This blog was originally going to be about that small sub-set of books that I found offensive, but re-reading parts of this particular novel reminded me just how objectionable I found it, and how puzzled I was that I seemed to be the only person who has a problem with it.
Google any combination of the words “Perfume” “Suskind” and “misogyny” or “feminism” and you won’t find anything. And yet I am genuinely puzzled that feminists did not feel outraged by this novel. So what is my problem?
So a story of a murderer – the clue is in the title – isn’t about a lunatic murdering virgins and abusing their bodies to distill scent from them, but is about nice, fluffy things like identity, communication, and the human spirit. Is it really?
Imagine an advertisement for a film. It promises to feature the casual murder of 20 virgins – and the emphasis of their sexual status is Suskind’s, not mine – followed by an orgy and scenes of cannibalism. The bodies of the murder victims are abused by the murderer in some fetishistic way to distill “perfume”. What kind of film would you expect – an exploitative torture porn video nasty, or something literary and sophisticated.
I appreciate the case for the defence will be that I shouldn’t take this too literally – despite Suskind’s determined focus on making each scene as real as possible by his focus on the senses throughout the novel – and that this is magical realism, where the brutal slaughter of young women is a metaphor for…. – what exactly? This case is laid out, for example, in the dozens of laudatory reviews on Amazon, for example this one:
“I came to this book expecting to find a crime novel, or a thriller, about a serial killer. Instead I found a beautifully written and deeply researched novel about a young Frenchman with an unusual sense of smell and a unique gift for the art of the perfumier. In fact, the murders of young girls, so emphasised in the film, take second place to the marvellous descriptions of how perfume is made, and the way in which Grenouille gradually infiltrates the profession, becoming a master perfumier due to his prodigious gifts“
The murders of girls takes second place to the descriptions of how perfume is made? Really? I don’t give a stuff about the technical detail as to how perfume is made, but I am pretty sure it doesn’t involve murdering virgins. grenouille may have been a skilled perfumier, and I am sure Hitler could whip up a nice cheese omelette, but talk about missing the point.
To be as clear as possible, it is not the literary treatment of murder that I find objectionable – that would preclude me from appreciating large sections of world literature, including Shakespeare (Titus Andronicus, anyone?). Murder can be used to shock, to amuse, or to make any other number of points. It can even be handled in a way that is hard to stomach (for example, American Psycho). But the idea that women’s bodies contain within them an essence that can be found as long as you kill enough of them, and that this is some way legitimises their killing, I found nauseating.
I am aware I have not made the case for the prosecution compellingly here – it is hard to define the offensive, even when it is staring you in the face. Equally I accept no-one else seems to have a problem with this novel and its treatment of women. But I found it nasty, brutal, and disturbing. If that was Suskind’s intention, fine, but why is everyone else pretending this is a high minded dissertation on identity and the like?
The Reading Bug 
Sorry, this might get long. I haven't read the book. I got here by looking for feminist reviews of the movie to see if there were any responses focusing on the treatment of women. I began watching the movie; I liked the dark, creepy, detail-oriented style, and I enjoy a good dark story here and there, but I had to get up and leave after the first murder. The other feminist-type review I've read via googling says something like “these murders aren't eroticised” which to me is pure bs. Though this is just based on the very few minutes of footage I actually watched, I was really revolted by what I was watching– close-up, lovingly rendered shots of him unbuttoning the dead girl's dress, sliding it down her body, rubbing his nose on her chest… ugh I feel sick and panicky just thinking about it.
An acquaintance asked me later why I left early and I said I couldn't handle watching eroticised depictions of sexual assault/violence against women, and his response was “well he didn't rape her, he just smelled her.” No, sorry, he didn't “just smell her.” You don't get to tell me what I'm allowed to be uncomfortable with. I don't particularly care which body parts he used to violate her, I'm really not interested in watching that in hi-res macro shots for the sake of your ~artsy~ moral ambiguity.
As I understand it, the rest of the film goes on to include such fantastic topics as murdering a sex worker, leaving naked women's bodies strewn around the city, and stalking a teenage girl in order to kill her, before ending with the father of said teenage girl (and also the whole world) adoring and embracing the perpetrator. Wonderful. I'm not necessarily saying that this is a story that shouldn't be told (but hey let's think critically about how necessary it is to put even more depictions of remorseless violence against women into the world before just going ahead with it), but can it maybe not be filmed in such an eroticised triggering way? I can't imagine that many other sexual assault survivors have been able to sit through this movie without flashbacks or panic attacks.
Ugh, sorry for the novel. I was really bothered by this and by the lack of anyone else seeming to feel the same way. Hopefully the first murder in the movie is the worst one and the protagonist is thoroughly vilified after that, but somehow I doubt it.
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p.s. I've looked through your blog a bit and see that you enjoy finding similarities between books. May I direct you toward the Roald Dahl story “Bitch,” of which “perfume” strongly reminded me. I'm assuming you haven't read this or you might have mentioned it. That story and the book it was published in (Switch Bitch) are all kind of sickening/thrilling sexual taboo stories, all of which I enjoyed for the writing craft but all of which featured rather questionably assumed consent, not least “Bitch,” which to my mind glamorizes forced sex in a totally unquestioned way (without exception, the women love and welcome it), but it was written for playboy, after all.
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get out of your own arse you miserable trout. Perhaps consider that if you are the only one who has a problem with this book, that maybe it is YOU that is wrong. Never in my life have I read a more horrific butchering of classic literature articulated in such an arrogant and self-interested way. Grow up and appreciate this work of FICTION for the masterpiece it is.
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