Tilikum

amberhawkswanson.com

The fascinating and tragic tale of Tilikum, the male killer whale held captive at SeaWorld (Orlando Florida), is brilliantly told in the documentary Blackfish (2013), directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite.

The film focuses on the cruelty and stupidity of keeping such a large and intelligent mammal in what is essentially a fish tank and obliging him to perform like a seal and act as a living sperm bank for SeaWorld's lucrative breeding programme. 

If he enjoys doing tricks for the trainers who, when not throwing him food from a bucket, are masturbating him with a cow's vagina in order to gather his semen, it hasn't stopped him from being actively involved in the deaths of two of them (Keltie Byrne and Dawn Brancheau); as well as a Sea World visitor, Daniel P. Dukes, who made the fatal mistake of hiding in the park until after closing time and then getting into Tilikum's pool. His naked and mutilated body was found the next morning draped over Tilikum's back.

    

Inasmuch as Tilly has undeniably been objectified by owners who believe him to exist solely to generate profits and sire young and spectators who think his duty is to entertain them and their children, then the above deaths might well be described as the brutal and bloody revenge of the object. 

Undoubtedly, the person who best appreciates this aspect of Tilikum's tale is the very wonderful video and performance artist Amber Hawk Swanson, for whom issues of power, violence, sex and objectification are clearly of great import. She is probably best known for her Amber Doll project (2007-10) in which she married a RealDoll made in her own image and jointly explored the distinction between fantasy and reality. 

Predictably, Amber Doll, and Ms Swanson's relationship with her, solicited some extreme reactions and they were involved in strange and disturbing situations. But who would have guessed that the severely damaged sex doll, with her silicone flesh and plastic skeleton, would one day resurrect and be transformed into ... Tilikum!

This, however, in December 2011, is precisely what happened and, I have to say, it's a brilliant move by the artist; as one pure object is turned into another, by a woman who is herself the object of her own work. The critic and blogger, Megan Milks, describes this best:

"With the transformation of Amber Doll into Tilikum, Swanson’s exploration of compound female subjectivity becomes an exploration of human-doll-animal intersubjectivity. Swanson figures Tilikum in the pose of the entertainer, with tail raised, greeting his spectators, with the collapsed dorsal fin characteristic of orcas in captivity; meanwhile his upward, unflinching gaze, communicates his enforced submission and his history of and potential for violence, inscribed back onto the female-gendered doll body that forms his own. Swanson as doll as Tilikum: the art object flickers with the radical passivity of these co-mingled subjects."

- Megan Milks: Free Tilikum, or the Transfiguration of Amber Doll: Radical Passivity in Amber Hawk Swanson's Doll Projects, posted on the multi-authored blog montevidayo.com (Oct 11, 2012) 

Good News / Bad News

 

In the news this morning: a UN General Assembly committee has agreed a resolution put forward by a Norwegian-led coalition to protect women's rights activists working around the world. 

That's the good news. 

The bad-but-sadly-predictable news is that the resolution was opposed by all the usual forces of reaction and religious stupidity, including the Vatican, which, working in alliance with the regimes of Russia, China, Iran and other Islamic states - not to mention some particularly unpleasant African governments - sought to weaken the resolution by refusing to endorse the idea that all forms of violence against women's rights activists were completely unacceptable, whatever laws, customs, traditions, or beliefs might be used to justify such. 

This led to prolonged negotiations over the wording of the document and, in the end, concessions were made; something described by the Icelandic ambassador, Greta Gunnarsdottir, as a low point for the UN rights committee who could have and should have remained resolute about the wording of the resolution.

Still, it's a small victory of sorts. Although, of course, the real work begins when it comes to enforcing the resolution and ensuring no more health workers, for example, are murdered for trying to immunize children or teach young women about the use of contraception.

  

On the Right to Bare Arms (A Post in Support of Pussy Riot)

The Right to Bare Arms (ffabyrd.deviantart.com)

Lawrence once insisted in a piece of fragmentary writing that he felt no deep hostility towards Christianity. Indeed, on religious fundamentals he maintained there was no breach between himself and the Church of Rome, whose authority he believed in.

