowing what they will eventually feel (the victims)
or be forced to witness and sense (the audience). “Tactile, kinetic, redolent,
resonant, and sometimes even taste-full” is how Vivian Sobchack defines the
phenomenological, “cinesthetic”—and in this case, carnival, participatory—
experience of cinema (2004: 54). In her essay “What my Fingers Knew: The
Cinesthetic Subject, or Vision in the Flesh,” Sobchack attempts to understand
the meaningful relation between cinema and our sensate bodies in relation to
contemporary film theory (2004: 54-55). Tom Six, like Rabelais, is working
towards the same goals of “unmasking” the presumed behavioural acts of
“public conduct,” and forcing an audience to indulge open-mindedly with the
discomfort of their entertainment, and with healthy observation. Sobchack
would agree; she writes that

scholarly interest has been focused less on the capacity of films to

physically around us to meaning than on what such sensory cinematic
appeal reveals about the rise and fall of classical narrative, or the
contemporary transmedia structure of the entertainment industry, or
the desires of our culture for the distractions of immediate sensory
immersion in an age of pervasive mediation” (2004: 57).

In sum, both Sobchack and Six would acknowledge that we must regard
horror cinema and THC films as welcoming the cooperation of our senses,
and of unruly, sensory responses. Audiences have behaved in a reflexive and
phenomenological way to the content of the THC, which serves to “confront
and discomfort the audience,” a behavioural reaction that was anticipated and
welcomed by director Tom Six (Och and Strayer, 2013: 171). In keeping with
the definitions of Raymond Williams, a study of audience behaviour towards
the film would be linked to the interaction with their environment,
“specialized to ‘stimulus’ and ‘response’” (1983: 44), a type of interaction with
a text that allows for bodily engagement, rather than immediate dismissal. This
bodily, or embodied engagement is like the experience of attractions—the
sensation of a rollercoaster ride rather than absorption in the narrative. The
linked bodies in the films might be understood as mimicking how the audience
is bodily linked to the materiality of the medium. The audience is thrust into
the lower stratum of the films, sensually mimicking the bodies there.

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Carnivals of the Lower Stratum

While the central premise of these films may be linked to genres that have
deprecatingly been called “torture porn”2 or “goreno” they are also situated,
depending largely on the theoretical lens, within carnival expressions of
humour and satire, linking the trilogy as a whole with Bakhtin’s behavioural
and cognitive understanding of the principals of carnivalesque within
Rabelaisian writings. “Carnival,” “a rowdy [European] tradition” is derivative
of festivals and theater that has a counter-cultural reputation for misbehaviour,
where “lampooning liberty is allowed, and scandal so highly exalted [… as to]
upend conventional social decorum” (Stam, Goldsmith, and Porton, 2015: 69).
Linked to the concept of behavioural studies, Bakhtin uses Rabelais and his
definition of carnivalesque to depict “utopian jouissance, the celebration of
the bodily lower stratum, and free and familiar contact […] that rejects formal
harmony and unity in favour of the asymmetrical, the heterogeneous, and the
miscegenated” (Stam, Goldsmith, and Porton, 2015: 69). My use of this
definition here is not meant to suggest that the participants in Dr. Heiter’s
experiments are filled with “utopian jouissance” at their transformation, but
that the Human Centipede films’ audiences, (while most appear to be
uncomfortable or offended), are entertained by way of a ‘carnival’ experience
(at least part of which involves delighting in seeing others offended).
Mikhail Bakhtin’s book is considerably interested in Russian folk culture
and its place amongst the satirical literature of Rabelais; more specifically,
Bakhtin positions folk culture as a binary of “high culture” (Pomorska, 1984:
xi). Bakhtin has linked behavioural studies with his theories of laughter and
carnivalesque, which he describes to have a purposeful sense of “heterglossia”
(Pomorska, 1984: x). Krystyna Pomorska notes in her Foreword to Rabelais and
His World that Bakhtin’s theories observe carnivalization as “the conditions for
the ultimate ‘structure of life’, that is formed by ‘behaviour and cognition’” (x).
Bakhtin makes an important shift to sound as a dominant sense, emphasizing
auditory exaggeration and enunciation over the sense of sight. Rabelais
frequently lists the dynamic characteristics of the body’s elimination during
birth and death, and writes “a man could belch, fart, poop, piddle, shit, sneeze,
sob, cough, throw up, yawn, puff, inhale, exhale, snore, snort, sweat, and
wangle the ferrule to his heart's content” (Bakhtin, 1984: 358). In this instance,
the spirit of carnival penetrates the sound and language of Gargantua and
Pantagruel, yet it is “laughter [that] penetrates the highest forms of religious cult
and thought” (Bakhtin, 1984: 13), and “laughter was seen as man’s highest
spiritual privilege, inaccessible to other creatures” (Bakhtin, 1984: 68). In this

