A Tale of Two Caped Figures

 

In the absence of bats, a caped Kirk Field 

feeds the pigeons in Trafalgar Square (1981)

 

Meanwhile, a caped Larry David (alongside Jerry Stiller) 

features in an episode of Seinfeld (1994)

 

 

I.

 

One of the things best loved about the season six episode of Seinfeld titled 'The Chinese Woman' [1] is the uncredited guest appearance by series co-creator Larry David as Frank Costanza's eccentric divorce lawyer - a man with a penchant for wearing a cape ...

 

II.

 

The history of the sleevless cape in men's fashion is a journey from an essential piece of outerwear worn by the everyman in the ancient world for protection from the elements to an elite status symbol and indicator of class, before being largely relegated to ceremonial dress and an item favoured only by vampires and superheroes. 

 

Although the Ancient Romans loved their capes, it wasn't until the early-modern period that the cape reached its fashionable apex, frequently integrated into outfits along with doublets and breeches. Whilst the majority of men made do with short, heavy wool capes, the wealthy and privileged would wear capes of various length and style made of velvet and other fine materials, secured at the shoulder with jewelled brooches.   

 

There was nothing a nobleman loved doing more than sweeping aside his cape to reveal a sword or pistol at his side [2].

 

However, fashions change and as Roland Barthes would tell you, in the 18th and 19th centuries there came a cultural turning point known as the Great Renunciation when men increasingly abandoned ostentatious, colourful and theatrical clothing in favour of sober, functional, and uniform attire [3] - say goodbye to the swish cloak and cape [4] and say hello to the heavy overcoat.

 

By the early 20th century, the triumph of modern tailored overcoats meant that the cape was no longer seen as romantic and dashing but archaic and cumbersome. The cultural perception of the man's cape was further altered by Bela Lugosi's 1931 portrayal of Dracula and the 1938 debut of Superman, forever linking the garment to gothic horror, theatrical villains, and comic book characters.

 

With the cape firmly relegated to the margins of modern society, we can now return to the streets of Manhattan ...

  

III. 

 

When out picking up some groceries one day, Jerry and Elaine spot George's dad, Frank, with a mysterious figure wearing a cape. 

 

Elaine asks: 'Why is Mr Costanza with a man in a cape?' 

 

To which Jerry replies (in typical Jerry manner): 'Well it is good cape weather - cool, breezy ...'

 

Elaine is still troubled, however: 'Why a cape? Who wears a cape? Where d'you even get a cape?' 

 

Eventually, Jerry is forced to concede: 'You're right - it is strange', and he suggests they cross to the other side of the street to avoid a potentially embarrassing situation.  

 

Later, at Jerry's apartment, they tell George that they saw his father and Elaine mentions he was with a man in a cape. 

 

George asks: 'Why was he wearing a cape? Was my father wearing a cape?

 

Jerry replies: 'No, jacket and tie - no cape.' 

 

George is perplexed: 'Hmm. What was a man with a cape doing with my father? What was my father doing with a man in a cape? Why a cape?'

Later, when confronted on it, Frank reveals to his son that the man in a cape was his lawyer, casually explaining that he's 'very independent: he doesn't follow the trends'. 

 

IV. 

 

What motivated my friend and fellow punk Kirk Field to start wearing a cape back in the early 1980s, I don't know. Perhaps he too might be described as independent-minded and as someone who doesn't follow trends ... 

 

Only, of course, by 1981 the punk movement had already splintered into so-called post-punk and whereas some punks transformed into colourfully dressed new romantics, others sought out the darker, moodier look and sound of what became known as gothic rock (or goth for short). 

 

Thanks to Bauhaus, Bela Lugosi had risen from the dead [5] ... and would-be vampires like nineteen-year-old Mr Field were putting on their eye-liner and wearing their capes, before venues like the Batcave had even opened their doors [6]. 

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Seinfeld, 'The Chinese Woman' [S6/E4], dir. Andy Ackerman, written by Peter Mehlman (Oct 1994). Frank Costanza was played by Jerry Stiller. Click on the link to watch the relevant scenes discussed in this post. 