Of course, this is slightly disingenuous to say the very least ... But, there is one occasion on which Lawrence leaps to the defense of the Holy Father and affirms Catholic teaching. In his long essay written à propos Lady Chatterley's Lover, Lawrence savages George Bernard Shaw for daring to mock the Pope's attempt to maintain the modesty of women by insisting that they cover-up their bare arms and legs whilst attending Mass and, ideally, when in any public space whatsoever.

Not unreasonably, Shaw points out that the irony of wanting to veil female flesh is that this more often than not leads to its eroticization; that it is clothing that arouses thoughts of sex, not nakedness. For Lawrence, however, this remark is indicative of the flippancy and vulgarity of intellectuals and whilst he agrees that half-naked, modern women fail to stimulate genuine desire in the modern male, this he feels is a reason to despair and to rethink our relationship to the body (the female body in particular).

Ultimately, like the Pope, Lawrence, wants women to keep their limbs and their hair covered. Not because the exposure of such arouses sexual desire, but because it doesn't and that is a sign that something is sadly wrong: with men as well as women; but mostly with women who have lost their natural allure and become as sexually undesirable as plastic dolls. 

If, on the other hand, women have gained their economic and political freedom and the right to participate in society as equals; i.e. to work and to vote as well as to have control over their bodies, this means very little to Lawrence. It's the fact of female flesh being publicly displayed that continues to exercise and deeply trouble him. 

I was reminded of all this - of Lawrence's insistence that the bare arms (legs, necks, and shoulders) of women constitute a dangerous and vulgar form of atheism - whilst watching a film of the trial of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich. These three courageous young women - members of feminist punk group Pussy Riot - were convicted by a Russian court in 2012 of 'hooliganism motivated by religious hatred' and sentenced to two years in a penal colony, after performing a brief anti-government protest in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

During this performance, they shouted and swore and called on the Virgin Mary to support them. But, as pointed out at the trial, they also did so whilst dressed in an inappropriate and offensive manner to those who subscribe to the Orthodox faith; that is to say, they had bare arms and this seriously compounded their crime. The fact that they had their hair covered (beneath brightly-coloured balaclavas), unfortunately did nothing to redeem the situation and save them from jail ...

There's really not much more I can say on this: Lawrence's position is sincere in its puritanism, but mistaken in its sexism. I prefer Shaw's flippancy to the Pope's misogyny. And I support the right of Pussy Riot and of all women everywhere to expose or cover their bodies, however they choose, wherever and whenever they want to, regardless of men with beards who think them all witches at heart.


See: Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, Produced and Directed by Mike Lerner/Maxim Pozdorovkin (2012)

Taste the Rainbow

Taste the Rainbow by Kameolynn: deviantart.com

Left, right, back to the middle / head on swivel, neck till I quivel 

taste the rainbow, taste my Skittles - Iggy Azalea

It has been said that oral sex is as American as apple pie; but this invariably refers to fellatio and not to cunnilingus. It's almost as if the latter is somehow un-American, or a little too exotic. And there also seems to be a very real concern amongst many men that giving head, rather than just receiving it, is unmanly and emasculating; or something rather abject to perform, like all jobs involving physical labour.     

Thus it is that, within the super-macho world of rap, whilst the magic and softness of the cock-sucking female mouth is enthusiastically celebrated, there has been very little sung in praise of pussy-licking. At the very least, we might say this refusal to reciprocate is a little ungenerous. And, as hinted above, a sign of male laziness and insecurity.  

However, things have recently started to change and going down on a girl is now no longer regarded as something to be ashamed of or grossed out by, but is seen rather as the sign of a real man. Suddenly, male rappers are falling over themselves to boast of their skills and techniques in this area; bragging of either how quickly they can make a 'bitch' come, or of how long they can pleasure a woman orally.

Check out, for example, the following three tracks selected by Rebecca Haithcoat of LA Weekly: 

- Eat the Pussy, by Ty$ and Joe Moses ft. Reem Riches and TeeCee4800
- Do It With My Tongue, by YG
- I Will, by Danny Brown.

As Ms Haithcoat nicely points out, the latter scores extra points for rapping that he doesn't even care if a real cunt doesn't taste of fruit Skittles.

