Recasting Harry Callahan: Focalization, Epistemology and Discourse in Dirty Harry (1971), Zodiac (2007) and Sudden Impact (1983)

This piece was originally delivered in an abridged version at the 2010 Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image conference in Roanoke, Virginia, under the title "Recasting Harry Callahan: Focalization, Epistemology and Discourse in Dirty Harry, Sudden Impact and Zodiac."  Please be advised that this essay contains multiple spoilers.   

Produced in the aftermath of two landmark rulings of the United States Supreme Court under chief justice Earl Warren, 1964’s Escobedo vs. the State of Illinois where in essence the court decided that the sixth amendment right to legal counsel applied not only to post-indictment questioning but to pre-indictment interrogations, and 1966’s Miranda vs. the State of Arizona, which held that statements procured through interrogation were valid only so long as it could be demonstrated that the suspect had willingly waved his or her fifth amendment right not to incriminate his or herself, Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry (1971) fuses the concern raised in the dissents to both rulings that the impediments that each placed on criminal investigations would lead to greater rates of acquittal, with a fictionalization of one the United States’ most notorious series of unsolved murders, those of the so-called “Zodiac” killer.

Siegel’s film opens with the killer’s point of view, aided by a high-powered scope as he follows his bathing, soon-to-be victim. With the film’s incipient killing complete, Siegel then introduces us to detective Harry Callahan, played here as in the film’s four sequels by Clint Eastwood. Callahan rapidly establishes his investigative acumen, as he locates the source of the assassination that the introductory passage carefully mapped for its viewer. Callahan determines the shooter’s position almost immediately, which leads to his discovery of both evidence in the form of a shell-casing, and also the killer’s letter. In short, the viewer is made to feel confident from the outset that Callahan will be able to locate the still unnamed assassin. This crime will not remain unsolved, unlike its real-life model.

With the aforesaid letter signed by the Zodiac’s astrological equivalent “Scorpio,” Siegel makes explicit his San Francisco-based film’s connection to the recent Bay Area murders. Siegel, however, unlike as in the real-life, unsolved ‘Zodiac’ murders does not keep his killer’s identity hidden for long, but rather shows Scorpio’s face on-screen twenty minutes into the film’s 102-minute duration, with the police department’s want ad response to his demands in his possession and conspicuously circled in order to make his identity clear. Hence, Dirty Harry will not be about discovering the killer’s identity, but rather will focus on his apprehension by the San Francisco P.D., and of course, by 'Dirty Harry' specifically.

As the sequence in which Scorpio is identified proceeds, Siegel adopts a strategy of parallel editing, with the film alternating between Scorpio on another rooftop, following the film's cold open, preparing for a second assassination, and the police department attempting to locate the shooter by helicopter. Thus, Dirty Harry diverges from said set-piece, where the film adheres solely to Scorpio’s point-of-view (which of course follows from the fact that murder is unexpected). In the subsequent passage, with the police department now cognizant of Scorpio and his written threat, the question becomes whether the police will be able to spot and stop Scorpio before he claims another victim. As such, Siegel’s film signals the influence of D. W. Griffith, whose cross-cutting strategies in The Drive for Life (1909), The Lonely Villa (1909) and most prominently and notoriously The Birth of a Nation (1915), provide a pattern of saving victims from bodily harm and from crimes that are in the process of being perpetrated. As in these Griffith films, the victim is saved; Siegel extends this pattern to a second rooftop assassination attempt, with Harry and his partner on the lookout for Scorpio whom they suspect may be planning to kill a Catholic priest as per his written threat. Again, Scorpio’s crime is thwarted, though once again he escapes from the rooftop. Thereafter, Scorpio abducts the teenage Ann Marie Deacon. This successful crime, as is the case with a second murder that Scorpio commits immediately after his first thwarted assassination, significantly does not appear on screen.

