#institute benjamenta

[chiennefantome]

institute benjamenta (or this dream people call human life), 1995. brothers quay.

[mad-prophet-of-the-airwaves]

Institute Benjamenta (1995, Stephen Quay/Timothy Quay/Weiser Quay, Germany)

[dxcstrange-stuff]

"This Dream People Call Human Life"

[bobbole]

Playing with dolls: the Corinthian and "this dream people call Human Life" - part I

Written for The Sandman Book Club

Since at The Sandman Book Club we are re-reading The Doll's House, and since the first chapter of this story marks the entry of the Corinthian, I would like to dwell on some of the distinctive traits of this character, how he is the embodiment of one of the great symbols of American and Western pop mythology (the serial killer) and how the netflix adaptation, while excellent, has completely deprived him of precisely those elements that made him so distinctive, while enhancing other important aspects.

Murderer vs. Killer, or when killing is a "work of art"

In The Dreaming, the spin-off series immediately following the canonical Sandman, there is a panel that I think is emblematic in defining what the Corinthian is, even before his being nightmare, black mirror, etc

Judging Cain like he's on Dancing with the Stars

There is a passage in which the Corinthian states that Cain is definitely a murderer, but not a very good killer. This because the word murderer here is linked to a primordial concept of homicide. Yes, Cain is the first murderer, but his act is something instinctual, part of his nature. Cain kills because he cannot do anything else and murder for him is an inevitable act, demonstrating his being part of a story from whose narrative he does not escape.

For the Corinthian, on the other hand, killing theoretically is not in his nature: he is after all a nightmare, which must terrify, unsettle, reflect the deepest fears and secrets of the human subconscious. A means to an end, not the end itself. For the Corinthian, killing is a deliberate act by which he tries to carve out a space of his own within a predetermined story.

The serial killer is a planner: in the Corinthian mind, an artist too. Even the fact that he appears on the scene not already in his nightmare function but primarily in that of being ready to kill a young man leaves no doubt about it: the Corinthian, in the way he perceives himself, is first and foremost a serial killer/artist.

This is not Vogue: comics vs show

In the netflix Sandman, episode one, the Corinthian has sensed that Dream is free. He wipes off the blood from his eyes and stands up, sensually stroking the head of his...victim? It would be better to say a model without eyes. Death here is not horror: there is something glamorous about this scene that irritates me deeply, not least because we are watching it from a spectator's pov, comfortable in our chairs. We are in a hotel room but the space is open, and the screen of the devices from which we are watching the episode gives us

1) an escape route

2) a way to dilute the horror of the scene (there is always hope if there is an escape route)

This Corinthian is elegant and sensual. He could disturbs us, if he wants, but definitely he's not scary.

Let's compare the netflix scene with the comic. First, fundamental change: the reader's pov, which coincides exactly with that of the Corinthian. We do not see the Corinthian in the panels, and we will not see him until after a long time. We look at the scene through his eyes, we read the words through his voice. From this perspective, it's as if behind the glasses, together with him, we were there, an active part of this crime.

Paradoxically, this scene should be less scary than the one in the TV show. There is no blood and the boy still has his eyes. But we perceive his terror, we see him tied up and helpless like a doll. We see his pimply face making ugly grimaces of fear (in the netflix episode the victim's face is perfect). There is no hope for this boy and while he begs for mercy in vain we brandish, together with the Corinthian, the knife that will kill him. There is no sensuality, there is no seduction, there is no sex here (better, sex and death are the same thing but I will return to the relationship between death and sexuality in the second part of this little essay). We are in a room with no escape, the scene in front of us is dirty, not at all glamorous, in which we readers are actively participating. This Corinthian is fucking scary.

The waking world: a big doll's house to play in

This title takes on a different meaning depending on the various characters involved in this Sandman story. From my point of view, I believe that the characters who most of all are linked to the concept of a doll's house are Unity and the Corinthian.

Unity appears near an old doll house, and her clothes are also similar to those of an old doll

Unity was literally a doll for most of her life: her condition was caused by an external event and external people decided about her life, including her motherhood.

The Corinthian doll and the surrealist doll of Hans Bellmer: both obscene and disturbing toys

The Corinthian, on the other hand, is a sort of doll maker and the dolls are the human beings he kills and whose physiognomy he transforms with his knife.