White Skin, Black Mask: The Case of Iggy Azalea

Photo of Iggy Azalea: www.iamhiphopmagazine.com

According to one of her critics - and she has many - Australian-born rapper and model Iggy Azalea is hip hop's nightmare; a privileged blonde white girl who plays with African-American identity and exploits black culture and history, reinforcing the very worst racial and sexual stereotypes in the process of making mega-bucks for herself and the corporate-media pimps she hustles for.*

Now, whilst I understand and sympathize with this position - which is not simply based on personal hostility, so much as it is rooted in a long and shameful past that only an idiot would seek to deny - I'm wary about sharing or supporting it. Because in order to share and support this view one would have to understand race as an essential categorization.

And that's tricky for me, as I see blackness in terms of artifice and attitude, not authenticity; as a question of style, not soul. I also believe it to be performative; that is to say, a way of walking and talking, as well as dressing, thinking, laughing and loving.

In other words, negritude, because it is culturally constructed, is something that can be legitimately assumed by anyone - even a pale-faced young woman from Down Under. She might be wearing a mask and playing a role - but so are the rest of us - and despite some rather depressing and regrettable aspects of her persona it is important to recognize also the complexity of her performance as a postmodern minstrel. 

* See the essay by Aimee Valinski; Hip Hop's Nightmare - Iggy Azalea, (www.iamhiphopmagazine.com)

No One is Innocent

Innocent Drinks was founded in 1999 by Richard Reed, Adam Balon and Jon Wright: three Cambridge graduates working in the well-paid world of corporate consultation and advertising who knew precisely how to market idealism in the form of fruit smoothies. As did design director, David Streek, who developed the brand identity based on fair trade, environmental friendliness, and making sure people get their five-a-day. Or bringing nature, community, and business closer together for mutual benefit.

Via the Innocent Foundation, a UK registered charity set up in 2004, the company donates a percentage of its profits to good causes, including development projects in the Third World. Innocent also run a campaign in partnership with Age Concern each autumn known as the Big Knit, in which people are encouraged to make tiny little woolen hats to go on top of 250ml bottles. Every sale of such results in a 25p donation to charities attempting to save the thousands of old folk who risk freezing to death during the winter because they can't afford to heat their homes.

So far, so saintly. But, of course, no one is innocent; not even Messrs. Reed, Balon and Wright ...

And so it came to pass that in April 2009, they announced that they had agreed to sell an 18% share of their company to Coca-Cola for a sum in the region of £30 million. Despite the horrified reaction of many customers to this news and the threat of a boycott, one year later Coca-Cola upped its stake in Innocent to 58% for a further £65 million. Coke applied the coup de grace in February of this year; increasing its holding to over 90% and taking full operational control whilst the three founders pocketed another £100 million.

Richard Reed described the deal as beautiful and pointed out that if it were not for capitalism we would all be living in mud-huts, or shivering to death from the cold like the elderly. It's easy to be cynical and sneering, but at some point customers and companies alike need to grow up and get real. 

It is, of course, an old story that follows a predictable path and no one should really be surprised by this sell-out. Nor shocked to hear that Innocent have now signed a deal with McDonald's. Even so, for the first time a fruit smoothie is starting to leave a nasty taste and one remembers again Malcolm McLaren's sage advice: never trust a hippie - particularly a hippie with a calculator.

Be a Wise Monkey

 The Three Wise Monkeys (Tōshō-gū shrine, Nikko, Japan)

Having recently written a post in praise of Iwazaru - the wise monkey who spoke no evil - I've been thinking over the last few days about the other two: Mizaru and Kikazaru; i.e. the monkeys who choose to see no evil and hear no evil respectively. 

Although it is often said that by encouraging us to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the unpleasant reality of the world we live in, the above thereby foster a wilful and shameful form of ignorance, I have to confess to a growing sympathy for those who choose to look away from scenes of grotesque violence and brutality (be they real or simulated) and listen not to the stream of foul and abusive language pouring from the mouths of those who conflate hate speech with free speech. 

