Fridamania: Notes on an Accident and Becoming a Ballardian Angel

Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo in the bus crash scene [1]  

in Frida (dir. Julie Taymor, 2002)

 

I. 

 

Like most people, I knew that the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo had been seriously injured in a collision involving a wooden bus and an electric streetcar (that may or may not have been named Deseo). But until a few days ago, I didn't know details of the accident or the nature and extent of her injuries. 

 

Now that I do, however, I can see why this event has taken on such metaphorical (and near mythical) status. It wasn't fatal, but it was certainly fateful and reveals not only the brutal reality of what happens when vulnerable bodies are smashed by merciless mechanical forces, but how moments of grotesque horror and suffering can have terrible beauty and be transformative.   

 

Kahlo would say afterwards that she lost her virginity on the day of the accident: the broken iron handrail that pierced her lower body entered via her pelvic region and exited through her vagina (puncturing her uterus as it did so) [2]. But she was not only born a woman on 17 September 1925, but born an artist and what might be called a Ballardian angel ...

   

 

II. 

  

For some reason, the sight of Jesus on his Cross has never really resonated with me. 

 

I know crucifixion was designed to maximise suffering over a prolonged period of time - we have the modern word excruciating to remind us of this - and it can't be much fun to have large nails driven through one's hands and feet; as the artist Sebastian Horsley courageously confirmed in 2000 when he re-enacted the Passion of the Christ [3].  

 

But, my compassion for Jesus is limited by the fact that he predicted (some might say provoked) his own gruesome fate whilst doing nothing to prevent such, believing as he did that it was a central and pre-ordained part of God's redemptive plan. In other words, he connived in his own crucifixion and in doing so nailed us all to the Cross.   

 

Further, we are also led to believe that this act of self-sacrifice was something of a sham. For just three days later he was up and about and back from the dead having learned nothing. His resurrection renders his death meaningless - just as his supernatural ascension makes mortal life seem of no real significance. 

 

Frida Kahlo's impaling on a metal pole on the other hand - her rebirth and transformation - seems much more real, much more beautiful, much more moving, much more inspiring to me. I don't adore Kahlo or see her as some kind feminist deity or queer icon - I don't even particularly like her work [4] - but I'd rather sip tequila with her than munch dry bread with Jesus. 

 

 

III.  

   

Unfortunately for Kahlo, all the tequila in the world wasn't enough to numb completely the severe lifelong physical pain she experienced due to the accident, multiple surgeries, several miscarriages, and the emotional distress caused by her rollercoaster marriage to fellow artist Diego Rivera (twenty years her senior).    

 

She once amusingly wrote: Bebía porque quería ahogar mis penas, pero las malvadas aprendieron a nadar ... [5]. However, we're not here to discuss her drinking habits, her unhappiness, or her art. 

 

We're here, rather, to focus on the crash which has acquired a permanent place in the popular imagination because of the highly surreal details surrounding it - most of which were actually true, including the fact that a fellow passenger was carrying a packet of gold paint powder that burst open on impact and covered Kahlo's bleeding, semi-naked body, creating a horrific yet visually striking and magical image [6]. 

 

And then there's the handrail, which we have already mentioned ... 

 

 

IV.

 

Certain people - including medieval Christians and Nazi occultists - get terribly excited over what is sometimes referred to as the Spear of Destiny (i.e., the lance with which one of the Roman soldiers is said to have pierced the side of Christ on the Cross to ensure that he was dead before being taken down). 

 

Indeed, just like Kirk Brandon, I was a little obsessed with Trevor Ravenscroft's bizarre but influential bestselling book of that title in the early-mid '80s [7].  

 

Happily, such holy relics now mean nothing to me and I find the thought of Frida Kahlo's little body being impaled with a snapped iron handrail is more fascinating to me than the thought of Jesus being pricked like a sausage by some superstitious Roman centurion. 

 

And, to tell the truth, I'm a little surprised and disappointed that J. G. Ballard didn't mention Kahlo and her accident in his astonishing novel Crash (1973) [8]. The nature and severity of her injuries and the fact she then had to rely on surgical corsets, back braces, and metal prosthetics, perfectly anticipate his work: was he never tempted to call Gabrielle Frida and give her a monobrow?  

 

V. 

 

In sum: Ballard missed a trick! 

 

Connecting Kahlo's real-life accident to his dystopian fiction would have added a brilliant layer to his study of how human trauma, technology, art, sex, and death are entwined. Like the characters in Crash who obsessively photograph and document collisions, Kahlo spent the rest of her life reimagining and mythologising the exact moment her body was fucked by public transport.  

 

Whether the nightmarish events endured by Kahlo and Ballard's crash-loving protagonists provide a liberating line of flight for everyone is, of course, debatable. Not all of us subscribe to a kinky cyborg aesthetic in which human flesh perversely fuses with metal, and wounds become the site of a new sexuality. 

 

(There are still Christians, for example, who prefer to fantasise about a spiritual union with Christ.)  

 

Ultimately, both Kahlo and Ballard suggest that when the human body is shattered by motor vehicles the victim does not simply heal; they are forced to reinvent what it means to be human within a technological world. 

 

Not that the current exhibition at the Tate - Frida: The Making of an Icon - hints at anything like this: it prefers to celebrate the clichéd and kitschy commodification of Kahlo rather than recognise her as the ultimate nightmare angel born of unimaginable violence, physical suffering, social non-conformity and revolutionary politics.

 

 

 

El accidente (17 September 1926), graphite on paper 

(Colección Juan Rafael Coronel Rivera) [9]

 

Notes

 

[1] This scene - and the surreal operating room sequence that follows in which director Julie Taymor cleverly incorporated stop-motion animation and traditional Mexican Día de los Muertos imagery - can be viewed on YouTube: click here.  

 

[2] Kahlo was a promiscuous bisexual who had affairs with figures ranging from Leon Trotsky to Josephine Baker. Nevertheless, her sexuality - like her art - was to a large extent shaped by her accident and she fucked as an act of defiance and a means of reclaiming power over (and pleasure from) a broken body. 

 

[3] See the post: 'On the Crucifixion of Sebastian Horsley' (4 April 2015). 