Callahan, however, receives a tip as to the suspect’s whereabouts, prompting the officer and a police associate to set off in search of Scorpio - with Deacon's life presumably hanging in the balance. In this way, the narrative enacts a very Griffithian ‘last minute rescue’ scenario, which we as spectators understand will not wait for Callahan to secure a search warrant from the district attorney; time is indeed his most pressing obstacle. With Callahan thus scaling a locked fence, Siegel cuts to Scorpio as he watches his police adversary arriving. Consequently, Siegel not only diminishes our hope that Callahan will be able to capture Scorpio, but indeed we become worried for the officer’s safety as it is Scorpio who possesses knowledge of both of their locations. With Callahan arriving in Scorpio’s empty living quarters, however, Siegel utilizes off-camera sound to indicate that the latter is fleeing. With this, Callahan sets off in pursuit of the suspect, with our desire for the murderer’s apprehension and Ann Marie Deacon’s safe return, restored. Callahan thus chases Scorpio through a shadowy football stadium, eventually tracking him onto the turf, at which point he signals to his associate to flood the field with light.

Frozen in the spotlighting, the visibly limping Scorpio raises his hands over his heads. Harry, however, rather than continuing to chase the serial killer, who notably beat the officer severely during a prior, pre-arranged ransom-drop, exacts a bit of extra-legal revenge by discharging his firearm at the immobile Scorpio. Of course, we as viewers can find a degree of satisfaction in this personal act and understood fully that if Harry wanted to kill Scorpio, he certainly would have done so. Still, Callahan’s shot, and his subsequent coercive, on-field interrogation where he extracts Ann Marie Deacon’s location – she is dead as the viewer will see subsequently – lead to Scorpio’s release on the grounds dictated by the two Warren court rulings. While at this juncture we can certainly go along with Callahan’s assertions that Ann Marie Deacon’s rights supersede those of Scorpio’s, and that he was right to search for the abducted girl even if this meant acting beyond the law – we can agree with his sentiment that the law is "crazy" – his personal score-settling is less easy to excuse, even if we as viewers can find pleasure and even justice in his actions. Dirty Harry does introduce at least a degree of ambiguity.

From Callahan’s employment as a bagman in his first attempt to rescue the missing Deacon, Scorpio manipulates the San Francisco P.D. Harry is offered the same job after the latter hijacks a school bus, a detail that Siegel and his screenwriters take from the real-life Zodiac case, though in reality the Zodiac’s threat proved hollow. In this second instance, Harry declines the request of City Hall, asking when they are going to stop messing around with the killer. The mayor objects that he has given his word and that Scorpio will not be “molested.” Thereafter, Harry proceeds to the drop-off spot, leading to a concluding showdown that visually echoes the Western showdowns that he instantiated in the works of Sergio Leone. With the police department failing in not only protecting its citizenry, but in pursuing justice for the Scorpio’s victims, Callahan faces off with Scorpio as the latter holds a boy hostage. Again demonstrating his extraordinary aptitude with his Magnum revolver, Harry shoots Scorpio allowing the boy to escape. As he looms over Scorpio, Harry waits for his adversary to draw first in order to justify his shooting. Seeing how comprehensively he has manipulated the police force, we too want him to make this mistake, to test Harry, and for Callahan to achieve both justice for the dead and to take Scorpio off the streets permanently. We get the ending we desire, after which Harry tosses his badge in the adjacent pond upon finishing the job. With this concluding gesture, he shows his contempt for a criminal justice system that has become ineffective in achieving its primary purposes: to secure justice and keep its citizenry safe.

David Fincher’s true crime adaptation of Robert Graysmith’s treatment of the ‘Zodiac’ killings, simply entitled Zodiac (2007), declines to arrive at both the same vigilante solution as Siegel's film and also its cynical conclusion. Rather, Fincher’s film focuses on the legally undecided question of the serial killer’s identity, mooring itself to the San Francisco P.D.’s investigation of the Bay Area killings, and to cartoonist and author Graysmith’s extra-curricular investigation of the cold case. In Fincher’s hands, the ‘Zodiac’ killings speak less than they do for Siegel to a criminal’s ability to manipulate the media, politicians and law enforcement and to the impediments placed on officers to secure evidence and ultimately achieve justice following Escobedo and Miranda. Justice, in fact, proves a secondary concern at best for Fincher, who instead is more interested in deciphering the mystery of the Zodiac’s identity, and in the epistemological question of whether it is possible to know the Zodiac by sight, whether by looking into his eyes he reveals himself to be a serial killer. Zodiac is about knowing the killer’s identity; it is not about saving the public from a monster, attaining justice for those whom he has victimized or critiquing a criminal justice that has made both more difficult, which is to say those concerns that were most current during the Zodiac’s activity in the late 1960s and early 1970s – the time of Dirty Harry’s release.