This last thing is perhaps one of the elements that most differentiates the netflix Corinthian from the one in the comic. The Boyd Corinthian is almost a romantic character, a bohémien eager to savor human life in every sense, moved by contrasts and ambiguities that make him decidedly more similar to the Second Corinthian of the comic than to the First. He looks at humanity with a curiosity that is sometimes almost paternalistic: ruthless, but not cruel. He embodies a type of socially well-integrated serial killer, the "unsuspected type", who knows how to contain his impulses when necessary. Most important, with him sex is not always synonymous with death.

The Corinthian of comics, on contrary, never escapes this binomial: in him, sex and death are always intrinsically linked because they are the same thing. He is always cruel and brutal, seeing humans as meat to be cut. Humanity is nothing but fresh clay in his artist's hands: shaped dolls to play with in his new dark stories.

[aboutmercy]

tagged by @awildwickedslip for my top 9 favorite films watched in 2024. thank you for the tag hailey! <3

tagging: @msvhs @yvain @gimmeshelter @virginiadre @divorceblogger @gabriestat @ytumamatambien2001 and whoever else that wants to do it, please consider yourselves tagged 🤍

didn’t consider this year to be a great one in good/excellent films watched but i did struggle to choose between the 21 films i’ve rated highly this year, special shout out to ash is purest white (2018) and august in the water (1995) which i wanted to include but didn’t fit the accidental color theme i have going on </3

[toiich]

Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (1995), dir. Brothers Quay

[hayaomiyazaki]

I couldn't hurt you. It's so nice to talk with you, like we are almost related. The way you speak, your gestures, your mouth, everything. It's delightful to behave in that rather weak sort of way with you. Just think: me, your master, confessing to you, my pathetic little worm whom I could utterly crush if I chose to.

a film from each year of my life: Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life — 1995 dir. the Brothers Quay

[las-microfisuras]

11]

LOS ÁNGELES no son dorados, brillantes ni luminosos; son grises y caminan entre la multitud que arrastra los pies; entre la muchedumbre, sin color y sin rostro, de los domingos, hacia el fútbol, hacia el concierto mañanero, entre la pálida muchedumbre de los días de fiesta vacíos del mundo moderno. Ángeles grises de la pobreza y el anonimato que nadie ve, pero que muchos han sentido: un roce leve, una ligereza, un estremecimiento en el mar de la multitud anónima...El mundo de hoy no permite otros...Los de fuego y luz no vienen hoy. Sólo los otros, los ángeles de polvo y ceniza.

María Zambrano, Poemas. Edición de Javier Sánchez Menéndez. La Isla de Siltolá

Fotograma de Institute Benjamenta, o This Dream People Call Human Life,1996, primer largometraje de Brothers Quay. Se basa en "Jakob von Gunten", novela escrita por Robert Walser.

[hawkelf]

tag people you want to get to know better

I was tagged by @squishmelo

last song: Hijinx - Heart

currently watching: Are You The One, Monster High (2022 series), Critical Role Campaign 3, Dimension 20: Burrow's End, Taskmaster

three ships: non-exclusive Athos/Aramis/Porthos (Musketeers), Silver/Flint/Madi (Black Sails), Wynonna/Doc/Dolls (Wynonna Earp)

favorite color: green or yellow, I have blue fatigue

currently consuming: water bottle (just finished loaded fries + milk)

first ship: I was not an organic shipper, much. I didn't ship for YEARS after joining fandom; ace as the day is long bay-bee. I shipped for the bit. Alternative answer: I had a lot of Theories and Confusion about the A-Team as a kid, but we don't need to get into that---

place of birth: breadbasket of America

current location: bedtime

relationship status: QPR and too ill/busy to socialize much

last movie: Institute Benjamenta

currently working on: uh crap getting rid of a migraine that's over a month old? trying to re-graduate physical therapy? Fall of a Kingdom, by Hilari Bell

Thank you for the tag! I'm shocked I noticed it and responded promptly! Anyone who wants to do this, do it, you're tagged, blame me, go.

[wellconstructedsentences]

One learns very little here, there is a shortage of teachers, and none of us boys of the Benjamenta Institute will come to anything, that is to say, we shall all be something very small and subordinate later in life.

