Gargle the Bloodnectar
In our culture, child sexuality is a taboo subject. While Durbin’s text certainly flirts with this taboo and evokes discomfort – when, for instance, a young girl drops her spoon while at the dinner table and bends to pick it up next to her father’s foot, “…she hesitates near the opening of her dress….a spoon in her cunt.” – the text never seems wanton; instead, I am reminded of the uncomfortable but calculated feelings evoked by Todd Solondz’s films Welcome to the Dollhouse or Happiness. I am reminded of Henry Darger’s paintings of the Vivian Girls. Unsettling, yes. Provocative, certainly. But also absolutely necessary, because without these moments of confrontation our limits go unexplored and perhaps more importantly unexamined. Just as Critchley suggests, “The disgust that we feel might not simply repulse or repel us. It might also wake us up.”
Christopher Higgs revisits Kate Durbin‘s The Ravenous Audience.