Scenes mainly referenced (sorry this is a longer vid): [0:00-2:20] – Infection of the carnival; [6:00-7:10] – Death and fusion-birth; [9:20-9:55] – Revival and separation-birth
Conner O’Malley’s Coreys follows family-man Corey and his influencer-doppelganger during a psychotic break that fuses their bodies in Vegas. Coreys treads between Bakhtin’s “grotesque realism” while also making clear the empty vapidness of the contemporary carnival per Eco’s critique.
There are multiple moments of emphasis on the body, yet in two crucial scenes– the joining of the two Coreys into a fleshy fused-Corey and later the… reemergent birth? of Corey– the body is not simply exaggerated for gross-out affect, but as an equal part of a larger character transformation. Grotesque realism, as Bakhtin writes, was the medieval carnival’s mode of this same equation: it made “the cosmic, social, and bodily elements… an indivisible whole” (Bakhtin 18). The typically-dismissed particularities of the body are foregrounded, and though there is a “degradation” of the higher ideas, it is the “coming down to earth” of these aspects that gives it a carnival, comic element (Bakhtin 21). Spiritual/philosophical awakening is made to roll in the sand during Corey’s separation-birth, while his declaration of love at the end is buttressed with “I’m just really fucking hungry”. The image of bodies near birth and death, in keeping with the carnival’s celebration of change, renewal, and cyclicality, beyond being the sites of the previously mentioned transformations also bookend the descent of Corey into participating in the carnival of Vegas.
However, what Coreys portrays is not carnival with its comic mode, but rather the serious mode. Bakhtin outlines how rigid social structures subordinated the comic mode of rituals beneath the seriousness of official ceremonies; an idea which Eco takes further, describing how the carnival is necessarily subordinate to the official, and only exists as “authorized transgression” in designated spaces and times (Bakhtin 6; Eco 6). Vegas is the permitted space of modern carnival, and Corey’s trip to Vegas reflects the destination-consumption mode that we experience the carnival through these days: Vegas is not “revolution” nor “upside-down world”, it is power’s “circenses” (Eco 2-3).
Coreys is also a story about social media, and it is in this space that Eco’s idea of “continuous carnivalization” has taken on a new meaning. Social media is much like Bakhtin’s carnival, universal spectacle experienced through participation, but also Eco’s, permitted site for the masses to dehumanize themselves as the elites have preordained. Corey is infected watching his influencer-doppelganger amidst the carnival, and cannot return to life until he himself has gone through the same carnival. O’Malley questions the psychotic and discontenting effects of today’s digitally-proliferated carnival, which has launched us all “outside of space and time”.
This is a really interesting analysis. Vegas is definitely a place where it’s “allowed” to go against the rules and any transgressions are forgiven (the saying “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” exists for a reason). However, as you say (“it is power’s ‘circenses'”), what people do in Vegas is lose all their money to an incredibly wealthy, merciless industry while they are distracted by the glitz and glamor of it all. A great example of Eco’s point that carnival is not subversive!