I don't accept for one moment that it's cowardice or the refusal of our duty to acknowledge evil that's depicted in the famous carving at the Tōshō-gū shrine in Japan. Mizaru, Kikazaru and Iwazaru may be guilty of many things, but moral indifference is not one of them. 

Rather, I think the point is this: evil corrupts in its sensational character on the one hand and desensitizes on the other and it is therefore wise not to dwell on evil, or get it in your head, as Lawrence would say. Otherwise, before you know it, all you can palpitate to is murder, rape, and hatred and you end up feasting on corpses like some kind of zombie with atrophied feelings.

Anasyrma: Upskirt Politics and Vulva Activism

Illustration to La Fontaine's Nouveaux Contes (1764)

Once upon a time, when a woman lifted up her skirt and displayed her cunt, it invoked profound horror in male onlookers. Even gods, demons and insects were disconcerted by this apotropaic act of magical indecency and her anatomy was not merely her destiny, but also the source of her terrifying power over life and death.

Sadly, however, within our epilated culture of digital pornography and labiaplasty, the cunt has lost much of its monstrous beauty and effective capacity. Women have been fatally exposed in the name of emancipation and equality and close-up images of their exposure are today endlessly circulated via the media; an act of violent and systematic exorcism.

For their feminine power is rendered null and void when their sex is put on permanent display and everything is made visible and accessible. No longer the site of secrets, the cunt has become a disenchanted and sanitized hole that waits to fulfill a function by being filled; just another empty sign in a hypersexual and hyperreal universe.

Having said that, some women are at least trying to reclaim their own genitals. The Labia Pride movement, for example, seeks to combat the growing trend for designer vaginas and raise awareness of the fact that the cunt comes in many shapes, sizes, and colours and should not be expected to conform to a hairless and odourless ideal determined by pornographers and cosmetic surgeons.

And whilst some of the statements I have read by vulva activists strike me as philosophically naive, I'm more than happy to support the goal of genital diversity and to resist trends which seek to further shame and humiliate women via the creation of misogynistic cultural norms and new insecurities.

Revolutions are so vieux jeu

Image by party9999999 on deviantart.com

Having just watched the latest depressing news out of Libya, I can only send a message of sympathy and solidarity to my friend, the London-based freelance journalist and blog editor, Nahla Al-Ageli. She had high hopes of the Arab Spring and for a post-Gadaffi Libya. Indeed, despite the armed gangs of militiamen and the rising threat posed by Al-Qaeda, she still has what we might term revolutionary faith.      

For better or for worse, this is something I lost long ago, thanks to Nietzsche. For Nietzsche encourages his readers to reject notions of political redemption and belief in great events. Instead, he advocates a politics of pure resistance based upon opposition to all forms of idolatry (including state idolatry) and a refusal to trust those who promise salvation. By learning how to laugh at our own seriousness and ambition - as well as those who hold positions of leadership and authority - we may be able to offer at least a temporary defense against the desire for some kind of final solution to life's complexity, or the dream of a New Jerusalem.  

In an interesting passage of Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche warns against revolutionaries who, in an attempt to garner public support, "transform their principles into great al fresco stupidities in order that they might paint them on the wall" [I. 8. 438]. He also argues that whilst political violence can be the source of stimulation via the resurrection of the most savage energies, it can do no more than this. For change of a truly important nature requires something else; not something bigger or more extreme, but, on the contrary, small doses of difference administered homeopathically. Nietzsche writes:

"If a change is to be as profound as it can be, the means to it must be given in the smallest doses but unremittingly over long periods of time! Can what is great be created at a single stroke? So let us take care not to exchange the state of morality to which we are accustomed for a new evaluation of things head over heels and amid acts of violence ..." [Daybreak, V. 534].

This crucially important passage concludes with a series of remarks on the French Revolution, but which might just as easily be read in relation to the recent upheavals in Libya and elsewhere: 

"It is now ... beginning to become apparent that the most recent attempt at a great change in evaluations, and that in a political field – the ‘Great Revolution’ – was nothing more than a pathetic and bloody piece of quackery which knew how, through the production of sudden crises, to inspire ... the hope of a sudden recovery – and which therewith made all political invalids up to the present moment impatient and dangerous." [Ibid.]

