Eros and Thanatos

I pass a movie poster for Sorority Row (left) maybe six or so times a week. Every time I see it, I get a little angrier. What’s with the slasher film formula of getting a person naked/sexual, and then stabbing them with a shard of glass or electrocuting them in a bathtub? Does anyone else see this as a problem? These movies get the viewers aroused, but instead of an orgasm (something that instantly warrants an R rating) we see their blood and guts drop to the ground (something that could easily be PG-13). What messages does this send? That whenever one is sexual, they deserve to die? Also, I wonder if there are negative side effects to having a arousal/murder correlation in one’s mind.

Maybe there is something else going on here. Maybe I should be less of a granola eating vegan hippie. The connection between love and death is old. For example, Cupid, the god of lust and romance, is the offspring of the god of love and the god of war. Eros and Thantos (lust and death, or so, pictured on the right) are often portrayed as a pair, and interestingly with a woman as Eros and a man as Thanatos. There is a French expression literally saying, “the little death,” but referring to an orgasm. Recent studies (like this one) have showed brain activity parallels between dying and orgasming. So who knows, but I still think it’s bad.