Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 2, June 1993 | Page 54
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Popular Culture Review
In literature, it is of course Patrick Suskind's 1985 best-seller
novel Das Parfunfi that put both stenches and perfumes on the
popular cultural map. All that seems needed for the sense of smell to
really take off now is some technical invention of a cultural
magnitude similar to the movie camera or sound recording and replay
systems. Imagine the possibilities this could open up~possibiIities
which Aldous Huxley, among others, already toyed with in his
technofantasy Brave New World sixty years ago.^
In the following I want to focus on two of the numerous
p>eculiarities in physiology, neurology, classification, and (verbal)
representation that surround the sense of smell. Both concern the
verbal codification of olfactory perception. First, there is the almost
complete lack of an abstract vocabulary for smells as there is for
vision, in particular for colors. We therefore commonly refer to smells
in terms of their origins (it smells like . . . ; the smell of . . . ) . Second,
although we lack a particular vocabulary, we seem to have little
difficulty or doubt about referring to smells in the basic binary
categories of good and bad, which are anthropologically as well as
sodo-historically coded. The subsequent discussion is limited largely
to the good side of the olfactory spectrum, specifically perfumes.
Let us address the second point first with a hypothesis about the
origin of these two categories. It is Freud who provides the starting
point. His theorizing about the sense of smell places olfaction in a
teleological process that leads, in fact has already led, to its virtual
demise as a culturally relevant mode of perception. The decisive step
in this course of events, according to Freud's admittedly speculative
remarks, occurs some time in prehistory when humans begin to walk
upright.^® The olfactory, before this event the guiding sense in n\an's
sexual behavior (as can still be observed in certain animals), loses its
function of regulating male-female attraction, which is taken over
more and more by vision. Indeed, we fall in love at first sight, not at
first smell~or if so we rarely talk about that.
To elucidate this point further, let us also draw on Freud's concept
of Eros and Thanatos, which can be fruitfully linked with his
remarks on the sense of smell. Bad smells signify repulsion,
corruption, decay, and ultimately death. The final reference point is
the decomposing human body. For this our cultural histoiy provides
numerous examples, for instance in the accounts of Nazi death camp
survivors.^ ^ The underlying forces and the fear associated with them