As Voltaire reminds us: Quand la populace se mêle de raisonner, tout est perdu. And this is particularly true when large sections of the public are infected not only with political idealism, but religious mania.

Speak no Evil

Image from gracefyt.blogspot.com

It is important - if you wish to defeat fascism - to be sensitive to the use and misuse of language: to understand how the terms we use, the metaphors we subscribe to, the empty clichés and elevated banalities of idealism that we fall back on, essentially determine the world we inhabit and the kind of people we become. And it's important to remember that whilst sticks and stones may break bones, only words are really murderous.

Victor Klemperer, a professor of French Literature at Dresden University until the Nuremberg Laws obliged him, as a Jew, to resign his post in 1935, knew this when he bravely documented the role of certain key words and phrases within Nazi Germany. In The Language of the Third Reich, he demonstrated how language, culture, and history are intimately related and how a violent rhetoric demanding racial purity and Lebensraum resulted in obscene bloodshed and the digging of mass graves.

Klemperer rightly understood that it isn't only actions that need to be examined and combated, but also what he calls the Nazi cast of mind and its way of thinking rooted in the language of hate. He writes: "Nazism permeated the flesh and blood of people through single words, idioms and sentence structures which were imposed on them in a million repetitions ... taken on board mechanically and unconsciously." [14]

Denazification, if it is ever to be accomplished, is thus a procedure that must be carried out at the level of micro-politics; a fact recognized by Michel Foucault, who, writing in a preface to Anti-Oedipus, argued that the major and strategic adversary remained fascism: "And not only historical fascism, the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini ... but also the fascism in us all, in our heads, and in our everyday behaviour ..." The key task is therefore to learn how to "rid our speech and our acts, our hearts and our pleasures, of fascism" [xiii].

But this is no small task. For it involves the revaluation of everyday language; exposing seemingly innocent and innocuous words commonly used by all on the one hand, whilst giving formerly pejorative terms positive virtue on the other hand. It perhaps also obliges us to coin neologisms and find ways to speak with sensitivity and a certain softness of tone - unlike the Nazis, who endlessly shouted the same things and spoke with one voice that was as loud, monotonous, and threatening as the barking of an Alsatian dog.

In saying this, am I promoting a form of what reactionary idiots like to characterize sneeringly as political correctness? Perhaps.

I am certainly saying we all need to mind our language and be a wise monkey like Iwazaru. For although those who peddle hate speech often like to do so in the name of free speech, the latter is rarely contrary to propriety and good manners.

- Victor Klemperer, The Language of the Third Reich, trans. Martin Brady, (Continuum, 2006).
- Michel Foucault, 'Preface' to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley et al, (The Athlone Press, 1984).

Re-Dreaming the Dark (Notes from a Witch's Manifesto)

Witchcraft has traditionally been concerned with the Mysteries and sex has traditionally been regarded as the essence of those Mysteries. But today we know that sex is neither mysterious nor essential. In fact, sex is simply nostalgia. Or, as the poet Dawn Garland once wrote, "sex is crap".

For many older witches, however, sex remains crucial to theory and practice and they insist on ritual nudity and sacred fucking within the Circle (actual and symbolic). They think it brings them closer to the Goddess, but it only betrays their sentimentality and helps reinforce a deeply conservative ideology based upon an untenable dualism.

Witches who believe in the so-called "two principles" and twitter on about sexual polarity and the complimentary opposition between male and female energies deserve to be burned at the stake. They bring shame upon the pagan community. For it isn’t magic that’s founded on such binary thinking, but phallocentric and heterosexist stupidity.

We should be wary therefore of those witches who speak of sex and sexual "difference" as something innate and natural. Such persons whilst often masquerading as radical are often reactionary morons, quick to condemn homosexuality, for example, on the spurious grounds that it negates difference and privileges the same. The belief that homosexuality promotes a narcissistic self-seeking due to a fear of otherness is bullshit.

All fucking is overrated. But fucking between men and women is the most overrated act of all. Even the epiphenomenal baby that might result doesn’t justify the senseless importance given to it (and besides, fucking has nothing to do with fertility). Witches who argue that erotic pleasure without the consummating act of coition is inauthentic or perverse should be beaten with their own broomsticks.

