Initially, Inza's White Blue Air plays innocuous and mundane with trapeze artist Roberta Lima running through a series of simple exercises. While beautifully shot, there seems little here of innovation or shock value. It's simply a woman and a trapeze, a spectacle quaint enough for a child at a circus. This deceptively calming introduction, however, fades rapidly to physical revulsion when grappling hooks are run through the skin on either side of Lima's knee. As the blood begins to seep through her thin stockings, she's hung upside down, quite like a large fish caught, by these grappingly hooks, and here she floats, bleeding, suspended by skin and supported by her own strength.

This is non-fiction. The athlete was certainly in pain during the process.

Once past the empathic disgust inspired by this, the reality of its historic prevalence comes to mind. Throughout world religions, the importance of self-denial, celibacy, starvation and flagellation cannot be underestimated. There's a quality to man, particularly with regards to religion, which seeks its own diminishment. It's as if in the face of God, or not understanding God, as either one being, a multiplicity of beings or a collective unconscious of sorts, man chooses to belittle himself to compensate for his ignorance. He is naturally a sinner, and these escapades of masochism seek to rid him of his inherent tendencies toward evil.

In a progressive, secular society, the extremes of these religious proclivites mark themselves elsewhere--in the arts, sciences and athletics. The habit of going beyond the limit of human moderation is by no means eliminated by an agnostic or aetheistic world. Rather, its coat is changed. To recognize its continued existence is somewhat a blessing, and so, difficult as it is to watch, White Blue Air is a perfect marker of the primitive within the progress of humanity. It's truimphantly shocking in its glimpse of reality.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

Show/Hide comment form