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context, embodied enunciation and production is as transgressive, if not more

so than, articulate speech.
According to Bakhtin, “carnival,” or “folk” culture—oftentimes referred
to in contemporary cinema and popular culture studies as “cult”—are “comic
cults which laughed and scoffed at the deity; coupled with serious myths were
comic and abusive ones; coupled with heroes were their parodies and
doublets” (Pomorska, 1984: 6). Films like THC are filled with “sacred/profane
time-out[s] for imaginative play and alternative cosmovisions” that give
expression to “the people’s second life,” and are used to transgress rationalism
and ethical behaviour patterns (Stam, Goldsmith, and Porton: 2015, 69).
Those who have a perverse sense of humour like Rabelais will undoubtedly see
Six’s attempt to compose satirical and carnivalesque subject matter alongside
the scatological plot. The sinister, yet comical parody of the “mad scientist”
caricature is hard to miss. Any number of examples come to mind, for
example in THC, the image of Heiter’s three post-surgical patients getting an
airing on the lawn as they crawl around in a mouth-to-anus chain at Heiter’s
direction, or in THC II, the wannabe mad scientist / crazy fan, Martin
Lomax’s, administering a laxative to produce a more extreme effect out of his
experiment. The implication of such moments in both films seems to be that
the experiment is not enough; what the scientist really wants is abject
spectacle.

Mouth-to-Film: Grotesque Attractions

If carnivalesque is enjoyed through a transformation of behaviour and

liberation from the “prevailing order,” then the “grotesque” body, a term used
in relation to Bakhtin’s study of carnival, deals with bodily transformation.
The film, and Rabelais’ novels, undoubtedly relate to Mary Shelley’s novel
Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus (1818), and its titular “mad” scientist’s
“secret toil” with “profane fingers” in a “workshop of filthy creation” (1996:
32)—“filthy” here referring to both the scientist’s gore-soaked laboratory as
well as his suspect (“secret,” “profane”) ethical choices. Stam, Goldsmith, and
Porton define “grotesque realism” as “turning conventional aesthetics on its
head in order to locate a new kind of convulsive, rebellious beauty, one that
reveals the grotesque of the noble and the latent beauty of the ‘vulgar’” (2015:
69). Like Dr. Victor Frankenstein's monster, referred to by the monster
himself as “the Adam of your labors,” Dr. Heiter’s Human Centipede patients
detest their maker for violating their bodies and, by extension, the laws of

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nature. Shelley’s novel and Six’s films “confront some of the most feared
innovations of evolutionism: mankind’s status as a species of animal” (Butler,
1993, from the book’s back matter), while also stripping the human animal of
its so-called superiority over nonhuman animals. If we laugh at the situation
created by Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein, it is more over the idiosyncrasies
manifested by his obsessive, often oblivious behaviour. But Six’s films are
built on the prospect that audiences will find amusement in the absurdly
vulgar scenarios he offers.
The ability to laugh and be entertained by the ‘vulgar’ allows the audience
to grasp a more ‘utopic’ existence, according to Bakhtin. Linking the concept
of the “grotesque” body to carnival, Stam, Goldsmith, and Porton believe that
it is not, above-all, the subject matter that makes a text satirical, but the
a satirical Yiddish
emphasis of who is the “butt of the joke” (2015: 70). The example he uses is the
festival or play
dramatizing the ‘Purim Spiel’3 who make fun of Haman the tyrant, not the Jewish Esther, who
Hebrew Book of
Esther. is inferior to Haman’s tyranny (2015: 70). In THC an audience likely laughs
less at the subjects being tortured, and more at the circumstances of the
subject’s torture. It is not so much the pain and discomfort of the subject that
is funny, in other words, but rather Dr. Heiter himself—it is in his
mannerisms and his dialogue that an audience cannot help but see the
humour. For example, the first time Dr. Heiter’s Human Centipede “walks”—
that is, the first time we see his victims in the designated hands-and-knees
position as seen in his picture-book example (Fig. 4)—he is so over-the-moon
with joy that the audience almost feels congratulatory of his accomplishment:
“He did it! The Centipede can walk!” Heiter is proud of his success and in
turn, the audience is—however conflicting the feelings produced—proud for
him. He walks around his Centipede flexing, laughing, and taking photos, his
subjects all-the-while squirming and crying with discomfort; nevertheless, this
is Heiter’s time to shine, and we respect that in part because of his sheer glee.
He takes a mirror off the wall and places it in front of his Centipede—a
moment simultaneously suggesting and parodying the “mirror stage”4 of their
development as a self-aware creature-subject—and Heiter cries along with his
Centipede tears of fulfilment, rather than anguish. This scene implies a
positive, emotional forthcoming for Dr. Heiter. With the melodramatic string
orchestra playing in the background, this scene is ridiculous, and it is exactly
the over-the-top ridiculousness of this film that places the moment’s
situational comedy above the torment of Heiter’s Human Centipede. Stam,
Goldsmith, and Porton recognize a certin comedic “rule” which mandates that
“laughing at death” is a theme that can be vulnerable to humorous treatment
when examined in this context (2015: 70).