 

[4] The modern cultural industry has turned Kahlo into a heavily commercialised simulation and pop icon; see the sister post to this one - 'Fridamania: Notes on a Frida Kahlo Exhibition as a Perfect Crime Scene' (22 October 2026). 

 

[5] This is commonly translated into English as: 'I drank so as to drown my sorrows, but the damned things learned how to swim.' It's an internet variation of a line originally written by Kahlo in a letter to Ella Wolfe (19 October 1938); see The Letters of Frida Kahlo: Cartas Apasionadas, compiled by Martha Zamora (Chronicle Books, 1995).

 

[6] This scene was powerfully recreated in Julie Taymore's 2002 film, Frida, starring Salma Hayek - see the screenshot above which I chose to illustrate this post.

 

[7] Trevor Ravenscroft, The Spear of Destiny (Neville Spearman Publishers, 1972). 

 

[8] As far as I remember, Ballard makes no mention of Kahlo in Crash, although he does invoke her name in a much later novel Millennium People (2003), in which the character Sally Markham is obsessed by Kahlo's life and work following a serious accident in Lisbon involving a tram. Ballard shows how modern individuals often base their identities on the lives of famous people in order to add a little glamour to their own boring lives and find some sense of meaning.      

      Kahlo's absence from Crash has been a point of discussion among critics and fans of the book. See, for example, Steve Finbow's excellent essay, 'The Absent Muse: the Terminal Prosthesis of Frida Kahlo and J. G. Ballard', on creatrixmag.com (5 July 2026).  

 

[9] A year after the accident that enabled her to become the woman she was, Kahlo recalled the event in this rather charming pencil sketch. 

 

 

Fridamania: Notes on a Frida Kahlo Exhibition as a Perfect Crime Scene

Frida Kahlo: Representation of the Accident (undated) 

 tate.org.uk [1]

 

I. 

 

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of Frida Kahlo and wouldn't have gone to Tate Modern's current exhibition Frida: The Making of an Icon (25 June 2026 - 3 Jan 2027) if it wasn't top of the Little Greek's list of things she wanted to do on her birthday ... 

 

And so, despite certain reservations - not so much about the artist and her work, but the highly commercial, punter-pleasing nature of the exhibition itself - off we set on a grey and drizzly Tuesday morning to Bankside, only stopping first for coffee and croissants at the Royal Exchange (as you do) ... 

 

 

II.

 

There's a combination of reasons why I have never been entirely taken with Frida Kahlo and her work. 

 

Firstly, there are those elements of dreamy surrealism and folksy magical realism that seduced André Breton, but which I find irritating after a while; too many symbols, Mozart. 

 

Secondly, her concerns to do with gender, postcolonial identity, the female body and its experience of pain, revolutionary Mexican politics, etc., are ultimately not mine and whilst I'm vaguely interested in what she has to say about these things, I don't want them forced upon me in painting after painting. 

 

Also, how many self-portraits by the same artist can one reasonably be expected to find interesting: at what point does it all become a wee bit repetitive and reveal both technical limitation and narrow thematic focus [2] when an artist simply paints her own boat? 

 

Kahlo only produced around 150 works and of these over a third feature her own monobrowed likeness and whilst she certainly had a distinctive (and not unattractive) look, it's not one I find as endlessly fascinating as many people today clearly do [3].    

 

 

III. 

 

The exhibition was spread over ten rooms, each with a different title and theme. A standard adult ticket was priced at £25—or £64 if you wanted a two-course lunch in the Level 6 restaurant (where I highly recommend the grilled octopus, even if the onglet steak left me underwhelmed).

 

Writing in The Guardian, art critic Jonathan Jones is quick to point out that the exhibition only features thirty-six works by Kahlo herself and that it is supplemented not only with photographs and archival materials (including several Tehuana dresses), but by a wide range of works produced by contemporaries and those who have since been influenced by her art, image, and legend, helping to manufacture the Frida Kahlo myth-cum-global-commercial-brand.        

 

Actually, Jones says the show is "padded out with responses by lesser artists" [4], but that's a bit unfair in its sweeping dismissiveness of artists that include monumental figures like Diego Rivera and influential contemporaries like Judy Chicago. To be honest, I enjoyed seeing some of their works more than I did looking at Kahlo's own. 

 

In fact, unlike Jones - and unlike The Observer's art critic Laura Cumming, who also argues that the Tate exhibition woefully sells Kahlo short [5] - I was pleased to discover that this was not merely an exhibition by Kahlo, but an exhibition about her and, in particular, about how the world succumbed to Fridamania.    

 

Ms Cumming complains that the artist's own work is singularly missing from the show, but I think she's missing the point. 

 

The clue to the exhibition is right there in the title: The Making of an Icon. The curators [6] aren't trying to give us a pure and predictable retrospective; they are documenting the exact process by which Kahlo has disappeared beneath multiple interpretations and mass-produced merchandise - it's le crime parfait, as Baudrillard would say [7]. 

 

Since Kahlo is now present everywhere, her ringing absence in the galleries is no longer an issue. 

  

 

 

  

Notes

 

[1] As is well-known, Kahlo was severely injured in a bus crash when she was eighteen (1925). And perhaps my favourite image in the Tate exhibition discussed here is this one in which she restages the accident with a rag doll and toy horse-and-cart. As Jonathan Jones says, there's a primal quality to Kahlo's memories of this devastating event and this picture suggests it marked the end of childhood innocence and pain-free joy. Photo by Stephen Alexander (20 Oct 2026). 

 

[2] To be honest, I'm not overly concerned by these things. That is to say, I don't much care about so-called technical deficiencies in her work or even if her range of external reference was narrow and this led to repetition and self-obsessiveness. 

      But ultimately, unlike Madonna, I just wouldn't want one of her works hanging on my wall - they simply don't hold my interest for very long, with one or two exceptions, such as the miniature oil on tin plate painting titled in English 'Girl with a Death Mask' (1938), that really charmed me at the exhibition (a print is available in the Tate shop). 