 

[2] Perhaps the last echo of this is to be seen in a Fistful of Dollars (dir. Sergio Leone, 1964) when the Clint Eastwood character flips back the right side of his poncho over his left shoulder exposing the holster on his hip and thus providing a clear visual cue that he is about to draw his pistol. This gesture serves as a signature dramatic signal immediately before a gunfight - as in the early scene from the movie linked to.  

 

[3] See Roland Barthes, 'Language and Clothing' and ' Dandyism and Fashion', in The Language of Fashion, trans. Andy Stafford, ed. Andy Stafford and Michael carter (Berg, 2006).

 

[4] Is there a clear distinction between a cloak and a cape? Well, in fashion, the word cape usually refers to a shorter garment and cloak to a longer (and technically different) type of garment, though the two terms are often used synonymously for full-length coverings.

 

[5] Recorded live in the studio in one take in January 1979 and released in August of that year, Bauhaus's astonishing debut single 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' (Small Wonder Records) laid the blueprint for goth with its slow, sepulchral bassline, dub-inflected drums, and vampire-themed theatricality. 

 

[6] The Batcave was a weekly club-night launched in Soho in 1982. It is considered to be the birthplace of the goth subculture in London and the south east of England. As Kirk and I were Leeds based in 1981-84, this was not our regular haunt - we danced the nights away at Le Phonographique. 

 

   

D. H. Lawrence's Vision of a Demonic America

Jasper Johns: Flag (1954-55)

moma.org

I. 

I've never been to America. But I have always loved all things American, including the people. Perhaps this is due in some mysterious way to the fact that my mother-to-be dated a GI during the War (he even proposed and planned to take his teen-bride back with him to New York, but my mother-to-be said no).

Whatever the reason, I've always thought of myself as, in some sense, American and I fully appreciate why so many Brits - including Christopher Hitchens and Johnny Rotten - are proud to become US citizens.

Despite his determination to remain English in the teeth of all the world, I also believe D. H. Lawrence would have made a fine American. Indeed, it's rather surprising that he didn't settle in the States and turn his back forever on the country of his birth, which treated him so poorly on so many occasions.*        

For whilst Lawrence despised many aspects of modern life in America - telephones, tinned meat, automobiles, indoor plumbing, incomes and ideals, etc. - he was fascinated by the spirit of place and the alien quality also of American art-speech that he discovered in the classic literature:

"The furthest frenzies of French modernism or futurism have not yet reached the pitch of extreme consciousness that Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, Whitman reached. The European moderns are all trying to be extreme. The great Americans I mention just were it." [12]

I think that's true: which is why, for example, I think The Scarlet Letter a more provocative novel than L'histoire de l'œil.

I also think Lawrence might be right to suggest that the real American day hasn't dawned as yet. And that when it does, it'll surprise everyone - not least the pale-faced, apple-pie loving idealists who think of themselves as the true Americans of today. For the America to come will be one that has reckoned at last with the full force of the daimon that belongs to the American continent itself.   

Troubling as it is to contemplate, I admire Lawrence's queer dark vision of a demonic America, inhabited by a people whose destiny "is to destroy the whole corpus of the white psyche, the white consciousness" [81]. This doesn't mean primitive regression - Lawrence is clear that there can be no going back - but it does entail a dusky-bodied posthumanism with a rattle snake coiled at its heart.**  

II.

Even before he had made his first visit in 1922, Lawrence was pinning his highest hopes on America. In a letter of October 1915 to the American editor, critic and poet Harriet Monroe, he writes:

"I must see America. I think one can feel hope there. I think that there life comes up from the roots, crude but vital. Here the whole tree of life is dying. It is like being dead: the underworld. I must see America. I believe it is beginning, not ending." 

Lawrence's contrasting of American vitality with European deadness is a constant in his work from this period. Thus, it's not surprising to find that in a foreword written for Studies in Classic American Literature, he attempts to persuade Americans to get up off their knees before European culture and tradition and be thankful for their own barbaric freedom from the past.

