Piece of Art? A Look at Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk

The assignment in my Opinion Journalism class was to review my favorite piece of art. I could, in fact, easily review something I hold in high esteem, something I dote over such as a painting, a film, a video game (yes, video games have finally become an art form), or a novel, short story, or poem. But, as having read Snuff recently and finding it to be somewhat lacking, I began to think: How difficult is it to review something, with utter fairness, that is, quite frankly, lacking. And, moreover, review that lacking piece of art that is spawned by a beloved artist, one also held in high regard. Here, I decided to delve into the world of Chuck Palhaniuk's Snuff...a novel I both admire for its showcasing of a writer branching out and venturing down new and unknown avenues of creativity and a novel that I, in the other hand, abhor for execution and style....


I'm not an avid viewer of pornography or a connoisseur of the taboo and I'm not saying Vancouver native and Fight Club author Chuck Palhaniuk is, but he does provide a strong case in his fictitious porn-scape, Snuff. A satire from the view of five individuals (Mr. 600, Mr. 137, Mr. 72, Sheila, and porn-goddess Cassie Wright), the story sheds light on a record breaking adult-film- a 600 man gang-bang. But in most parts, the story only gets deep enough, intimate enough, to show us sex; it never really shows us why we should care about what's going on or how the characters feel, or how they fill their “Palahniuk-voids.”

Palahniuk has a style that often leaves his characters with gaping, rotten-flesh wounds, schizophrenic baggage that somehow relates to all us saps that dig into his stories with rabid vigor. But here there is no surgeon, no gun-in-mouth epiphany, or psyche-ward afterward to sew things up, to show us the meaning behind it all, to show that the characters really are characters we could encounter in everyday life, that we could connect with- characterization just falls flat.
  
So, we trudge along as Cassie digs her way out of regret for her long lost “porn-baby” - some reverse ego-trip- and gets her wounds filled with all kinds of gruesome and raw phallic devices,- “tangy, ranch-flavored erections”- but never anything true or rewarding or redeeming. And we can say that about Mr. 600, the porn-o-sapian fossil who, in some ways, is responsible for Cassie's situation. And Mr. 137, the failed television star. And Mr. 72, the Cassie Wright heir wannabe who is trying to save his mother from death by dick.

All the characters are “flesh and blood, but like something's exploded inside” of them, leaving them lifeless.  So, through all the failed parenting, adolescent soul searching, reminiscing, and vanity, we are only left with some strange, Palahniuk-fused monstrosity of entertainment and northwest-hipster culture doused in the triple-x.   
 
 And doused in gruesome detail as well. True to his style, Palahniuk describes dildos, intercourse, condoms, blow up sex-puppets, and countless rare and strange sexual abnormalities to the most hideous of detail, painting us a picture that sometimes could have been omitted. And although Palahniuk's devotion to tabooish detail gives up images that are laugh out loud funny and, at times, pukingly vulgar, he fails to cue us in to the drab surroundings of the 600 gang-bangers. All we know about the backstage area is that there are monitors and monitors and monitors showing Cassie Wright in sexcapades, a bar with nachos and chips and punch and hot-dogs, and gray voids- everything is claustrophobically-gray and dark and vague. Except Cassie who is robed in white light – goddess.
  
So, with this strange juxtaposition of detail, we know about some strange fascination with gang-land tattoos, superfluous celebrity trivia, sexual innuendo, cockamamie porn-film names like “World Whore 1,2,and 3, Gropes of Wrath, and The Wizard of Ass,” but not much of the actual setting or the outside world.
  
But maybe setting isn't important and growth isn't important and zany names aren't important. Maybe this time it's about entertainment for entertainment's sake. And if this is the case, all of Palahniuk's research and hard work and determination to showcase the culturally hip, yet forbidden reality of pornography paid off. And maybe he is telling us something by not showing it all.. Maybe that in itself means something.
  
Mr. 600 says, “Dudes have a million ways of peeing on what they claim as there own,” and Palanhiuk reminds us that shock-writing is his territory by entertainment to prove it. So, read this if you just want to sit back, relax, and be shock-and-awed. Don't expect to find the meaning of life here.