Page 80 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

To Mosley's example several other instances of the Belgian disease can be added. These included
the long-lasting and still-unsolved case of the Bende Van Nijvel/Tueurs du Brabant ('The Killers
of Brabant', a series of violently brutal hold-ups and robberies by one single gang - including ex-
police officers - in the 1980s). Added to this were numerous rumours about call-girls and paedophile
networks serving high placed politicians (the 'Pink Ballets' and ' X - l ' cases), as well as the kidnapping
of former prime minister Paul Vanden Boeynants. As a result, writers such as Marc Elchardus have
indicated that the Affaire and its context revealed a growing sense of crisis of legitimacy of Belgian
cultural identity.2 Equally, many of the facts in the Affaire (physical violence, sexual abuse) also
enabled the 'Belgian disease' to be connected with larger cultural discourses on permissiveness and
moral laxity being exploited by the political right. It placed issues of sexual identity (and practice) and
its social implications firmly on the country's agenda, leading to a paranoid sensitivity of social and
sexual 'Otherness'.
It took a while for Belgian cultural representations to relate to this new situation. In fact, there
was some indignation that it took major producers of cultural representations a couple of years
to include the recent events in their work. But gradually works started to appear that, directly or
indirectly, addressed the Affaire and its contexts. Flemish literature saw the publication of a number
of experimental and popular books, which either used the events in their narrative (Pieter Aspe's Het
Dreyse incident/The Dreyish Incident and Kinderen van Chronos/Children of Chronos, and Tom Lanoye's
Het goddelijke monster/The Divine Monster and Zwarte tranen/Black Tears) or made metaphorical use
of them (Jeroen Olyslaeghers' Open gelijk een mond/Open like a Mouth). Theatre productions like
the Shakespeare adaptation Ten Oorlog/To War or several plays by Alain Platel and Arne Sierens, and
television drama productions like Stille Waters/Quiet Waters also referred extensively to the Affaire.
Evidently the Affaire also had a powerful resonance in Belgian film culture. By 1999, the otherwise
not-so-prolific Belgian film industry had churned out five films that had taken their inspiration from
the Affaire or from related issues (Agusta-scandal, Killers of Brabant). These titles included Bal
Masqué {The Masked Ball, Julian Vrebos, 1998), Pure Fiction (Marian Handwerker, 1998), Film 1
(Willem Wallyn, 1999), Blue Belgium (Ron Van Eyk, 1999) and S. Similar themes were also running
through the anarchist films of Jan Bucquoy (Fermeture des usines Renault/Closing of the Renault Factory,
1998; La vie politique des Belges/The Political Life of the Belgians, 2002). The Belgian disease similarly
informed the narrative of prize-winning films like Rosetta (Dardenne Brothers, 1999), which won the
Palme d'Or in Cannes, and Dominique Deruddere's Iedereen Beroemd (Everybody Famous, 2000),
which earned an Oscar nomination. Given the size of Belgian film culture this represents significant
attention.
But, unlike many other cultural representations, Belgian cinema had already been dealing with
such issues long before the outburst of the Affaire. As I have argued elsewhere, Belgian cinema has
a long reputation in portraying sexuality (Daughters of Darkness (Harry Hiimel, 1971) and 1970s
permissive cinema) and (anti-) political pamphlets (the documentaries of Henri Storck, Frans Buyens
and Fugitive Cinema). 3 The 1992 realist horror film C'est arrivé près de chez vous (Man Bites Dog,
Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel and Benoit Poelvoorde), had also dealt with and portrayed child
killings, kidnappings and rape. The Dutroux case triggered a retrospective reconsideration of these
films, leading to the canonisation of Man Bites Dog as a 'prophecy' for the Affaire.

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