Page - 49 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/01

Rampant Lechers, Chaste Heroes | 49www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/1, 45–57 Kaishakunin9 with almost supernatural combat skills, travels the country with his young son, offering his services as an assassin for hire; over time, he repeat- edly meets members of the clan responsible for the death of his wife and his loss of status and engages them in bloody fights. In Sword of Vengeance, the first film from 1972, Itto Ogami comes to a village terrorised by ronin, samurai without a master. Ogami watches unmoved while one of the men rapes a young girl to death. He also does not start a fight with the bandits; when they threaten him, he has sex with a prostitute to demonstrate his fearlessness and probably also his masculinity. this scene is only outdone by another one in Baby Cart to Hades, also from 1972, when first the audience witnesses the gang rape of a mother and daughter by three wandering watari-kashi, itinerant low-class war- riors. the fourth of these men then kills one of his companions to make him the scapegoat for the crime, before proceeding to murder the two raped women to protect the group’s honour. When he notices itto Ogami, who has been look- ing on, he apologises by simply saying, “i am sorry that you had to watch this unpleasant scene.” Whereupon Ogami responds, “you act like a true warrior.” What might still be justified here as a “historically accurate” representation of Japanese society in the early edo period, in the 17th or 18th centuries, can also be found in screen adaptation of comics set in the recent past or the present: sexuality and sexual violence as realities that are part of the narrative. iNterreLAtiONshiPs BetWeeN seX AND ViOLeNCe it may thus be argued that the depiction of violence in screen adaptations of comics transcends cultures, while sex is mostly blanked out in the Western con- text. the following section will address the question of whether interrelation- ships between sex (even if not shown) and violence exist, and, if so, what form they take. For this purpose, we will first look at the villains: in almost ideal-typical man- ner, the villains in the screen adaptations of Marvel and DC comics embody the Augustinian concept of evil as a result of desire.10 All these villains are character- ised by a desire that overlays all other traits, even potentially positive ones: lust for power (world domination, etc.), for revenge following a perceived or actual wrong, for possession (usually of means required to obtain power), or, simply, for the destabilisation of the established order in order to create a chaotic re- gime of terror. Quite often, this desire is shown as erotic desire gone off the rails – a desire the villain is unable to physically enact, since he is either deformed or outs him- 9 A Kogi Ksishakunin is a warrior officially charged by the shogun to carry out executions, a fictional posi- tion invented for Lone Wolf and Cub, see World heritage encyclopedia 2017. 10 see Brown 1991, 424–432.