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Bakhtin declares that to be entertained by carnivalesque images is to defy

one’s well-established behaviour, and that a certain degree of truth is
discovered when one laughs or professes a desire for grotesque or vulgar
imagery. As a direct relation to Rabelais, Bakhtin acknowledges a connection
between “sexual stimuli together with defecation” that THC also visualizes
with the quasi-sexual ass-to-mouth foreplay and the stimulated, erect nipples
of the fit, tan, and beautiful American tourists. Of Rabelais’ Fourth Book,
Bakhtin argues that to appreciate the grotesque is to communicate
wholeheartedly with humanity and truth:

At the end [excrement] is described as a tree, something pleasant. And

the tirade concludes with an invitation to drink, which in Rabelaisian
imagery means to be in communion with truth. Here we find the
ambivalent image of excrement, its relation to regeneration and renewal
and its special role in overcoming fear. … An heir to grotesque realism
he conceived excrement as both joyous and sobering matter, at the
same time debasing and tender; it combined the grave and birth in their
lightest, most comic, least terrifying form. (1984:175-176)

Again, we see an important shift towards the lower senses: smell, taste, and
touch. Bakhtin's emphasis on “the feast” or the “drink” in his book and in this
passage is a valid observation in terms of the way THC and the literature of
Rabelais both rely on celebrations of otherwise abject bodies, collapsing an
acute awareness of the body, and of the gruesomeness of birth and death, in a
kind of sensorial feast.
These links between deviant behaviour and even observable behaviour,
the genre of the carnivalesque, and the beauty of the grotesque body, all relate,
on some level, to the idea of nonconformity. To enjoy, or to theorize a film
that repulses many audiences is to oppose the initial behavioural “mimicry”
discussed by Raymond Williams; to participate in carnival is to leave
inhibitions behind, citing again what Stam, Goldsmith, and Porton call
“formal harmony and unity in favour of the asymmetrical, the heterogeneous,
and the miscegenated” (2015: 69). Likewise, to find beauty and worth in
grotesque realism is to ignore sacred implications and acknowledge the body
as an anatomical living piece of flesh and blood, rather than the privileged
vessel of the immortal soul. They “laughed and scoffed at the deity; coupled
with serious myths were comic and abusive ones” (Bakhtin, 1984: 6). In this
regard, carnivalesque texts uncomfortably mingle the sacred and the profane.

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In Bakhtin’s description of death, “the soul, together with bile, blood,