 

[3] It is worth recalling that Kahlo remained a relatively unknown figure until the late 1970s, when her work was rediscovered by art historians and an assortment of feminists, queers, political activists, etc., all began to see themselves reflected in her life and work. 

 

[4] Jonathan Jones, 'Frida: The Making of an Icon review', The Guardian (22 June, 2026). 

 

[5] Laura Cumming, 'Frida: The Making of an Icon sells a great artist short', The Observer (25 June 2026).

      Among several criticisms - mostly aimed at the cack-handed portraits by other artists on display and members of the viewing public who dared hold up smartphones in order to record their own Instagram homages - Ms Cumming complains that "what is singularly missing from this show, first to last, is the artist's own work". I will address this point in the main text. 

 

[6] The exhibition was curated by Tobias Ostrander and Beatriz García-Velasco. The show was organized in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

 

[7] I'm thinking here of Jean Baudrillard's argument in The Perfect Crime (Verso, 1996), where he refers to the extermination and vanishing of reality. 

      Interestingly, Jonathan Jones notices how, in the Tate show, Kahlo as "a real person who made intensely autobiographical work" suddenly disappears only to be replaced by "homages, restagings, deconstructions and, finally, merchandise", but he fails to understand why this is symptomatic of the times in which we live and ends his review by simply defending her true greatness. 

 

 

For a sister post to this one on accidentally becoming a Ballardian angel, click here.

      

 

Here He is the Pink Panther (But Is He Really Such a Groovy Cat?)

Tired of trying to paint the world pink,

 the Pink Panther decides to burn it to the ground instead.

 

 

I. 

 

One of the more arresting images to have come out of the latest unrest in Paris was - predictably enough - generated by AI and circulated on social media. It features the Pink Panther [1] and probably makes some readers of Deleuze and Guattari very happy ... 

 

Why do I say that? 

 

Well, firstly because many - perhaps most - readers of Deleuze and Guattari anchor themselves to the concept of becoming-revolutionary. 

 

Thus, they are likely to look favourably upon the events unfolding in France at the moment - hopeful that, like May '68, the uprising signals a radical break from the established order and allows new, uncodified possibilities to emerge (even if secretly a little concerned that things will collapse into reactionary violence and mindless destruction and thus play into the hands of political figures on the far-right promising to restore order).    

 

Secondly, Deleuze and Guattari were such groovy cats themselves - well, Guattari was, I'm not quite so sure that's true of Deleuze - that they had a soft spot for La Panthère rose, who briefly makes an appearance in Mille plateaux (1980) ... 

 

 

II.

 

"Mimicry is a very bad concept, since it relies on binary logic to describe phenomena of an entirely different nature. [...] The Pink Panther imitates nothing, it reproduces nothing, it paints the world its colour, pink on pink; this is its becoming-world, carried out in such a way that it becomes imperceptible [...]" [2]  

 

Without getting too bogged down in asignifying ruptures and aparallel evolution, I think Deleuze and Guattari reference the Pink Panther here in order to illustrate that becoming is not "a correspondence between relations" and neither is it "a resemblance, an imitation, or, at the limit, an identification" [3]. 

 

Above all, becoming "does not occur in the imagination" [4]. It's a real process; not at the level of forms, but at the molecular level of forces. "Be the Pink Panther", say Deleuze and Guattari, "and your loves will be like the wasp and the orchid, the cat and the baboon" [5].

 

Which sounds great - but is it great? 

 

Isn't the Pink Panther ultimately a fanatic out to deny difference (and external reality) by painting the entire world one colour - the colour of his own fur? This seems the very opposite of becoming-world to me - more an attempt to remodel the world in his own image. He may become-imperceptible in this manner - but at the cost of denying everyone else the right to identify in their own colours.   

  

I'm sure followers of Deleuze and Guattari will accuse me of a misunderstanding, or of a naive and superficial reading. They'll argue that the Pink Panther is free of ego and vanity - that he's actually attempting to lose himself via an act of extreme humility, not erase otherness.  

 

Ultimately, however, despite what the followers of Deleuze and Guattari say, I still think the Pink Panther is a bit of a fascist and an enemy of diversity: Eine Welt, eine Farbe, ein Panther! He acts like a coloniser - entering another's space, painting over their history and traditions with his monochromatic colour scheme; is he deterritorializing their world or just destroying it? 

 

 

III. 

Funnily enough, I'm not the only one who is a little suspicious, shall we say, of the Pink Panther ... Some contemporary viewers interpret his antics as cruel and borderline psychopathic rather than comic.  

 

For example, he relentlessly frustrates the Little Man (sometimes known as Big Nose) by repeatedly trying to paint his blue house pink, showing zero regard for the latter's property or personal preferences - and even when his actions cause chaos or misery for others, he remains coolly detached and indifferent.  

 

He may simply be having fun, but his humour is rooted in absurdist provocation rather than warm-hearted merriment. That doesn't necessarily make him malicious or manipulative, but when I think of all the animals I've heard about, there are plenty I'd choose as companions before I'd choose a panther that is positively pink [6].   

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm assuming most people know who the Pink Panther is, but, just in case there are readers who are unfamiliar ... The Pink Panther is an animated, anthropomorphic character created by Friz Freleng and David De Patie who first appeared in the opening credit sequence of the film The Pink Panther (dir. Blake Edwards, 1963). 

      Later, because of his huge popularity, he got his own TV show. He also, famously, has his own jazzy theme tune composed by Henry Mancini - click here - which has helped cement his place in the cultural imagination. 

 

[2] Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (The Athlone Press Ltd., 1988), p. 11. 

 

[3] Ibid., p. 237.

 

[4] Ibid., p. 238.

 

[5] Ibid., p. 25. 

 

[6] I'm playing here with the lyrics from the theme song to The Pink Panther Show (NBC, 1969): click here. 

 

 

Thanks to Tim P. for sending me the image that inspired this post.

 

 

Almost, But Not Quite Touching

Fig. 1: Detail from Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam (1508-12)

Fig. 2: Detail from Jim French's Longhorns - Dance (1969)    

 

 

I. 

 

The phrase almost, but not quite touching invariably evokes Michelangelo's iconic fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, where the index fingers of God and Adam reach toward each other without quite making contact. It's an image that theologians and art critics have discussed for centuries. 