In facilitating the film’s primary epistemological questions, Fincher assiduously masks the killer’s identity during three sets of murders, as well as a fourth abduction and possible attempted murder. In three of the four, the Zodiac strikes at night with Fincher and director of photography Harris Savades’s low-key cinematography concealing the killer’s identity in the enveloping shadows of their set-ups. In the fourth, the killer’s one daylight homicide, the Zodiac himself conceals his identity, wearing a suit of his own design. In each instance, the Zodiac left witnesses, whether it was the two men and the younger mother that he failed to kill, or the two young boys and two police officers who saw the Zodiac fleeing from the taxi cab killing. From their testimony, Fincher reconstructs probable scenarios for each of the murders. In this sense, all of the violent crimes perpetrated or attempted on screen are focalized through the evidence provided by the witnesses, with shots depicting the victim’s point-of-views included in the set ups. Indeed, it is for this reason that a fourth, Christmas 1968 double homicide is excluded: it is one crime that, though incontrovertibly the Zodiac’s, no witnesses were left. Even so, Fincher does conceal at least one piece of evidence, the 1991 identification of primary suspect Arthur Leigh Allen by the surviving victim of the July 4th, 1969 homicide. In this instance, Fincher does not stick solely to what we know – or think we know – about the crimes, but instead preserves the film’s primary dramatic question: who is the Zodiac? Fincher delays his film’s answer.

In so doing, Dirty Harry’s early, driving concern of capturing the Bay Area serial killer is deferred in Zodiac, inasmuch as his identity not only remains un-established, but as he remains (unlike Scorpio) unrecognizable, even to the film’s viewers. The viewer is not placed in a privileged position here, where we are able to root for the police to discover what we already know – and thus to capture the killer on the loose, which thanks to Dirty Harry’s regulation of information becomes our primary desire as viewers. Rather, until at least the film’s introduction of a substantial amount of circumstantial evidence that implicates Arthur Leigh Allen, we wait for the killer’s identity to be confirmed. Indeed, we know only as much as the Zodiac case’s investigating officers Dave Toschi, the real-life inspiration for Harry Callahan, as well as for Steve McQueen’s 'Bullit,' and his partner, William Armstrong, know. Zodiac restricts its narrative to the known evidence of the case. And even after Fincher establishes the likelihood of Allen’s guilt - though there is not enough hard evidence for an indictment - a second suspect, Rick Marshall, is introduced into the narrative. While Marshall does not remain the focus of narrative interest for long, his inclusion, so late in the narrative, emphasizes the continued unsolved nature of the Zodiac murders.

By this point, the film’s narrative has shifted from its focus on the Police Department’s investigation, to that of cartoonist Robert Graysmith, who first comes into contact with the case while working at the San Francisco Chronicle. As with Toschi years earlier, Graysmith ultimately concludes that Allen is the likely killer, thanks in part to additional pieces of circumstantial evidence that he has since uncovered, independent of the police investigation. With a reasonable degree of certainty that Allen is the Zodiac, Graysmith pursues his own desire for resolution, where he first discusses his theory with Toschi, and then tracks down Allen, into whose eyes he stares. As he has stated earlier in the film: “I need to know who he is. I need to stand there, look him in the eye.”

In Zodiac, criticisms of Dirty Harry and the police work in Siegel’s original are reserved for the 1971 picture’s real-life inspiration, Dave Toschi, who again cautions Graysmith with an “easy Dirty Harry” after his insistence that he cannot “prove” the cartoonist’s theory. In an earlier meeting again with Graysmith, and this time outside a departmental screening of the Siegel film, Toschi responds to another officer’s jab that “that Harry Callahan did a hell of a job with your case” with “no need for due process, right?” spoken almost beneath his breath. That the screening and Toschi’s response come immediately after the news that the District Attorney lacks the evidence to prosecute Allen only reinforces Toschi’s portrayal as an anti-Dirty Harry. In Fincher’s rehabilitation of the real-life officer, Toschi objects first to the suspect’s denial of rights, to which we will remember Callahan responds that he’s “all broken up,” and then to Graysmith’s claim that one can know the truth without proof, meaning without legally admissible, non-circumstantial evidence, which again led to Harry’s response that the “law’s crazy.” For Toschi, the law is paramount, as accordingly are legal rights; as such, Fincher’s film insists on the equal protection that the constitution gives to all citizens, even to those accused of crimes. Whereas for Callahan, it is natural rights, namely that of life, which is of foremost importance, and which supervene when the criminal justice system fails to adequately preserve the aforesaid right. He seeks a primordial form of justice that restores equality between the killer and the killed, though again only after he is prompted by Scorpio’s draw.

