31 Fates Worse Than Death! (#23: Audition)

I know what you're thinking. Yes, having a girl you're trying to date drug you, paralyze you, stick pins in you, and then slowly amputate your limbs using piano wire is a fate worse than death. And you're right, it certainly is, but it's not the fate of Aoyama, the lonely protagonist of Takashi Miike's classic film Audition that's the topic of today's Fate Worse Than Death. Sure, Aoyama is going to have a limp for the rest of his life, and he's probably going to have an even harder time getting back on the dating circuit, but his life is a cake walk compared to The Man in the Sack.

That's right, the Man in the Sack, the casually mentioned missing record producer from Asami's past who we learn is confined permanently to living in a burlap sack in Asami's apartment. And if being kidnapped and forced to live in a sack isn't already a fate worse than death, how about having both of your feet, three fingers, a tongue and an ear chopped off before being put in said bag?

Plus, what happens to the Man in the Sack at the end of Audition? Asami clearly can't take care of him anymore, which means that poor man is not only mutilated to hell and back and shoved into a burlap sack, but now he's been denied the only meal source he had: someone else's vomit.

Yep, I'd say slowly starving to death in a burlap sack because you can no longer eat your mistress' vomit is a Fate Worse Than Death.