Jakob von Gunten by Robert Walser

[pyongyangdreams]

Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (1995)

[kino-zoo]

Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream That One Calls Human Life (1995)

[bobbole]

My dear @windsweptinred this little fairytale is my festive present for you 😸

Thank you for your fabulous gifts and for being the most amazing partner in crime/esteemed and precious corinthiel colleague ever!!!

Hope you will like it 😊

🤍💚🤍💚🤍💚🤍💚🤍💚🤍💚🤍💚🤍💚🤍💚🤍💚🤍💚🤍💚🤍💚🤍💚🤍💚🤍💚🤍💚

A Dream people call Human Life

[funeral]

Institute Benjamenta, Or This Dream People Call Human Life (Stephen Quay, 1995)

[sunshinepoltergeist]

my favourite watches of 2020 (random order)

Kill Bill: Vol. I (2003) dir. Quentin Tarantino

The Handmaiden (2016) dir. Park Chanwook

Battle Royale (2000) dir. Kinji Fukasaku

Parasite (2019) dir. Bong Joonho

Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (1995) dir. the Brothers’ Quay

I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020) dir. Charlie Kaufman

Girl, Interrupted (1999) dir. James Mangold

The Fundamentals of Caring (2016) dir. Rob Burnett

Django Unchained (2012) die. Quentin Tarantino

The Lighthouse (2019) dir. Robert Eggers

list on twitter + list on letterboxd

[boo-cool-robot]

Red White and Royal Blue (Matthew López): Adaptation of an insipidly liberal gay romance novel about an English Prince and the American president's son. Okay, I expected bad politics and mediocre acting and filmmaking craft. I watched season 1 of Teen Wolf so I thought I could handle whatever, but this is so much worse in ways that were not at all expected. Every moment feels entirely disconnected from the next. The writing has not heard of the idea of building tension or having character arcs. It's edited like they had to stop filming early and didn't get enough footage. The racial politics are the shallowest nonsense you could imagine. (The prince takes the American, who has talked about feeling like a racial outsider (even though his parents are a senator and a president) to. THE BRITISH MUSEUM in a big romantic gesture.) There are extremely famous actors doing horrible jobs. I thought people were exaggerating when they said bad movies felt like eternities, but this movie legitimately felt like it took 5 hours to watch and I was winded at the end. I frothed at the mouth at the In the Mood for Love namedrop. There is misinformation about the HPV vaccine being only for bottoms.

The Third Man (Carol Reed): An American comes to post-war Vienna to work with his friend, only to investigate his suspicious death. Brenna Wellnoe picked this one as an introduction to the noir genre for me, and it's a good one! Super interesting to watch an older film and see where genre conventions develop from, and there's surprising depth in its portrayal of how global geopolitics shade the characters' lives.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off (Abel Góngora): The perfect sick day treat. Funny how it tries to rectify the mistakes of the original. Fun, not too deep, and I appreciated the upped gayness.

Institute Benjamenta (The Brothers Quay): A young man is drawn into the surrealist machinery of a school that trains servants and the suffocating relationship between the siblings who run it. This one had my brain working overtime to hold all the visual symbols and assemble them into meaning, in an enjoyable way. I can say that this is the only homoerotic phrenology scene I've seen.

Gilda (Charles Vidor): Conman becomes the miserable third between a controlling casino owner and his sharp wife/conman's ex. This was a Brenna noir pick meant to demonstrate an early femme fatale. This film seems to generally be described as a fun noir where Rita Hayworth puts on a good performance, but the reality had me the most Tails Gets Trolled I've been about any film this year. If you watch the first hour and 20 minutes it’s the most incredible rancid bisexual all-directions mean love triangle. If you watch everything but the last 10 minutes it’s a harrowing but effective tale about the horror of heterosexual marriage. If you watch the whole movie you’re gonna get so mad-

Carol (Todd Haynes): Harold, etc. 60s period piece about an aspiring photographer falling for an older woman in a disintegrating marriage. The actors are very compelling, especially Cate Blanchett, but this one fell short for me after experiencing Velvet Goldmine. It's just a well-made film with nice shots, and I wanted weirder.