With justice reserved for the legal system in Zodiac, the narrative’s lack of non-circumstantial evidence dictates that justice does not receive serious consideration in Fincher’s film. By comparison, justice is emphasized in the director’s previous serial-killer classic Se7en (1995), albeit in the degraded form of a mass murderer’s impetus for choosing his seven victims. That is, Kevin Spacey selects his victims on the basis of their transgressions of the seven deadly sins, thereby assuming a divine authority in enacting his crimes. While there is in other words a perversity in Spacey’s enactment of justice certainly, Se7en does not emphasize the necessity that he be brought to justice, in part perhaps due to guilt of all but one of his victims. When he does break his pattern and kill Brad Pitt’s wife, the latter becomes the executioner, thus completing what Spacey insists is “masterpiece.” While it is not this precisely for Spacey’s killing of the innocent Paltrow and her unborn child, the film’s interest resides in these killings being brought to their completion, in the Seven Deadly Sins each receiving their homicidal translation. Extra-legal justice is nothing more than the killer’s alibi and Brad Pitt’s ultimate transgression - his wrath.  (Zodiac, it is worth noting in conclusion, provides a sort of revision of Se7en, as its real-crime, serial killer subject procures a form that in its very looseness separates itself from the tight, pre-determined construction of Se7en and its deadly sins.)

Dirty Harry’s third sequel and the first and only directed by Clint Eastwood, Sudden Impact (1983), manifests a similar ethos of self-revisionism. In this instance, as in the first ‘Dirty Harry’ sequel, Ted Post’s Magnum Force (1973), Callahan is not the agent of vigilante justice, but rather his or her pursuer. In Sudden Impact, Sondra Locke plays the film’s vigilante, whose identity Eastwood delays until after the film’s second homicide, which like the first, results in a man shot in his groin and head in the front seat of his automobile. Eastwood shows both killings on camera, with Callahan arriving on the scene of the second.

Immediately after the second homicide, Eastwood discloses Locke’s identity as Jennifer Spencer, a modern artist whose work corresponds closely to a number of nineteenth and twentieth-century models including those of the German Expressionists, the mid-century Abstract Expressionists, and in one very distinctive instance pictured here, to Edvard Munch’s The Scream. The last of these comes after a series of similarly enacted homicides that by this point in the narrative signals her growing awareness not only of the anguish which her gallery show “Dark Visions” depicted previously, but of the darkness inside her. Spencer, the artist, is nothing if not self-aware, which stands in distinct contrast to Eastwood’s Callahan.

Between the first and the second of Spencer’s homicides, we see ‘Dirty Harry’ threaten a group of recently acquitted criminals after they taunt him on an elevator, stop a robbery by shooting and killing all but one of the assailants in the presence of a coffee shop’s innocents, and lastly accuse a mafia don in the presence of his just married daughter. The first and third of these correspondingly prompt to retaliatory acts that culminate in Harry jumping from a full automobile as it careens off the end of a peer and shooting three mob hit-men who stalk Harry across a dimly lit boardwalk. By the time Harry is reassigned to a case in rural San Paulo, Harry’s body-count is approaching double digits - to Jennifer’s two. He is, it goes without saying, far less self-aware than the murderess, with whom he is conflated throughout the remainder of the film.

To take just one example of this comparison, Eastwood presents Spencer stabbing a mirror in her home following another of her homicides. This in fact is the second consecutive mirror she destroys as she fires her handgun at the first immediately after the crime. In both instances, Eastwood suggest that Spencer cannot abide this clear, unblemished view of herself; she is, to push the metaphor, broken, which we see not only in these mirrors but in the paintings, one of which is reflected in the second of the two reflective surfaces. Callahan, on the other hand, has no such self-awareness as he tracks the killer whose identity he will only later realize; while his actions bring about more deaths than do hers, and while those people he kills are no more deserving than Spencer’s victims (as we come to learn), he seems to lack her internal struggle.