 

Many argue that it illustrates how, following the anticipated Fall of Man, there will be a spiritual rift between humanity and God the Father. Others, however, suggest that if Adam but stretch his finger he can still connect with his Creator - the choice is his (even if perfection remains unattainable).       

 

I suppose it might also be said that the space between fingers - across which many viewers imagine a divine spark leaping - serves to remind us that there are things beyond our grasp, suspended between the tangible and intangible, absence and presence.

 

 

II. 

 

The phrase almost, but not quite touching also makes me think, however, of another artwork: - one that is not so widely known or replicated, even though it rather beautifully symbolises ideas of anticipation and yearning ... 

 

The picture in question is a homoerotic illustration produced in charcoal and ink by the American artist Jim French in 1969, working under the pseudonym Rip Colt [1]. It depicts two cowboys "facing each other in side profile [...] one wearing a denim jacket, the other a leather waistcoat" [2], but naked from the waist down except for their boots and gun belts. 

 

The cowboy on the right is shown rather tenderly adjusting the other's neckerchief. It's not this detail, however, which initially catches one's eye. Rather, it's the fact that their "semi-flaccid penises, prominently on display, are close to touching" [3]. 

 

First released as part of a six-print series, the image was then reproduced in The Colt Album (1973) and issue #7 of the magazine Manpower! (1974). It gained much wider notoriety, however, when Malcolm McLaren and his partner Vivienne Westwood appropriated the design for their 'Cowboys' T-shirt - as sold in their King's Road boutique and as worn by members of the Sex Pistols [4]. 

 

 

III. 

 

While separated by centuries and vastly different cultural contexts, both images discussed here ultimately derive their power from the exact same spatial politics. 

 

Thus, whether it is the distance between the fingers of Man and God, or the erotically charged gap between two sets of male genitalia, the magic lies entirely in the fact that they are almost, but not quite touching. 

 

Reconciliation and fulfilment are withheld, and the viewer in each case is left suspended in that exquisite, agonising space of pure anticipation. 

 

It seems that in the world of art as in the world of sex, edging is a key concept used to prolong an experience and keep everyone aroused (though I believe those in the art world prefer to speak of liminality).   

  

Notes

 

[1] As well as his artwork, Jim French (1932 - 2017) is famous for establishing Colt Studio - an independent gay porn business - with his business partner Lou Thomas in 1967. His legacy of homoerotic images, spread across a wide spectrum of formats and media, is one that has shaped the cultural perception of the male body and his artwork and photography has been hailed as iconic and seminal (no pun intended). 

      If you like hypermasculine nudes - construction workers, cowboys, sailors, bikers in leather, etc. - then French is the artist for you (just as Village People will probably be your disco group of choice). 

  

[2] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 265. 

 

[3] Ibid. 

 

[4] The only addition made by McLaren and Westwood to the original image was some imaginary dialogue between the two figures. French was not particularly pleased by his illustration becoming one of the key visual provocations of the punk movement without his agreement and without his being financialy compensated. 

      For more information, see the post 'Double Exposure' (19 Jan 2025) in which I discuss this T-shirt and image (in relation to a painting by D. H. Lawrence). 

 

 

Torpedo the Ark - Is It Just a Lot of Stuff and Nonsense?

 

 

I. 

 

The everyday expression c'est n'importe quoi has its roots in Old French, evolving from the phrase il n'importe pas quoi. 

 

In its original usage, it simply implied that what was being said didn't matter because it lacked substance or failed to add value to a conversation. 

 

In its modern form, however, the phrase expresses a certain level of exasperation: today, if a French-speaking critic tells you c'est n'importe quoi with reference to your writing - as recently happened to me - they are essentially dismissing your work as utter nonsense. 

 

In other words, when weaponised by a critic speaking with the arrogant authority of bourgeois common sense, the phrase becomes an intellectual and ideological insult. It is a dogmatic insistence on rhetorical clarity and logical coherence. 

 

Not only are they dismissing your thinking as lacking rigueur, they are indicting you for something far more serious: absurdité. To them, your work doesn't warrant a formal refutation and you, as the Humpty Dumptyish writer of such random and relativistic rubbish, do not deserve their respect. 

  

 

II. 

At this point, I can only give a weary sigh, as I feel that I've responded to the same critic - whose name is legion - on this exact topic a thousand times before. However, let me put my Barthesian hat on one more time ... 

 

When wielded by a hostile critic, the phrase c'est n'importe quoi is, first and foremost, a sign of panic when confronted by someone (like me) who prides themselves on being "a kind of Monsieur Teste in reverse" [1]. 

 

In other words, someone who doesn't care about logical consistency and happily mixes contradictory ideas without apology provided the result is pleasing for the more audacious reader who prefers the outside of meaning and believes they can have their cake and eat it. 

 

For me, yelling c'est n'importe quoi! every time a post on Torpedo the Ark fails to conform to fixed rules and cultural prejudices is to retreat into the safe space of doxa and pre-packaged ideas. 

 

I would hope that - at its best - TTA opens up a space for thinking that is hors-sens; a world where there are rattlesnakes and palm trees but no policemen, gatekeepers, or grammar nazis. Somewhere that encourages the reader to forge their own connections and not feel constrained (or even particularly convinced) by what I say. 

 

I agree with Barthes that far too many writers and artists overload their work with metaphors and symbols and are obsessed with the production of meaning. And I agree that the best works are suspended in a state of neutralité that baffles the binary and is exempt from the fascist requirement to always make good sense or pass judgement. 

 

If TTA can be said to have an ethical project, this is it. 

 

 

III.

 

By suggesting that I have gone too far, my critic is attempting to police the boundary between philosophically interesting work (which still plays by certain rules) and sheer nonsense (which succumbs to pure whim). 

 

They operate from within a classical hermeneutic framework: they accept that a text can have multiple meanings, but they rigidly insist that it must remain tied to truth at some level, and that I, as the author, must be held accountable to my intent. 

 

I fear, therefore, that they will never learn to love a blog like Torpedo the Ark - one which has as its motto: Ce que l'on conçoit bien est mort [2]. 