Witchcraft has been mistaken in its self-understanding as a fertility cult and magic has nothing to do with nature; it is both unnatural and supernatural. We need to get over our subservience to vindictive Nature just as we might get over any other impediment to our future evolution. Witchcraft needs to understand itself as an art concerned with creation, not procreation and as something rooted within culture, not nature.

Witchcraft is performative. It is a practice: likewise our sexuality and gender identities. We play at being men and women and to this extent we are all transvestites. There’s no reason why male bodies should exclusively give rise to masculinity; or why female bodies should exclusively give rise to femininity. Feminists have been saying this for years, but it has been ignored by those who like things fixed and to take themselves seriously; by those whose pride is in rigidity: patriarchal pricks.

If witches are to become free-thinkers and free-spirits, then we need to abandon essentialism and fundamentalism and interrogate those violent hierarchies that demean and disempower those who fail to belong to its dominant categories (such as white, male, and straight, for example). We need to desire differently and stop kissing the arse of those in power (the only truly obscene kiss).

This is not a call for a sexual revolution, however, and should not be mistaken for such. The despotic agency of sex has had its day and we look forward to a time when we can at last talk about, think about, and do something more enjoyable. The orgy is coming to an end and we await the masked ball and that different economy of bodies and their pleasures.

There are no male witches.

Nietzsche's Animal Philosophy

The Company of Wolves, (dir. Neil Jordan, 1984)

One of Nietzsche's most daring strategies is to call into question the traditional privileging of the human over other animals and thus to place man back amongst their number. For Nietzsche, man is certainly not the high-point of evolution; rather, he is the most depraved of all beasts. Which is to say, man is the animal that has strayed furthest from its sound instincts.

It is only when the ideal of man as a divine creation made in the image of God is shown to be not only conceited but damaging, that individual men and women will be able to achieve a level of enhancement via a becoming-animal. There is thus what one critic terms a reverse anthropocentrism in Nietzsche's texts via which he naturalizes the human species and grounds not just his own thinking but all human culture in zoology.

Now, admittedly, there are times when Nietzsche risks simply allegorizing animals on the basis of a single characteristic or trait that he determines as either noble or base. However, what remains radical in his animal philosophy is the clear implication that socio-ethical behaviour - often held up as something uniquely human - can ultimately be located (if in a rather cruder form) amongst animals. He writes:

"The beginnings of justice, as of prudence, moderation, bravery - in short, all we designate as the Socratic virtues - are animal: a consequence of that drive which teaches us to seek food and elude enemies. Now if we consider that even the highest human being has only become more elevated and subtle in the nature of their food and in their conception of what is inimical to them, it is not improper to describe the entire phenomenon of morality as animal." [Daybreak, I. 26]

Later, in the Genealogy, Nietzsche will examine how man’s evolution from the semi-animal, happily adapted to the wilderness, was a difficult and painful process involving either the suspension of natural instincts or their internalization. Proto-humans were reduced to their consciousness; "that most impoverished and error-prone organ" [II. 16] and forced to think and feel shame for the first time. And other creatures looked upon man with fear and pity as "the insane animal, the laughing animal, the weeping animal, the miserable animal" [The Gay Science, III. 224].

Of course, what has happened has happened: our fall into consciousness and moral subjectivity, as well as our ever-greater reliance upon technology, is doubtless a fate that we will have to see through to the end. In other words, we will have to perfect our decadence and idealism before we can move towards a transhuman and noble future; i.e. the kind of future in which people pride themselves on their animal skills and attributes and understand that the sharing of traits with other species belongs to a primordial ethics.

But note: it’s not that this interaction and exchange hasn’t continued in the modern era of the farm animal and household pet - it has, and this has significantly contributed to modern man’s taming. What we need to do, then, is dynamically interact with animals other than those reared purely for slaughter and profit, or oedipalized cats and dogs.

In other words, as Angela Carter knew all too well: we should seek out the company of wolves and consent to becoming the tiger's bride; not just herd sheep and marry the boy-next-door!