Indeed, we have by this point discovered the source of Spencer’s anguish and her impetus to kill. Jennifer and her near comatose sister were raped by a group of San Paulo townies during a party held in the recent past. At this point it is worth mentioning that Sudden Impact’s transposition to small-town America provides the film with one of its significant points of revision of the vigilante formula – not only Dirty Harry, but Michael Winner's 1973 Charles Bronson-vehicle Death Wish are paradigmatic examples of the vigilante’s response to urban social decay – as it does in its selection of a female as the agent of justice. Here we have the crime itself, followed by her final confrontation with Eastwood following a shootout that leaves that last of her attackers dead.

Thus, unlike the crimes in Dirty Harry and Zodiac which we experience as they unfold, here the precipitating crime comes in the victims past, and is filtered through her subjectivity. Then again, there is never any sense that she is misremembering, which the reactions of those she kills reinforces; it becomes clear by the film’s end that her account of events is accurate. Thus, Eastwood’s choice of subjectivizing the rape speaks again to his construction of the victim’s interiority. If Harry Callahan speaks and acts for the victims with the criminal justice system providing inadequate – in part thanks to his own actions – Jennifer Spencer, while acting on her sister’s behalf for the same reason, also is acting for herself, out of her very real need to experience satisfaction for the crimes, for there to be justice, with her assault remaining unprosecuted thanks to the fact that the chief of police’s son was one of the perpetrators.

As Spencer puts it, speaking for her director, “there is a thing called justice.” Sudden Impact in other words conforms to Dirty Harry’s insistence on the existence of natural law. In this way, Sudden Impact does not opt for what I would argue is Zodiac’s easier revision of Dirty Harry – namely it does not remove justice from the equation by making the killer unknown. While the real-life details of the Zodiac case compels this revision, what it really shows is that Dirty Harry does not adequately represent the ‘Zodiac’ killings, which it would seem was never really in question. Rather, what the appearance of that film in the midst of the homicides really spoke to was a fear that the apprehension and prosecution of criminals had been made needlessly difficult out of a fear of police misbehavior.

At the same time, in Eastwood’s film there is a price to be paid for securing justice outside the law. While Harry ultimately manages to let Jennifer walk, pinning the crimes on one of the dead criminals, the film’s insistent presentation of her interiority highlights the emotional scarring that results from her vigilante acts. The broken mirror into which both she and Harry look suggests that they share this internal state, though only Jennifer demonstrates an awareness of this, thanks again to her anguished self-portraits. In terms of the film’s focalization, Eastwood alternates between Harry and Jennifer, who again largely produce the same results, though it is only Spencer’s mind that we truly know, thanks to both her flashbacks and also her painting. It is the artist, like Eastwood himself, who is cognizant of the toll of justice.

"....does that hurt?"

I think at some point in a modders life they have been asked those 3 words somewhere, sometime.

Just picture it
You're sitting there, just minding your own business, probably thinking about something completely random like what you're gonna have for dinner when....

DID THOSE HURT? *Insert pointy finger to area where there is mod*

Honestly when that happens to me, I panic slightly! Mainly because they've distracted me from my daydream and left me in a confused and slightly vulnerable position. Its not fun to be hurled back into reality when you're off in you're own world.
You go blank.
Maybe uhmm and ahh a bit.

Then, and only then you answer.

"No, it didn't hurt"

Now, Common sense denotes that a 'no' answer means no.  However in the world of mods, no isn't an answer when people ask that question. Its just an opening to a whole new series of questioning.

 

"Really!? Cause I would've thought it'd hurt cause its like a hole in your face..blahblahblahblah"

  

Now, I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels slightly uncomfortable at this point. You've been rudely awoken from your daydream, answered their question which frankly you are getting sick to the bone of people asking you, and THEN they still keep on asking you questions. God dammint stranger, I just want to get back to my fucking daydream, I don't want you to keep asking me stupid questions. Yes, I've got a piercing, get the fuck over it, stop asking me shit, LEAVE ME ALONE, THERES KFC IN MY DAYDREAM AND I'D LIKE TO GET BACK TO IT AT SOMEPOINT THIS CENTURY. *crys inside*

However, typically people are polite. We can think that inside, but on the outside we just smile, and repeat what we just said, praying that they'll leave you alone at some point.