  

 

Notes

 

[1] See Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller (Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1990), p. 3. In Paul Valéry's original conception (1896), Monsieur Teste is a man of pure intellect, logic, and internal consistency.

 

[2] This is a play on Nicolas Boileau's famous couplet from L'Art poétique (1674): "Ce que l'on conçoit bien s'énonce clairement / Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément." Put simply in English prose this reads: What is well conceived can be expressed clearly and in simple terms. 

 

A Rotten Breakfast

Mmes. Singh & Garraway trying to look interested and amused 

as John Lydon performs his signature routine and promotes some product 

on Good Morning Britain (ITV, 15 October 2026)

 

 

I. 

 

Yesterday, 70-year-old former Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten was wheeled on to the set of Good Morning Britain - ITV's "lively BAFTA-nominated breakfast show that serves up an enticing blend of news and entertainment to start your day" [1] - in order to promote his new book [2].   

 

Watching such a spectacle live and first thing in the morning is, if I'm being honest, a bit more than I can take. 

 

However, I have now seen the interview with Kate Garraway and Ranvir Singh (the latter of whom wasn't even born when 'Anarchy in the U.K.' was released - and I very much doubt that nine-year-old Kate was pogoing round her bedroom at the time).    

  

Rotten performs in his now familiar role as national treasure and a man more sinned against than sinning; surely someone from the RSC should sign him up to play Lear - perhaps with Cook and Jones dragged up as Goneril and Regan, and Matlock in the role of Edmund. 

 

Anyway, I thought it might be instructive to critically examine a transcript of the interview. Note that italicised words and phrases in the text that follows are from the interview linked to above, as are the longer lines quoted.   

 

 

II.  

 

The segment begins with Ms Singh reminding the GMB audience - which numbers on average around 700,000 and mostly consists of viewers in their mid-50s - how the fabulous Sex Pistols exploded on to the music scene, scandalised the nation, and helped change popular culture forever. 

 

There is no mention of the role that an earlier ITV show played in this: these days, everyone has to pretend that punk was great and that the Sex Pistols were just four lovable spiky tops; these days no one wants to be seen to side with poor old Bill Grundy.      

 

Similarly, these days we are also asked to believe that "the man once known as Johnny Rotten is still tearing up the rule book". Really? Even the lovely presenter had to lean forward slightly at this point as if to check she was reading the autocue correctly.    

 

Lydon finally gets his chance to speak and - yawn - he begins with an attack on his former band mates for having the cheek to tour without him (Frank Carter having replaced him as the Sex Pistols frontman in 2024 and now singing the songs for which he, Lydon, had once provided lyrics). 

 

Not unreasonably, Ms Singh suggests he should have put his grievances behind him and joined them on the road, to which Lydon responds: "No, ma'am. I worked enough with them in the first place. They're deceitful, lying hyenas, and I never want another thing to do with them."

 

That being the case, then why complain or express disappointment when they draft in a new lead vocalist? I can't imagine Steve, Paul and Glen would make a fuss should PiL decide to perform a Sex Pistols track (as earlier variations of the band have done in the past), even though they - not Lydon - wrote the music. 

 

I'm really not sure why Rotten feels he has some kind of moral claim over songs that were credited to all four band members. He clearly has no legal right to prevent their performance or use, as the ruling in the Pistol case made clear [3].     

 

 

III.  

 

In an attempt to move the conversation on, Lydon claims that the Sex Pistols are now nothing other than a karaoke band. Which is true. 

 

But this is a bit rich coming from a man who on a spoken word tour in 2024 would lead the audience in a singalong-a-Johnny whilst a backing track of 'Anarchy in the U.K.' played [4]. Lydon has been offering us an imitation of Johnny Rotten for forty years or more.

 

Also, there's an irony in his choice of the word karaoke: for it is one that Malcolm McLaren increasingly used in his later years. But rather than acknowledge that he is still drawing inspiration from the latter, Lydon can't resist taking another cheap shot, describing his former manager as "just a bloke that run a clothes shop" who had no advice to offer and nothing of any importance to contribute to the band. 

 

This kind of casual dismissiveness - of everyone not just McLaren - is typical of Lydon, who remains convinced that he was the central figure in the Sex Pistols story, when, actually, he was a late-comer and a collaborator [5].    

 

 

IV. 

Ageing is a subject of significant and growing interest amongst members of the Punk Scholars Network - particularly those who are now over the hill themselves. And it's interesting to see how individuals who once subscribed to an ethos of living fast and dying young now deal with the physical realities of growing old. 

 

Lydon tried to laugh and joke his way off the topic when it was put to him - "I hit 69 and I thought that sounds like an interesting number" - although, interestingly, he confesses, he was more concerned about turning 21 than 70 (I'm somewhat sceptical about the truth of this, however).   

Dear old Kate Garraway - 59 - flattered her guest by expressing her astonishment that he had reached three score years and ten: "I mean, talk about energetic, youthful energy!" Clearly, she hasn't seen his most recent performances with PiL: unfortunately, thanks to YouTube, I have. 

 

Fans insist that although his physical movement is now restricted - and he can no longer really sing - his stage presence and vocal intensity are greater than ever. In other words, he's fat and he bellows and wails. Rotten always promised us he was no Mick Jagger - and I can absolutely confirm that when it comes to delivering a high-energy stage performance and still looking the part, he's no Mick Jagger. 

 

 

V.  

 

Of course, Lydon was always going to bring the conversation around to his lovely wife and having to care for her in the years before her death, aged 80, in 2023, having been diagnosed with Alzheimer's five years previously.

 

I find it increasingly irritating that he publicly plays the Nora card so often. I might be mistaken, but I do feel he emotionally milks her death whenever he wants not to solicit sympathy, so much as virtue signal and humanise himself in the eyes of viewers. 

 

Again, Lydon's fans view his openness as a rare and authentic display of vulnerability and suggest that talking about things is a way for him to overcome his grief. 

