DATE: Saturday, May 31, 1997                TAG: 9705310057

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARY ANN GROSSMANN AND CHRIS HEWITT, KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS

        SERVICE 

                                            LENGTH:   37 lines

PERV CHIC POPULAR CULTURE IS BEING INUNDATED BY ART AND ADVERTISING MEANT TO SHOCK

THERE'S ONLY so much you can do with a dead body.

Unless, that is, you are: Molly Parker, who has sex with corpses in the upcoming movie ``Kissed.'' Or sculptor Noel Kennedy, who was arrested in England with a houseful of body parts he used as molds. Or the serial killer on TV's ``Millenium'' who used his victims as canvases, sewing their eyes and mouths shut. Or the band Korn, whose new video depicts its members laid out on autopsy tables, awaiting dissection.

Has there ever been so much innovation with corpses? And not just corpses. Prison sex figures prominently in the novel ``The End of Alice''; consensual incest is the punch line of the memoir ``The Kiss''; more incest drives the off-Broadway play ``Learning to Drive''; and, on the radio, Nine Inch Nails lead singer Trent Reznor brays, ``I want to ---- you like an animal/I want to feel you from the inside.''

What is all this stuff? Call it Perv Chic.

In the last year, songs, books, movies, plays and TV shows dealing with formerly off-limits topics have been inescapable. And these subjects are being tackled by serious artists and writers, none of whom could be described as pornographers. For complete copy of this wire story, see microfilm ILLUSTRATION: Color illustration by Sam Hundley/The Virginian-Pilot KEYWORDS: PERV CHIC

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