It just isn't good enough though is it? D:

There have been times where I've had to sit there for 10 minutes pretty much being asked the same question over and over and over again just in different ways. Theres only so many times you can say 'Yes it did hurt or No, It didn't' But it just doesn't seem to work. No or Yes isn't a good enough answer, they want pain scales, amounts of tears or the knowledge that you're a doublehard bastard.

Jesus christ, don't you understand what No or Yes means? D:

Soon you get to the point where you just go 'Okay, I've told you everything, nice speaking to you' then finally retreat back into your mental daydream bliss which is as far away from reality as possible :3

If they back off you at this point, you are one of the lucky ones...

 

Give it 5 minutes then you'll feel that oh so similar tap on the shoulder....

And then you're back to square one .___.

Its quite amazing what someone with mods has to go through on a daily basis. If you're not getting insulted, you're getting questioned. If you're not getting questioned, then you're getting funny looks.

All of that for a piece of metal through the skin or a picture tattooed on the skin.

....The general public really can be stupid, can't they?
Seems like they stopped teaching common sense in schools and just started bringing in ignorance and stupidity!

 

Aftercare... Afterwhat!?

Aftercare... It really should be Afterwhat!

Aftercare is an essential part to the healing process of your piercing/tattoo

But the question in this is HOW THE HELL DO YOU DO IT!?!?

Now I'm sure at some point with Aftercare you've pulled a face like this ^ (Okay minus the chip, but you get the confused/shocked face!)
You've got to clean with rubbing alcohol! NO! NO ALCOHOL, YOU'VE GOTTA USE SEA SALT SOAKS! Wait no, I've heard you can just leave it alone and it'll heal by itself? Well my grandmother told me if i washed my face in butter everyday it'll heal anyway....

Truth is, there are a million and one ways to care for a piercing/tattoo. Most of them contradict one another at some point but all in all they make the same sense. However there are some more sensible ways to heal a mod and I'm gonna list them below for you :3 Just remember, follow the aftercare your piercer/tattooist gives you as they do know best whats for your mod! However if they tell you to rub cat shit in it, you know something isn't right!

Piercings

So you've just got a piercing, YAY! You're all happy until you look at the aftercare sheet. 'Sea salt soak? wtf is that? I have to do it twice a day for 6 months!?' Truth is, sea salt soaks are pretty hard to do! Not many people can get the salt - water ratio right, and even if you do, its an art in itself to suction a shot glass with saline to your piercing! Then its a whole new ball park with oral piercings, what mouthwash to use, can I smoke? CAN I DO ANYTHING? Next thing you know you're all confused and wishing you hadn't even bothered in the first place!

Now truth in the matter is (which a lot of people seem to forget)
Forgetting to clean your piercing won't kill you Odds are it won't even do you any bad. Your body is one giant mechanism for healing and fighting afterall!
However there is no excuse not to use any form of aftercare, so following these methods will do you and your piercing the world of good!

Sea Salt Soaks

Okay so as the name suggest, SALT. But not just any salt, you need to use rock salt (the non iodized stuff!). Normal salt will not do anything so the rocky stuff is best :3 Rock salt and warm water, simple!

How to soak

Using a shot glass, cotton bud/pad, soak the piercing for a few minutes until crusties are gone. You can either use warm saline or room temp saline. Just make sure to rinse!

Ratios

1/8th teaspoon to half a cup of warm water tends to do the trick! Too salty and it'll dry your piercing out. Too weak and it'll do jack shit.
REMEMBER : Always rinse afterwards! Residue sea salt will still dry a piercing out and will cause all sorts of problems

Saline Solution

In all honesty, I suggest this to people more instead of Sea Salt. The saline is ready made to a good ratio which wont cause the piercing to dry out, is ready to use and portable as well! Best thing to do is to soak with a cotton bud/kitchen towel/ shot glass making sure all the crusties are gone and then rinsing afterwards.
Bliss in a bottle!

But where can I find saline?
Any chemist/supermarket etc. Its in the contact lense section!

How often should I clean? Now, the ideal amount of time to sea salt soak is twice a day. Best times for me are in the morning and before I go to bed. Overcleaning it will dry it out so try not to soak too much. If your piercing gets infected or develops scarring, then Warm Sea Salt Soaks are advised twice a day to help draw out any gunk or infection built up inside the fistula.
Once again, Remember to rinse after every soak!

Well what about oral piercings? How the hell do I clean those cause I don't want salt in my mouth...Understandable, salty water tastes like shit! For oral piercings the best thing you can clean with is...