phlegm and flesh, leaves its bodily abode which has grown cold and has
already acquired the aspect of death” (1984: 359). Grotesque realism
acknowledges that death, discomfort, and biological degradation are all
behaviours of the body that every living being must succumb to: “the bodily
element […] is presented not in a private, egotistical form, severed from the
spheres of all life, but as something universal” (Bakhtin, 1984: 19). Bakhtin’s
book, and these passages, support the notion that behaving according to a
social rule is egotistical and in favour of a hierarchical type of humanity, which
he declares is elusive and unattainable. To discuss the relation between the
literature of Rabelais and Tom Six’s THC, and their use of inadequate
cognitive archetypes, the amusement of carnival culture, and the appreciation
for the grotesque body, is to link the concept of humour in one's own decay as
a challenge—and an honest response—to the truth of bourgeois morality.
THC concludes with the death of three kidnapped experiment subjects
who are surgically conjoined mouth-to-anus, against their will. Two of the
subjects, we can assume, die of malnutrition, infection, or bile poisoning, while
the other—the first in the chain of bodies—takes his own life after
triumphantly escaping maker and captor, Dr. Heiter. Though Heiter is a
madman, his attention to detail and his obsession with sterilization,
cleanliness, and medical accuracy sets him apart from other villains of the so-
called “torture porn” genre (including the villain of THC II), and also from
what we have come to envision as a ‘realistic’ murderer. Tom Six successfully
places the first film, THC (First Sequence), into the diegetic world of his sequel
when he opens The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) (2011) (THC II) with a
point-of-view shot of the 2009 film’s denouement, followed by the closing
credits, being watched by the would-be experimenter-villain of the sequel. This
film-within-a-film, or mise en abyme, is used by Six to demonstrate the extreme
and ultimately unrealistic silliness of the film’s attractions, and the over-the-
top inaccuracy (contrary to the tagline “100% Medically Accurate”) of Part I’s
plot line, reminding the viewer that the original film remains just a film, albeit
perhaps a very real object of grotesque fascination. Linda Williams argues in
Film Bodies: Gender, Genre and Excess (1991) that body genres like horror and
melodrama encapsulate the notion of excess. Like Vivian Sobchack’s thoughts
on the phenomenological sensation experienced by spectators of cinema,
Williams agrees that “body genres” “foreground sensational engagement in
explicit image and sound content and narrative focus” (Sobchack, 2004: 62).
Williams tells us: “we feel manipulated by these texts—an impression that the
very colloquialisms of ‘tear jerker’ and ‘fear jerker’ express—and to which we

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could add pornography’s even cruder sense as texts to which some people
might be inclined to ‘jerk off’” (1991: 5). Again, Williams argues that audiences
mimic emotions in body genres because of our attraction to and appreciation
of the spectacle. Tom Gunning, writer of “The Cinema of Attraction[s]: Early
Film, its Spectator and the Avant-Garde” ([1990] 2006), discusses our
fondness for, and willingness to identify with, the spectacle and the artifice of
the attraction, and that while we know that the “magic” is not real, audiences
nevertheless feel assaulted and encapsulated by it. Horror and other “body
genres” offer “attractive” moments [attractions] that are willing to exhibit and
“rupture a self-enclosed fictional world for a chance to solicit the attention of
the spectator” (Gunning, [1990] 2006: 382). In this paper, Gunning offers
similarities between amusement parks and cinema, carnivals, and film
exhibition. He writes, “the cinema of attractions directly solicits spectator
attention, inciting visual curiosity, and supplying pleasure through an exciting
spectacle—a unique event, whether fictional or documentary, that is of
interest in itself” (Gunning, [1990] 2006: 384). Tied directly into the attractions
is the kind of direct address (and confrontation) of spectatorial desire that
undergirds the Human Centipede films in general, but the first sequel in
particular.
THC II thrives on the fear of, and desire for, replication of the first film’s
grotesque spectacle, providing a compelling re-enacting of Gunning’s theories
of exhibitionist cinema. Martin (Laurence R. Harvey), a disturbed recluse, is so
inspired by the original Human Centipede film that he decides to replicate its
gruesome experiments. That is, his motives are largely tied to recreating the
prior film’s attractions for himself as much, if not more than they are to any
scientific curiosity. He does this in a way that is in direct contrast with Dr.
Heiter’s medically comprehensive method, housing his experiments in a filthy
abandoned warehouse, and using duct tape and staples in place of sterile
needles and sutures. Martin’s social and psychological hindrances, in addition
to the film’s explicit scenes of bodily assemblage, provoke more realistic
emotional, and biological reactions from its characters, whose bodily functions
literally splatter the stage. Though arguably more gruesome in its imagery than
the prior film, THC II, as a black and white film, beautifies realistic bodily
grotesqueries through the use of low-key lighting, high-contrast close-up
shots, and an exquisitely uncomfortable score that carry on throughout the
film. In the opening sequence, we enjoy the capture of Martin’s first
Centipede-subjects. Mise-en-scène alone works to construct the psyche of
Martin as an authentic psychopath, and to strongly express the exaggeration,

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hyperbole, and excess that make up the fundamentals of grotesque style.

