#bunuel

SENDING GOOD VIBES TO THE CREATOR TODAY TO HELP YOU GET WELL, EUGENE S. ROBINSON.

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A double album with three sides. A balancing act performed for and by the unbalanced. Throughout, BUÑUEL take every opportunity to stretch their musical tendrils towards discomfort, surrealism and the deconstruction of tradition, as they reach absolute abandon. “Mansuetude” dives into the eye of the storm and beyond, encompassing many moods, from post-hardcore to avant-noise, hard blues to…

Le journal d'une femme de chambre (1964)

“No one has any idea of all the worries that servants have to put up with, nor of the monstrous way in which they are continually exploited. If it's not the employers, it's the registry offices or some charitable institution—not to mention your fellow servants, for some of them are pretty foul. No one has the slightest concern for anyone else. Everybody lives, grows fat, amuses himself at the expense of someone more miserable and hard-up than himself. However much the scene may change or the background be transformed, however different or hostile the social setting, men's passions and appetites remain the same. Whether it is in a cramped, middle-class flat, or some banker's luxurious town house, you find the same beastliness, the same inexorable fate. When all's said and done, the truth is that a girl like me is defeated even before she starts, wherever she may go and whatever she may do . . . poor human dung, nourishing the harvest of life and happiness for the rich to gather and use against us . . .

There is supposed to be no more slavery nowadays. But that's all rubbish. What about servants? What are they, I'd like to know? In practice, they are simply slaves, with all that slavery entails—the moral degradation, the inevitable corruption, the spirit of revolt that breeds hatred . . . It is the masters who teach servants to be vicious. However pure and simple-hearted they may be when they start—and some of them are—they are soon corrupted by the depravity they come in contact with. They find themselves surrounded by vice, everything they see, breathe or touch is vicious. And so from minute to minute, from day to day, they begin to adapt themselves to it, for far from being able to defend themselves against it, they find themselves on the contrary, obliged to wait upon it, pamper it, respect it. And the spirit of revolt arises from the fact that they are powerless either to satisfy it or to break the shackles that prevent its natural development. It's really quite extraordinary. They expect us to have all the virtues, all the resignation, all the heroism and readiness for self-sacrifice, but only those vices that flatter their vanity and further their interests. And for this, all we get in return is their contempt—and wages that vary between thirty-five and ninety francs a month . . . No, it's fantastic! . . . And, on top of all this, we have to live in a state of perpetual struggle, of constant fear, between the semi-luxury of having a job one day, and, the next, having to face the squalor of unemployment; knowing that, whatever we do, we are always under suspicion, so that they are forever bolting doors, padlocking drawers, locking up cupboards, marking bottles, counting every cake and plum, and even have the nerve to search our pockets and our trunks as though they were detectives. There's not a single door or cupboard in this place, not a drawer or a bottle, that isn’t continually shouting at us: ‘Thief, thief, thief!’ And, as it all this wasn't enough, we have to put up with the constant irritation of seeing the terrible inequality, the appalling contrast between our lot and theirs, so that despite their familiarity with us, despite all their smiles and little gifts, an impassable gulf exists between us and them, a whole world of unspoken hatred, of suppressed envy, of longing for revenge . . . a contrast that, at every minute of the day, is made more blatant and humiliating by the whims, and even by the kindnesses of these unjust, loveless creatures, which is what rich people always are . . . Do they ever, for one single moment, consider what bitter and legitimate hatred we must feel, how we must long to kill them . . . yes, kill them . . . when we hear them, in order to describe something low and ignoble, saying, with a disgust that denies all common humanity: 'He has the manners of a servant . . . She is as sentimental as a servant girl . . .’ Under such conditions, what do they expect us to become? Do these women really imagine that I, too, wouldn't like to wear beautiful dresses, drive about in fine carriages, flirt with my lovers . . . yes, and even employ servants? . . . And then they lecture us about devotion, about being honest and faithful . . . I only wish their words would choke them, the cows!” - Octave Mirbeau, ‘The Diary of a Chambermaid’ (1900) [p. 211 - 213]