MOUTHWASH!

However not just any mouthwash. It is suggested you use Alcohol-Free mouthwash.

Why you ask?

Well...
Alcohol is a magical thing. It gets us drunk, fights infection and taste rather delicious with a sunday roast! However its strong and will destroy bacteria both good and bad! When healing a piercing, you want the good bacteria there and the bad bacteria gone. Alcohol will destroy BOTH and that prolongs the healing. Its essentially making the piercing raw :(

Well how often am I to clean with mouthwash?
Now, I've heard some people say you should mouthwash after pretty much everything with an oral piercing. After eating, After Smoking, After Drinking.... but c'mon. Be realistic?
I'm not gonna carry around a small bottle of mouthwash with me to rinse after having a glass of juice at a resturant! Or that sneaky ciggarette before getting on a train! Only someone who is that into aftercare will, in reality it is just wasted mouthwash.

When healing an oral piercing (esp the tongue) your mouth creates more peptide to cover the surface of the tongue to protect it.
As a guide, you should clean with mouthwash at least twice a day (when you get up, before you go to bed) And AFTER meals. Just a quick rinse will do fine!

Oh god I'm so swollen after my piercings, what do I do ;___;?

The body is fantastic when it comes to healing, and swelling/redness is part of it!
All in all the best ways to deal with swelling are -
Take Neurofen. Its an anti-inflammatory and a painkiller
Icepacks/Ice Water
Rest + Time

However, If at any point your piercing becomes very swollen and red randomly and it causes your concern, consult your piercer or doctor asap! 

I've got this weird bump turn up during healing, WHAT IS THIS?

 

One thing that is very common during healing is Hypertrophic Scarring, Especially with Cartilage piercings! Simple things like not rinsing sea salt soaks or shampoo when you bathe can cause them as well as bumping then in your sleep accidentally.
Sea salt soaks and chamomile compresses can help reduce and get rid of them, however if one does persist and you've exhausted every method out there, go see your doctor or piercer for professional advice! It could be that the jewellery you have is not compatible with your body (e.g shape wise or metal wise) and is causing irritation!

When can I stop cleaning? Its getting boring!
Ideally, you should stop cleaning when the piercing is fully healed. But be honest, who ACTUALLY has done that? I've never cleaned for 6 months solid with my helix piercing. Infact I stopped cleaning it twice a day after about a month. Then it was the odd clean here and there to keep up maintenance.

Truth in the matter, there is no magical set time for when a piercing has healed or when you should stop cleaning. Some people heal quickly, some people take forever and a day. With all piercings though you should at least clean it during the inital healing (whether that be a week or a few months, it all depends!)
Go by what your body tells you, if your piercing stops crusting and lymphing and feels fine, then you know you can calm the cleaning down and just do maintenance cleaning. If it flares up, you know to be more indepth with cleaning.
We are all different, so no-one fits under the same healing times!







Finally...

If you follow these aftercare methods, you should heal fine :3 However no-one is the same and each aftercare will be tailored to suit you! Some people need to clean less, some people need to clean more. Some people don't have to do anything and will heal all by themselves so play about and see what works for you ^__^ Just remember to stay safe and clean!

First Post...

First posts always need an introduction so here we go!

I'm Paige (aka Mio), 19 years old and the proud owner of 19 piercings and 10 tattoos.
Over time I've had over 50 piercings and have toned down over time due to personal tastes changing, getting older and just wanting more room for different mods!

I've been enthusiastic and a huge supporter of the Body Modification community since I was 14. I actively post and submit to BMEzine.com, the Vampirefreaks bodymod forum and pierce as a hobby. I was also a piercing apprentice for a while (hard but fun work!)

I also attend local Tattoo Conventions and sport a gorgeous half sleeve from a 12 hour sitting at London Tattoo Convention in 2009 (credit to Elson Yeo for the fantastic tattoo :3)


Through this blog, I want to advise people on piercings and tattoos with aftercare and knowledge of places, promote piercings and tattoos and help shed them in the better light that they deserve!