Like Nietzsche, Lawrence is only interested in serving history to the extent that it serves life; when it becomes disadvantageous - i.e., when it merely instructs without increasing or directly quickening human activity - then he's happy to draw a line under it.

It's a pity, says Lawrence, that Americans are always so wonderstruck by European monuments: "After all, a heap of stone is only a heap of stone - even if it is Milan cathedral. And who knows that it isn't a horrid bristly burden on the face of the earth?" [381]

He continues:

"America, therefore, should leave off being quite so prostrate with admiration. [...]
      Let Americans turn to America, and to that very America which has been rejected and almost annihilated. [...] America must turn again to catch the spirit of her own dark, aboriginal continent.
      That which was abhorrent to the Pilgrim Fathers and to the Spaniards, that which was called the Devil, the black demon of savage America, this great aboriginal spirit the Americans must recognise again, recognise, and embrace. The devil [...] of our forefathers hides the Godhead which we seek. [...]
       It means a surpassing of the old European life-form. It means a departure from the old European morality [...] It means even a departure from the old range of emotions and sensibilities. [...]
      [...] Now is the day when Americans must become fully, self-reliantly conscious of their own inner responsibility. They must be ready for a new act, a new extension of life. They must pass the bounds." [383-85]       

In a sense, as these lines indicate, Lawrence is transferring Nietzsche's project of a revaluation of all values into the wild west. One can almost picture the overman in a poncho, cowboy hat and spurs - a bit like Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name. (Readers might think I'm only teasing here, but, as Lawrence says, the essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic ... and a killer.)*** 

 thedigitalpilgrimage.wordpress.com 

Notes

* In a letter written to his friend Catherine Carswell in 1916, Lawrence makes it clear that he had, at this time, determined that he wanted to leave England for good and at the earliest possible opportunity, transferring all his life to America, a country in which he could "feel the new unknown". 

** See what Lawrence writes in 'Herman Melville's Typee and Omoo' (Final Version, 1923), in Studies in Classic American Literature, pp. 126-28. And see also his remarks in 'Indians and an Englishman', in Mornings and Mexico and Other Essays, pp. 119-20. The essential point is that whilst Lawrence advocates Americans picking up where the native peoples left off, he also wants those who accept this challenge to perfect the old way of being as a new body of truth in the future; not make a vain and naive attempt to simply return to the past: I can't cluster at the drum any more. 

*** Reading Eastwood's movies - particularly the Dollars Trilogy - in terms of a postmoral existentialism, is not an original move on my part; several scholars have produced interesting work in this area. See for example the collection of essays ed. Richard T. McClelland and Brian B. Clayton, The Philosophy of Clint Eastwood, (University Press of Kentucky, 2014).

 
Bibliography

D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003). All page numbers given in the text refer to this edition.

D. H. Lawrence, Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde, (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
 
D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II (1913-16), ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), letter 1028, to Harriet Monroe, 26 October, 1915.

D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III (1916-21), ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), letter 1306, to Catherine Carswell, 7 November, 1916.

Nietzsche, 'On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life', Untimely Meditations, ed. Daniel Breazeale, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1997). 


Many thanks to James Walker of The Digital Pilgrimage for use of the Lawrence as cowboy image.

Paint Your Wagon: Civilization and Its Discontents

Paint Your Wagon (1969) is a 22-carat, rip-roaring musical comedy set in a mining community - No Name City - during the period of the California Gold Rush (1848-1855). Directed by Joshua Logan, the film was adapted by Paddy Chayefsky from the 1951 stage show by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, and starred Lee Marvin as Ben Rumson, Clint Eastwood as Pardner and Jean Seberg as Elizabeth.

Despite its faults - and it's more ponderous and overblown than it is riotous if I'm being completely honest (which helps explain its failure at the box office) - it's a movie that I love very much.