 

But critics argue that he turns personal tragedy into a slick media segment; an emotional narrative that is perfectly suited to the requirements of daytime TV. It may be that it was Kate Garraway who steered the conversation on to Nora - "I'd love you to to talk to us a little bit about her" - but Lydon was only too happy to give her what she wanted: "The more iller she got, the closer we got."

 

Ultimately, it's not cynicism on my part to notice that discussing his role as a loving husband and carer instantly humanises him, deflecting harsher political or personal critiques from hosts and viewers alike. 

 

 

VI.

 

I have to admit, I did smile when Lydon was shown - apparently for the first time - a photo taken by British photographer Lou Boileau to mark his 70th birthday and which is apparently going to be housed in the National Portrait Gallery. 

 

He said: "I don't like it. It's horrible!" and just for a moment I thought of Johnny Rotten and of all he once meant to me.   

 

VII. 

 

Finally, Lydon voices his opposition to AI and the fact that artists can have their voice and image appropriated: "It's horrible ... I don't want Mozart reinvented by a machine." [6]

 

Johnny Rotten, in other words, is a champion of the real deal and rejects falsehood and fakery in all its forms - including artificial intelligence. He even (jokingly?) promises a future album with the title Actual Intelligence.    

 

I suppose this shouldn't surprise us: punk was always obsessed with authenticity - a quality that, along with sincerity, risks transforming the human being into an overly earnest bore, like Lydon, forever banging on about the vital character of live performance, etc.    

 

  

Notes

 

[1] I'm quoting from the official blurb for Good Morning Britain on ITV's digital streaming platform ITVX.

 

[2] Archive (2026) is a forthcoming photographic memoir which "brings together rare and previously unseen photographs spanning John's extraordinary life and career" and "captures five decades of music, controversy, creativity and cultural change". Alongside the pictures, Lydon "offers candid commentary and personal reflections on the experiences and people who shaped his life". 

      I'm quoting from the official Public Image Ltd website. Click on the link if interested and if you wish to pre-order a copy of either the luxury edition (£49.99) or the superluxe edition (£149.99).

 

[3] In 2021, Lydon lost a High Court battle with his former bandmates Paul Cook and Steve Jones. They wanted to license songs by the Sex Pistols for use in Danny Boyle's six-part miniseries, Pistol, but Lydon - aggrieved that he wasn't being consulted about the making of the show (and that it was based on Jones's autobiography, not his) - sought to exercise an imaginary right to veto. 

      The judge in the case was clear, however: the Band Member Agreement signed in 1998 stated that licensing decisions could be approved by a majority vote and, like it or not, Lydon was therefore required to sign the necessary licenses. 

 

[4] See the post 'Johnny Rotten as an Abject Antihero' (9 July 2024).

 

[5] Obviously, Lydon would reject this characterisation. In fact, later in the interview (5:55 on) he claims that he has not been absorbed and eventually corrupted by the music industry - even though, of course, he was swallowed by the Virgin shark in 1978. 

 

[6] That's a nice line. Unfortunately, however, Lydon spoils it thanks to his own tendency for malapropism: instead of declaring the reinvention of Mozart by a machine as an atrocious thing to do, he says it's an audacious thing to do. It seems fairly obvious that's not what he means.  

 

Bow Wow Wasn't: On Two French Masterpieces That Didn't Quite Fit the Bill for McLaren and Egan

Jean-Honoré Fragonard: Le Verrou (1777) [1]

Eugène Delacroix: La Liberté guidant le peuple (1830 / restored 2024) [2]

 

 

I.

 

Having recently viewed the extended remix of Peter Pahor's documentary about the life and work of Nick Egan - Creative Vandal (2024) [3] - I was left thinking about the design decision taken with regard to the cover of Bow Wow Wow's debut studio album. 

 

As everybody knows, See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! (1981) features a brilliant photographic recreation of Édouard Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) [4].

 

But what a lot of people - including me - didn't realise before hearing Nick discuss this work was that Manet's painting was not the first or only choice: that at least two other famous French masterpieces were also considered, including Fragonard's Le Verrou (1777) and Delacroix's La Liberté guidant le peuple (1830) ...   

 

 

II.  

 

Le Verrou is one of Fragonard's most famous works. It depicts what is known as a galant scene [5]. 

 

Whether the male libertine is locking the door with consent so that he and his elegantly dressed mistress are not disturbed, or whether he is bolting the door so as to prevent her escape and what we are witnessing is an attempted rape is open to interpretation [6]. 

 

Either way, it's slightly risqué and one can see why it would appeal to Malcolm McLaren and Nick Egan, although, in my view, it would have made a much better cover for the Bow Wow Wow single 'Louis Quatorze' - which famously contains the lines: Louis, Louis's locking my door / Louis's serious, I'm delirious [7] - than for the album, so they were right to reject it.     

 

 

III.

 

La Liberté guidant le peuple is a very well-known Romantic painting by Delacroix that many people - including Egan - mistakenly believe to be a depiction of the 1789 Revolution, when, actually, it commemorates the uprising of July 1830 that toppled the short reign of King Charles X [8].    

 

Everyone loves a bare-footed, bare-breasted woman wearing a Phrygian cap while waving the tricolour and brandishing a bayonetted musket. Malcolm McLaren and his cohorts certainly did - one might recall, for example, that Jamie Reid later adapted this Marianne image for the cover of his 1987 book Up They Rise [9]. 

 

But, again, I think McLaren and Egan wisely decided not to use this image for the cover of See Jungle! It's a bit too punk and political and doesn't quite fit with the aesthetics and ideology behind Bow Wow Wow - which was more about going wild in the country and teenage kicks than it was anarchy and bloody revolution.  

 

Delacroix's picture would have been fine for the Sex Pistols - the young boy storming the barricades is even holding two pistols - but, in relation to Bow Wow Wow, it's probably not even as strong an option as Fragonard's work. 

 

And neither match up to Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, which is the perfect choice: très moderne and still capable of causing scandal and outrage - particularly when the nude female figure is replaced by a fourteen-year-old girl.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Known in English either as The Bolt or The Lock, this painting by Fragonard is an oil on canvas measuring 73.5 x 93.5 cm. It can be viewed at the Louvre.

