What noses do

I've been formulating a theory for a while now. The basic tenet of this theory is that, of our five (six?) senses, the olfactory one is the most important, primarily because pheromones rule the world. I tend to think that it's likely our pheromones serve us in more ways than just helping us choose sexual partners. I mean, sometimes there are people that you encounter and you know, right away, whether you like them or you don't. You may or may not want to have sex with those you like, but my basic conjecture is that the ones you don't like smell bad to you on a subliminal level. But even if pheromones themselves aren't the primary factor at work in all interpersonal relationships, sex, our most fundamental of motivators, most certainly is. And because people to whom we are familially related do not smell as good to us as those who originate from a significantly different gene pool, pheromones do help us figure out with whom we can mate and procreate without making little inbred flipper-babies. So, because pheromones help us decide with whom to have sex, and sex rules the world, I quasi-logically extend the argument that, yes indeed, pheromones rule the world. Tada! Science and logic a la Marjorie. Never mind that there are not yet any conclusive scientific data that could definitively confirm that humans actually create pheromones in the first place (the term most often refers to love potions for bugs)--this is but a small detail.

I suppose I'd been spouting off about this theory to my friend Jen some months ago when she recommended that I read Patrick Suskind's book Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. And so, read it, I did. It's a fun book--speedy reading and full of some delightfully revolting descriptions of the smells of Paris in the 18th Century, of the spoiled dairy odors of humanity, of the escapist purity of lifeless stones. Great light beach reading (by my slightly askew standards, anyway). But my real attraction to this story is that in his character of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, Suskind has created a pretty unique anti-hero. His detachment from all worldly entrapments save his--dare I say--artistic quest lends him a peculiar charisma and a palpable nastiness. And Suskind's writing itself glories in a sardonic cynicism--misanthropy, even. Did I mention it was funny? The book is a couple decades old already and it makes me a little nostalgic for the days when irony was still cool.

(Aside: early on in my graduate studies, my beloved professor, Jane Miller, made a claim that we were entering "the post-ironic era," and finally moving out of the post-modern one, I guess. And then she laughed at herself for her coinage. But then, the other night, on a re-run of an O.C. episode, what did my little ears hear? Rachel Bilson saying, "Oh, I'm post-ironic now." I guess it's entered the lexicon, Jane!) (Shut up. Yes, I'll occasionally watch an O.C. re-run. So, eat me. )

But then Tom Tykwer, the director of the film adaptation, takes the whole thing someplace a little different, someplace a little more...earnest. If Suskind's Grenouille is the consummate anti-hero, Tykwer's Grenouille is a more conventional remorseful villain. In Suskind's version, he is outside the rules of the social order of which he finds himself in the midst and the world, by and large, ignores him. Because he has no unique smell of his own, other humans are mostly unaware of his very existence (very good for sneaking up on people!). And while he does manage to eke out a small crisis about his lack of identity, his is joyously unobservant of even the most basic moralities. He's a curious figure because his is, at once, all id and possessing of a singular purity of soul. He is not subject to regrets and guilts and so, he is able to pursue his particular aptitude/art/science of making perfumes with utter detachment from human sympathies. And yet, his perpetual questing has the character of an instinctual drive, rather than something more high-minded. And so, as a reader, I relished Grenouille's deviance. In Tykwer's movie, however, Grenouille took on the more typically sinister aspect of a bad guy. Not wholly, of course--the actor playing Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) is sinewy and a little rodent-like, but certainly not ugly. And you can't help but root for him, even though completing his project entails the murders of all the most beautiful virgins in the French countryside. But he lacks the wicked sense of humor of Suskind's narration, and, well, I missed that.

Tykwer also made a choice, towards the end of the film, that I think deleteriously affected both the message and the tone of the story. At the climactic scene in the novel, Grenouille douses himself with his fanciful creation, the perfume that would allow him to take over the world (how very Pinky-and-the-Brain of him!). His massive audience, at first, begins groping towards him in adoration. He conducts them as though they're an orchestra. Pretty soon, they are overwhelmed with sensory information and the whole scene devolves into a massive town-wide orgy. So far so good. The movie is pretty faithful up until this point. Now, in the novel, Grenouille becomes completely nauseated by the sea of undulating French bodies before his. From the book: "He would have loved right now to have exterminated these people from the earth, every stupid, stinking, eroticized one of them." Tykwer's Grenouille, on the other hand, takes this moment to engage in a romantic reverie about the very first beautiful-smelling redhead he killed when he was barely more than a boy. He succumbs to an imagined flashback in which, instead of suffocating her, he fucks her. As though a well-timed act of physical love would have colored Grenouille's cold, shriveled soul differently. Ridiculous! What makes Grenouille great is that he is remorseless. And that he gets his jollies through the vehicle of fragrance, his very own little fetish, not through blah ol' vanilla sex. He is not subject to the desires and motivations of normal people-- and I think Tykwer missed that that's what makes him such a compelling and charismatic anti-hero. This little change in message humanizes him in a completely mundane fashion. Suskind's character is weird and driven, singular and freakish, but alluring in his ultimate detachment and asexuality. I think the ACTOR playing Grenouille understood this-- squinty weasel that he is-- but Tykwer made him a flawed pariah, as susceptible to the whims of the body as any of us. How dull.