Contextualization of the Opening Sequence of The Human Centipede II

(Full Sequence)

Martin (Laurence R. Harvey) is a mentally and intellectually challenged

forty-something-year-old man who lives with his mother. Martin was
subjected to sexual abuse by his father for several years and his mother still
blames him for the imprisonment of her husband. Martin’s therapist Dr.
Sebring, a Charles Darwin-type character, confesses his desire to “fuck that
retarded boy,” thus causing Martin even more grief, aggression, and emotional
torment, which drives the motive for his twelve-person Human Centipede-
induced sexual fantasy.
As discussed above, THC II introduces its antagonist, Martin, watching
footage from the last two minutes of THC. By opening with a point-of-view
shot, the film forces the viewer immediately to identify with Martin in that
moment, for presumably they have both shared the shock, and/or awe-
inspiring pleasure of the Tom Six film-universe offered in Part I. Relating
again to Gunning’s concept for “rupturing the fictional world”, THC II
reiterates heavily on the fact that THC, and horror films as a whole, remain
attractions-based, even when committed to an awe-inspiring realism ([1990]
2006: 382). Cynthia Freeland, too, suggests that in “realist horror” there is a
shift from narratives committed to intricately unveiling supernatural monsters
to “promising and withholding the spectacle of violence” (1995: 128, emphasis
added). The dread of the Human Centipede films is largely attached to the
coming spectacle produced by a reprehensible, but otherwise possible
characters.
THC II follows its opening forced point-of-view shot with an establishing
shot exposing Martin at work in the ticket booth of an underground parking
garage. For Martin, this workspace acts as a place of independence and
freedom from his disturbing domestic situation, and, consequently, is where
Martin gathers the majority of his subjects. The scene is short and
straightforward: Martin watches THC and as the final credits roll, he notices
the security cameras capturing a man and a woman walking towards their
parked car. Chaos ensues when the man realizes he has lost his keys and
Martin assists them with his crowbar for what we assume is the purpose of
helping the couple enter their vehicle. The man and the woman laugh at
Martin’s social awkwardness; this provokes Martin to shoot the man in the

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foot and the women in the leg. Martin then uses his crowbar—a reoccurring
weapon throughout the film—to knock the couple unconscious for the
purpose of more efficiently loading their bodies into the back of his van. The
sequence concludes with Martin back in his office chair, gazing at the now-
paused film credits with a wide-eyed expression inspired by his recent
adrenaline rush. The sequence occurs in full-circle; Martin’s breakdown, or
moment of “clarity,” begins and ends with his admiration of THC. This five-
minute sequence becomes a teaser attraction for the film to come: Not only
does this scene begin and end with Martin secure in his office, the film begins
and ends there as well. This turnaround is used to insist upon the
psychological disturbance of Martin to the point where THC becomes fuel for
his repressed aggression, but also a model for his ambition. This sequence
epitomizes Martin’s belligerence; while it is not the climax of the film, it is the
climax of Martin’s life as a whole.
Again, recalling Shelly’s Frankenstein, Bakhtin writes: “The grotesque body,
as we have often stressed, is a body in the act of becoming. It is never
finished, never completed; it is continually built, created, and builds and
creates another body” (1984: 317). The film starts at the peak of Martin’s
anger when he begins to implement his fantasy of creating his very own
“Human Centipede.” These grotesqueries are visualized, just as Dr. Heiter’s
unrefined projector drawings were in THC, in a scrapbook heavily affixed with
screen-grabs and doodles that fetishize and romanticize his favourite film.
Likewise, Martin’s body is equally put on display as one of grotesque appeal:
like the gluttonous characters found within Gargantua and Pantagruel, Martin
similarly possesses the fat, round belly, gaping mouth and swollen, popping
eyes of the “gay carnival monster” (Bakhtin, 1984: 335). While Rabelais wrote
of jovial, unbiased and utopian gluttony, that of festivals, carnivals, and feasts,
Martin is situated within the grotesque image of the body, similar to the “Devil
Pantagruel,” in his “immeasurable, and infinitely powerful” cosmic terror
(Bakhtin, 1984: 335). Bakhtin writes: “This cosmic terror … is the fear of that
which is materially huge and cannot be overcome by force. Even the most
ancient images of folklore express the struggle against fear, against the
memories of the past, and the apprehension of future calamities, but folk
images relating to this struggle helped develop true human fearlessness” (1984:
335-336). The scrapbook and THC (First Sequence) work as the template for
Martin’s transformation into manhood. Bakhtin continues: “The struggle
against cosmic terror in all its forms and manifestations did not rely on
abstract hope or on the eternal spirit, but on the material principle in man
himself. Man assimilated the cosmic elements: earth, water, air, and fire; he