 

[2] Known in English as Liberty Leading the People, this painting by Delacroix is an oil on canvas measuring 260 x 325 cm. It too - of course - can be viewed at the Louvre. 

 

[3] I was fortunate enough to be invited to an evening with Nick Egan, hosted by Catalina Guirado at Karma Sanctum Hotel, in Soho, earlier this week, and there was a screening of Peter Pahor's film - as well as an exhibition of Nick's latest paintings. See the TTA post 'Live Forever / Fuck Forever' (11 October, 2026) which anticipates this event. 

 

[4] Whilst as art director Egan was responsible for the overall sleeve design and staging the photo shoot, the actual photograph was by Andy Earl. It is now part of the National Portrait Gallery collection. See the TTA post: 'Why I Love Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe' (27 April 2017). 

 

[5] A galant scene [fête galante] is a genre of art that was particularly popular in 18th-century France, blending reality with Rococo fantasy. 

      Such scenes depicted aristocratic figures engaged in lighthearted conversation, music-making, or gentle courtship activities. While most often set in outdoor locations, such as idyllic gardens, some artists ventured into the bedroom or boudoir and works like Fragonard's Le Verrou were rather more suggestive of amorous games and illicit affairs. 

 

[6] Of course, it could be that the man is attempting to leave (perhaps post-coitally) and the woman is holding him back and trying to prevent him unbolting the door. 

 

[7] Lyrics (written by McLaren) from the Bow Wow Wow track 'Louis Quatorze' which featured on the cassette-only mini-album Your Cassette Pet (EMI, 1980), and told the story of a young girl being sexually assaulted at gunpoint (or perhaps of a teenage girl's fantasy of such). It was released in Europe as a 7" single by EMI in 1981 and then re-recorded and released in the same format for the UK market by RCA in 1982. 

 

[8] Speaking to camera in Creative Vandal, Egan twice says that Delacroix's 1830 picture depicts the French Revolution. It's a common error - one that I often made until fairly recently, probably like most people with only a vague knowledge of French history. 

      See Egan discussing his work with Bow Wow Wow at 8:28 - 11:22. His claim that nobody saw the reworking of Manet as having anything to do with sexuality whatsoever is either naive or disingenuous - either way, I could only smile when I heard this. McLaren's projects have always been stylish and subversive - always been attempts to capture the look of music and the sound of fashion - but, above all, they have always been about confronting the English public with sex.  

 

[9] See Jamie Reid and Jon Savage, Up They Rise: The Incomplete Works of Jamie Reid (Faber and Faber, 1987). A signed and numbered six-coloured silkscreen print of this work produced by Reid in 2007 can be viewed at (and purchased from) fairart.com 

 

 

This post is for Nick Egan and Catalina Guirado.

 

 

Very Ordinary People

Two very ordinary people 

 

 

I. 

 

I was irritated to recently hear a Hollywood type who, having relocated to a village in Ireland in 2024, spoke of her joy in being able to go about her daily business in peace and quiet and mingle with the locals whom she termed very ordinary people.    

 

I immediately thought of a famous song by Pulp - you know the one [1]. 

 

And I immediately noted the use of an intensifier: the locals were not just ordinary people, they were very ordinary people. Which is, I suppose, just about as ordinary as you can be; almost extraordinarily ordinary in the manner that W. H. Auden once noted [2].  

 

If she had just said ordinary people, I might have overlooked her remark as a slightly ill-judged attempt to say down-to-earth or interpreted it as a clumsy search for authenticity: a kind of faux pas rather than an example of toxic privilege. But adding very makes the phrase feel doubly insulting.

 

I was only thankful that they didn't speak of simple folk, which would have made things even more triggering.   

 

 

II.  

 

  

The word ordinary comes from the Latin for regular or orderly. So an ordinary person is one who might be termed straight - one who follows the rules and conventions without fuss; one who subscribes to common sense and likes to keep up with the news.

 

Someone very much like the hard-working family man identified by the Bureau of Statistics as JS/07M378, about whom no official complaint had ever been lodged [3]. 

 

 

III. 

 

Somehow, the fact that this person is a filmmaker who speaks a lot about the sensitivity needed to be an artist, deepens the irony. 

 

Do they not see that rather than sounding grounded and approachable, their phrasing makes them sound self-important and patronising; someone who mingles only in order to observe and perhaps find inspiration from very ordinary people and their charming (somewhat tragic) little lives? 

 

In other words, even if their intent was to express (or perform) humility in order to virtue signal and gain moral credit, their language is inherently exclusionary and problematic.    

 

 

IV. 

 

Having said that, as a Nietzschean, I accept that there's an order of rank in this life and that some individuals are more important, more influential, more interesting, or more intelligent than others. But I'm not sure they should be accorded special rights or priority treatment.      

 

In fact, the truly extraordinary individual has no need to announce their superiority by asserting VIP status and patronising those they deem beneath them. The performative humility of a Hollywood expat is not a sign of higher rank, but of a deeply internalised bourgeois anxiety - a desperate need to look down from a self-constructed pedestal while pretending to stand on common ground. 

 

There is something pathetic about an artist who travels thousands of miles just to find people they consider ordinary enough to validate their own sense of exceptionalism. It suggests that without a backdrop of simple village life to contrast themselves against, their own brilliance would quickly evaporate [4]. 

  

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring to a single by Pulp titled 'Common People', released from the album Different Class (Island Records, 1995). 

      But one might also recall this track by the Kinks, 'Ordinary People', which featured on the album Soap Opera (RCA, 1975). Or, indeed, this song by Flanagan & Allen (pictured above) - 'Two Very Ordinary People' - found on the album Songs from the Pavement (Decca Records, 1931). 

 

[2] I'm referring to a poem by Auden titled 'The Unknown Citizen' (1939). 

 

[3] Ibid. 

 

[4] See Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886), particularly Chapter IX, 'What is Noble', where he details the self-sufficiency of the noble soul - they have no need to mingle or act the tourist.  

  

 

The Clash: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

 

 'Clash City Rockers' - single release (1978)   

 

'This Is Radio Clash' - single release (1981) 

 

'We Are The Clash' - album track on Cut the Crap (1985) [1]

  

I. 