In the words of Adam Ant
'ridicule is nothing to be scared of, don't you ever stop being dandy, showing me you're handsome'
Always remember to be yourself as that is the best you can get ^-^

Mio :3 

Mon cas (1986): Manoel de Oliveira's Four-Part Personal Cinematic History

Manoel de Oliveira's fundamentally experimental Mon cas (1986), from the filmmaker's adaption of José Régio's play "O Meu Caso," with additional dialogue excerpted from Samuel Beckett's "Pour Finir et Autres Foirades" and the Biblical "Book of Job," orchestrates the same stage performance three times, first as filmed theatre (pictured), then in silent black-and-white, and finally as imperfectly dubbed sound cinema. In each of the repetitions, Luís Miguel Cintra precedes Bulle Ogier's actress onto the proscenium, intruding on stage with the intention of stating his "case" to the audience just as the latter is about to commence with her performance. Oliveira follows these three takes with a contemporary re-staging of the Job narrative in the midst of a contemporary urban wasteland that is no less artificial and theatrical in its stagecraft. Beyond recapitulating the filmed theatre of the opening stanza, the fourth provides an additional variation as it likewise adds to Cintra's 'case,' expanding especially upon the documentation of gross human suffering that appears explicitly during part three (on a film screen in the rear of the stage; among the most indelible images are those of bodies disfigured by the famine then contemporary to the Horn of Africa). Mon cas's 'case' accordingly poses the theodicean questions of Job in this earlier segment as well, thereby offering another interruption of the bourgeois entertainment that Ogier and her fellow players are attempting to provide. Oliveira indeed insists on an engaged art, in the manner of Picasso's "Guernica" (1937), which the director introduces in a pointed in-film reference, as opposed to the frivolous, light comedic fare that Ogier begins to annunciate early in part one.

Oliveira directly precedes the first part - which he marks with the on-screen snapping of a clapper and the words, "Mon cas, first repetition" - with long shots of an auditorium filling around a camera and crew. The filmmaker focuses attention on what shortly will become the space behind the camera, with Oliveira drawing an analogy between theatrical audiences and those persons who watch the filmed performances from behind the camera; or, more precisely, Oliveira reminds his viewer that film actors likewise play to real people in a manner comparable to the theatre actor. Cinema, in other words, is revealed to share more with theatre than arguments for the two arts' inherent specificities commonly concede - an opinion that Oliveira has articulated throughout his work, as for instance in the concluding passage of his sublime I'm Going Home (2001). Moreover, Oliveira's filmed theatre feels the most like the cinema of its present day, thanks to its comparative lack of technical limitations that mark parts two as silent (lack of sound save for the voiced-off monologue, sped-up footage) and three as classical sound (overdubbed, with an exaggerating echoing effect to emphasis the sound of a second space housing the recording equipment). That is, cinema becomes most recognizable here when it is at its most theatrical; Oliveira's thesis is, as always for this writer, more compelling than it would appear at first glance.

If parts two and three therefore mark a progression out of the theatre, first to silent and then to sound cinema, part four implies both cinema's passage into a modernist phase, and also a form of regression to a much earlier (passion-play, or even oral history) mode - not that an exploration of pre-modern sources is any way inimical to modernism. This progression does not occur by virtue of formal inscription, however, but rather by dint of artistic self-reference, as a symbolic continuation of the cinematic history that Oliveira's career likewise instantiates. (In this sense, Mon cas prefigures the director's most recent effort at cinematic history/autobiography, 2010's The Strange Case of Angélica.) That is, part one also suggests Oliveira's own adolescent, pre-cinematic artistic passion: the stage. Part two similarly depicts not only cinema's silent start, but Oliveira's as well, with the filmmaker's silent Douro, Faina Fluvial (1931) his first effort in the medium. Part three consequently inscribes both classical sound cinema and also Oliveira's lone offering in this mode, Aniki-Bóbó (1942), which like Mon cas's third part, presents theatrical performances before real-world backgrounds (though as open-air theatre rather than through a substitute for rear-projection footage). Lastly, Oliveira's Biblical fourth part suggests not only a post-classical phase of cinematic modernism in its self-reflexive, artifice-laden updating of the Job text, but also the director's specific post-Aniki-Bóbó move into this mode with Acto de Primavera, the filmmaker's equally self-reflexive 1963 staging of a passion-play. In the case of part four, it is only through an awareness of this particular point of self-reference, of the Biblical play as a threshold for modernist practice in Oliveira's work - given the degree to which Mon cas proves Brechtian avant la lettre otherwise - that the completion of Oliveira's personal cinematic history registers.