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discovered them and became vividly conscious of them in his own body. He
became aware of the cosmos within himself” (1984: 335-336). A similar
evocation of the ‘cosmos within ourselves’, THC II, contrary to the original
film, is a look into the psyche of its antagonist, allowing the viewer to take a
closer look at the character of Martin, and the motives behind his actions.
Tom Six, in his broken English, reasserts this concept of psychological
realism: “the film isn’t actually about a ‘Human Centipede’. It’s more, this
time, about the main character. […] If the film would be in colour—with all
the diarrhoea flying around and the blood, it’s so distracting from the story—it
would only be a gore film. And now, it has much more layers, I think”
(Andrews, 2012: n.p.).
While THC focuses on the victims, the centipede concept, and the
resilience of human nature, THC II uses this metanarrative plot structure to
examine more closely the personal life of its aggressor, all the while
interweaving the central features of grotesque imagery and gritty realism.
Martin is not a medical doctor like Dr. Heiter; therefore, his centipede is
excessively constructed, as mentioned earlier, by way of staples and duct tape.
And his malnourished centipede victims require laxative injections to release
their bowels. Unlike the more clinically detached Dr. Heiter, Martin rapes the
tail-end of his centipede with barbed wire, creating a façade of power and a
comparatively more excessive use of bodily “expressions” than offered by
THC. As a result, THC II is even more a cinematic representation of
grotesque realism than its predecessor. According to Bakhtin, the bowels and
the phallus “play the leading role in the grotesque image, and it is precisely for
this reason that they are predominantly subject to positive exaggeration, to
hyperbolization. Next to the bowels and the genital organs is the mouth,
through which enters the world to be swallowed up. And next is the anus. The
main events in the life of the grotesque body, the acts of bodily drama, take
place in this sphere” (1984: 317). While the motives of our villain are more
pronounced and scrutinized in Part II than in Part I, the obscene nature of the
Centipede’s origins, accompanied by the film’s graphic defecation scenes,
intensify the grotesque nature of the film. Relating back to what Linda
Williams discusses about body genres in “excess,” THC II can also be linked
to her theories about the structures of fantasy. She writes: “Laplache and
Pontalis maintain that the most basic fantasies are located at the juncture of an
irrecoverable real event that took place somewhere in the past and a totally
imaginary event that never took place. The ‘event’ whose temporal and spatial
existence can never be fixed is thus ultimately […] that of ‘the origin of the
subject’—an origin which psycho-analysts tell us cannot be separated from the

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discovery of sexual difference” (Williams, 1991: 10). In the opening scene,

Martin fantasizes about his own Human Centipede in way that can be
ironically psychoanalyzed as fuelled by his sexual abuse as a child, and the lack
of compassion he receives as an adult from his mother, his psychiatrist, and
his parking-lot customers.
Martin speaks very little
dialogue throughout the film;
his character is shaped
entirely through David
Meadows’ black and white
handheld cinematography
composed of close-up shots
and Laurence R. Harvey’s
vital expressions, particularly
related to his wild, wide,
almost swollen-looking eyes.
Bakhtin writes that “the nose
and mouth play the most
important part in the
grotesque image of the body.
The grotesque is interested
only in protruding eyes […]
the bulging eyes, a purely
bodily tension” (Bakhtin,
1984: 316-317). Framing and
lighting within the mise-en-
scène of THC II contribute to
the narrative development of
Martin as a deranged
psychopath, and echo
Bakhtin’s interpretation of
grotesque imagery in terms
of transgressive bodily
Figures 4, 5 and 6: Martin (Laurence R. Harvey) watches
exaggeration and hyperbole. The Human Centipede (First Sequence) in The Human
At two minutes and Centipede (Full Sequence)
thirteen seconds, THC II cuts
to a frame-within-a-frame shot of Martin’s computer screen (Figure 4, above).
Off-screen, we hear Martin breathing heavily and coughing amidst the cries,
the crickets, and the birds that make up the credit sounds of THC. This close-