There's another moment in the film about which I haven't yet made a decision about how I feel about it. Much of the rising action of the story surrounds Grenouille's preparations for the murder of Laure-- the hottest redhead on French legs. In the novel, she reaches the heady peak of her girl-scentedness, her father tries to skip town with her, Grenouille tracks her, Grenouille sneaks into her bedroom, Grenouille bops her on the head and then, Grenouille goes about the business of preserving her scent. In the novel, steps one through four are the same, but at the moment he is to bop her on the head, she rolls over, opens her eyes and looks right at him. I actually think this is an interesting choice because it kinda implies that she's complicit in the part she has to play in his creative endeavor. She's the 13th note in the perfume and she's the prize. She knows it and she doesn't scream or fight him off. In that moment of opened eyes, Laure acquires a particular agency that Suskind never gave her. Pretty clever move, I think.

Now, I know that movie write-ups in the format of a 5-paragraph compare/contrast essay, for the purposes of parsing out those novelistic conceits that are untranslatable to film, are tedious. And I know that that's pretty much all I've been doing here. Alas. But I don't get tp play that game very often anymore. Oh, to be an undergrad English major once more...

And so, in true formulaic essayistic style, I'm going to both tell you that I'm beginning my conclusion ("In conclusion...") and bring this post back around to my introduction. When Grenouille first encounters Laure,--he, of course, smells her long before he sees her-- Suskind's narrator, from his perch inside Grenouille's head, says this:

"In a year or two this scent will be ripened and take on a gravity that no one, man or woman, will be able to escape. People will be overwhelmed, disarmed, helpless before the magic of this girl, and they will not know why. And because people are stupid and use their noses only for blowing, but believe absolutely anything they see with their eyes, they will say it is because this is a girl with beauty and grace and charm. In their obtuseness, they will praise the evenness of her features, her slender figure, her faultless breasts. And her eyes, they will say, are like emeralds and her teeth are like pearls and her limbs smooth as ivory--and all those other idiotic comparisons. And they will elect her Queen of the Jasmine, and she will be painted by stupid portraitists, her picture will be ogled, and people will say that she is the most beautiful woman in France. And to the strains of mandolins, youths will howl the nights away sitting beneath her window... rich, fat old men will skid about on their knees begging her father for her hand... and women of every age will sigh at the sight of her and in their sleep dream of looking as alluring as she for just one day. And none of them will know that it is truly not now she looks that has captured them, not her reputed unblemished external beauty, but solely her incomparable, splendid scent!"

So, think on this: what if I'm right? What if it is our noses, not our eyes or hearts or brains or groins, that guide us towards those we find worthy of bedding? What if those who smell good to us suddenly look a lot better once we've gotten a good strong whiff--better, anyway, than they did when they were standing just out of nose-shot? Don't tell me it hasn't happened to you. Don't tell me you think your lover stinks. I won't believe a word of it!

And now, to break form, I'll offer one final thought. It strikes me that what is so compelling about Grenouille's quest to distill the scents of the bodies of beautiful virgins is that he somehow manages to steal that which is most untheivable. Firstly, in harvesting the body odor of a human, he is taking what is most unique, genetically speaking, about a person. Our stinks are like snowflakes! And in that way, he is stealing the very identities of those girls so that he can wear them to mask his own lack of identity. Beyond that, because he is taking from them that which triggers the most instinctual of attractions in other humans, he is absconding with their sexualities, too. So, it seems that he's managed a particular brand of sexual ownership that isn't really possible in more pedestrian relationships. In the end, I suppose it is the very least he can do, when he offers up his OWN body for a very literal public consumption.

Oh, and P.S.--Christophe Laudamiel and Christophe Hornetz, two fancy French perfumiers responsible for Thierry Mugler's Angel and the like, actually concocted a real coffret inspired by the scents described in the story. If anyone has a spare $700 earmarked to help me support my perfume habit, I'll gladly take it off your hands now. Thank you.