Do You Scroll and Stroll? A Reply to David Sexton

Illustration by Paul Dallimore: Evening Standard (05-11-13)

In an opinion piece entitled 'Do You Scroll and Stroll?' in yesterday's London Evening Standard, a writer by the name of David Sexton argues that due to an increased use of smart devices in public spaces a large number of people have become zombies or phone-drones and scroller trolls. 

Such individuals, he says, are no longer aware of others and only semi-conscious of their surroundings. They have become "little more than human obstacles" that "get in your way" and "collide with you without apology". This, he says, is both insulting and enraging. A form of digital solipsism that has rendered the "sense of shared purpose, of mutual respect in negotiating the daily friction of the city" null and void.

Such individuals, he says, are in "surrogate social worlds, at the expense of the real one."   

Now, all of this, is of course hysterical nonsense and ultimately a form of cheap and lazy journalism, written in an attempt, I suppose, to be amusing and provocative. Philosophically, clinging as it does to the fantasy of a real world, it's embarrassingly naive. But the cheapness, the laziness, the crassness and the naivety pale into insignificance before what follows: a misogynistic incitement to violence. 

For it turns out that Sexton's phone zombies are, "if the truth be told", mostly young women. And, because they are mostly young women caught up in their own "bubble world" of gossip, gaming and googling he is happy to fantasize their deaths beneath the wheels of tube trains and to encourage his readers to yell at girls who dare to use technology in public, or perhaps clap hands in their faces, click fingers, or hold arms out "as if directing idiot traffic". 

Indeed, due to the fact that the capital is such a busy place and - by implication - his is such a busy life - Mr Sexton goes still further and delights in the fact that you can see some men "choosing just not to get out of the way but to make sure they bump hard into the phone addicts walking into them". Indeed, some men "even deliberately try to knock the phones out of their users' hands". 

He admits that such verbal aggression and violent physical assault isn't "nice". But he justifies it on the grounds that a city such as London, full of busy men on important business like himself, "works only when there is mutual tolerance and respect between people sharing a packed public realm" and female phone zombies just don't understand this or give such. And thus these women had "better mind out" - !

Now, I know that the Evening Standard is a paper of such high quality that the publishers have literally to give it away, but, even so ... surely such a shameful article as this can't be acceptable, can it? Free speech is one thing: hate speech is another. 

And so, like Miss Zena McKeown who brought this piece to my attention, I can only call upon the Editor of the Standard, Sarah Sands, to issue some form of apology to all her female readers who have the audacity to carry smartphones and use other devices in Dave Sexton's world.      

In Praise of Inna Schevchenko: La Nouvelle Marianne

Photo of Inna Schevchenko (Reuters, 2013)  

Femen (Фемен) is a radical feminist movement that has recently gained international notoriety due to its topless protests against sexism and the phallocratic authority of church, state, and industry.

Originally founded in the Ukraine, in 2008, by Anna Hutsol and others, the group is now based in Paris but has members and supporters in several other countries, including the UK, where it is currently recruiting activists who are encouraged to paint their naked bodies with various slogans in order to promote an aggressive gender politics termed sextremism.

Now, whether turning your breasts into weapons is or is not an effective tactic in the war against patriarchy is debatable. But I must confess to having a soft-spot for the very vocal (and very beautiful) spokesperson for Femen, Inna Schevchenko, who resembles an illegitimate love-child born of Guy Debord and Ilona Staller.

But then any woman who cuts down a large wooden Cross in Kiev with a chainsaw is always going to capture my attention, affection, and admiration - even when said action was condemned by Maria Alyokhina of Pussy Riot and even when Miss Schevchenko is accused by opponents of being a self-promoting wannabe and a mere puppet under the control of the Femen Svengali-figure, Victor Svyatski.

Bare breasts do not an amazon make - that's certainly true. However, anyone prepared to take on a public role that invites ridicule and abuse - as well as very real threats of rape, kidnap, and murder - deserves respect and support in my eyes.    

eBay and the Question of Holocaust Memoribilia

Image: BSkyB

The mock-horror and fake outrage that greeted the news that online auction site eBay does good business selling mementos from the Holocaust was, of course, all-too-predictable. 