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up shot sets the visual and

stylistic tone for the entire film,
which is shrouded in shadow
and rendered claustrophobic
through smudged vignette
edges made all the more
striking by virtue of
cinematographer David
Meadows’ low-key black-and-
white chiaroscuro lighting.
When the film cuts away to the
left of our antagonist who holds
the original perspective, the
audience holds its gaze on
Martin in the same manner that
Martin gazes upon his screen
(Figure 5, above). This gaze acts
as an examination of the film’s
main character and the close-
up; additionally, the eyeline
match offered in Figure 6
above, allows the audience to
become engulfed in Martin’s
personal space.
The close-up shot is used
to emphasize Martin’s facial
features and bulging, highly
expressive eyes, which often do
the talking for him. Figures 7
through 10 (at right) are taken
from Martin’s “breakdown”
sequence to demonstrate how
the use of shallow-focus close-
up shots frame his vulnerability,
thus again showing Six’s
interest in the psychology of his
antagonist rather than the plight
of Martin’s victims. Close-up Figures 7-10: Martin’s Breakdown in The Human
Centipede (Full Sequence)
shots are commonly rendered

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in shallow focus to “suggest psychological introspection” (Prunes, Raine, and

Litch, 2019: n.p.). Close-ups and extreme close-ups of Martin’s profile,
deviating only slightly between eyeline angles, are framed and bordered in
shadows as a way to focus the attention on his emotional and psychological
state. Gunning discusses close-up shots in relation to his cinema of attractions,
suggesting an added element of spectacle to whatever emotional reality is
meant to be conveyed: “Its principal motive is again pure exhibitionism [… .]
The enlargement is not a device expressive of narrative tension; it is in itself an
attraction and the point of the film [… .] It is the direct address of the
audience, in which an attraction is offered to the spectator by a cinema
showman, that defines this approach to filmmaking” ([1990] 2006: 384). What
I am suggesting is twofold: while such close-ups may, according to Gunning,
work in service of a kind of disorientation or distanciation (dépaysement), they
also work in service of narrative to make a grotesque spectacle of emotion—to
prolong emotional and psychological realities for the audience as a kind of
extended moment. Edgar Allan Poe created entire stories that were extensions
of emotional states, but that can read as strict realism, for all their excesses and
occasional hints of the supernatural.
Likewise, the hard lighting creates a grotesque realism focus on Martin in
that it both renders the scene in chiaroscuro shadows, and highlights the glare
from Martin’s saliva, as well as the sweat, the grease, and the oil on Martin’s
hair and skin. Both the man and woman are similarly framed in tight close-
ups, yet they lack the spotlight that Martin is permitted. Martin remains
illuminated by stark (unflattering) light throughout this entire sequence—in his
office and in the parking garage—while his subjects are merely sculpted by
matte greys and immersive shadows that reflect Six’s intentions of creating a
film about the character of his antagonist; Martin does not share the spotlight
with his guinea pigs. The opening scene—and ultimately, the entire film—are
undoubtedly claustrophobic; we rarely travel outdoors and when we do, we
are cemented within Martin’s kill-van, or caught in a torrential downpour.
THC II primarily takes place either within the parking garage or locked
Martin’s dark, and dingy warehouse, and our sense of claustrophobia are
elevated. On the effect that the black and white film and his claustrophobic
cinematography had on the construction of character, Six notes: “the story
gets a little more dramatic and I think, a little more scary as well, because you,
uh, live more with the characters” (Six, 2011, n.p.). The result may be termed a
kind of spectatorial claustrophobia that forces affective confrontation with the
characters.

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When Martin shoots the couple, Six zooms in on the glistening blood
pouring out of their wounds. Likewise, when Martin knocks the man
unconscious with his crowbar, the close-up shot and low-key lighting
emphasizes the beauty of the wound that Martin created (Figures 11-13, this
page). These close-up shots
are clearly not meant to
emphasize the emotions of
the characters—the light is
used in these shots to show
Martin’s masterpiece of
excess; the victims are art
objects, and the blood is his
paint. Martin is an artist of the
grotesque. The lighting in
THC II prefers Martin as a
subject and works in his
favour, artfully illuminating
his own artful creations, and
echoing Bakhtin’s notion that
“the artistic logic of the
grotesque image ignores the
closed, smooth, and
impenetrable surface of the
body and retains only its
excrescences (sprouts, buds)
and orifices, only that which
leads beyond the body’s
limited space or into the
body’s depths. The outward
and inward features are often
merged into one” (Bakhtin,
1984: 317-318).
Currently, one can find
(the cut version of) THC II Figures 11-13: Martin’s murder spectacle in The Human
on Canadian Netflix under Centipede (Full Sequence)
the “Visually Striking”
category, sharing a space with films like The Revenant (Alejandro González
Iñárritu, 2015), Only God Forgives (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2013), and Under The
Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013), to name a few. The film looks, feels, and sounds

