Weekend and Cannibal Holocaust: Art, Ballyhoo and Remediation

Abstract

This chapter starts with an assessment of Jean-Luc Godard’s auteur status, before focusing on Weekend, a film frequently overlooked in discussions of extreme art cinema. By drawing attention to the film’s depiction of cannibalism, rape and real animal slaughter, the chapter highlights the similarities it shares with other extreme texts, repositioning it within the boarder extreme art film tradition outlined throughout the book. To find out whether this reputation impacts the commercial identity of the film, the chapter moves on to explore the paratextuality of the film. Ultimately concluding that the film’s distributors (Artificial Eye) offer a hybridised object that flirts with extremity, the chapter then examines Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust. Noting similarities between the films, the chapter provides a detailed analysis of Shameless Screen Entertainment collectors’ edition DVD. Showing how the paratextual material re-constructs the film’s history, the analysis argues that Cannibal Holocaust’s remediation moves it away from an exploitation film ghetto by employing traditionally highbrow marketing techniques. By complicating existing ideas regarding the commercial function of extremity, the chapter illustrates the extent to which home entertainment objects obscure long-standing taste distinctions.