When will the editors of The Mail on Sunday simply admit that such trade - just like child pornography - is inevitable in a free market in which, as Marx pointed out long ago, all values are resolved into exchange value and all objects and events are commodified and given price tags.

Capitalism doesn't care about respecting the memory of the dead anymore than it cares about the rights of the living. It is systematically amoral and inhuman: everything is permissible. To paraphrase Marx once more, under capitalism all the sensitive bonds and small kindnesses that tie us together are dissolved until all that's left is shameless greed, naked self-interest, and callous cash payment. 

Money is substituted by capitalism for the very notion of a social code and the possibility of living a good life. And whilst love of money may not be the root of all evil, it certainly doesn't seem to encourage ethical behaviour. And so it is that traders have no qualms about adding a small bar code beneath the yellow Star of David attached to the striped uniforms of death camp inmates.

It's a financial solution to the awkward question of genocide: what shall we do with the remains? Nazis everywhere will be smiling ...

Who Is Clara Blum?

Digital portrait of Clara Blum by 

Siegfried Croes on deviantart.com 

In a digital age it's nice to have a virtual muse.

And as muses go they don't get much lovelier than the super-smart and very funny Clara Blum; she who brings joy to the world like a real life Amélie Poulain, even as she struggles with her own trials and tribulations (and, perhaps, her own loneliness).    

I would like to write at length about her, but, in all honesty, I don't know much beyond the following:

1. She's French ...

2. She's twenty-one years old ...

3. She has a cat called Pilule ...

4. She plays the ukulele (and her ukulele is called Billy) ...  

5. She's studying to be a dentist ...

6. She likes saying sorry ...

7. She has tmblr. account called Galatée  ...

8. She likes to post short performances on YouTube ...

9. She dislikes intolerant and judgemental people ...

10. She is the promise of the future made perfect in the present ...

Carry On Bertie

There's no doubt that his years in Croydon (1908-12) were difficult ones for Lawrence. Bored and often exhausted by a full-time teaching job which left him little time to focus on his writing, he had also to recover from the death of his beloved mother and a bout of pneumonia that left him gravely ill for many months.

But what's really fascinating is the increasingly frustrated nature of his love life during this period. Almost one might describe it as his polyamorous phase; a time when he made romantic overtures to numerous young women in the hope of getting laid, before finally meeting and eloping with a married woman six years his senior. 

I was reminded of the complex, chaotic and somewhat farcical character of Lawrence's dealings with the fairer sex whilst watching a performance of Glyn Bailey's musical, Lawrence, at the Bridewell Theatre. I would argue that the number entitled 'Bertie's Girls' teasingly suggested a possible future development of the show: more humour and more bawdiness on the one hand; less pathos, less sentiment, and less preaching on the other.

I'm certain that many people would enjoy encountering Lawrence the young would-be poet and sex maniac chasing farmer's daughters and suffragettes as he attempts to break on to the London literary scene, rather than Lawrence the bearded priest of love boring us all rigid with his obsessive moralizing.

And I think Lawrence's reputation - which, let's be honest, is not great - would be best served by being subjected to a camp and irreverent reinterpretation more in the tradition of the British music hall rather than the Broadway musical.

Carry on Bertie, anyone? Or Confessions of a Miner's Son, perhaps?  

The Case of Dylan Alkins

 

The above photo, posted by friends on his Facebook page, was taken of fourteen-year-old Dylan Alkins just days before he was tragically swept out to sea in a recent storm.

It's a haunting and beautiful image of a young man who dared to live dangerously, confronting the waves and the elements and laughing in a state of ecstatic happiness. Doubtless there will be those who will shake their heads and talk about the foolishness of youth. And, obviously, it's not sensible to stand at the edge of a pier when sixty-mile-an-hour winds are blowing and giant waves are crashing all around. 

But, whether they like to admit such or not, there is something heroic in Dylan's paradoxically death-defying and death-affirming foolishness and I believe that his was a true practice of joy before death; that is to say, a fatal game via which a young man sought to transfigure and transcend a dull individual existence.

He might have taken precautions; but instead he took a risk. And I admire him for that and even, in a sense, envy him.