 

One of the things that The Clash had a penchant for doing throughout their recording career was affirming their own identity, producing three tracks that directly reference the band's name: 'Clash City Rockers' (1978), 'This Is Radio Clash' (1981) and 'We Are The Clash' (1985). 

 

Of course, this kind of thing is not unprecedented: many bands across different genres write self-referential songs to celebrate their identity, legacy, or status. The practice is popular among metalheads, for example, but both punk rockers and hip-hoppers also like to establish credibility amongst a tightknit community of fans by self-proclaiming their greatness and authenticity [2].  

 

In other words, it's not just vanity - incorporating one's own name into one's body of work serves actual strategic and artistic purposes. By writing songs like the trio mentioned above, The Clash are actively participating in their own myth-making. 

 

Or, if you prefer, they are brand-building - letting fans know they are not just another punk group, but, in fact, the Only Band That Matters. The Clash were obsessed with posing as a gang of outlaws and declaring that it was them (and their fans) against the world - particularly the big corporations who controlled the record industry. 

 

It was all bullshit of course - The Clash signed a multi-album record deal with CBS in January 1977 - but let's discuss the three tracks in turn ...

 

 

II. 

 

And I wanna move the town to the Clash City Rockers 

Ya need a little jump of electrical shockers 

Better leave town if you only want to knock us 

Nothing stands the pressure of the Clash City Rockers [3]

  

'Clash City Rockers' was released as a single in February 1978, four days after my fifteenth birthday. 

 

I liked it then and I like it now: it's a good song, and represents the band at their punk peak - showcasing exactly what it was that made them such an exciting group, even if it was already moving away from the sound of their eponymous debut album released the year before. 

 

One of the things I liked about it was the fact that it attacked those who simply complain about their useless employment but lack the courage to jack it in, and it took a pop at David Bowie (for being old and stuck in a rut) and Gary Glitter (for being unfit) [4].     

 

 

III. 

Interrupting all programmes

This is Radio Clash on pirate satellite [5]

 

'This Is Radio Clash' was released as a single in November 1981. It received mixed reviews and although my friend Kirk Field liked it, I did not. 

 

In fact, I thought it was a bad attempt at a rap-funk combination designed for the US market; six months later they'd release the album Combat Rock, which was greeted far more enthusiastically by the American critics than the British critics.     

 

Ultimately, if I wanted to listen to a song about piracy then I'd go play Bow Wow Wow's fantastic debut single from the year before: I didn't need to tune into Radio Clash [6]. 

 

 

IV.

 

We ain't gonna be treated like trash 

We got one thing: we are The Clash! [7]

 

Having described 'Clash City Rockers' as a good song and 'This Is Radio Clash' as a bad song, I suppose I'm obliged to characterise 'We Are The Clash' as il brutto (the ugly).

 

Only, the more I listen to this song, the more I like it and start, like Ron and Russell Mael, to see the beauty in it. There's something touchingly bonkers about this final cry of defiance from Strummer and the lyrics also generously invite everyone to sing along - not just punk rockers, but hip hoppers, pill poppers, and show stoppers. 

 

And I like that: just as anyone can be a Sex Pistol during The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle period, so too anyone can be part of the Last Gang in Town ...     

 

Could it be that if this track were only given a decent remix, it might yet be recognised as the stand out number on the much-despised and much-derided album Cut the Crap (1985)? [8] 

 

   

Notes

 

[1] Unfortunately, the band themselves didn't release this track as a single. But a cover version by Sparks was released as a digital single in 2022: see the post 'Strike a Match! It's Sparks vs The Clash: Ron and Russell Show Joe and Bernie How to Cut the Crap' (9 Oct 2026). 

 

[2] It should be pointed out also that The Clash were heavily influenced by Jamaican music and that it was standard practice for reggae artists and dub DJs to self-promote by calling out their own names. 

 

[3] Lyrics from the song 'Clash City Rockers' written by Mick Jones and Joe Strummer, released as a single by The Clash in February 1978 (CBS Records). The b-side featured a song from Strummer's pub rock days - 'Jail Guitar Doors' - that was heavily reworked by Mick Jones who not only provided new lyrics and music but performed the lead vocals on the track. 

 

[4] Bowie had turned 30 in 1977. However, it was hardly the case that he was creatively at a standstill and did not need The Clash to show him the way forward. As for Gary Glitter, I suspect Strummer is suggesting he was fat and out of shape - that this was not a comment on his moral unfitness as his sex crimes against children were not revealed until twenty years later (1997). 

 

[5] Lyrics from the song 'This Is Radio Clash' written by The Clash (Mick Jones / Joe Strummer / Paul Simonon / Topper Headon), released as a single in November 1981 (CBS Records). The b-side was an alternative version and remix of the track simply called 'Radio Clash'. 

 

[6] It might be noted that the last single I'd bought by The Clash was 'London Calling' in December 1979 (and I wasn't a great fan of that either). The Bow Wow Wow single I refer to is of course  'C30 C60 C90 Go' (EMI, 1980). The contrast between The Clash's pirate radio station fantasy and Bow Wow Wow's provocative celebration of home-taping culture - which actually terrified the record industry at the time - is stark.

 

[7] Lyrics from the song 'We Are The Clash', written by Joe Strummer and Bernie Rhodes. Never released as a single by the band, this track featured on the sixth and final studio album, Cut the Crap (CBS Records, 1985). 

 

[8] Actually, the song - along with the rest of Cut the Crap - was given a decent remix/reboot by German punk musician Gerald Manns, who, in 2021, isolated Strummer's vocals from the original audio recording, re-recorded the music, and eliminated unnecessary overdubs and drum machines. 

      The result can be found on a limited-edition (unofficial) vinyl album titled Cut the Crap Rebooted (2021), by Mohawk Revenge with The Clash Mark II. The project received a positive response from fans and figures in the punk community - including Clash guitarist Nick Sheppard, who said the album came remarkably close to how he and the band had originally envisioned it sounding.

      Fortunately, the album is freely available on YouTube - and so, here's 'We Are The Clash' in its rebooted form (still not as amusing as the version by Sparks, but good fun nevertheless).