From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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"Human sexuality is, quite apart from Christian repressions, a highly questionable phenomenon, and belongs, at least potentially, among the extreme rather than the ordinary experiences of humanity. Tamed as it may be, sexuality remains one of the demonic forces in human consciousness - pushing us at intervals close to taboo and dangerous desires, which range from the impulse to commit sudden arbitrary violence upon another person to the voluptuous yearning for the extinction of one's consciousness, for death itself." --Susan Sontag in the The Pornographic Imagination

Sex and death have gone hand in hand since the earliest times. In Freudian psychology, Eros, also called libido, libidinal energy or love, is the life instinct innate in all humans. It is the desire to create life and favours productivity and construction. But in later psychoanalytic theory, starting with the essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Eros is opposed by the destructive death instinct of Thanatos (death instinct or death drive). In going "beyond" the simple pleasure principle, Freud developed his theory of drives, by adding the death instinct, often referred to as "Thanatos," although Freud himself never used this term.

Philosophically, the theme has been explored by Georges Bataille in L'Érotisme.

"Erotic horror" in art, literature and cinema

In art

• Death and the maiden

In cinema

The erotic horror genre can best be approached through the work of Alfred Hitchcock and Jess Franco. The most relevant movie in the genre is Peeping Tom.

Further reading

• Lesbian vampires
• Snuff films legend
• Peeping Tom (1960) - Michael Powell
• Scream queen

Alfred Hitchcock

• Psycho
• Frenzy

Cinematic bibliography

• Immoral Tales: European Sex and Horror Movies 1956-1984 (1994)
• Eros in Hell (1998) - Jack Hunter
• Necronomicon series (1996 - )

See also

• Death drive
• Eros (concept)
• Thanatos
• Botan Doro
• Sexual aggression
• Bodice ripper
• Erotic asphyxiation
• Liebestod
• Little death
• Love and death
• Necrophilia
• Sex and death
• Sex and violence
• Beyond the Pleasure Principle
• Death and eroticism in Norse paganism
• Erotic horror
• The Tears of Eros
• De l’érotisme, il est possible de dire qu’il est l’approbation de la vie jusque dans la mort
• Erotism: Death and Sensuality