And what makes me love it is the anarchic, amoral, hobo-punk spirit that the film romanticises and which is embodied in Marvin's character Ben Rumson; a spirit that Pardner - a farmer at heart, looking to settle on a little patch of land rather than a genuine prospector and pioneer always prepared to take a risk and move on - in collusion with Elizabeth - a woman who wants nothing more than the security of a log cabin that she can call home and a loyal, hard-working husband to provide for her - are determined to exorcise in the name of clean living and respectable society.      

This ongoing tension between civilization and its discontents is the essentially Freudian theme at the heart of the movie. As Ben Rumson points out, those who desire the taming of Man take every opportunity to coordinate the natural world and control freedom of movement:

"They civilize what's pretty by puttin' up a city / Where nothin' that's pretty can grow
They muddy up the winter and civilize it into / A place too uncivilized even for snow
The first thing you know ...
They civilize left, they civilize right / Till nothing is left, till nothing is right
They civilize freedom till no one is free / No one except, by coincidence me"

- 'The First Thing You Know' (lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner)

Writing in his seminal text - first published in German as Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (1930) - Freud discusses how conflict arises whenever the individual's quest for naked liberty bangs up against the walls and institutions erected by a civilization that demands social conformity, even if it involves a violent repression of the instincts (the latter are always thought of negatively by Freud; as desires derived from and representative of the death drive which threaten the greater good of the community).

Thus, for Freud, as for Pardner and Elizabeth, the unrestricted happiness of men like Ben Rumson - drinking, gambling, fighting, whoring - cannot be allowed to continue; it has to be subject to a system of law and order and enforced with the threat of severe punishment. In other words, if you want to have all the benefits of living in society - education, healthcare, honest work, indoor plumbing, home-cooking etc. - then you just have to accept that certain forms of pleasure are no longer permissible.

And if you don't want these things and refuse to accept any restrictions on your freedom and happiness, then, well, you'll just have to paint your wagon and get out of town - not knowing where you're going, uncertain when you'll arrive, but careless of consequences and pleased simply to be on the way, following your dreams with a song in your heart ...


Click here to play Wand'rin Star, the number one UK single taken from the soundtrack of the film, sung in his own unique manner by Lee Marvin. 

See: Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. Joan Riviere, ed. James Strachey, (The Hogarth Press / Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1969). 

On The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and Its Critics

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly by Billy Perkins

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach in the title roles respectively is, according to Quentin Tarantino, the greatest film ever made.

He's not alone in this assessment; many people love it and name it as the purest example of cinematic art brought to a moment of absolute perfection thanks not only to the performances of the three stars and the directorial skills of Leone, but also the magnificent photography by Tonino Delli Colli and the famous score composed by Ennio Morricone.

It's surprising, therefore, to discover that upon its release it was met not with universal acclaim, but, on the contrary, fairly widespread hostility and critical disdain. Not only was the violence found objectionable, but the length of the film led some to label it dull and interminable. Meanwhile, the fact that it was an Italian re-imagining of a classically American art form - a so-called spaghetti western - led even Roger Ebert in his original review to deduct a star purely on the grounds that, as such, it could not be art.  

It was Italian-born Renata Adler, however, who really took against the movie in her New York Times review from 1968, dismissing it as "the most expensive, pious and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre". This is particularly disappointing coming as it does from the pen of a woman with a background in philosophy and comparative literature.

Disappointing too is the review of Pauline Kael in The New Yorker, published two months after that by Adler. Kael - described by some as the most influential film critic of her generation - called the film, garish, gruesome and stupid. She particularly objected to what she perceived as the mindless sadism and fascistic nihilism of the film in which all noble and heroic elements of the traditional (American) western have either been omitted or spat upon. 

What this demonstrates, I suppose, is that even very smart, very well-educated critics can sometimes get things very wrong; particularly when confronted with the genuinely New (i.e. that which comes to us from the future and shatters the past). 

One recalls in closing Woody Allen's remark about Kael to the effect that she has everything a film critic needs except judgement: 'She has great passion, terrific wit, wonderful writing style, huge knowledge of film history, but too often what she chooses to extol or fails to see is very surprising.'