Control your senses!

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (German; 1985)
Author: Patrick Süskind

https://www.amazon.com/Perfume-Story-
Murderer-Patrick-Suskind/dp/0375725849

Thank you to MC for introducing this excellent book. It is an engaging read that baffles me how one can write a whole book just based on all descriptions about our olfactory sense and fragrances. It is one book that I think he managed to use all the words in the English language to describe smells.

The olfactory sense is said to be one of humans' most primitive sensations. It is said that even unicellular organisms had this in their most rudimentary form. Unlike other sensory organs, smell is not carried by nerves, but has a direct connection to the brain. 

Perhaps because of its ancient origin in the evolutionary ladder and its close proximity to the brain, it has a profound effect on the human brain. It is not surprising that fragrances can arouse the reptilian part of our suppressed brain, to unleash the beast within. 

Entering many Hindu homes, one would encounter a painting or a metal tooling sculpture of a golden chariot. The chariot would be manned by five horses. The reins would be held firmly by the charioteer against the five prancing horses. It could be a representation of a scene from the Bhagavad Gita.

It could very well be a reference to Plato's Chariot Allegory, where the charioteer (man) needs to balance the power between the two horses (a noble and an unruly one) to lead the charioteer (body) to the path of the Truth. Freud, in his writings, could have referenced it to the eternal struggle between the id (instincts), the ego (reason) and the superego (guiding force).

In the Gita version, the five horses denote our five senses. The rein, with the wisdom (Buddhi) of the charioteer (mind), controls the senses (horses), so that the chariot (body) is not led astray. 

The book, set in pre-Bastille France, follows the tragic life of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. Left to grow up in an orphanage after his mother was guillotined for killing Grenouille's three other siblings, he is unloved. Grenouille somehow escaped his mother's murder attempt, as he likes to think that he is invincible. This thought is reinforced when he recovers from the pox.

After the orphanage, he is sent to work as a tanner. Grenouille has an inborn ability to distinguish a vast range of scents. Paradoxically, he does not have his own individual smell. A diligent and hardy worker, he yearns to be a perfumer.

After capturing the scent of a virginal pubescent girl, he becomes somewhat fixated on the smell. Wanting to keep all the scent to himself, he strangles her and kills her. 

The author further narrates about his self-exile, the discovery, his experimentation with perfumes, his fixation with the extraction of pubescent girls and his obsessive interest in one particular lass, Laure, the fairest of them all. 

A nice book which brings vivid descriptions of various smells and piques into the business of perfumery as it was carried out before.

'The Perfume' is often stated as Kurt Cobain's favourite book. It is even believed to have significantly influenced his song "Scentless Apprentice" from Nirvana's album In Utero. The cautionary lesson from Cobain's life experience is that one should not be tempted away from one's duties by the allure of sensory pleasure. The final outcome is usually undesirable. The only silver lining may be that Cobain departed in a state of bliss.

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Poverty stinks!

Parasite (Korean; 2019)
Direction and Story: Bong Joon-ho

Yet another genre-bending offering from the land of kimchi. It is a thriller, a comedy, a dark one and a gory one too, for there is a blood bath at the end of the movie. But above all, it is a social satire.

The sensation of smell is often described as one of Man's most primitive senses. Olfactory perception is quite impressive. Its nerve endings are in such close proximity with the brain and are one of a few neurons in our brain, which is capable of regeneration. Even though it is assumed that our olfactory bulb, where sensory input converges, is underdeveloped, as our primitive survival skills dwindled when we became gatherers and farmers, we are still said to be able to identify up to a trillion different odours. The olfactory bulb is also one of the areas of the brain where neuroplasticity has been shown. At least in rodents, it has been illustrated to regenerate over the lifespan. Our olfactory sensation is under-credited than what it is capable of. Our smelling 'prowess' is shown in many professions - wine tasting and culinary industry being two common examples.

Our sense of smell has a profound and prolonged effect on our psyche. Just ask ourselves how much smells of our childhood, when life was so much more straightforward, gives us a fuzzy feeling inside. Simple things like the bodily odour of our mother or of freshly baked cookies give us indescribable warmth or reassurance that everything would be all right. 

On the other hand, there are certain smells that we just want to be released from our systems. A person wishing to uproot himself from his previous working-class background would be all too familiar with the effects of toiling long hours under the heat of the sun. He would associate fermenting strong odour with the first sign of poverty. Even how much he tries to mask with perfumes and aesthetics, to the outsider, it is apparent. And he may want to run away from his chequered past. 

It is also interesting that our mind somehow can 'cancel off' some smells that we are entrenched in. Like stupidity, body odour is for others to realise. My mother once visited her friend. In her small home backyard, she reared a few cows. My mother could hardly endure the one hour that she spent there. Everywhere she smelled cow dung even though the house was far from the cowshed was quite a distance away. She was quite perplexed that her host was entirely oblivious to the stench and going about their daily activities, like eating, doing school activities and such without a care about the lingering 'malodour' (at least in my mother's perception).

Like Bong Joon-ho's other film, Snowpiercer (2013), this film is about the clash of the classes. It tells the tale of the Kims, a poverty-stricken but happy, tight-knit family of Papa, Mama and two young adult children, a boy and a girl. They scrape through life, doing odd jobs and living in a filthy basement apartment. A job offer comes when the son is offered to replace his friend as a tutor to the affluent Park's daughter. Slowly one by one, the previous servant and driver of the Parks are terminated with the Kims devious plans. Pretty soon, Papa Kim, Mama Kim and Sister Kim join the Park household as employees in various capacities.

The drama unfolds when the previous servant comes back with a vengeance as she lost more than a job when she was pink-slipped. Even the elements of Nature seem to thwart the Kims' desires to unshackle themselves from poverty.

A thought-provoking flick. 4.5/5.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.