Relation to this Course
One very evident part about
Grenouille is his self-control. He gains this throughout the film, and is most
apparent as he waits specifically to capture Laura’s scent. In Plato’s Phaedrus he talks about three
components of a soul, a white horse, a black horse, and a charioteer. The white
horse is the good noble horse where the black horse is the bad and corrupt
horse (Plato, 44). Yes, we can say that Genouille’s black horse is in more control when it
comes to his actions towards these girls. However, he takes careful time in
order to not ruin his plans, and that takes self-control and patients, where
his charioteer has no problem controlling the black horse.
“Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (Althusser, 109). Grenouille’s idea of creating such a unique perfume is what drives him to murder. His existence is through these woman’s scent and without them he is nothing. He could create thousands of perfumes that people would love him for, but he would never be satisfied because he knows those aren’t true beauty, these woman are true beauty.
In the first chapter of Evil: A Primer, Hart describes evil as “…anything that interferes even slightly with humans’ universal desire to lead happy lives” (Hart, 21). Grenouille is in fact, evil, as described by Hart. Though describing how Grenouille stole the lives of all these young woman is cliché and boring. It’s more exciting to try and defend this man in his work and find a way to make him innocent in his wrongful doings. Grenouille doesn’t actually have to murder these women, if they would stay calm and not move their scent would remain ideal and they could walk away unharmed. But no woman wants to be smothered in a lard mixture for hours and then scraped clean. He tried doing that once with one woman and she freaked out ruining her scent and so he had to kill her in order to see if his methods would work, which they did.
“Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (Althusser, 109). Grenouille’s idea of creating such a unique perfume is what drives him to murder. His existence is through these woman’s scent and without them he is nothing. He could create thousands of perfumes that people would love him for, but he would never be satisfied because he knows those aren’t true beauty, these woman are true beauty.
In the first chapter of Evil: A Primer, Hart describes evil as “…anything that interferes even slightly with humans’ universal desire to lead happy lives” (Hart, 21). Grenouille is in fact, evil, as described by Hart. Though describing how Grenouille stole the lives of all these young woman is cliché and boring. It’s more exciting to try and defend this man in his work and find a way to make him innocent in his wrongful doings. Grenouille doesn’t actually have to murder these women, if they would stay calm and not move their scent would remain ideal and they could walk away unharmed. But no woman wants to be smothered in a lard mixture for hours and then scraped clean. He tried doing that once with one woman and she freaked out ruining her scent and so he had to kill her in order to see if his methods would work, which they did.