Chased by Dinosaurs - Sea Monsters (Jasper James): Faux-documentary about a Steve Irwin-esque guy time traveling to hang out with ancient sea creatures. (Me: Chased by dinosaurs? I didn't even know he was transgender! Brenna: Ha. Ha. Ha.) It was very funny to watch with Brenna and the ending did make me shriek.

Legend of Korra [Halfway through S4]: This one is also too long to explain if you don't already know it. Every time any politics come up I get incredibly angry. WHY DO THEY HAVE A PRESIDENT NOW, UNEXPLAINED??

Everything I Watched This Year

I have watched the most movies this year of my life, which is still so few that I can fit them all into one tumblr post, so here they are in approximately chronological order (along with TV shows). I almost exclusively watch visual media with other people, and they're often the ones picking. Favorites get an asterisk (*), and this does not include rewatches.

*Fallen Angels (Wong Kar-Wai): Five loosely connected lonely people chase imagined versions of each other around the Hong Kong nightscape. I didn't go into a plotless arthouse film expecting it to be extremely funny, but it is. He Zhiwu (my new tumblr icon!) deserves to be up there among the deranged autistic blorbos of all time.

What We Do in the Shadows (Showrun by Paul Simms and Stefani Robinson) [First half of S4]: If you're on tumblr you probably know the premise already. I was disappointed that after S3, which felt like a build to huge shifts in the characters and status quo, S4 felt like a walkback. Don't remember much else about it other than crying laughing at the sequence where they try to get baby Colin Robinson into private school.

Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee): Everyone knows what this movie is already. It's well-made and solid, but it wasn't anything that exciting for me. I expected it to be more striking. Love the 70s home production design in that one scene though, and that kiss truly is good.

*Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes): A reporter tracks down the truth of a rock star gay affair that sparked his own queer coming of age. Dreamy, gorgeous, and I could not describe the plot scene to scene if you paid me. Just a really lovely film to experience for me, someone who had latent and unnamed transgay feelings as a teenager about the concept of "emo boys kissing."

Phantom of the Paradise (Brian De Palma): Phantom of the Opera-inspired drama about a songwriter getting revenge on the predatory producer that ruined his life. Total delight of a campy melodrama.

Kamikaze Girls (Tetsuya Nakashima): A delinquent and fashion-obsessed scam artist strike up a lesbian-tinged unlikely friendship. This movie is bananas. Way more stylistically experimental than I'd expected--there's a sequence of the protagonist's birth, people just float offscreen sometimes, the townspeople constantly turn to the camera and advertise for the megamart they buy all their clothes from, etc. A really really surprisingly fun watch.

*Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury (Hiroshi Kobayashi and Ryō Andō) [First 6 episodes only]: Optimistic young pilot of a war machine that she may have an illegal psionic connection with goes to space high school and is promptly drawn into political plotting via accidentally getting gay engaged to a corporate heiress. Highly enjoyed the parts of it I saw - great action sequences, fun character drama, and just enough political substance. Not as weird as Utena, which it's inspired by, but can be brutal where necessary. I should watch more!

*In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai): Two Shanghainese emigrants in Hong Kong discover their spouses are cheating and embark on a tragic affair of their own. God, this movie deserves every bit of praise it gets. I gasped out loud multiple times at the gorgeousness of shot compositions. Top notch acting, gorgeous colors. This tends to be a movie pitched as being about a repressed love affair, but it's also a movie about the positionality about being middle class colonial subjects and the relationships they have with the world. This gave me so much to chew on after I watched it.

Happy Together (Wong Kar-Wai): Two Hong Kong expats living in Argentina have a toxic gay relationship trapped in a tiny apartment. This one felt very opaque to me, and it is allegedly an allegory for Hong Kong being returned to Chinese rule after British colonialism, which I absolutely do not have enough background to really get. Wong is a great director though, and I constantly think about the sequence of the main character seeing the abusive ex walk into the club, beat while he finishes his drink, and then he breaks his bottle off and goes in to screams.

Bound (The Wachowskis): A lesbian handyman falls for a woman married to an abusive mobster that they plot to rob. The first 45 minutes were very enjoyable as a lesbian heist film. Unfortunately, once the gunshots started the torture scenes became so stressful for me to watch that I sweated through my shirt. (I also had Covid).