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like a cross between Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977) and Tsukomoto’s Tetsuo: The
Iron Man (1989), films that continually alert the viewer to their aesthetic beauty,
while simultaneously pushing boundaries narratively, and atmospherically.
Roger Ebert’s “complementary: review of THC II acknowledges this aesthetic:
‘I’m giving this movie no stars, because it exists in a universe where the stars
don’t shine. And, the black and white in the sequel really helps create a world
with no sun, with no light at the end of the tunnel—a completely unremitting
bleak, nihilistic horror’” (cited in Andrews, 2012: n.p.).
The sequence concludes with a medium-shot of Martin, viewed from the
left, sitting casually, glancing towards his desktop computer as though his
current actions were merely a daydream. This scene outlines our protagonist as
a simple man driven by carnal, fantastic needs. His abuse as a child, and the
physical and (significantly overstated) emotional abuse that he currently suffers
from his mother, usurp his plausible fantasies. Likewise, the reoccurring angles
and close-up shots of Martin expose his emotional depth. Though Martin is
portrayed as being intellectually challenged and nonsensical, these shots, and
his expressive eyes, tell us otherwise, even against the film’s wider comedic
over-psychologizing. This sequence is perhaps the least gruesome in the film
as a whole; however, it is a vital example of Martin’s progressive spiral into the
terrible realities of his maniacal reverie. The use of shallow-focus close-up
shots and black and white contrast lighting to frame Martin psychologically
and aesthetically, paired with the forbidding humming of binaural pulses, bring
Martin’s inner world to spectacular life in a similar way to that which Six
brings Dr. Heiter’s motivations to life as carnivalesque pageantry. The
motivations and focus may be different, but the grotesque-realist-attractions
aesthetic remains the same.

Conclusion

Bakhtin believes that to participate in carnival and grotesque imagery is to

find entertainment in satirical literature/texts (like the writings of Rabelais, and
Tom Six’s THC films), both of which collapse the binary between high and
low, sacred and profane, human and nonhuman animal. To free oneself from
the restraints imposed by good taste is to experience life (Bakhtin, 1984: 8-10).
Breaking free from behavioural “mimicry” is to “[celebrate] temporary
liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order; [carnival]
marked the suspension of all hierarchical ranks, privileges, norms, and
prohibitions” (Bakhtin, 10).

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Tom Six has been known to publically voice his discontent with censor
boards, and the overzealous “political correctness” of high-class film criticism
as a whole. His entire public figure is built around his embrace of audience
backlash. Tom Six and his Human Centipede trilogy use gore and excessive
corporeal violence to portray and reproduce similar reactions elicited through
horror, comedy, and grotesque imaginings to become a ‘parody’ of oneself,
and of the conventions by which he gained his success, and The Human
Centipede franchise continues to exist outside of the current film universe as a
self-referential and self-conscious pastiche of its own excesses. While Six’s
villains defy the acceptable behaviour of social order, they also break free from
behavioural and cognitive restraints, as do the audiences who react with a
combination of laughter and repulsion to on-screen mouth-to-anus surgeries,
drooling beady-eyed wannabe mad-scientists, and spraying diarrhoeal
excretions. The Human Centipede films’ ‘100% medical accuracy’ suspends
cultural norms and privileges to offer a not-entirely-unserious (and certainly
not uncritical) escape into naughtiness.

Notes
1 This essay excludes discussion of the third film in the trilogy, Human Centipede III (Final
Sequence). While that film maintains Six’s interest in upping the ante in terms of confronting a
culture’s sense of good taste with extremely bad taste (and political incorrectness), it does so
in far less sophisticated ways than its predecessors.
2See David Edelstein, “Now Playing at Your Local Multi-Plex: Torture Porn,” New York, 39,
no. 4 (6 February 2006): 63-64.
3 “Purim Spiel,” or Purim play, is a satirical Yiddish festival or play dramatizing the Hebrew
Book of Esther.
4 See Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English (New York: Norton, 2006).

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